Topic: Super Second Parties

[ThePerm]

No Rare, No SK? Replace em!

what happened to the super second party?
All gone. I think thats what Nintendo needs. Rather,  I think Retro and NST(which are actually first parties) should be beefed up to where they are producing a higher volume of games. NST should have its quality brought up by constant bitching from the parent company, and retro should make more than just metroid(hire more people)

sony and ms actually have way better second/first party support. With the likes of Bungie for ms, and naughtydogg and whoever makes all their pretty good platformers.


Nintendo needs to fill this gap.

Rare used to fill it with bk and 007/pd...but they are gone now

actually in a way its more of a lack in western titles thats the problem.

[Sir_Stabbalot]

Well, Ninty's got Retro, right?

[ThePerm]

well yeah, but retro needs a push

[odifiend]

It is an impossible topic, really.  Any company with some talent and creativity could become this super second party.  I'm guessing though with the increased cost of game development, small studios are becoming more and more rare (ha ha ha).  It would be nice if Nintendo could restock on some 2nd party talent for the new generation so that there are more games with Nintendo's quality, especially now that they are driving the free hand controller idea.

[King of Twitch]

brownie brown  

[KDR_11k]

Small studios die as new small studios appear. The only dificulty is sorting out which ones have talent and which ones don't. Sony signed on a complete newcomer with Heavenly Sword, for example.

[Terranigma Freak]

Retro's first party now. They sold the entire company for like a million bucks a few years back remember? Remember when Retro had to cancel every freaking game they were making? Nintendo bought them out and now they're first party. They used to be second party.

[Nosferat2]

We need to blow Retro's email box up( i already tried and the damn address goes to NOA aint that a biaatch) to get them to bring Raven Blade to the Revolution. I wish Nintendo didnt kill it. Though i'll slightly forgive them because they gave me both Metroid Primes. But still, there is no reason why a studio cant develop two titles at once. The Rev needs an RPG, and FFCC should definielty not be it. Raven Blade needs to be brought back to life.

[Avinash_Tyagi]

Ninty will probably get a lot of "indie Developer" (for lack of a better term) support in the upcoming gen, due to the ease of design for the Rev and by association lower cost of development, so the need for second parties is minimized, just due to the way the system is built I exect to see a lot of developers who may not be able to mee the costs of design for the 360 and Ps3 to design games for the Rev.

[KDR_11k]

Ninty won't get any indies because indies aren't allowed to get devkits. Nintendo only lets established companies, preferrably with shipped games, buy devkits. The rich indies will hope for a big publisher to pick them up (and no longer be indies), the small ones will stay with the PC and if they're successful they might be able to sell an X360 port on Live! Arcade.

[Galford]

You will see more indies on PS3 and Xbox360 by a long shot.  MS is very quitely promoting Live Arcade as a showcase for independent developers.  Sony is positioning the PS3 to be the next Commadore 64.  Sony has been looking at independent developers for a long time now with it's Net Yaroze program.

Nintendo does what's good for Nintendo and no one else.  

[IceCold]

Quote
Originally posted by: Nosferat2
We need to blow Retro's email box up( i already tried and the damn address goes to NOA aint that a biaatch) to get them to bring Raven Blade to the Revolution. I wish Nintendo didnt kill it. Though i'll slightly forgive them because they gave me both Metroid Primes. But still, there is no reason why a studio cant develop two titles at once. The Rev needs an RPG, and FFCC should definielty not be it. Raven Blade needs to be brought back to life.

Well, there's the Camelot RPG, which should be good. And I'm sure Nintendo is trying as hard as they can to get some RPG love from Square and Namco, among others. Possibly Dragon Quest?

EDIT: I just remembered...Japanese crap - gotcha.

[Nosferat2]

Hopefully We can get Final fantasy(not FFCC). I was disappointed with the look of DQ8.  I cant get into a cartoony looking RPG that has lil smiley faced slimes as enemies. Sorry im near 30 years old and i need something more mature to play. Not Mature rated but mature content. Like how Metroid Prime is not rated Mature but its certainly geared to a older demographic. Hopefully Camelot brings something good.  I hope Nintendo delivers this time as well. I dont want to be lured to a 360 due to Elder Scrolls because Nintendo rather have lil blue haired kids running around  yelling corny lines. Thats all good for the younger players, but not for me. I cant go another 5 years playing Wizardy 7 and 8 on my computer, because Nintendo wants to only bring Anime stlye Rpgs. Thats why im praying for Raven Blade, that game will keep me away from the 360 and worse the blasphemus PS3. Or at least something like RB. Anything non Anime.

I hope you guys can understand were in coming from. Take this for example. The only mature RPG i can think of is BAten Kiatos. Though i thought is was quite good over all, EVEN with the card battle system, it still irritated the hell out of me when the games hero yells out lame stuff like, "Say Cheeseburger". In fact all the characters had dumb stuff to say. And one had a boat ore as a weapon for christ sake. Sorry give me Excalibur or Muramasa (sp) blade Not a damn Ore, boomerang or any other stuff that appears in Japanese Rpgs.

Sorry for ranting, i just hope Nintendo does not fail me again. The GC was excellent save for the lack of RPGS. The only blemish of the GC lifecyle. I dont want to see a repeat on the Revolution.

Also, Im not bashing Anime rpgs. People love them and they should get to play them. I just dont want to be left out.

peace Nosferatu

[Infernal Monkey]

Nintendo needs Sega's AV as a second party. Spend some of those billions of Nintendollars. F-Zero GX proved they can do very erotic things when working closely with Nintendo!

[Mario]

Free Radical (FPS)

Rockstar Games (GTA)

Melbourne House (Realistic Racing)

[Kairon]

Hmm...I'd have thought that Sony would have an iron grip on Rockstar studios by now, but apparently GTA:SA DID show up on the XBox! Fancy that!

...Still, with Sony and MS salivating over Rockstar, I don't think it's at all possible for Nintendo to get any piece of that company, lol.

Anyways, I've been disappointed with a lot of second-party-ish material lately. I'm not impressed with either N-Space, nor Kuju; neither have given me a magic spark so to speak...

Hmm... I count myself lucky enough in recognizing DMA back when they did Body Harvest and Space Station Silicon Valley, and thinking that they had the ability to really make appealing game concepts. But I just can't think of any modern day parallel, perhaps I just haven't come across them as of yet.

So my personal and completely subjective best pick for any studio for Nintendo to pick up would be Grasshopper studios. Killer 7 wasn't just a mature game, it was a beautiful way of presenting a videogame's flow to the players. By applying rail movement mechanics to action-shooters, they dealt with games on a design level in such a way to create an artistic result. They didn't just throw some wacky camera angles at us, they tinkered with the very core of the game's underpinnings, demonstrating the game design depth of thought that is just one of the many ingredients that could possibly come together to form a truly great experience.

Though Killer 7 was marred by the traditional Controller it was tied to, it seems ahead of its time in that the Rev controller would have been absolutely perfect for the game. BUT, Grasshopper Studios still has to deal with issues of interface, issues of game flow as pertaining to character cutscenes, AND they need to prove that Killer 7 was not just a game design fluke, and that they're not merely riding on the buzz of their edgy mature content.

Another possible up and coming studio could be NST (already under Nintendo's umbrella) , but we've yet to see what they can do independently of Nintendo's porting projects or franchises. They've definitely got chops: we're all anticipating Metroid Prime: Hunters... but do they have heart?

Or Nintendo could spin off an entire section of EAD devoted to non-gamer type games, such that Cooking, Conducting, Fishing and Painting games all come from one Internal Nintendo studio...

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Infernal Monkey]

I dunno, I bet Rockstar will make at least one Revolution game, something not many people will care about. After all, they gave the GC an exclusive Smuggler's Run game.

[odifiend]

Quote
Originally posted by: Nosferat2

I hope you guys can understand were in coming from. Take this for example. The only mature RPG i can think of is BAten Kiatos. Though i thought is was quite good over all, EVEN with the card battle system, it still irritated the hell out of me when the games hero yells out lame stuff like, "Say Cheeseburger". In fact all the characters had dumb stuff to say. And one had a boat ore as a weapon for christ sake. Sorry give me Excalibur or Muramasa (sp) blade Not a damn Ore, boomerang or any other stuff that appears in Japanese Rpgs.
Also, Im not bashing Anime rpgs. People love them and they should get to play them. I just dont want to be left out.

peace Nosferatu

I don't understand where you are coming from at all.  What constitutes mature to you?  I'm assuming photorealistic graphics.  Tales of Symphonia was both better storywise and gameplay wise and had a complex story to boot.  Skies of Arcadia though a port even surpasses the cliched Baiten Kaitos in all departments.  You also keep making jabs at Fire Emblem where 'kids' are forced into battle by circumstance.  It is fine if you can't get into that but if you are so juvenile that you can't appreciate anything but photorealism, stop throwing the word mature around.  It offends the rest of us.

Speaking of Skies of Arcadia, Overworks would be an awesome 2nd party as would Amusement Vision

[Kairon]

No, I agree with Nosferat2 in my dislike of most Japanese style RPGs.

Just because you give lip service to world annihilation and racial tensions does NOT make you mature in my book. Quite the opposite actually. For this same reason, I don't buy into the Final Fantasy angst either, so I'm even beyond Nosferat2 in my distrust of today's RPGs.

Yet on the opposite end of the spectrum is the desolate aimlessness of Morrowind, an acclaimed western style RPG that I just can't get into either... Hmmm...

So I guess that even though I second Nosferat2's opinions, we may be in the minority of current day RPG players. Sales numbers for modern day RPGs are fine, and I guess that's all that matters to modern RPGMakers. Still, with the Revolution proclaiming the existence of gamers OUTSIDE the traditional field of today, I can't help but wonder if we might find an RPG that is its own soul and conception, that succeeds on its own storytelling virtues instead of reusing cliched "mature" themes, and that relies neither on the tired conventions of Anime or DnD storytelling.

Oh, and I bought Skies of Arcadia, and I just... I sorta made a vow afterwards to never buy a Sega game... well...almost never...

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com  

[odifiend]

Racial/political tensions, war, coming of age etc.. are all generally accepted as mature themes.  Anime more so than american cartoons tend to tackle these issues more often and that is why links are generally made between the RPG and anime.  Presentation, depth and execution has a lot to do with whether the RPG is actually mature or not.  I find it funny that you second Nosferat2 opinions... what exactly are you agree with?  This?:
"I was disappointed with the look of DQ8. I cant get into a cartoony looking RPG that has lil smiley faced slimes as enemies. Sorry im near 30 years old and i need something more mature to play. Not Mature rated but mature content."
Not having played DQ8, i can't comment on how mature it is but it seems like he disqualifies games as mature based on their art direction... real mature...

[Kairon]

I think it's ridiculous to regard art direction as completely removed from a game's fabric.

Anime may contain all these themes, but they are trivilized and have become so canonized to have a desensitizing effect. And let's not even get started on when Animes or RPGs start to pseudo-philosophize.

And for some outtings, the art style rarely helps at all. I can't speak for the Dragon Quest series, (although I CAN say that I hate Akira Toriyama's style vociferously) but with soft art themes my opinion is that they only further trivilialize the gravity of the situation, they avoid confront the gritty realities of their implications, and they merely allow observers to say that they are "attentive" to such things, in so far as the glossing over of eyes can be called attentive.

As for ToS, I hardly see how its maturity was helped whenever one character would comment on the breast size of another. Such strictures of anime style, the slapstick humor, the sugar coated objectification/sexual obsession, the art style that keeps viewers at an emotional distance, the lip service to mature themes... I look at these things and WHILE I can enjoy an anime as much as the next Otaku, I cannot be persuaded to consider most RPGs of today truly "mature."

Jon Stewart got mad at his Crossfire hosts for their punditry, their spouting of the issues for sensationalistic and commercialistic benefit, with no real attempt to deal with and address them. If I am to consider todays RPGs mature, then they will have to deal with the exact same issues.

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Ian Sane]

The problem with Japanese RPGs these days is that they're stale.  We've basically been playing the same game since Final Fantasy VII or argueably even earlier.  I'm tired of this "corrupt power tries to take over the world and only a young person entering adulthood can stop them" cliche.  Someone needs to make an RPG with a different art style and different type of story because it's just the same stuff again and again now.

Anyway getting back on-topic I agree that Nintendo needs some "super second parties" again.  Though the real issue is that Nintendo needs more variety.  That's what Rare gave them that they seriously lack now.  Rare games had a comparible level of quality to Nintendo's first party titles but a different style and it gave the N64 a much broader lineup.  Even something like Banjo-Kazooie which played very similarly to Super Mario 64 had a style and feel you didn't quite get in EAD titles.  And Goldeneye would NEVER have been made by Nintendo themselves.

One thing I never really liked on the Cube is that the Nintendo-published lineup is incredibly homogenous.  Almost everything feels like an EAD game even when it's designed by another developer.  Now I like EAD's games but I don't want all my games to play and feel like that.  Somewhere early in the Cube's life Nintendo went sequel crazy and they haven't recovered from that yet.  They started believing that brand names were more important then the game's behind them.  Look at what devs were working on for them:

Rare - told to shoehorn Star Fox into an entirely unrelated game.
SK- after one original game was assigned a remake of MGS.  Nintendo wanted Metal Gear but made an incredibly lame deal because all they could see was the MGS name and didn't realize that when fans say "we want Metal Gear" they mean a NEW game, not a remake.  Nintendo also squandered an important developer who is now making Too Human for a competitor.  Waste of Metal Gear, waste of SK, waste of a third party deal.
Treasure - works on a Wario game that wasn't all that great.  Complete waste of one of the most creative devs around.
Camelot - works on incredibly redundant Mario sports games.  Nintendo needs an original RPG, these guys are experts at that, but instead they work on Mario games EAD could have made themselves.
Namco - works on Star Fox and Mario Baseball.
Sega - works on F-Zero.

What's the point of making deals with other developers if they're not going to contribute any of their unique expertise to the project?  There's no point in getting a talented dev to make cliche Nintendo games.  Third party support is supposed to provide VARIETY, not more of the same.  Nintendo needs "super second parties" again but more importantly they have to remember how to use them correctly.  They're far too sequel happy right now.  They could have 100 games from 100 developers available for the Rev launch and it wouldn't sell consoles worth crap because they would just be 100 Mario games.

Right now I would say Nintendo's greatest assets are Intelligent Systems and Retro.  Both are incredibly talented and provide a different feel from EAD.  Plus they make, well, cooler games too.  But they need to work on something new beyond Paper Mario and Metroid Prime.  Both devs should contribute an entirely original game to the Rev launch period.

[Kairon]

I actually agree with you there Ian. What Nintendo needs are second parties or close third parties who can actually provide unique experiences that broaden the world of Nintendo gaming. Retro and NST for too long have been working on Nintendo IPs, we need to see if they can really succeed on their own creative drive.

Quote
Originally posted by: Ian Sane
Right now I would say Nintendo's greatest assets are Intelligent Systems and Retro.  Both are incredibly talented and provide a different feel from EAD.  Plus they make, well, cooler games too.  But they need to work on something new beyond Paper Mario and Metroid Prime.  Both devs should contribute an entirely original game to the Rev launch period.

Well, Intelligent Systems used to be part of EAD, so whenever we see advance wars or Fire Emblem that's their own unique properties.

But I wonder whether Retro is capable of working on more than one game at a time, so I don't know whether we'll be seeing anything from them aside from MP3 for launch.

Kairon@aol.com

[King of Twitch]

Somewhere early in the Cube's life Nintendo went sequel crazy and they haven't recovered from that yet. They started believing that brand names were more important then the game's behind them.

I remember that. "Franchise" was the key word at 02's E3, when the Mario-Metroid-Zelda triple-punch was supposed to propel them ahead of Xbox that fall, but of course they were later spaced out by 3-4 months apart.

[animecyberrat]

I just want to add a couple things to what everybody has said. First I agree with topic creator that Nintendo needs more 2nd party and 3rd party exlcusives, and I agree with Ian in that there should be more variety, tahst what I felt was hurting teh GC, few fighting games, no mech games, few decent first person shooters no really great ones except Metroid prime, Echoes I havent played but it looks good. There is also a lack of team based Action games and theres no Mega Man games! I wish Nintendo would have fought harder to get Mega Man X games besides command mission on the GC because that Network transmision game sucked.

I personaly would love to see Sega give Nintendo more support but I also want them to spread theri games around as much as possible because I still want them making money and games in hopes that someday they will make a enw console and destroy Sony!


I do hope that Nintendo recognizes that Fighting games and shooting games are wroth investing in for the REV cuz theres so few on the GC and so many on teh competirots, not 1st person shooters either but games like Contra and Turrican and such. I wish Nintendo could get a Turrican game as an exclusive that would rock, especialy if Retro made it beause it would use same game engine as Metroid Prime, with different style of course to fit Turrican universe but THATS my dream game for Rev.