What Nintendon't

Let's go ahead and drop this pallet of bricks on the pavement right now: I hate Nintendo. I hate Nintendo in a way that most people might hate a parent that promises bad ass birthday presents and never follows through. I hate them like you might hate someone who gives you a puppy, lets you name it, and then stomps it to death.

I haven't even been a fan of video games for that long. I never had an NES when I was a kid (though I wanted one) and while I had a SNES, I never really played any of the classics outside of what Nintendo games everyone knew about through word of mouth. As soon as I got my Game Genie, my game selection hinged entirely on what games had the most awesome codes in the code book. I was what today would be classified as a "casual gamer", but back then would have been classified as "stupid kid whose taste in games is abysmal".

What I'm trying to say here is that I am 100% immune to the paralyzing, mind-addling nostalgia rays that grip most gamers today. This hate doesn't come from a jilted Nintendo Power reader. I didn't grow up with Link. I grew up with Mario, but in the way most people "grow up" with Mickey Mouse. No one but suburban housewives actually gives a shit about him. My babysitter wasn't the SNES: I was far too busy being babysat by Spider-man comics to pay attention to video games. I didn't play Link to the Past until my sophomore year of college, and Ocarina of Time my senior year.

Even so, Nintendo always meant one thing: games and systems that had that magical blend of technical prowess, creative gameplay, and good old fashioned Herculean effort. Their games were always huge, well rounded, technologically and graphically impressive, and truly creative. For nigh on 20 years they were the games you pointed to (on consoles) that said "This is how you make games". When they got down to brass tacks, they were simply the best in the business.

Unfortunately, that's not all you need in order for your system of the week to stay afloat: You also need a baker's shitload of games, which Nintendo found in really short supply once they had their first, real opposition. The Big N never quite realized just how powerful their foe was, just how hard they had to fight back, and as a result for two entire console cycles they got raped like a petite black woman that wandered too near to Mike Tyson's cage.

Here's where the hate comes in. At the start of round two of the great ten year rape-a-thon, things were up in the air for Nintendo. They were poised to take back some of the ground they'd lost with their promising new system. They had that aforementioned magical blend, they had spokesmen that weren't complete douchebags, and they had hardware that would never ever break. So I bit the bullet, bought a Gamecube, and waited for Nintendo to stand up and fight back with a string of titles that would once again show the rest of the world how you make videogames.

Nintendo opened with a solid left hook called Smash Bros. Melee, and after that Sony reared back and punched Nintendo so hard that Nintendo's head went back in fucking time and smacked Atari right in the balls, casuing them to tumble into their Great Video Game Crash.

Meanwhile, i'm sitting here in my chair, reading news about what Nintendo has in store for the little box I just bought going JESUS CHRIST NINTENDO GET UP AND FIGHT! THROW A FUCKING PUNCH FOR GOD'S SAKES SINCE I JUST SPENT TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY BUCKS ON YOUR SHITBOX EMBARRASSMENT.

They never did. Sony kept punching them so hard in the face that their head was little more than strawberry jam, and all they ever did to fight back was wobble their little hands in mild defiance every once in a while. The PS2 would have more games coming out for it than people could possibly play in a month, titles that would go down as classics of the era. Meanwhile Nintendo released one Mario Sports title every six months while Professional Meatman of Inderterminate Ethnicity Reggie Fils-Aime threw the same two quotes out: "We haven't forgotten about the hardcore gamer" and "We have a really grat lineup of games this quarter, such as *bullshit no one cares about!". As all this was happening, PS2's were practically shattering left and right, and all Sony did was say FUCK YOU WHAT'RE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT FAGGOT, and then proceeded to make billions.

Finally, Nintendo had enough. Like a big fat crybaby who doesn't get his way, Nintendo took their ball and went home. Nintendo retreated into their chrysalis, and when they emerged, they were the complete and utter polar opposite of what they had been. Instead of a company that embodied creativity, hard work, and technical excellence all rolled into one, they embodied mainstream appeal, minimal work, and gimmickry. The company that once put rules in place that both made them shit-tons of money as well as safeguarded against another Atari-era crash, could now not pump absolute garbage onto the market fast enough and is the only company of the big three that has no quality requirements whatsoever. The company that once made huge, epic games like Ocarina of Time and Mario 3 that will go down in history as the best examples of the medium, now gets up on stage at E3 and tell me that their big new thing is a ninety dollar bathroom scale that I can use to pretend to get in shape.

And you know what? It's made them billions of fucking dollars, so an extra special Fuck You goes out to all the blind pricks who supported their crybaby freefall into the slimy failure bog that Atari crash landed into twenty years ago. Call me a fanboy, but since the Old Nintendo left with their guiding light in tow, games in general have been worse off for it. Alas, that's a rant for another day.

And that class, is why I hate Nintendo.