hmm...

according to wikipedia, 'super mario advance', 'super mario world: SMA2', 'yoshi's island: SMA3' and 'super mario bros 3: SMA4' were all developed internally at nintendo, by the formally known R&D2 division. looking at R&D2's 'softography', it shows a number of original games such as 'kirby tilt n' tumble' on GBC and 'band brothers' on DS, but these are outnumbered by remakes. historically, there existed a similar situation in the 90's when miyamoto's team got allocated more resources because mario was more popular than games like metroid and kid icarus, so the metroid team was forced to work on mario land games for gameboy, etc. for more information see this article: http://www.n-sider.com/contentview.php?contentid=319

on the other hand, using the mario example, all those mario sports spin-offs are produced by external studios such as camelot. however, nintendo still spends money publishing those games and bringing them to market. IMO that money would be better spent elsewhere, like investing in more internal EAD teams working on more new concepts. but it seems that nintendo is trying to strike a balance between new ideas and popular brands. they seem to want it all; to be very profitable but also innovative.

i actually don't know how much nintendo rely on market research, but in a recent wii music interview, miyamoto explained that he comes up with ideas first, then gets a small group of workers together to test the concept. wii music is an example of that. other internal EAD teams i imagine listen to their fan bases, such as the bad reaction to 'mario kart: double dash', and then the more streamlined 'mario kart wii'.

nintendo has a powerful influence. they worked with skip to bring 'bit generations' to market. it was japan only, but these are great and original games. they also do have a history of nurturing talent in 2nd parties to produce new 'IP' (eternal darkness, metroid prime, perfect dark) that they have no experience in (or desire to make). but i don't think they'll drop their powerful brands, as it's their strong point. they are like the japanese disney, and as well as being a factory, they innovate 'underneath' their brands (mario galaxy, wind waker etc.).

I also imagine that they can't let their internal teams get too big or it will impact on the ability to innovate. this is a guess though. i imagine the design team at nintendo EAD tokyo is tiny and i imagine they are allowed to do what they want with access to as many 'resources' as possible.

'And again, ask yourself this: if they didn't do these remakes, would the amount of new games on the way be any different?

Let's be honest, here... it wouldn't.'

depends. depends on whether they have any ideas in the first place. i'm sure they test a lot of ideas, but these might not work or something else. though i do agree that nintendo shouldn't push the mario brand onto so many teams. originality should be allowed to thrive, and in some cases i'm sure it slows down possible new IP. and also it takes talent to design a game, and they might be selective in who they hire, or there might not be a suitable applicant. i don't know.

'you don't like it, just ignore it'

ignoring doesn't do any good. why be ignorant? surely it is better to be concious and make people aware; open their eyes and make them think.

'Metroid Prime 1 and 2, Super mario Sunshine, and Pikmin are all games that will work much better with the pointer.'

maybe so, but i don't agree with some of those remakes. i imagine it's either to satisfy US, the 'hardcore' nintendo fan, or to build new audiences.

'Theres more than a billion games out there and at least half of them are remakes'

sequels are remakes too. depends what you mean by 'remake'. mario kart wii isn't new IMO! it's a remake of an old design that was created in the early nineties. that's kind of cheating and doesn't count as new to me. mario galaxy makes 'true' advancements though and is a very good game all around.

'We've known the zelda team has been working on a wii game for a while now.'

they have a whole team dedicated to zelda. all they do is perpetually make zeldas. eiji aonuma is the main director i think. the zelda team is 'EAD software group No. 3' according to wikipedia.

'But if I have to choose it is Gameplay that matters more.'

the fact is, when do you have to make that choice?

this is a silly and generalised topic, but i see it a lot on forums. it's like an endless cycle.

some re-releases might be worth it. for example, DK: jungle beat, pikmin 2 and chibi robo. DK: jungle beat is almost impossible to find where i live, and its also hard to find a PAL version online. pikmin 2 is ridiculously priced online (£45/$80 or so) and nowhere in the shops here. chibi robo likewise.

nintendo need to stop putting region blocks on their consoles, and they should stop 'acting' like their previous consoles are forgotten and dead because i'm sure those 'user-bases' still exist. re-release those games at a small discount, so the crazy inflation online goes down, and then focus on new wii ideas simultaneously. is a company's SOLE purpose to maximise profits at the cost of everything else?

another justification for messing with old games is to experiment or iterate on something that will aid a future game getting the green-light for production; i.e. to test ideas out. this seems like a cheap way to go about doing that, and make some money from the time doing it. otherwise, yeah, it is a bit pointless.

nintendo should stop nurturing such a rabid fan-base of patriots. hopefully the new audiences they gain will be a breath of fresh air...but i don't know.

doesn't it depend on the game? -.0

i used to automatically finish games just by playing and enjoying them. for instance, my n64, i didn't have many games for it, but the games i did have i played and saw most things (unless there were moments that were too difficult for me, then i stopped).

when i got a psone, i played through all the final fantasies (of course - like novels). but when i got a playstation 2, i stopped playing completely through my games unless they could hold my attention for a long time. and that is where i am now, so completion isn't like a 'goal' for me, but if a game is that good i will probably be excited to play through it all.

and i don't bother 'completing' racing games/fighting games etc.

i'm stunned at the ignorance on display here. most of you give your answers blindly, without thinking.

'graphics or gameplay do you think matters more?':

1. it depends on what you mean by 'graphics' (polygons? sprites? textures? animation? effects? level design?)

2. it depends on what you mean by 'gameplay' (contact? movement? interaction? physics?)

3. it depends on the aesthetic and look of the game (photo-realistic dystopia? cartoon lava world? german expressionism?)

4. it depends on the type of gameplay (shooting? sword battles? collisions in burnout? jumping? rolling samus into a ball?)

so what exactly are we talking about here? because they are all linked together. i'll illustrate my points and produce examples using the many short-sited (and badly spelt) comments from this topic:

"Graphics dont make a game buddy. The gameplay does ,and I have to admit a game with a nice art [look] is nice too if it has good gameplay"

well, actually you are wrong, because graphics are an integral part of the 'gameplay' of a game. firstly, where is your 'gameplay' without the environment (which is part of the graphics; the polygons); you would be floating in space and unable to make contact with the ground. also, if the textures were not applied, or they were really blurred and out of place, how would you be able to tell what you're doing? and if the animation was missing (movement is a big chunk the of interaction, and interaction is gameplay) how would you move? how would you accurately connect to the environment or to other objects? gameplay is largely comprised of moving objects, so if you take them away there is no game.

'Definitely gameplay. Why do you think people still play the retro 80's-90's games? Gameplay simply!'

'I played a variety of games as a child 80's and 90's from my older cousin's with the old bitmap 2D graphics. Nostalgia...'

exactly. nostalgia. veteran gamers still play pacman and asteroids because they grew up with those games and have special attachments to them, but they probably love the graphics as well, as there is nothing wrong with them and those games wouldn't function without them because take the sprites away and everything is invisible. do you think metroid on the NES would be playable without its aesthetic? do you think the signature isolation would be felt? even if you replaced the sprites with white blocks, the 'gameplay' you're thinking of wouldn't work properly. take away the animation for samus's spin jump and it would be just a regular high jump which would destroy a huge part of what metroid is. every game would be arbitrary and unidentifiable, connection and contact would feel horrible, and you would get lots of glitches.

'worrying about how much colours the NES's graphics chip is rendering'

'i'd play super mario bros and won't give a damn about it's pixellated graphics'

who's worrying about the graphics of 8-bit games? 2D is a type of game and gameplay, that IMO sits BESIDE the current genre and trend towards 3D. super mario on the nes was a different type of game than super mario 64 BECAUSE of its graphics. can you not see this? and anyway, take away mario's character design (the graphics; the sprites) and you lose the large attraction that game had, and you lose a lot of fun too. the gameplay of mario comes from his character. ever wonder why you laugh at pixar movies and animations? animation is fun. animation provokes reactions and emotions. a lot of games would be bland and not fun without these things. and also, without character textures and the initial drawing concepts that became character textures, the animation would have no intention and no direction and no purpose. it would move in any direction for no point, because there would be no character.

'If there were no gameplay it wouldnt be a game'

correction. if there were no INTERACTION it wouldn't be a computer/video game. interaction is the key differentiator. but interaction isn't just physical. sound and music is interactive; the visual world you walk around in is interactive; your movement and animation INTERACTS with the world. take away the aesthetic and graphics and you're losing more than half the possible interactions a game can give. graphics and physics have to be equal; they have to be both there to start.

'but a good game NEEDS good graphics! It makes a lot of difference to the way you feel about or when playing the game!'

...and the way you FEEL in a game relates to physics which relates to gameplay. and the way to FEEL about a world you are playing in...isn't this the point of playing games? you want to feel something? if you take away the beautiful imagery in super metroid, or the artists didn't bother that much with the aesthetic, you would not feel the same about that game and it would not be so fondly remembered today. atmosphere was key to SM, and without it the subtle visual storytelling would be gone, and it would probably be quite boring. so... where is the fun coming from now, eh?

'I prefer gameplay but graphics today are somewhat important.'

graphics are as important as gameplay. games are a visual medium. if a game is just about shooting and killing things, then the graphics and aesthetic are more important to me, because that kind of gameplay is stale and there is nothing new about murdering polygons for pleasure.

'[what matters is]gameplay,but i love games with great graphics,i always loved,games like Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy and MGS'

KH and FF are mostly graphics anyway. MGS has a lot of cut scenes that are part of the graphics and the artists make the graphics. next.

'But graphics is a part of gameplay. Gameplay isn't just a "fun factor", It's also about feeling like you're "in the game".'

exactly. one of the only sensible comments here. graphics is a part of gameplay.

'I think for a key example of this argument all you need to do is look at Megaman 9 and the direction it went. I personally would rather play a pixelly masterpiece then a Goregeous waste of time...'

that's probably something more to do with nostalgia. if you never played megaman before, or if it never existed, then capcom made a new game character called megaman, i doubt it would be as successful.

define yours terms.

use examples.

this is a binary argument..

although it is hard to gauge a video or computer games' impact on the industry, i think shadow of the collosus will become the most influential video game. i think SOTC is ahead of its time. but saying that it is ahead of its time feels wrong. it feels wrong because the kind of design innovations that that game made could have happend a lot earlier; it is just that the digital games industry is very slow to innovate and is still growing.

it is hard to explain, but shadow of the collosus automatically has influence on every game, regardless of genre; these include...

*visual/interactive storytelling - storytelling THROUGH the graphics, envrionment and collossi (w/out dialogue and cut-scenes)

*re-thinking the concept of level design, bosses, enemies and plot structure

*making new and interesting developments in character design (wanda & agro, similar to yorda & ico)

*depending on how you read the game, it can mean a lot of things - it has a purposefully ambiguous structure

SOTC is designed from the ground up; from a small drawing on a scrap of paper by one person with no other people disturbing the vision. the team also seems to have had limitless technological power and a large budget at their disposal. it's an extremely organised team of very creative individuals.

the creator, fumito ueda, has said that he works on a 'design by reduction' principle; stripping away any superfluous material, and only sticking with the necessities of what the design must be. it's a game that hasn't been compromised.

my most loved recent game is probably super metroid, not that it is recent, but i only deeply got into it recently. and i think that game is as influential as SOTC, although not necessarily just because of its influence on 2D adventure games. REZ is also up there. it is a tie between SM and REZ (also very influential, but i've blabbed enough already about SOTC!).

fondest memories... super mario on the snes...and probably banjo kazooie and donkey kong country. before REZ and SM, Zelda:OOT is my past favourite/loved game. it defined immersion and adventure for me (in virtual terms!).