Topic: Have you ever been disappointed with your Nintendo purchase?

[Adrock]

The GameCube disc and drive were proprietary. Wouldn't that have cost them more? They'd still be shooing themselves in the foot, but for an even worse reason. "Let's spend more money for fewer benefits." If they thought it would curb piracy, it's optical media which is protected for 37 seconds before someone figures out how to beat it.

[shingi_70]

The GameCube disc and drive were proprietary. Wouldn't that have cost them more? They'd still be shooing themselves in the foot, but for an even worse reason. "Let's spend more money for fewer benefits." If they thought it would curb piracy, it's optical media which is protected for 37 seconds before someone figures out how to beat it.

Oh it was for piracy.


Either way I think the Gamecube would have been a bigger contender and did better if it had a standard Disc Drive.

[Nemo]

I know I'm in the minority, but I thought the DS Phat was better than the Lite. I liked how it fit my hands better. I like that the L and R buttons are bigger and slightly angled. Mine also is still 100% functional, although the paint has worn away in some spots from much use.

[Dasmos]

I know I'm in the minority, but I thought the DS Phat was better than the Lite. I liked how it fit my hands better. I like that the L and R buttons are bigger and slightly angled. Mine also is still 100% functional, although the paint has worn away in some spots from much use.

It's close to the ugliest thing that Nintendo have ever designed! I liked the size better too, but I hated the buttons.

[Oblivion]

At least the buttons lasted longer than the Lite's. I had my Lite for two years and by the end of it's run the majority of the buttons were loose and unresponsive. The original Phat? Perfect to this day. I feel like every iteration of the DS (including the 3DS) has had shitty buttons with the exception being the Phat.

[Kytim89]

I had an original DS phat that scrapped, dented, scratched, and pounded beyond recognition.  It was even accidentally ran over with a lawnmower and survived. Hell, it even survived being sprayed with a water hose when my house was damaged by a fire next door. I let it sit in the window for about three or four days to dry before powering it up. It worked like new for the exception of causing GBA games to freeze, but this eventually stopped. Sadly, a burglar broke into my house and stole it before I could put it into more torture tests. I was planning to take the electrical components and shoot it with .22 caliber shorts and then put it back together.

[pokepal148]

the phat I have heard has one of the best d-pads on any console

[Khushrenada]

I still use my DS Phat for some of the more touch specific games since it has a few scratches to the screen in an effort to protect my DS Lite's touch screen and keep it more newish. That said, I've always liked how well GBA games fit in it and the feel of it also. The only thing the Lite does better is the brighter screens. I do wish I could crank up the brightness on the Phat a bit more and then it would be just fine as far as I'm concerned.

[Agent-X-]

The N64 sticking with cartridges retrospectively was a bad idea, but look at what happened back when they made the decision. The PS1 was not yet a huge seller (when Nintendo made the decision), Saturn was not doing that well (though in Japan it was doing alright), 3DO was a failure, Sega CD was a failure, Jaguar CD was a failure. There wasn't much success with CD-ROMs for gaming.

Every other console was going with CDs and CD-ROM drives were becoming the standard for computers.  Nintendo was the sole holdout.  The logic of the Sega CD being a failure is EXACTLY the sort of logic I often see out of Nintendo, where they make a decision that will impact them for the next five years based on where things were six months ago.  They used this "at this exact moment" logic for online gaming and supporting HDTVs and looked like old fuddy-duddies within a year.  To me the most obvious reason to go with CDs was simply that they held WAY more data than a cartridge for a fraction of the price.  Anyone with half a brain would know that cartridges would be a hard sell not just to third party developers but customers as well.  How can you ask devs to make less money or customers to pay higher prices for games that can't do cool new stuff like FMV or redbook audio that literally EVERY OTHER COMPANY is offering?  They were banking everything on the notion that load times were so valued to everyone that we would give up functionality and pay more money.

Nintendo used to lead the videogame industry but I think around the N64 they mistook being a leader for being contrarian.  When Nintendo does something THEIR way it typically falls into one of three categories:

1. They're penny-pinching.  Cheaping out on something to save them a few bucks or over-charging to squeeze every penny out of us.  Nintendo will gladly throw away $1000 tomorrow for $10 today.

2. Their isolation has made them ignorant of what the rest of the industry is doing so they re-invent the wheel in an inferior way that no one likes when the proper and logical solution has already been done by others.  I've also hypothesized the possibility that it is arrogance instead of ignorance that fuels this and that they do things their own goofy way so as to admit to themselves that other companies can have great ideas.

3. They come up with something absolutely brilliant that nobody else has ever thought of and change videogames forever.  They have done this far more times than other companies have but this is still a rare occurance as these sorts of things are by their nature.  There are times where Nintendo is perhaps trying to achieve this and fails.

I don't like it when they do 1 or 2 and that seems to happen way more than 3.  3 shouldn't even be attempted without proper risk analysis.  Nintendo might think that they're capable of pulling industry-changing ideas out of their butt and that arrogance would also be a problem.  They absolutely shouldn't jerk us or their business partners around and shouldn't be ignorant of what everyone else is doing.  They should aim to do things right or do things better.  Doing things different is arbitrary if it provides no obvious improvement.

Nintendo was always clear about their reasoning in sticking with the cartridge medium, which you make no mention of. CD-ROMs were borderline unusable for game consoles. Nostalgia has a way of blinding us to the flaws of the past, so you'd have to sit down with a PS1 and play some games to recall how insufferable the load times are. My friend and I would set our controllers down and go make some sandwiches while waiting for the load screens.

In spite of the drawbacks to cartridges, it's silly that anyone still blames Nintendo for this decision. The industry was in rapid change, and even Sony nearly doomed the Playstation with insufficient hardware (they didn't think polygon graphics were going to be that important). No one knew how significant a role pre-rendered game environments were going to be, and that's really where the cartridge medium fell short. It's unfair to blame Nintendo for not predicting that that ONE generation would build around such an inferior concept when it's arguable that game companies based that decision around the Playstation's limited hardware in the first place. Draw some direct comparisons between Ocarina of Time and Final Fantasy VII and tell me that games really needed to have pre-rendered backgrounds to be blockbuster. I would wager OoT was a vastly bigger game and it did not require 3 CDs for all the content.

You claim Nintendo is incompetent and clueless, and this will make at least the third time I've told you how silly that assertion is. Just because you dislike their decisions and have a different opinion does not make them wrong and you right. Why not just stick to the really bad decisions that have had lasting consequences like feuding with Square and making disparaging (almost racist) comments about Western consumers and developers? With cartridges, many gamers actually preferred the nearly non-existent load times of the N64 to the [sometimes 10 minute] wait times of [pick any PSOne title]. I'll also go on to briefly mention scratched up game discs and wore out disc drives as frequent experiences that most of us forget about in the fondness of our memories with that system yet they were very real problems. We basically totally lost some really great games after a few years simply because the discs were bad to stop working.

Conclusion for me: It's debatable whether cartridges were actually a bad decision.

Nintendo's mistake has always been not building great partnerships with gaming companies. The GameCube had no serious limitations but still failed to attract great third party support and pretty unanimously was disliked by western developers who preferred to work with Microsoft and would not ignore Sony. Here again, with the Wii U, we see rather poor third party support on another Nintendo platform, but this time the system is much more comparable with the platforms from Sony and MS than the Wii was, and the great excuse now is lack of an installed userbase. Other people on these forums see the hypocrisy of that claim since newer systems that aren't even on the market yet are grabbing real support, but some will continue to rail on Nintendo's hardware decisions. How can that be the real problem when this problem has existed all the way back to the N64? That's when developers began exclusively supporting an inferior Playstation platform whose market was non-existent and userbase was lagging until the last couple of years of its life. What was the excuse then? Oh, game cartridges. Right... It couldn't possibly be some other reason. The hardware was great, and the userbase was bigger. Still, somehow, developers found plenty of reason to develop on the Playstation while that platform grew.

[oohhboy]

Super Paper Mario Sticker Stars. I was hoping for something like Paper Mario and The Thousand Year door, what I got instead was closer to Super Paper Mario. It burn me enough to be wary of getting Mario and Luigi Dream Team.

[swordslinger]

Hardware-wise, I can't say I have. For me, Wii U's launch lineup was very solid. I would have got six or seven of the launch games if I had had the money. There hasn't been a steady release of new retail since launch, but there have been a couple gems like Monster Hunter and Lego City. And really, is any console's first year on the market ever filled with hits?

[Mop it up]

The original 3DS was surprisingly shoddy considering how expensive it was, it has numerous hardware flaws and feels like they released a prototype. The XL has fixed the shoddiness, but still has some of the same layout issues. It's quite shameful that the original 3DS is still on the market without at least fixing the construction issues.

The Wii U seems a bit unfinished as well, but I haven't bought one so I can't call it a disappointment.

Then again, to be fair, Nintendo have almost always been a disappointment on the hardware side of things.

[Wah]

Guys stop whining about prices in america!
Come to australia any time soon!
Average 3DS price preowned $200
( i did get mine on laybuy for $169 dough)

[EasyCure]

Mop it up, are you talking about hardware specs, or hardware design? Besides the pin connector issues with the original new, Nintendo console hardware has always been reliable. Can't speak for handhelds though.

[Wah]

Mop it up, are you talking about hardware specs, or hardware design? Besides the pin connector issues with the original new, Nintendo console hardware has always been reliable. Can't speak for handhelds though.

Are you sure no one knows better handhelds then Nintendo! ahem.. PSP doesn't even come close in sales!

[Khushrenada]

And really, is any console's first year on the market ever filled with hits?

Gamecube's was (back when Nintendo released games ho ho ho ho ho). Smash Bros. Melee, Super Mario Sunshine, Rogue Squadron 2, Pikmin, Animal Crossing, Luigi's Mansion, Wave Race: Blue Storm, Star Fox Adventures and Eternal Darkness were all released within that 1 year span of the Cube's first year. While mileage may vary on what constitutes a hit or not due to one's opinions, that is still a pretty solid line-up and by the end of the second year, the Cube was stacked with great games.

[Mop it up]

Mop it up, are you talking about hardware specs, or hardware design? Besides the pin connector issues with the original new, Nintendo console hardware has always been reliable. Can't speak for handhelds though.

A little of both really. You already mentioned the NES, but the Super NES has pretty loose construction that makes it feel a little cheap and flimsy, and the controller buttons are squishy. These aren't a big deal though, and the SNES is probably Nintendo's best and most complete system, from a hardware standpoint.

The N64 has the whole cartridges instead of CDs thing, and other problems like no sound processor, a small texture caché, and other bottlenecks. Oh, and the analogue sticks that wear down from use.

GameCube has the small discs, and then the limited availability of the component cable (and later removal of its port). And the short cords compared to the competition (I know they're about the same as Nintendo's previous systems, but at this point in time that was getting too short). There's something I'm forgetting at this time...

Wii has the most problems, not just from tech specs, but also durability. A weak disc drive, and memory corruption wasn't that uncommon either.

I don't have a Wii U, but the current OS problems and the day one update stuff sound like things that would annoy me. There may be some other stuff that's yet to be seen...

I know I can't expect them to get it perfect, but that's why it would have been nice if they had released some revisions for these systems like how they have with their handhelds to improve them and fix issues. The revisions for the NES and SNES came too late and removed features.

The original Game Boy and Game Boy Color were good, I can't think of any problems they had, at least ones that could have been solved during their time (such as battery life or colour screen). The original GBA had a dim screen to conserve power, even moreso than the GB and GBC, which was a huge problem. The SP fixed that though, and I can't think of any problems it had either, aside from the lack of a headphone jack which I don't care about. The Micro didn't seem to have any problems either, but a tiny handheld doesn't appeal to me so I never had one.

I never had an original DS but it did seem like a bit of a mess, a prototype, similar to the original 3DS. The DS Lite was good though, but it sounds like it has some durability issues as I commonly hear people have trouble with the shoulder buttons. The DSi/XL might have fixed that, but it was a lame stopgap system.

Now this isn't to say that I think other companies have done a better job at making systems, just that I'd like to see the quality of Nintendo's hardware match the high quality of their games. In most cases, I feel they don't.

[NWR_insanolord]

It's a lot harder to make something as durable as the old ones these days. The SNES was durable because it had no moving parts, which isn't really possible anymore. Things get more complex, and thus have more ways they can break down.

[Mop it up]

Though that is true, there are still places where they can make things more durable than they presently are. For one example, using a flip-top disc drive like the GameCube (and Wii Mini) has instead of a slot-loading drive would help make the disc drive more durable. The small size of the Wii was also a problem, because heat from the Wi-Fi communicator was known to melt the GPU. I know, it's "cool" to have the slot-loader, but Nintendo doesn't usually take the "style over substance" approach with their games, so they shouldn't take a similar approach with their hardware.

[NWR_insanolord]

I think the main problem with the Wii's disc drive was the added ability to accept the smaller GameCube discs, which most slot drives can't do, which I'm sure added even more moving parts to the mix. We'll see how the Wii U fares without that.

[MagicCow64]

Nintendo was always clear about their reasoning in sticking with the cartridge medium, which you make no mention of. CD-ROMs were borderline unusable for game consoles. Nostalgia has a way of blinding us to the flaws of the past, so you'd have to sit down with a PS1 and play some games to recall how insufferable the load times are. My friend and I would set our controllers down and go make some sandwiches while waiting for the load screens.

In spite of the drawbacks to cartridges, it's silly that anyone still blames Nintendo for this decision. The industry was in rapid change, and even Sony nearly doomed the Playstation with insufficient hardware (they didn't think polygon graphics were going to be that important). No one knew how significant a role pre-rendered game environments were going to be, and that's really where the cartridge medium fell short. It's unfair to blame Nintendo for not predicting that that ONE generation would build around such an inferior concept when it's arguable that game companies based that decision around the Playstation's limited hardware in the first place. Draw some direct comparisons between Ocarina of Time and Final Fantasy VII and tell me that games really needed to have pre-rendered backgrounds to be blockbuster. I would wager OoT was a vastly bigger game and it did not require 3 CDs for all the content.

You claim Nintendo is incompetent and clueless, and this will make at least the third time I've told you how silly that assertion is. Just because you dislike their decisions and have a different opinion does not make them wrong and you right. Why not just stick to the really bad decisions that have had lasting consequences like feuding with Square and making disparaging (almost racist) comments about Western consumers and developers? With cartridges, many gamers actually preferred the nearly non-existent load times of the N64 to the [sometimes 10 minute] wait times of [pick any PSOne title]. I'll also go on to briefly mention scratched up game discs and wore out disc drives as frequent experiences that most of us forget about in the fondness of our memories with that system yet they were very real problems. We basically totally lost some really great games after a few years simply because the discs were bad to stop working.

Conclusion for me: It's debatable whether cartridges were actually a bad decision.

I'm with you on cartridges. I'm glad Nintendo stuck with them. Discs introduced horrendous loading times (which are still going strong), pre-rendered backgrounds (dead-end), and FMV cutscenes (awful aesthetic direction that has thankfully mostly died). I can't remember how many times people gushed to me about how good the graphics were in FFVII, with seemingly no awareness that the actual game looked like ****.

As for the larger topic, and I've said this before, I think the Wii would have been golden if it shipped with Motion Plus, but I still think it had a great library. I'm digging the WiiU for what it is, and look forward to the next year of releases. It might totally die in two years, but if so I'm sure I'll have gotten the $240 back out of it.

Specific games that were a let down: DK64 left a bad taste in my mouth. I wish NSMBU had pushed the envelope more. I'm pretty good at not buying games that I won't like, so I can't think of anything that sucked that I didn't just rent (Other M).

[Retro Deckades]

I had an original DS phat that scrapped, dented, scratched, and pounded beyond recognition.  It was even accidentally ran over with a lawnmower and survived. Hell, it even survived being sprayed with a water hose when my house was damaged by a fire next door. I let it sit in the window for about three or four days to dry before powering it up. It worked like new for the exception of causing GBA games to freeze, but this eventually stopped. Sadly, a burglar broke into my house and stole it before I could put it into more torture tests. I was planning to take the electrical components and shoot it with .22 caliber shorts and then put it back together.

Don't have kids.

[Shaymin]

I'm sure natural selection and evolution would take care of that.

[Agent-X-]

In spite of how cheap optical media are these days, I think a truly bold move on Nintendo's part and something I would like to see in a game console is the use of flash cards for games. Solid state drives are still a tad expensive, but 32 GB flash cards aren't all that expensive and would really kick the snot out of the other consoles in terms of load times. I would pay for that.

[NWR_insanolord]

Load times really aren't a huge issue most of the time anymore. Certainly not enough of one to justify drastically increasing the cost of the media.