Jim Sterling (The Jimquisition)

People've brought that up in the past multiple times. It's part of the reason opinion of Miyamoto's fallen over the years, what with his addiction to gimmicks over iterating and developing what people already liked while fixing what they didn't (Paper Mario -> Thousand Year Door for example).

Right, but, like, the GAF thread for this video is mostly filled with people arguing back and forth over whether SFZ's controls are any good and not the innovation-for-innovation's-sake bit, which is mildly frustrating when I didn't really partake in the latter discussion and don't give much of a Semprini about the former.

I'm not really sure I'd call it innovation for innovation's sake. More like innovation (or even just change) for sales' sake.

Mario Kart series sells well? Let's just make normal sequels that expand on what we have rather than add any ridiculous gimmicks. Kirby sells decently for how low-budget it is? No need to do much outside of Super Star's formula. New Super Mario Bros. sells amazingly? Let's recycle half of the art assets and music. People will buy it no matter what!

Star Fox doesn't sell super well? Let's add some controller gimmicks. 3D Mario sells very well, but not as well as we want? Make it like a New Super Mario Bros. game in 3D. Metroid sells are middling, at least in Japan? Let's add a bunch of anime bull. Paper Mario sells could be better? This next game will be so different, no genre that currently exists will be able to describe it. It'll be in a whole new genre^note COUGH that does basically everything worse than genres that already exist COUGH of our own invention!

Nintendo's been obsessed with gimmicks for pretty much their entire existence. The Light Zapper and Super Scope were gimmicks. The Virtual Boy was a gimmick. Every incarnation of the Game Boy has had a gimmick except the Advance. "Now in Color! Now flat and tiny! Now with two screens! Check it out, we made the top screen 3-D!"

Minidiscs, motion controls, hell, console gaming was a gimmick at one point. They were a playing card manufacturer.

When Nintendo releases a new console, it's usually because they have a cool new toy they want to show you. Sometimes it goes over extremely well. Sometimes it doesn't. But either way, innovation is more or less their entire driving motivation. The reason people don't talk about it much is because it's been talked about at length since the GameCube came out around the turn of the millennium. There isn't much left to say.

edited 26th Apr '16 9:10:07 AM by TobiasDrake

The closest thing the Gamecube had to a gimmick was its compact design, and that didn't impact anything on a pure gameplay level.

What really makes this "constantly innovate" mindset dangerous, however, is when it works. Kid Icarus Uprising, for example, completely retooled a platformer into an on-rails/third-person shooter hybrid, and it pulled that off needing quick flicks from the control stick/pad for different movements and a combination of button presses and the touch screen for attacks. And it sold like hotcakes. So when something that weird works, it encourages them to keep going with things weird like that, because hey, it works. Except when it doesn't.

I mean, it's not like whether or not innovation works is just down to luck. They have to think about how these new things will effect the game.

I feel like Uprising ended up good because Sakurai and his team were smart enough to separate what did and didn't work early in development. I feel like Sakurai or someone else thought, "Oh, with stylus controls the player can react more quickly to enemies appearing" and based the game around thoughts like that. With 3D Land and 3D World, EAD Tokyo was careful in thinking about what 2D Mario elements do and don't work well in 3D and vice-versa^note I will never stop defending the removal of flight and the triple jump.

Whereas with Sticker Star, nobody once thought, "Hey, maybe giving the avoidable battles no meaningful reward isn't such a great idea," or, "Forcing the player to backtrack for using the wrong sticker or not having the right sticker probably doesn't make the game fun." With Other M, no one thought, "Using d-pad controls for a 3D game just for the sake of being retro is probably a terrible idea."

I would hope the takeaway Nintendo gets from Uprising's success would be, "Innovation that is well thought out results in a good game," rather than that innovation in itself is good.

edited 26th Apr '16 12:57:14 PM by FawfulCrump

Heh. Don't talk to Jim Sterling about Kid Icarus Uprising; he despises that game almost as much as he despises Star Fox Zero.

Well I liked uprising so I'll take what he says about this with a grain of salt

Even if I liked Uprising, I still agree with Jim's general point.

Here's his review, by the by.

And yeah, he shits on Kid Icarus Uprising here, too, so.

People are giving flack for ol' Jim not for the score, but for a particularly hyperbolic statement that he made on it:

Of course, this has led to people that both agreed and disagreed with the review to call him out on it, saying that it seems rather hypocritical of him to do so when he did a video in the past saying how said hyperbole is kinda stupid, but I can't say for sure how accurate that assessment is because I've never seen the video and believe people are taking it the wrong way (for example, they seem to think that he said "you must be crazy for liking the game, PERIOD" and not "you must be crazy for preferring this game over any other Star Fox game").

edited 26th Apr '16 5:49:07 PM by Nettacki

Regardless it's not a cool thing to say/imply.

edited 26th Apr '16 6:19:20 PM by randomness4

Yeah, even if I'm not at all interested in Star Fox Zero, that's where I diverge from Jim.

Reminds me of some of the Uprising arguments. No need to imply people who like the controls are lying and/or crazy. No need to to imply people who don't like them (or literally find them physically painful, ffs) are lying and/or crazy.

edited 26th Apr '16 6:53:14 PM by FawfulCrump

Yeah, I got rather sick of that shit always coming up whenever I mentioned that I couldn't finish Kid Icarus Uprising because, stand or no stand, OG 3DS or XL, that game gave my hands cramps something fierce. No, I am not doing it wrong. Yes, I did the pinky method. Yes, it still started hurting within five minutes or so of play.

It's a shame, because the writing seemed really good. I should probably watch an LP or something to see the end of the plot already.

edited 26th Apr '16 11:12:45 PM by ShadowHog

I had to watch an lp to see how uprising ended it really screws your hands up

( '>'): Only "if" you use the "stylus"...eh.

I must be one of the lucky people who didn't have any problems with Uprising.

You're not the only one. I never had a problem with Kid Icarus: Uprising either, and it still remains one of my favorite games of all time.

Lots of people had no problems with KIU. And that's fine! It's when the people who don't start talking down to me, a guy who did, that we have an issue.

He's doing this to troll us

Huh, he did episode on that

Jim's solution is brilliant.

Good on you, Jim.

Oh my fucking god, that is amazing!