I love Nintendo, okay. I have an appreciation for their games and some that may be unpopular, but I still consider their works a piece of art. So if any of you Nintendo Freaks think I hate them and me making this post is offending you, then just don't read. I know there are some things that a lot of you, or maybe some, that don't know Nintendo's process of making a game. Some are actually very poetic and better than most companies who handle a new title, but they were greedy when they were in the fame back in the 80's. Hello and welcome to this truth-filled thought blog.
Okay to start, since Nintendo was taking the light that was Atari, they were the only ones who were the desired company to sell games. Yes, there was the Sega Master System, but no one liked that console sadly. So, to not do what Atari had did (Having any game to have their licensing on it and sell it without seeing if it would sell), they made an entire process to make a game be on Nintendo. The game had to go through this process of whether the game would be fun, work on the console and nothing to upset the audience or destroy Nintendo's image. And before they accepted, the company or person who submitted their game had to pay $200 to see if they were worthy to be on their console. To many, this was a good security check for a game, to not create the crash of 83 again, but it was a painful process. Having to spend as little as possible to be apart of a still new business and risk whether or not this game would sell after paying a hefty $200 to just have it out there. There were some who went past that process and made illegal copies of their own game, but those game were sold either in an alleyway or in a Swap Meet, having barely any cartridges sold.
I believe there was even a private protests against NIntendo's policy to put a game on their console, but was mostly unheard of to the public, barely having any lash on the company. I don't know if that's true though. I found it on a site a while back, but can never find it. You can take my word for or not, it's your choice. Anyways, This also made some good with the games on the console, having people to strive to do their demands or do multiple submissions after tweaking your game, making the game have a passionate team working to release their game on a successful console. Unfair, but it encouraged better performance. Even the head of Nintendo at the time, being a person who never played a game in his life, was passionate of making any game fun and making sure he had the right people do so such as trusting Miyamoto in what he thought was a good game. You can say that their policy was bad, but it had a perfect purpose in the gaming industry to stay alive for what it was.
Although that wasn't as fiendish as most can think, but Nintendo had another thing that they still do today, along with one other thing. Whenever they thought something they released wasn't going to sell past the Japanese market, they decreased stock in European and Western markets to make them more valuable and given more fame than they already should. The first product they gave this treatment to was the hated Zelda II: Adventures of Link. It was a first attempt of a sequel and the fear of a game to fail for them was completely possible, so to not be fired from the company, they made copies low and you know the rest. In America, the game was sought after, having people create lines that would go through stoplights out of the store. There was even a guy who went cross country for the game that wanted the it for collector's sake, he was put on the news and the game was given free advertising, having people speculate that the game was awesome and needed to be had. So in return, the game wasn't considered a fail to the company.
This followed with other products in the future such as the Amiibos and the famous NES Classic Edition. Remember the whole Amiibo shortage, having some Amiibos exceed the thousands price range? Yeah, that was a tactic for Nintendo make a product more mainstream. And how they stopped production for the NES Classic to leave room for the SNES Classic. No, it was so that they don't have to waste resources to give the product a shelf to call home. It's a pretty greedy tactic, but Amiibos were stop talked about recently and people are still willing to pay hundreds of dollars to buy an NES Classic, so they did a good job being able to make us want it.
Past that, Playstation was going to be the next console for Nintendo while partnering with Sony. They had so many redesigns, having them fight whether it should be cartridge based with games and have a CD player attached to it or have it be entirely CD based. At the time, that was the staple for any piece of technology, being determined as "high tech." They separated after a few disagreements and Sony made the Playstation, while owning the rights to name entirely, in protest against Nintendo, making the console entirely CD based, making it seem more high tech than any other console. I love that, though. Sony had some balls to do such a thing as this. And to make it even worse for Nintendo, they created a new way of putting a game on a famous console. They had no process of which a game had to be accepted, they just paid someone a lot of money to flip Nintendo off with the next best game after Mario. Many would say that Playstation had a poor attempt of fighting Nintendo, but look at them now.
To keep their Nintendo Policy, they made their next console, the N64, to be only cartridge based. Although being inferior to their competitor, they still made great games in a cartridge that made so many great classics and generation defining games.
What does this have to do with being fiendish? I mean yeah, that can be just a refusal to follow what their competitor has, but it was basically game lock in hiding. If you look at articles from that time, there are a lot of people complaining about how Final Fantasy 7 wasn't on the N64. Well, FF7 was a game that carried three CDs in one box to play the entire game and CDs carried 12 time the memory and power of that compared to a cartridge. How many cartridges do you think would be put in an N64 box of FF7? Maybe 5 or 7, being generous. It would be overpriced, seeing how much materials would take to make that many cartridges, having to make every other version follow the same price or similar, having the game be a risk to both companies.
They basically made this console cartridge based to put another lock on their system so no one can sell a game without acceptance by Nintendo. They followed this rule since that console, having the Gamecube use awfully small, but cute CDs to play games and the recent Switch being only cartridge based, having every developer to go through the acceptance process with Nintendo to put it on their console. A smart move, even without their $200 fee before acceptance. I guess Nintendo had more balls than Playstation had. Although now it doesn't matter to be on a Nintendo Console since Xbox and Playstation have an easier and painless process to have a game out there and considering Indies have the PC realm to play with. Now, it's just Pirate Protection instead of Game Lock.
I would have to say, even though Nintendo is a friendly company, they're still a corporate company that want in the competition as much as Xbox and Playstation after taking Nintendo's thunder. What do you guys think? After reading this, would you still call Nintendo a friendly company to trust or did you already know this and don't care if Nintendo does something wrong? I would actually like to know honestly. I want to know if the majority know about these things. Well, I hope you enjoyed this read, been a while since I wrote something this fun, so I hope you like it. And 'til next time...
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