Oh, the Irony - Nintendo Dev Says Stop Making Sequels
- Scribbled on March 9th, 2007 by Jonah Falcon
- Filed in Editorial Content, GDC, WTF
Of all the people to wag a finger at developers, telling them to stop making endless sequels of the same intellectual property, Shigeru Miyamoto shouldn’t be talking. Even if he qualifies that as saying “video game developers should resist the temptation to produce only sequels of established hits and games based on horror and revenge” (pointing out Resident Evil and Mortal Kombat), Miyamoto has churned out endless iterations of the same characters, like Mario, Donkey Kong and The Legend of Zelda. Time Magazine called him ”the Stephen Spielberg of video games”, but oh, the irony on that too - anyone who’s seen Amistad, Schindler’s List, and Saving Private Ryan can attest that Spielberg can be more violent than most directors. Just ask Quint from Jaws.
(Thanks, USA Today.)
March 9th, 2007 at 9:45 am
Miyamoto creates sequels, but he also creates new franchises. Unlike Bungie, or Rockstar, this single man has a long list of successful franchises:
1. Mario
2. Zelda
3. Donkey Kong
4. Wave Race
5. Star Fox
6. F-Zero
And has build a few games that do not have many sequels: pikman, 1080 Snowboarding, Eternal Darkness, Nintendogs and others.
Then he has your mashups like Super Smash Brothers, Wario, Mario Party, etc. where he builds games based on prior characters.
Want to name hit franchises Bungie churns out? Or what about ID Software? Even Epic Games now adays?
“only sequels of established hits and games based on horror and revenge”
That pretty much covers every development firm that does western-style first person shooters. Can you think of a title by Infinity Ward that doesn’t contain the pattern “Call of Duty [n]“?
Being able to juggle six franchises and still keep things fresh with Wii Sports and Wii play? Pfft.
Like Will Wright, Miyamoto can create hit sequels and fresh ideas all in the same year. When Bungie, Epic or Infinity can do that I’ll give them an applause.
March 9th, 2007 at 9:48 am
Uh huh. And what new property has he done in the last 20 years?
March 9th, 2007 at 10:11 am
Pikman, Nintendogs, Geist, Wii Sports to name a couple. I didn’t think I’d like Pikman, but it was a great game.
Yea yeah, I’m sure their will be a few more releases of it (actually, there was a pikman 2) - still don’t see that as a bad thing.
Full list of games here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nintendo_games_created_by_Shigeru_Miyamoto
A crap load more than those FPS cloners. Even if half had “mario” in them, at least they’re a shade different then a game ‘re-lit’ with new maps.