Topic: Games That Retro Studios Should Be Developing for the Wii U

[nickmitch]

It wouldn't be Nintendo if they were just trying to keep up with the other consoles. Yeah, they COULD do it, and it would probably work. It would make more sense and be more Nintendo-like for Retro to fill a hole in the market, make something that's been missing (like Star Fox) or something that's never been done before simply on a whim.

[Chozo Ghost]

Yeah, I meant Super Mario Bros.

And yeah, there are fewer stones left unturned in the video gaming world now than there was 30 years ago when the industry was just getting started, but I doubt every stone has been turned over. There were people even like 200 years ago who said all the world's species had been discovered and cataloged, but probably more have been discovered since then than had ever been discovered before then and new species are still being discovered. So using that analogy I'm sure there are a lot of great video game ideas still waiting to be developed. There are going to be naysayers who will say its all been done before, but they will be proven wrong by someone. Isn't it better if that someone is Retro/Nintendo?

[NWR_insanolord]

Nintendo doesn't need to have anything in the genre. Just because Sony and Microsoft have these types of things doesn't mean Nintendo should too. Halo hasn't been a system seller in a long time, and Killzone never was. There are already too many first person shooters out there; we shouldn't waste what may be Nintendo's best development team on an oversaturated genre it has no hope of being a major player in.

By that logic Nintendo should never have released the NES, because the market was already oversaturated with the likes of Atari and Colecovision and so on.

That's not the same logic at all. First off, the console market wasn't oversaturated when they launched the NES, because all of those systems were pretty much dead by that point. Second, hardware is not the same as software. Super Mario Bros. wasn't in a genre that everyone else had done to death; it was something fresh and new, which is exactly what I'm saying Retro should be doing instead of making yet another FPS.

[Ian Sane]

Part of me wants to see what Retro could do with an FPS.  Yeah, there are lots of FPS games out there but how many of them are "Nintendo good"?  But I get where insanolord is coming from in regards to the Wii U getting the big third party first person shooters anyway.  The time for Retro or Nintendo to have released such a thing was THIS gen.  Hell since the N64 days there have been lots of times where Nintendo should have released a game in genre X because their lack of third party support essentially left that genre unspoken for.  So what Retro should do is fill whatever gap is not filled already by third parties on the Wii U.  Time will tell what genre is not well represented.

[Tamazoid]

I would like Retro to have a crack at the RPG genre. Perhaps restarting Raven Blade.

[Chozo Ghost]

As I said, an FPS is the thing Nintendo is lacking and has always been lacking from its franchise library. An FPS is exactly the thing which could have sold people on the Virtual Boy back when it came out, and maybe that could have saved it. But we'll never know, because Nintendo didn't have an FPS franchise offering then or now.

I think it relates to how Japanese centric the company is. FPS games are unpopular in Japan for whatever reason, but they are extremely popular in the west. But since Nintendo is a Japanese based company and because most of their thinking revolves around Japan and Japan is given their most attention and the highest priority, catering to western gamers is really an afterthought.

That said, the 3DS could really use an original Nintendo FPS franchise on it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think it even has any 3rd party FPS games on it at the moment, and if it does I'm sure there aren't many of them and they aren't of great quality. Even COD MW3 which recently came out did not see release on the 3DS. So this is a major hole in the 3DS' library.

Nintendo is trying to say they are reaching out to all gamers and all demographics, right? Well, until they start reaching out to FPS gamers they can't make that claim. That doesn't mean they should do a 180 and abandon everyone else and do nothing but Halo style shooters. Of course they shouldn't do that. But they should make at least a token effort at an FPS game so then they would have all grounds covered, and then and only then would it be correct for them to say they are trying to reach out to everyone.

[Adrock]

If Nintendo gets 3rd parties on board, I don't see why they can't make the claim that they're reaching out to all gamers. Nintendo doesn't have to own an IP in every genre to claim mass appeal. They need 3rd parties to support their console with titles in those genres.

[Chozo Ghost]

If Nintendo gets 3rd parties on board, I don't see why they can't make the claim that they're reaching out to all gamers. Nintendo doesn't have to own an IP in every genre to claim mass appeal. They need 3rd parties to support their console with titles in those genres.

Hoping for 3rd parties to fill in the gaps and depending on them to do that has been a strategy Nintendo has been relying on since the Gamecube (and probably before that) and we have all seen how well that policy has worked out. I think it goes without saying that this shouldn't be repeated.

Nintendo doesn't have to be strong in all areas, but they need to have all bases covered. For all anyone knows it could end up being a runaway success and spawn 50 sequels and generate a character that can show up in a future smash bros. game. Maybe it won't be that successful, but it needs to be there anyway just in case at some time in the future Nintendo needs to call him/her/it up for active duty. Its important that he/she/it be there.

[NWR_insanolord]

Nintendo can't do everything themselves. If the Wii U is going to have a game lineup with all bases covered, some of them are going to have to be covered by third parties.

While it is possible that this hypothetical Retro FPS could be a huge hit that sells a ton and spawns all kinds of sequels, realistically there's basically no chance of that happening. Not saying it won't be really good, but it won't get enough attention to be a major player in the genre. I'm certain Retro could do a job with it, because I would bet on Retro doing a good job of anything they set their minds to, but I really think their time is better spent on other things

[ThePerm]

maybe making Donkey Kong was to get them experience making jungles

[Ian Sane]

There's nothing wrong with letting third parties fill the gaps.  But when it has become clear that third parties are NOT going to fill the gap, Nintendo has to step up.  Once it became clear that the Wii was not going to get much attention on the FPS front, Nintendo had to do it themselves.  They should have done that with an RPG on the N64 (though they did release Paper Mario at the very end, maybe they just took too long).  They weren't getting GTA on the Cube so they should have made their own sandbox game (note I only said "sandbox", doesn't have to be crime related).

Sega is mostly a big screw up but they did get the Genesis right.  When third parties weren't delivering the goods, Sega filled the gap themselves.  No Final Fight?  We got Streets of Rage.  No Dragon Quest?  We got Phantasy Star.  No Mario?  We got Sonic.  They didn't sit there and mope about third parties not stepping up.  They went out and filled the gaps so that their userbase wasn't left in the cold.

[NWR_insanolord]

Sega did that on their other platforms as well. Hell, on the Dreamcast they invented new gaps to fill, like the outer space dancing reporter gap.

[Chozo Ghost]

Sega did a fine job filling in the software with what little shoestring resources they had available, and they should be commended for that. Its a shame they spread themselves too thin by releasing too much redundant hardware which they could not possibly support adequately.

Nintendo is a multi-billion dollar company and has all the talent and resources it could ever need. So if Sega could fill out every genre, then there is no excuse for Nintendo not being able to. Nintendo does a good job delivering the games they want to deliver. Look at the Wii and how many 2D and 3D platformers it received, or casual games. If those are the only two genres of games you care about, then the Wii was the most awesome system of this generation if not of all time. But unfortunately, if you are looking for anything other than that you will be disappointed to find the cupboard is bare.

[NWR_insanolord]

Comparing what Sega did back then to the way things are now is ridiculous. Things have changed quite a bit; games are a lot more expensive and take significantly more time to make. For Nintendo to be able to cover everything they would have to expand by a lot, meaning founding and staffing new studios or buying existing ones, or probably both. That would cost a fuckton of money, and it would most likely be too much for them to handle while maintaining the level of quality they're known for. The much better and more sane solution is the one they seem to have gone with, to work more closely with third parties and design their systems to be more accommodating to them, ensuring better support.

[Chozo Ghost]

The much better and more sane solution is the one they seem to have gone with, to work more closely with third parties and design their systems to be more accommodating to them, ensuring better support.

But this solution has not bore fruit. They've been trying it since the Gamecube, and what has the results of that been? If Nintendo wants things done right they have to do it themselves. 3rd parties will look for any excuse to screw Nintendo over. Its happened over and over again, so why think this time would be any different?

You say this is the "sane" solution, but correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the definition of insanity to do something over and over again and expect a different result? So it seems to me this is not the sane solution at all, but rather the insane solution... like some mental patient beating their head against the wall of a sanatorium hoping that this will make the voices go away, but actually just taking their meds would probably work better.

[Ian Sane]

I agree that game development is more complex now so Nintendo can't do exactly what Sega used to do.  A game like Streets of Rage was probably made by only a handful of people and took mere months to make.  It's just not that complex of a game.

But has Nintendo EVER really tried this at all?  They have their favourite genres and styles and rarely go outside it.  I'm not suggesting they fill all the gaps.  I'm suggesting they make some sort of effort to tackle the most important gaps.  If they've got five gaps, fill the most important one!  Instead they just do whatever they want and don't give two shits if the genres they are not interested in are not well represented.

"Leave it to the third parties" is an EXCUSE from a company that doesn't give a **** if their userbase is content or not as long as they make a profit.  Since the N64 era Nintendo has never appeared to put in a legitmate effort to address any complaints about the gaps in their library.  If they cared they wouldn't have let this happen for 15 years.  They either don't care or they are ridiculously incompetent and they're far too profitable of a company to have just been fucking this up all this time.

[Chozo Ghost]

Since the N64 era Nintendo has never appeared to put in a legitmate effort to address any complaints about the gaps in their library.

I think its always been that way. Its just that before the N64 era the 3rd parties really did fill those gaps, so there was no problem, but from the N64 era onward the gaps are just left gaping wide open and never filled by anyone. Maybe this will change with the Wii U and I seriously hope it does, but that's putting faith in someone else to pull through and do the job you should be doing yourself. Sure, Han Solo might return in the millennium Falcon and save the day, but Luke shouldn't count on that as a given.

And even if that multiplatform support does come through, guess what? The competition is going to have those multiplatform titles also, PLUS their own exclusive 1st party offerings. FPS fans will not come to the Wii U based on multiplatform support alone. These gamers love COD and Battlefield and games like it, but they can get those on the other systems too, plus Killzone, Halo, Resistance, Gears of War, etc. which are platform exclusive.

So at BEST with Nintendo's current strategy of letting 3rd parties fill in the gaps they will only be able to get SOME of the games the competition systems will have. There needs to be at least one 1st party Nintendo franchise which is exclusive to the Wii U, otherwise FPS nuts won't care. There will still be COD and Battlefield of course, but since the Wii U is not the FPS console of choice the sales of these titles would probably trail behind the versions for the other consoles, and if it trails badly enough it could convince certain developers to ignore the Wii U and it would be the Gamecube/Wii situation all over again.

I'm not asking for Nintendo to create a COD killer, but they need an A+ FPS franchise which is exclusive to their hardware. It needs to be something the other consoles will not have, which would make FPS fans have a reason to want to buy a Wii U. Once that is in place, the 3rd party multiplatform games might do better on the Wii U because the market would be there.

[marty]

New Super Mario Bros. 2--as in using Super Mario Bros. 2 as the inspiration and making new version of it.

[Stogi]

Walls of Text make my eyes bleed.

I think if Nintendo should do anything, they should take a page from Google and allow developers to work on their main projects for 80% of the time, but then work on any pet projects 20% of the time. The best pet projects by the end of the year get full-funding.

Either that or just rotate from top team to top team, forcing each one at some point to come up with a new IP. That way everyone, everywhere can have their shot.

[ThePerm]

i really don't get the idea that "games are so complex now that they take more and more people to make", bullshit, thats bad management. All these games are made with the same software, and all you have to do is re-use resources. I'm pretty sure they make everything from scratch a lot of the time and that slows down development time. Also, at this point re-using resources should be that much easier because its going to be harder and harder to make the console crash. Games should get easier and easier to make, not harder and harder.

like for instance, im not really a programmer, but years ago I had programming classes. However, Object oriented programming is object oriented programming. If I were Nintendo and I wanted to make a shooter, all I would have to do is take the Zelda engine and make some adjustments. Basically, keep it in arrow mode and allow input from the joystick to cause the object tied to the character and camera to move. Viola, shooting game. Maybe make some weapon switichng input adjustments. The part that processes graphics and physics and other things would just be the same. If anything I could tweak it.

Graphics works the same way, and I'm not talking about enemies, im talking about scenery. I'd expect them to make new enemies each time. Scenery though is pretty static. Say the game calls for me to have a watermelon in it. Heres the thing, another game Nintendo made 2 years ago had a watermelon. All i got to do is copy the watermelon file from the old game, i don't have to model an new watermelon. IDK, ive messed around with so many editors on so many things, and one thing that irritates me is none of them have got it together like they should. Some programs have some things, and other programs have some things the others don't. None of them have all features combined. I kinda wish i had a company to make my own engine and creation software, because I see how you could make games more efficiently. Its hard to explain, i would have to make diagrams and stuff.

[Spak-Spang]

ThePerm:

Actually I remember awhile back Nintendo was basically moving in that direction with graphics.  They had a team that were basically making the definitive character models for all main Mario characters.  These models would then be able to be used in many other games...which is why Mario Party and Mario Sports games seem to be released fairly regularly. 

I agree to you to a point, and I know the PC market has been working that way for awhile...and probably the console market as well.  Nintendo has been known to comment about wanting smaller development teams and cheaper games. 

Still you do need that one or two big projects that take a couple of years to release to have your programmers make the new engines that will be used for their other games.  Games like Mario Galaxy and the New Zelda may not have been possible on current Nintendo game engines, but now that they are released and the resources for programming quality motion controls and such are there Nintendo will be able to implement them in other games.

[Dasmos]

a whole bunch of nonsense

You don't really believe this is a good idea, do you?

[ThePerm]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d17jVR2QR1k&list=UUQwkhTQQz50ETU5PjyVOUOQ&index=23&feature=plcp
yes

[shinyray01]

I want to see them create a new IP. Its time to think outside of the box.

Yes! I mean like let them work on Raven Blade (i think that's what it was called)

[FZeroBoyo]

Word on the street is that Retro swooped up some staff that worked on Uncharted 3 and Darksiders.


http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=34161262#post34161262


What could this mean for the developer? What could this "crowning achievement" be? Oh, the suspense!