As many here are aware, when Final Fantasy IV got ported to Playstation, they completely retranslated it. This was largely due to fan demands based on the popularity of the fan retranslation project for the game. The claim was the original translation was horrible and the fan translation was far more accurate.
This professional translator (and yes, it is very hard to decipher which translators and thus translations are worth trusting without actually learning the language in question yourself) basically calls out that fan translation as sloppy and amateurish to the point of being LESS accurate than the original SNES translation. While it's true that the fan translation worked off the original version and thus wasn't censored nor had content dummied out, they took so much liberty with their own version that everything else is essentially completely rewritten. As an example, as it turns out no, the original script was NOT filled with swearing. It seems that a big mistake beginner translators make when it comes to translating Japanese rude language is to replace the rude word with the rudest possible English equivalent, when in reality a lot of those rude words, based on grammatical context, are pretty mild, more equivalent to something like "You cur!" than "You bitch!". In many places, they basically just made up whole sentences entirely based on their opinion of what was said. A big example is the "William Shatner" joke wedged into the fan translation, which basically never happened. I read their FAQ on it and they even defended it by claiming the original referenced a famous Japanese actor so that translation "kept the spirit". However, this translator has shown that was made up entirely, so they basically lied. It seems that the fan translators weren't so much interested in an accurate translation so much as a complete script rewrite to fit better with what they thought it should be. That's fine in and of itself, but it's really crummy that they went on to claim they were making a perfectly accurate translation.
Unfortunately, this fan translation so affected the fan base that their demands resulted in Square Enix more or less deciding that instead of giving the fans a highly accurate translation, they'd make the translation a bit more accurate but plug in some extra swearing and other rewrites to make it more in line with what fans were expecting based on that fan translation. The later GBA and PSP translations are, rather than retranslations, just the Playstation script run past an editor a few more times.
The majority of this comparison deals with the original Japanese compared to the first English translation on the SNES, with a few comments on other translations sprinkled throughout. It's very revealing. The SNES version did get some things wrong and censored a few other things, but it actually was a lot more accurate than most people believe. One thing I've learned from this person's articles on these things is just how difficult it is to translate a lot of very language-specific ideas while still making the result read well. A perfectly accurate translation would be filled to the brim with asterisks and parenthesis going over all manner of Japanese-specific minutia, and a few things (like poetry and song lyrics) still wouldn't work right (which is why to this day full song translations in games are basically entirely different). As a result, I've learned to appreciate certain changes that manage to translate the SPIRIT of the original when they can't capture the literal meaning of the original (such as changing the squid statue to a pencil statue in Earthbound).
There are a few "features" of HTML that honestly need to be disabled in modern browsers. Here's a few.
Pop-ups: No seriously, who wants these? Nobody, that's who. I can't see any advantage at all to pop-up code still existing. There IS an advantage to popping up a separate TAB, but not a full window. The ability to start up a whole new browser instance should ONLY exist for the user, not the web page.
Pop-unders, menu bar "disabling", pretty much any code that controls how a pop-up window forms: If HTML standard makers just can't bear to part with pop-up code, at LEAST prevent them from being able to dictate the terms of how that new browser instance starts.
Built-in browser "alert" boxes: This one is a bit confusing. This isn't actually rendered on the standard tab, but is a request to the browser itself to put up a box with a message with buttons that MUST be pressed, can't be dismissed, and you can't even close the browser unless the user clicks something. These are used primarily to force users to "accept" stuff or keep a constant train of pop-ups from being shut down. Process closing from ctrl-alt-del is pretty much the only way to deal with these.
On-close code of absolutely any kind: This is HTML code that frankly should never have been allowed to exist. Browsers shouldn't even HAVE hooks that let HTML access this functionality. This is when you close a window and the page is coded to do stuff, like open up two more windows. Again, total process closure is about the only way to deal with this.
I mean seriously, the ability for HTML to do this to a browser should NOT exist in a modern browser! There is no advantage except to malware makers! I can promise the net in general would be far safer without these, and no one anywhere would miss them.
When did we decide, as a culture, that selling people packages of completely random product was acceptable? Seriously, I can think of no good reason for this practice to exist, except to artificially drive up the prices of this stuff. Imagine if Amiibo were sold in big question mark blocks, and you'd see basically where I'm coming from here.
How am I supposed to get that all important Kappa card this way?!
This is a huge waste of time. Basically, a bunch of "singularity" type futurists congregate on a board to discuss thought experiments. So far, it's harmless enough. One of them comes up with a nightmare scenario where an AI comes into existence who's entire purpose is to digitally recreate and torture anyone in history that worked to prevent it's own existence. It does this by recreating history as part of the simulation and anyone in the simulation who works against it's creation or doesn't act to make sure it is created is tortured for eternity. There would be no way to know for sure that you aren't currently IN said simulation, so the most logical course of action (in this thought experiment) is to work towards the creation of this AI, so that you are spared eternal torture. Variations include making multiple digital versions of reality, thus statistically making sure you are more likely to be in one of those simulations than in the real world.
The people at the "less wrong" forums thought this idea was terrifying, and an admin actually prohibited all discussion of it out of fear that someone might someday actually make it out of THEIR fear. That's right, these futurists don't even understand the Streisand effect.
Worse, some people at this forum were actually "convinced" by the logic and have dedicated themselves to creating exactly this AI so they can avoid punishment..
I'll put it this way. This actually is a nightmarish idea... for a short story. It's some "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" stuff, and as fiction I have to give the creator props. I have no reason to believe that it's something that would ever actually exist though. Ignore the whole "statistically you're more likely to be in one of it's simulations than in the real world" business, because that assumes it actually came to exist in the first place (if it never does, than statistically there's exactly zero chance I'm in it's simulation). It also assumes no one is willing to take the risk for the greater good of not making this machine, that the only rational thinking is putting your OWN well being first. For a bunch of optimistic futurist types, they sure have a negative view of human nature. The idea that this thought experiment someone came up with is worth actually taking seriously JUST because it's scary though, that's what pushes this into "you have got to be kidding me" territory.
Basically, it's Pascal's Wager for nerds, and it's just as easily defeated by taking the time to imagine what I'm dubbing "DJ's Irony Angel". That is, a future AI designed to take anyone who worked against the creation of the basilisk and giving them eternal paradise along with all their friends, and torturing anyone who tries to make the basilisk. It too can run as many simulations as it likes, like infinity billion more than stupid basilisk does, so statistically you're more likely to be in the angel's simulation than the basilisk's.
A bunch of futurists certain of their roles in creating a perfect utopia have managed to be so convinced of the certainty of their success that they've frightened themselves into working to destroy that utopia before it even starts. Their basilisk has crossed from the future to the past to completely immobilize their own philosophy from the inside. Their world view ate itself.
Frankly, I say this will be a good thing. Voice acting contracts in video games don't seem to work the same way as ones for movies. The Silent Hill HD collection (which had a LOT of issues but that's not relevant here) had to get brand new voice acting. In the end, they managed to work out a new contract for SH2's voice acting, but weren't able to get a similar deal worked out with SH3's voice actors in time. This is bizarre, because rereleases of old movies never seem to run into that problem. I've never heard of a movie having to remove some footage because this or that actor didn't renew their contract. If that was even a possible issue, we would certainly have encountered it endless times by now. Just think of all the zombie extras alone! Along the same lines, we've got games like Dragon's Dogma and Okami who's rereleases had to remove the vocal tracks due to no longer having the license for them. Imagine Goonies having to remove "The Goonies 'R' Good Enough" from the credits for this reason.
No it won't!
These actors are fighting for the flip side. They basically want the same sort of eternal royalties that actors in movies and TV shows get, that steady drip feed that current game actor contracts deny them. In other words, this could really be for the best for the gaming industry. Just write up acting contracts the same way that movies and TV shows do them and it should be fine. This is the sort of "growing pain" the medium needs. Now, the key here is to be sure that such contracts are written in such a way that if they decide to have one of their deep sales, the royalties drop to match the $5 price point, and if it's given away for free, the royalties drop to zero. I'm pretty sure these clauses are built into movie actor contracts as well, it's just something to be aware of.
W-Ring is a great shmup for the Turbografx from Naxat Soft, one of the stronger third-party supporters of the platform on both card and CD. I've liked this game since the first time I played it, but I went back to the game recently and finished it this time (pretty much) on the highest difficulty setting. As I will explain, this was quite a task; Normal is quite easy to beat once you've learned the game, but Hard is an entirely different story.
This game is a horizontal scrolling shmup released during that genre's peak which lasted from the mid '80s to early '90s. The game was clearly inspired by Gradius, but isn't just a straight clone of that series. W-Ring has normal weapon pickups, instead of the Gradius powerup system, and has a narrow shield ring around your ship that can protect you from some hits from above and below. You also can, as in many TG16 shmups, change your ship's speed with the press of a button between three speeds, instead of needing to use powerups for that as you do in Gradius. Also unlike classic Gradius games, you have infinite continues in W-Ring, which definitely makes the game a bit more approachable. Dodging bullets is much less predictable here than in Gradius or R-Type, though, an issue which is my biggest problem with the game, particularly in Expert mode; the lower difficulty settings are fairly easy and disguise how frustrating the shield and bullet-dodging mechanics can be when the game gets hard. This means the game should be playable by players of almost any skill level; just choose the appropriate difficulty setting for you.
For the plot, I'm not sure what the story is in this game, there isn't really one in the game itself and while I don't have the case or manual for this game, only the HuCard, even if I did it'd be in Japanese so it probably wouldn't be too helpful. I can say that the game is set in the Solar System. I presume that you are defending the Earth from evil aliens who have set up camp in the outer solar system. The game does have an English-language name for each stage -- Stage one is Saturn, 2 is Uranus, 3 Neptune, 4 Pluto, 5 Main Gate, 6 Death Hole, and 7 (if you count it as a level) Stage X. If not for those names you'd never guess where the stages are set, though -- they don't have much of anything in common with their supposed settings. They are just fairly standard stage settings for shmups of the day. I'm fine with that, though. Each of the seven stages looks different, and there is a good degree of variety in the game as well, with nice gameplay variety from stage to stage, great graphics and music, lots of enemy types, interesting bosses, secret alternate versions of most or all stages for you to try to find, and more. The game does have some issues, which I will cover below, but for the most part it's a pretty good game.
Quote:
Flying through level 1. Note the ring around your ship and the rocky green and brown visage of ... Jupiter?
Basic Design - Weapons and Your Shield
For weapons in this game, your basic gun shoots a gun ahead and bombs angle down. One enemy type drops weapon powerups which replace your default armament. The powerups alternate between five colored weapons. If you collect several of the same color powerup in a row without getting hit, you will power it up several times. However, it's important to note that if you get hit you lose your weapon powerup and go back to the normal gun, so don't get hit if you want to stay powered up. Getting hit without a weapon powerup will kill you of course. And just like in Gradius (well, the '80s Gradius games at least) or R-Type, when you die you go back to the last checkpoint, you don't continue right where you died. There are infinite continues as I said, but only from the beginnings of levels 1 through 6, not from the last checkpoint in a stage. The final stage isn't a continue point either, it sends you back to the start of level 6, but much more on that later.
There are also alternate versions of those weapons if you are in a stage with a hidden "?" weapon-modifier item to find. The five weapons are colored blue, green (both straight lasers), pink (spread shot), red (shield-orbs), and orange (missiles). Each weapon is potentially useful in different situations, though some are maybe a bit too similar --I'm not sure why the game really needs both blue and green. Still, there is nice variety here, particularly with those hidden "?"-mark alternate weapon variations. These secret powerups will appear if you shoot in the right places. One of the most interesting weapons is the alternate version of the red shield-orbs weapon. Normally, this 'weapon' just gives you the normal gun but with a trail of round shields which follow your ship, ship protecting you from enemies and doing some damage if you maneuver them onto an enemy. It's too close-range to be useful most of the time. But with a secret "?" powerup, this weapon is great! Now it shoots out a constant stream of balls which bounce off of any walls in the stage, taking out bullets and enemies along the way! This is very useful in stage 6, particularly.
A key mechanic surely inspired by R-Type is that shield-ring. As you move forward it moves back, and as you move back it moves forwards, so it is not stationary; this makes using it tricky. Bullets which hit it will bounce off and can hurt enemies. Bullets are very small, fast, and can blend in to the backgrounds, however, and getting your ring into just the right place to bounce back bullets can be hard while you also have to move around the screen. Trying to bounce bullets off of your shield ring can be a 50/50 thing sometimes -- the shield-ring is very narrow and will move as you do, it's not large and immobile unless you hit a button like the shields in R-Type or R-Type Leo, and you NEED to deflect bullets with it at times, particularly in stage 6 of Expert mode, the games' hard mode. W-Ring does have good, accurate controls, but it's not as consistently predictable as those other games are and that is an issue. This game can feel unfair at times. In Gradius or R-Type, with tight controls and clear graphics, when you die it is your fault. To beat those games, next time learn the levels better and don't mess up. In W-Ring, though, sometimes it feels like I did nothing wrong, but just got unlucky. Even so, with only seven levels, infinite continues, and forgiving lower difficulty levels, W-Ring isn't anywhere near as hard as Gradius or R-Type. It's only in Expert difficulty where the issues I just discussed help make the game a serious challenge, and even there Gradius and R-Type are probably even harder, but also more innovative and more fun. Overall, while it is pretty good, W-Ring isn't quite as great as the Gradius games are. Gradius is my favorite shmup series, though, so that is a very high standard. W-Ring is a very good game that I like a lot.
Quote:
Game over already? Whoever played this on Gamefaqs for these shots wasn’t very good. Do note the ship in the upper right, though — that’s the type of ship that drops powerups.
Graphics and Music
In addition to playing great, W-Ring also looks and sounds great. This game is one of the better-looking, and better-sounding, HuCard shmups for the TG16/PCE! Every stage looks good, and the background environments are very well animated for a 4th-gen console game. Most levels have animation in both the stage background and also on the platforms and other areas you can't fly over on the screen. From the flowing water in stage 3 to the giant spinning mechanical wheels and moving lights in stage 6, every stage background is interesting. The game looks better than you might expect a HuCard shmup would look, and that animation is cool. Those two levels probably are the two best-looking ones in the game, but every stage looks very good. The game also can throw lots of enemies and bullets on screen with no slowdown to speak of, which is reasonably impressive. Sometimes, particularly in Expert mode, the screen can be loaded with stuff. The lack of slowdown does make the game harder, and the bullets sometimes are too hard to see versus the background colors, but still, it's a nice technical accomplishment to see so much stuff on screen running so well. The game doesn't have any parallax scrolling, as usual on the console, but the animated water on stage 3 has a slightly fake-parallax look to it. The graphics in this game are good enough, though, that for once I don't mind the absence of parallax.
Aurally, W-Ring has a really fantastic soundtrack! This game sounds very, very good. I'm very far from an audiophile so I can't really explain why in detail, but I love chiptune and early CD console game music, and the electronic music soundtrack here is richer than usual on this platform. Every level has different music of course, and each boss as well, but all of the hidden special stages (see below) have unique music too, surprisingly enough. It's very cool, and encourages exploration to find all of them and hear all of the great music! The normal stage 3 theme might be my favorite track, but there are lots of good music tracks as you go through the game. The good graphics and sound definitely add something to this game. This game really sounds fantastic. If you want to hear all the music watch both videos at the end of this post, one for the regular stages and one for the special stages.
Quote:
The boss of level 3, the water level. The moving blue 'waves' along the platform edges look very cool. (Image from Youtube.)
Level Designs - Graphics and Gameplay
The level themes are not original, though., just well designed and interesting. I like the designs, and the game has a great and very well thought out difficulty curve, but there's noting too original in the level settings and such. Stage 1, Jupiter, has grassy rock platforms with alien ships scattered around. The stage is several screens high and is a good starting point for the game. Stage 2, Uranus, is a brown stage that looks like something straight out of the movie Alien, with the usual alien heads, dripping fluids, and such. Again the stage is two screens tall. Alien clearly made a huge impression on games, seeing how everything from Contra to W-Ring copy its style. Stage 3, Neptune, is the water level, because Neptune is blue so it's got water on it, right? :p As I said that water looks great. Stage 4, Pluto, is another base, this time a research lab with biological cell and robot enemies and a green circuit-board-like background. There is some animation on the circuits on the platforms. Stage 5, Main Gate, is the fast stage, so you have to set the speed to max and try to learn the layout. This stage is another all-metal base.
Stage 6, Death Hole, has a similar theme to the last stage, but with some pretty cool machinery around the stage as I said earlier, and some animation in the main background behind your ship as well. I love the large spinning wheels of lights, they look pretty cool. Also, things have slowed down; you are now nearing the final stretch, and have a narrow pathway to make your way through, the titular 'Death Hole' I guess. While earlier stages often give you a screen or two of vertical space to move up and down, this level varies between half a screen and very narrow passages, so you are very constrained and there often isn't much room to avoid the enemies. This level is tough! And last, Stage X plays over an animating wavy red screen. The background looks great, but it can be very distracting. This stage is short but the enemies are tough, the background crazy, and the boss hard. And if you get a game over here, you learn one of this games' crueler tricks: if you get a game over on stage 7, you go back all the way to the beginning of stage 6; Stage X doesn't count for continues. This makes the game so much more difficult than it needed to be, when you try to play the game in Hard mode! I wish Stage X was a continue point. Ah well. What's here is mostly quite good.
There is one last thing to mention here, those alternate stages. As with the ?-mark alternate weapon powerups, alternate stages are accessed with hidden "EX" icons which you have to shoot to see. If you touch the secret warp point, you'll go into an alternate version of the level in question. These levels are generally shorter than the regular stages, but can be harder -- the speed stage is even faster for example, in alternate mode. Interestingly, the color palette changes in the alternate version of each level, so the water level has red water instead of blue if you're in the secret variant version. It's cool stuff. It's more fun to try to find them for yourself, but if you want to be spoiled watch the video at the end of this post which shows ways to get into all the special stages. Many do have multiple entry points so there are other ways to enter some special stages, but still it might be handy. I found almost all of them myself without that video, only perhaps missing the one in, oddly, stage 1. That explains why I never have been able to can't find a special stage in level 6 -- there apparently isn't one. Too bad. Stage X doesn't have one either, but I never thought it would with its short length and focused design.
Quote:
The level 4 boss, from the computer/bio-research stage. (Screenshot from Youtube.)
Difficulty and Expert Mode
I beat this game on Normal several years back; it may seem challenging at first, but even I don't have too much trouble with it anymore and I'm far from great at this genre. A month or two ago, though, I played the game again for the first time in a while, and started the game on Normal difficulty. I found it surprisingly easy -- on my very first try, I beat the whole game without getting a game over! There were a few hairy moments in level 6, but I got through and beat the game. That's impressive stuff for me, I haven't 1-credit-cleared many shooters, for sure. So I was feeling good... and then it looped over into Expert (Hard) mode, after the short endgame sequence. Everything changed; Expert is an entirely different story! As easy as the game is on Normal, it's BRUTALLY hard on Expert. I got my first game over early in stage 1, and it took a fair number of tries at each of the first five stages to get past each one. I was working my way through Expert mode at a reasonable pace, though. In addition to wanting to complete this great game on its more challenging setting, I also I wanted to see if the game has a different ending on Expert difficulty versus Normal -- nobody online had mentiond if there is one, and there are no gameplay videos of Expert mode online. And then I hit stage 6, and a brick wall of bullets and enemies.
You see, stage 6 plus X in Expert mode is INCREDIBLY difficult. Again, there is no continue point at the last stage, 7 aka "Stage X", so you have to go back to the start of stage 6 upon game over, had me frustrated for hours as I kept trying, and failing, to beat the game. This stage-and-a-half of game is super, super hard on Expert. I did beat it, finally... sort of: I ended up having to use a cheatcode to win because I just couldn't quite manage it otherwise. I came very close once to beating the game without the cheat, though, in my time trying, but more on that soon. I spent more hours trying to beat stages 6+X than I did level 9 of Zero Wing for the Turbo CD, to compare it to another tricky shmup I played recently, and to less avail. Stage 6 is so narrow and confined that sometimes there is nowhere to go to avoid bullets, and there are SO many enemies on screen all shooting at you! Not getting hit is near-impossible at times, even with the best weapon for the stage, the Red + ? weapon that sends bouncy spheres around the screen forwards and back.
In all my tries, I defeated the final boss twice, once without the cheatcode and once quite a few hours later with it. See, that first time, I beat the final boss, but somehow died moments later. I don't know how, I should have been safe with the boss dead. Killing me after beating the game was incredibly cheap, and I never managed to get that far again, frustratingly. Perhaps the worst was a time I got to Stage X with four lives left, only to waste all of them and reach the boss on my last life since Stage X is really hard unless you have weapon powerups when you reach it, which I didn't because I'd messed up at the Stage 6 boss and got hit. Eventually I gave up and turned off the game... then looked the game up on the PC Engine FX forums and found a cheatcode. If you go into the sound test and start playing music tracks 7, 9, 3, and 10 (in that order), you get an additional pair of sphere-shields rotating around your ship. You're not invincible, but this help was enough to get me through Expert mode on this second attempt, though it did take more than a few tries to get past level 6+X even with the help. I'll count it as a win.
Quote:
Level 2 looks like something straight out of Alien. (Screenshot from Youtube.)
Conclusion
So, W-Ring is a great game, but the difficulty level is a bit unbalanced. I do love W-Ring, more than many people seem to, but still, the stratospheric jump in challenge between the rest of the game and Expert mode is a bit much. This is a very easy game on Normal, and even EASIER on Easy... and a near-impossible nightmare of frustration on Hard ("Expert"). And in Expert, the last level (6 and X combined) is exponentially harder than any other stage in the game. A smoother difficulty curve would be much better than what you see in this game; it doesn't need to be much easier, just not have as massive a gulf between the rest of the game and this. Just having a checkpoint in Level X so that if you get game over you start from there might have done the trick, really. It's too bad they didn't do that.
My other main issue with the game is that I never really felt like I could just get through with pure memorization -- I felt like there is a random element to the hit detection in this game, more so than a highly-precise game like R-Type or Zero Wing has. It's very hard to tell when a bullet was going to hit my ship versus and when it was going to harmlessly bounce off the shields, and the bullets are fast, small, and SERIOUSLY blend in to the background too, particularly in level 6. So, I often just had to take my chances, and this often resulted in getting hit. And in a level where taking even one hit is doom because you lose your weapon when you get hit and weapon powerups in lv. 6 are far apart, so you'll get hit again and die, that is a problem. I kind of wish the shield was stationary instead of adjustable, or only moved with a button; that owuld make some things harder, but perhaps more parts easier. I still like this game, but I wish the bullets were easier to see and it was clearer about whether something is going to hit the ship or the shield ring. The game has great graphics and music, with impressively animating backgrounds and lots of color and variety, but the hard-to-see bullets are its only visual flaw.
Finally... why is the title "The Double Rings" when that shield around your ship is a single ring? There are some things constructed out of two rings, such as the red-weapon balls or that twin rotating shield from the cheat, but I don't know if it's meant to refer to any of those things, the single ring around your ship is the most obvious thing. It's a weird title. I wonder if the manual explains it... but I don't have the manual, just a loose card for this game, and it'd be in Japanese anyway of course. Someone on PC Engine FX has speculated that the cheatcode's added double shield explains it and the "double rings" refer to those, but I'm not so sure; each of those balls is made up of two rings itself, so that adds up to well over two rings, between teh two of them and that single ring around your ship. So it's a bit of a mystery. Regardless, though, W-Ring is a very good game I highly recommend. The game has flaws, but it also has strengths, and overall I quite like it even if it's not Gradius or R-Type precise. With great graphics and music, varied levels, and plenty of challenge, I give W-Ring: The Double Rings an A-. It's good.
Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBepfrMRizk - This is a longplay video of Normal difficulty. The player does not enter any of the hidden alternate versions of stages in this run.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3L0YjNhYNY - In this longplay the same player as above enters all of the special hidden stages. As I said in the review, note that many of them do have multiple entry points so this doesn't show every way to get into the special stages, but it definitely is a nice help for anyone who doesn't want to have to find them the hard way by just shooting at stuff or lucking into one.
I can appreciate it on a technical level, but while The Babadook seemed to have a really important lesson about a fundamental part of the human psyche, It Follows just seemed to be about an STD style monster. I didn't really understand what made this so "important" and "thoughtful" to, well, everyone else.
Combined with my utter inability to "get" a number of other movies around here, can anyone put together a common thread demonstrating exactly what part of the human soul I'm missing?
To replace Satoru Iwata, Nintendo chose Tatsumi Kimishima. He's in his 60s now, so he probably isn't meant as a long-term president, but they needed someone so they chose someone close to Iwata. He apparently was originally a banker, before joint Nintend in the early '00s. Kimishima was head of NoA from 2002 to 2006 under Iwata, and after that went back to Japan. Miyamoto and Takeda are the next two; they seem to be trying a more group-leadership style than before, with the three of them on top. Kimishima sure doesn't look to have Iwata's personality, but hopefully will do a good job of leading Nintendo for the coming years; I'm sure he can do it, my concerns below are purely about the past.
I know I've posted about this before, but because of who Nintendo chose, it made me think about the GC era again... and overall I'm not thrilled with this choice, but it could be worse. Really, what I wish Nintendo would do is let NoA be an independent branch again as they were back when Nintendo was successful in the US in the '80s and '90s, but instead the guy who played a major role in Iwata's plan to centralize power in Japan is now President.
This is disappointing because looking back, Iwata's centralization of power is one of his bigger mistakes, in my opinion; perhaps Howard Lincoln could not be replaced, but Iwata didn't try, he decided to take more control of NoA himself instead. I know there are other major factors for Nintendo's fading in the US, probably most importantly Microsoft's entry into the console industry -- thanks to Halo and their Western developer outreach MS stole away the N64's core-gamer shooter-fan audience, after all! That seriously hurt Nintendo. Maybe Nintendo losing the Western support they had had on the N64 was inevitable as soon as MS entered the industry, but I think that Iwata taking power away from NoA, and the retirements of NoA's top people (Howard Lincoln and Minoru Arakawa retired) at around that time, really hurt. The NoA led by Kimishima, Reggie, and co. isn't anywhere near as successful as the NoA of before. (For those who forget, the N64 had some good support from major Western third parties, but much less from the major Japanese third parties, who left in favor of Sony and Sega.) All that hard work Lincoln and co. put into building up a strong Western first, second, and third party development base on the N64 was lost in the GC and Wii years as Iwata-led NCL focused on Japanese development and weaker hardware instead. Between Iwata cutting back on Western first/second/close-third-party relationships in the West and Microsoft pushing hard for Western third party support, Nintendo lost Western third parties that generation, and so far that has proven a permanent breach. Of course, in Japan the third parties had mostly been lost on the N64, which is why Iwata tried so hard to get them back on the GC -- the SNES to N64 crash in Japan was massive, in terms of both sales and third-party support. The problem is, it didn't work well -- the GC sold worse than the N64 in Japan, and the Wii was quickly abandoned by Japanese third parties in favor of the PS3.
Of course, one other move had a major effect on third-party support (particularly Western support, but somewhat Japanese as well particularly for the Wii and beyond) -- one major draw for Western developers to the N64 was the system's power, after all. The decision to abandon high-end hardware after the GC's failure really helped push away third parties, looking back. Iwata, Takeda, and Miyamoto all agreed on this for both the Wii and Wii U as far as we know, and it worked great for the Wii, but then crashed hard with its followup of course. Was it worth it? With the Wii, you can make a good case for yes; most Western third parties had given up on Nintendo during the GC era after all, and after seeing the 360's success they weren't necessarily going to return, though the weird controller and low-power system, did surely help keep them away, budget minigame collections aside. Still, the Wii is a fantastic console, and I love the Wiimote, it's a great controller that led to some great new gameplay concepts. Pointer controls are great. (This is why I wish the Wii U had used a Wiimote-like controller as its main controller instead of that tablet, the tablet was a mistake. But that's another issue.) Just because the Wii U went terribly doesn't mean the Wii idea was bad... but still, I do wish that the Wii had been a bit more powerful, though it's a bigger problem for the Wii U probably.
Now, in Iwata and NCL's defense, what happened to Nintendo's third-party support may have been inevitable. From the N64 on, many third parties, first Japanese and then later Western, abandoned Nintendo because they preferred to support platforms with weaker first-party development studios, which is the opposite of what Nintendo does. When you have very strong first party games, it's harder for third parties to be as noticed. They can do it (see the NES and SNES), but it requires a little more effort, and this of course drove away third parties. And with MS's entry, Nintendo holding on to the level of Western support it had seen on the N64 was probably not going to happen, MS was aimed straight at that audience and was going to get at least some of it. Still, I do think that Lincoln and Arakawa may have been able to do a better job than we saw during the GC era... ah well. And also, the decision to give up on high-end hardware really was key. The N64 and early Gamecube got some strong third-party support after all, only fading midlife during the GC generation thanks to the GC's weaker sales compared ot the N64 (again, with the Xbox being a major cause maybe even more so than the PS2).
So yeah, I liked Iwata a lot for some things he did -- getting better games on Nintendo platforms from Japanese studios again (after the N64 had very little of this), being such a great face for the company with such a funny, positive attitude, helping make the Wii and DS the two most successful platforms of the generation, and more -- but still, losing the Western second and third parties during the GC and early Wii era hurt, and Nintendo just picked the guy who oversaw that as head of NoA during that exact period as the new President. So yeah. I was expecting something like this to happen, because NCL's current leadership clearly likes the centralized-power strategy, but I do think it has hurt Nintendo at least a bit. The Gamecube was my only current-gen TV console between Nov. '01 and summer 2007, and I loved the system (though a bit less than I had loved the N64), but I did notice the slow loss of third-party support over the course of the generation, thanks to the GC's poor sales compared to the N64, the Xbox taking away shooter fans, and the PS2's dominating success everywhere. It's impossible to say if Nintendo could have done better or not, but I like speculative gaming history, so I'd like to think that they could have.
Regardless, that's mostly in the past; I may love history, but the question of 'what next' is of course quite pertinent. Well, there there's less to say -- Kimishima, from what we have heard, plans to continue Iwata's vision for the foreseeable future. So, Nintendo will continue to enter into the mobile (cellphone) gaming market, while working on the NX whatever it is. Kimishima, Takeda, and Miyamoto will run the company not too differently from how it had been, but without it somewhat charismatic leader. I'd like to see what Reggie could do with more power (remember, most decisions now come from NCL in Japan), but that isn't going to happen. Regardless, under any leadership this is definitely a very difficult time for the industry, but I'm hoping Nintendo can figure out how to come back and succeed again because I love Nintendo and Nintendo consoles, and don't want to see them go away, or worse, go mobile only like so many other Japanese developers have... if it is at all possible they need to figure out what to do. Here's hoping it works.
![[Image: 313334_front.jpg]](http://img.gamefaqs.net/box/3/3/4/313334_front.jpg)
![[Image: gfs_81811_2_1.jpg]](http://img.gamefaqs.net/screens/7/3/1/gfs_81811_2_1.jpg)
![[Image: gfs_81811_3_1.jpg]](http://img.gamefaqs.net/screens/c/8/5/gfs_81811_3_1.jpg)
![[Image: hqdefaultf3s60.jpg]](http://abload.de/img/hqdefaultf3s60.jpg)
![[Image: hqdefault0wski.jpg]](http://abload.de/img/hqdefault0wski.jpg)
![[Image: hqdefaultgks3z.jpg]](http://abload.de/img/hqdefaultgks3z.jpg)