Topic: The Most Emotional Moments in Nintendo Gaming Talkback Thread

[yoshi1001]

What about that part at the end of Hey You, Pikachu! where you have to say goodbye (literally) to Pikachu and send it back to the forest? That still makes me cry a little when I think about it.

[Tansunn]

It may have never been officially localized, but Mother 3 deserves a huge spot in this series.  I felt a HUGE range of emotions over the course of that game. 

[NWR_pap64]

Day three is up. It's Eternal Darkness.

[Ian Sane]

Eternal Darkness is in retrospect kind of a frustrating anomaly in Nintendo's history.  We're in the N64 era and Nintendo is making some of the best games ever.  But with the system relying so much on first party software, Nintendo's weaknesses as a game developer are exposed.  As talented as they are they often have weak stories and they don't like making mature content.  Bringing in Silicon Knights suggested that Nintendo was very aware of these weaknesses and was making the effort to address them.  Here was a company where story and mature content was part of their mission statement.  They were going to fill a gap that Nintendo themselves couldn't (or wouldn't).

Eternal Darkness was the first output of this Nintendo/SK team and though I feel the game has some flaws, it was a great first effort and it really was doing something different from the typical Nintendo title.  Here is Nintendo providing variety and the future looks bright.

But then they used SK to port Metal Gear Solid and the companies parted ways shortly after.  Okay, SK hasn't exactly delivered the goods since then but would that have been the case if it was the Nintendo/SK team?  I think the TEAM was everything and I feel the same way about Rare.

When the Gamecube was nearing launch it was like Nintendo had this nice little team of devs.  They had SK, Rare, Retro and Left Field with Factor 5 as an independent that they were on good terms with as well.  All of these teams were talented and complimented Nintendo in that they were good at the things Nintendo sucks at.  To me this was an ideal way for Nintendo to provide a more varied lineup without their Japanese teams being forced to do things they don't like.  Now only Retro remains and they've only released one Wii game.  And Nintendo's lineup has never felt less varied.  Everything feels mostly the same, not necessarily in gameplay but clearly in style and feel.  When Nintendo does work with another team it's almost always an unremarkable dev that is assigned to make the same sort of stuff EAD themselves would have made if they had the time to (except it isn't as good since it isn't the same level of talent).  Nintendo still sucks at the same things and makes no effort to address that, or even acknowledge that they care.

Breaking up that team, to me, felt like a sports team rebuilding through the draft only to give up on their prospects after a season or two because they didn't win a championship right away.  Every team except Retro more or less made one game on the Cube and then were sold off or given up on.  It often feels like when Nintendo doesn't want to do something they do a token effort to act like they addressed the issue only to put no real effort into it and then go back to the status quo after the idea "fails".  It appeared that Nintendo was addressing their shortcomings with that team of devs but considering how quickly they gave up and how they have made no effort since then, it really looks like they never really cared.  It was like NOA was giving something a try and NCL didn't like it and looked to kill it the first chance they did.

Eternal Darkness is the biggest Nintendo "what if".

[NWR_pap64]

Yeah, Eternal Darkness wasn't a perfect title. But it had a lot of quality to it. It was different from any kind of horror game, and in many ways it became a Nintendo title along the way.

[greybrick]

Day two is up! Greybrick will be pleased

Nice! Also I agree with day 3 as well.

Although, I feel as if you could have an entirely different discussion if you were to only talk about the ending of Mario Galaxy. That was some messed up stuff.

[NWR_pap64]

Day four is up! And I am willing to bet this one will raise a few eyebrows...

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/specialArt.cfm?artid=23178

[broodwars]

Day four is up! And I am willing to bet this one will raise a few eyebrows...

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/specialArt.cfm?artid=23178

Indeed.  The only "emotion" Wii Sports inspired in me was boredom.  I only cared enough to play about 5 minutes in every game type, and then the disc went up onto my shelf to rarely be touched again (unless I felt in the mood to play 5 minutes of bowling).

[NWR_pap64]

Wii Sports is a very exceptional case in that the game doesn't asks you to react emotionally to it. The previous games in this feature pretty much expected you to emote when their respective scenes happened (Be sad for the Lumas in Galaxy, be scared at the sanity effects in Eternal Darkness). But Wii Sports doesn't asks you to emote nor to have a deep connection to it. It just wants you to play the games and have fun.

The emotion lies in how the game was so inviting that everyone could truly play it and have fun. This created a very unique social gaming experience in which you didn't exactly have to be the best player in order to interact with everyone else (which is the case in games like Super Smash Bros. Brawl). The Miis, as I explained in this review, also helped.

It's been said that the reason Zelda and Mario have been so successful is because in the first games the characters didn't have an expansive storyline. They were avatars for the players to control, but along the way they became an extension of the player, thus creating an emotional connection between the player and the game character. The Miis take this idea further by letting you create your own characters in YOUR likeness as well as the likeness of others. In this regards, Wii Sports creates a personal experience for many.

People often forget that happiness, pleasure and satisfaction are genuine emotions that may not be as strong as anger or sadness, but they are indeed human emotions. We as gamers often forget that games primarily existed to be enjoyed, to have fun with and for everyone to enjoy. This was a common feeling in the early days of gaming. I believe Wii Sports brings back that emotion of fun and happiness that was once seen in classic gaming. But rather than asking the players to have a very high level of skill to enjoy the game, it just wanted you to play, and thus everyone could have a great time regardless if this was their first time ever or they have been gaming since birth.

I know no one is going to see it this way since Wii Sports is the complete opposite of what developers want to create and what gamers have come to expect in games. On that note, I don't expect anyone to have any emotional connection since emotions are subjective. But I know that many people and gamers have great emotional experiences because of this game because of the things I just mentioned. It's an example of how gameplay CAN create emotional responses in people without having to jerk them around in order to get a reaction.

[BeautifulShy]

Pap I agree with you. It does bring people together and brings out happy emotions while playing with other people. While most of the other games in this feature are single player games maybe people are so used to people playing by themselves and having experiences to themselves. Everybody wants their experiences to be personal. So something like Wii Sports gets criticism for including others.

[Ian Sane]

Wii Sports was an emotional experience for my Dad who had a big smile on his face when he first tried it.  I noticed a similar smile on a lot of people's faces at a work related function when the Wii was brought out.

I never really felt this sense of joy playing Wii Sports.  I enjoyed it, sure, but I enjoy lots of videogames.  There was a sense of "oh this is neat" as it was my first exposure to motion control.  But it didn't stick.  The game got dull very quickly and motion control lost its novelty.  Actually Wii Sports triggered my first case of motion control RAGE - the feeling of severe anger that occurs when a game grossly misinterprets your gesture causing you to lose.  I don't think anger is the type of emotional response Nintendo was going for.

The sense of joy I observed in others is very much like the sense of joy I had when I first played Super Mario World.  No, I am not comparing Wii Sports to the brilliance of Super Mario World.  The thing is my mom was very anti-videogame (and anti-fun and anti-comfort and anti-convenience) so I didn't have an NES and the only real gaming time I could get was if I could get a quarter off my Dad to use at an arcade machine (I also had no allowance so even this was rare).  My brothers and I saved up our money and bought ourselves a SNES (we had been saving for an NES so that should show you how long this took).  Thus Super Mario World was the first game where we truly got a chance to sink in serious play time.

Part of the thrill was that it was more or less my first videogame.  When one is not so familiar with videogames just simply playing a game is a sheer thrill.  The joy my Dad had playing Wii Sports was that "first game thrill".  He had never really even tried videogames before.  Wii Sports had a unique draw in the motion control to convince people, who had (largely arbitrarily) decided not to, to play a videogame.  It is a great example of videogame marketing.

Games like Pong, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros. have similar emotional response.  For many one of those games could have provided the "first game thrill".  There is considerable emotional attachment to titles like Halo or Final Fantasy VII because for many they were an introduction to a genre.  In fact they have a strong connection in that like Wii Sports those that were already familiar with the subject material wondered exactly what the big deal was.  I'm sure some Nintendo fans will claim to identify with the emotional connection to Wii Sports but I think they would be lying to themselves.  Not lying about their enjoyment of the game but rather the emotional connection.  It just isn't the same as if Wii Sports was your first videogame.

[NWR_pap64]

Day 5 is up, featuring Chibi-Robo!
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/specialArt.cfm?artid=23179

[Caliban]

Chibi-Robo's awesome.

[Gaviin]

I like this series of articles, but I had to bring this up.  Does NWR have a copy editor of any kind?

With this final line, we are assured that the sacrifice of the Lumas   wasn’t in bane...

In "bane"?  Come on, guys...

[S-U-P-E-R]

I was gonna say this was a silly article until I saw what #1 was. Way to go!

[IceCold]

Emotions are for pansies.

[S-U-P-E-R]

I wonder how many of you guys finished MGS3