Right, a while back I wrote up a letter regarding Nintendo's main franchises. The arguments were admittedly weak, but logical, and I failed to take into account the fact that I'm not in the age range of Nintendo's games anymore (doesn't stop me from enjoying the occasional round though). Ultimately, I didn't send it in, and I've rewritten a couple parts to make some more sense.

Now then, after you read this, feel free to point out the lack of logic. Objections are acceptable.



Hello Nintendo,

I am an avid gamer, and I was once a big fan of your games. Not to say I don’t enjoy the occasional round, especially with the Wii. But, that’s not what I’m writing about. What I’m writing about is the storylines of your games. I would write this in your language, but I unfortunately can not read, write, or comprehend Japanese, no offense intended.

You see, excluding the Metroid series, your main franchises, which consist of Mario, Pokemon, the Legend of Zelda, and the Metroid series (which I am again not counting) possess no real or comprehensible backstory.

For my point, let’s demonstrate on Mario. The famous fat Italian plumber, which alone raises numerous questions. For example, why Italian? What spurred you to make an Italian character? Then there’s the fact that he’s a “plumber”. That doesn’t make a lot of sense there, being that we’ve not once seen him actually do that job. Let alone the fact that he single-handedly saves the Princess from Bowser, which may owe partially in fact to the Inverse Ninja Law or Stormtrooper effect.

Then, there’s his backstory, his origins. You have so many games running around that quite a few of them end up contradicting each other and some without conclusions. Let’s look at Yoshi’s Island for the Game Boy Advance. The game starts with Baby Mario landing right on top of the Yoshi’s (who have countless different colors, which makes me wonder why we’ve only seen one consistently), while his brother is captured by Baby Bowser’s forces.

The game itself is fairly interesting, but the plot doesn’t make sense. Where is Yoshi’s Island located? How were Yoshi and his friends able to reach Mario’s house without leaving the island (if you paid attention to where Yoshi goes after every castle, you’d understand this line)? And furthermore, where does Bowser fit into all of this?

But if you go into the Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time for the DS, you see that Baby Mario, Baby Luigi, and Baby Bowser are already located in the Mushroom Kingdom with Baby Princess Peach. How did they get there if they were returned to their parents?

And if you go back to the first Super Mario Bros game, it said that Mario was a visitor (correct me if I’m wrong here) to the Mushroom Kingdom, and he was already fully grown. Is it just me, or does that contradict the other games?

Next off, we have Bowser. Where is he from, why does he kidnap the Princess all the time and what is his backstory? None of the games fully explain his backstory, or at least set a backstory that is consistently visited.

Now, for incomprehensible plots, let’s turn to the Legend of Zelda. Now, you’ve got all these games floating around (Legend of Zelda, Link’s Awakening, Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess, and a slew of other games, excluding the infamous CD-i games, which aren’t canon) and yet you don’t explain the order at which they come in.

Plus, there’s also the Four Sword. Where does that thing fit in with the Master Sword and Ganondorf? During the Four Sword Adventures for the Gamecube, the final boss unleashes himself as Ganon, which leaves me to believe that this story is located somewhere in-between Ocarina of Time and the next game in line, but nobody mentions the Hero of Time or the Master Sword. And in other games, nobody mentions Vaati except in the Four Sword games.

If you would be so kind to set “official” back stories for your characters and your games, it would do you so well. Your games proper are always the same plot over and over again (how many times has Mario saved Princess Peach, or Link slain Ganondorf?) with the same 1-dimensional characters and villains.

The only characters I know of that possess any form of an actual backstory that have been delved into is Samus Aran and occasionally Link (although Link’s backstory consistently contradicts itself because there are just so many Links).

I mean no offense to the company, not only because they are a mega-billion dollar company that can sue my ass onto the street in a heartbeat, and not only because of the rabid fanboys that would inevitably come to my house and beat me down if you did take offense, but mainly because I was once a big fan of your games, so please try to remember that I’m not trying to be rude here.

Now, back to my complaints. It would appear that your company is doing great mainly because of the hardware of your console and handheld (the Wii and DS, respectively). I applaud the creativity to whoever came up with the idea for those, but I must say that Nintendo is currently doing well only because of that. The Gamecube, from what I understand was the least popular of all the last-gen systems because there was no unique shine to it, and possibly also because it lacked online features.

That reminds me, another thing that I find frustrating with your company is the online game play of the DS and the Wii. While the other consoles use a much easier to recognize username tag, Nintendo’s consists of a random jumble of letters and numbers that would only be memorized if you wrote them down somewhere, unless you have some kind of super-photographic memory (which I do not have. In the words of Strong Bad, I have an extremely unphotographic memory. Which makes it more like a drawing, or a doodle. Like a doodle memory).

Now, the other consoles are selling as they are not only because of the graphics, but in my opinion also because of the storylines. Look at Halo for instance, it sold amazingly well and it had a good backstory if you delved into the Halo novels, and even then the Arbiter had a nice backstory that could make up for the Chief’s apparent lack of a backstory, albeit that the story is fairly commonplace, Bungie still manages to do something with it to make it work.

Then there’s also the great seller Grand Theft Auto 4, which the character was clearly defined, but it still let you do what you wanted. While this would seem like a lack of main story, the character itself was so well defined that it probably would make up for that seemingly obvious flaw which isn’t true, being that there is an actual main plotline.

I’m not saying Nintendo should go the way of Microsoft or Sony and go for more edgy games (Shadow the Hedgehog sold poorly and got terrible reviews, though it did leave a lasting impression in the player’s mind), but at least stapling an official backstory for the characters and villains would do them quite well once they run out of hardware options.

All in all, I’m trying to say that Nintendo ends up with too many 1-dimensional characters and villains with the same predictable plotline over and over again. This is especially so with the Pokemon games, which follow a DBZ style plotline (meaning: a highly predictable and repetitive plot that in the end leaves so many questions left unanswered). I’m also saying that your main franchises tend to have so many mixed up games that you reach the point when one really needs to sort it out into an official lineup. It’s either that, or 4kids has taken part in editing Japanese games and cutting out all the good stuff. I believe it is the former, but I wouldn’t put it past our editing programs to do the latter.

I hope that this letter is taken into consideration and not just thrown into the nearest trash folder like Strong Bad does whenever he gets a “how do you type with boxing gloves” email. And again, I apologize if I sounded rude at all, I did not mean to.

Oh yes, and I do not wish to disclose my name because of both rabid fanboys and stalkers. You can go ahead and put this up on the news if you like, or you can simply send a reply email. I would personally prefer the latter, being that I don’t want to make a big deal of this, but I can go either way, as long as I know you’ve taken this email into consideration.

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Last edited by General Tommy on Sat Oct 31, 2009 2:07 am, edited 1 time in total.

wall of text is formidable read


other than that... the letter is... :/

i don't think nintendo cares, or ever will.

Yes, I am aware that my letter is stupid. I fully realized that when I was posting it, as I highlighted in the beginning of my post.

Feel free to point out the logical fallacies. I won't argue back.

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4Kids does not edit games...

First of all, the creator of Zelda himself said that there is no timeline or alternate timeline theory of any sort. Unless they say, so each zelda game is completely unrelated to the other ones. The games are just new ways to tell the story of Link, Zelda, Ganondorf, and the Triforce. There does not need to be any continuity.

With Mario, it doesn't have to make sense, there are plenty of video games that leave many important things unexplained for no reason at all. Mario is technically a plumber because he goes through pipes and stuff. Don't know why he's Italian though...

The reason Pokemon is always so one-dimensional is because fans are gonna get way too pissy if you change anything about the game mechanics, which I don't really mind.

Really, nothing needs to be explained as long as you have fun.

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Story is definitely not a problem of Nintendo's.

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Actually, Nintendo has stated at one point that Ocarina of Time was the 'first' Zelda story chronologically, and Wind Waker is in an alternate universe from most of the other titles.

And Nintendo didn't make Mario a plumber. That came about mainly from the cartoon.

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I never thought of it that way before. And what's the 'inverse ninja effect?'

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Inverse ninja law=more mooks, less effective each mook is.

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Yes they did. He was a plumber from Donkey Kong and further, to explain his overalls and his use of hammers.

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And what is a mook?

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While it is true that he was declared a plumber in the games, he was a carpenter in Donkey Kong.

I remember shortly after vomiting and recovering from the sour taste Sapphire left in my mouth, I wrote a long list of..."suggestions" for the Pokemon franchise, including being able to choose a single Pokemon from your party to follow you around anywhere, at any time (possibly the Pokemon in the front of your party) ala Pokemon Yellow.

Of course, my letter didn't provoke any of it, but pretty much every thing I asked for came to live with HeartGold and SoulSilver.

...Minus making Missingno. a legitimate Pokemon (with a special ability that would warp/screw around with town/route/battle/etc music whenever it is out).

Yeah, Ruby and Sapphire are the only real bad Pokemon games from the main series but I like to think Emerald was an improvement....

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The standard faceless nameless enemy that the hero gets to slaughter at a large number.

See also: Stormtroopers from Star Wars.

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Show me where exactly in the games it states that Mario is a plumber.

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That's exactly it. They only SAY he's a plumber (if you'll recall M&L: SSS, the bad guy says for you to fix the plumbing), but he rarely, if ever, if found actually doing his job.

It's the same thing with Samus and bounty hunting: We never actually see her hunting a bounty. She's more like a mercenary.

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Actually Samus was referred to as a "space hunter" in the first game. She wasn't considered a bounty hunter until Super Metroid. They're close enough in meaning to each other in any case.

The difference is the Mario and Luigi games were released far after fans were already calling him a plumber. By that point Nintendo probably just went "Well, everyone thinks he's a plumber now anyway, so why not."

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Hmmm...perhaps. Either way, it's rather upsetting that Nintendo's characters never seem to have any actual personality to them, or at least doing their actual jobs.

Which reminds me of another problem I have with the Mario series: Peach. The only thing that she ever winds up doing in most Mario games (excluding Super Princess Peach, of course) is getting kidnapped. By now it's gotta be a routine for her. And it's rather annoying.

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Oh well, that's sexism for you. I mean who else would Mario bother to save all these times? Not Toad, that's who....

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Even still, it gets very predictable after a while. Even in Super Princess Peach, it was rather upsetting. Out of all the things they could've done, they made her attacks rapid mood swings. Nintendo must be more sexist than I thought.

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You don't even know the half of it. And it's not just Nintendo, other companies are sexist too. Oh well, what can you do about it?

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It's sad, really. To see the big boys standing as sexists.

Ah well.

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Yes, despite the sexism, once you get past it, the games can still be fun.

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Yeah, I admit, Nintendo's games are entertaining, though frustrating for older audiences given their track record of stupidity and contradictions.

Heh, the AA characters would have a field day pointing out the contradictions in Nintendo's games.

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Just like Sonic liking chilidogs?

Except that took seventeen years.

http://www.gamersgraveyard.com/reposito ... riobrs.txt

Here is the text version of the manual of the original Mario Bros. game. If you look under characters, it clearly states that they are indeed plumbers. This is from the NES manual.

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...............

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That's not a problem with the age of the audience, it's a difference in sensibility and the ongoing "casual" vs "hardcore" gaming demographic. Plenty of older people play Mario and Zelda and couldn't care less if there're plot contradictions from one game to another.

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Even among "Hardcore" gamers, most people could care less. The games are about the fun and enjoyable gameplay. Thats whats important. Thats why the OPs argument is completely retarded. Why spend the time on writing out some huge coherent plot, when its really not important in the grand scheme of things. I stomp on shit, rescue the princess, and have fun. I don't need anything else. Especially if it will have as poorly written of a plot as most video games out there. No/minimalistic plot is > shitty plot.

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Some people would argue that plot is very helpful in making a game.

And thank you for recognizing something that I am already quite well aware of. And I wasn't saying to write a "huge coherent plot", just try to clear up a few questions that are always left unanswered at the end of each game.

And I never said that no plot is bad. What I didn't like was how it didn't make any sense when you look at it from afar.

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But it's always more fun to decide for yourself what the answers to those questions are....

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Perhaps. But that is very difficult to accomplish when everything is contradicting itself.

God, the AA characters would have a field day pointing out all the contradictions in Mario and Zelda, most notably being that the geography always changes with each game.

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Who cares? No one is able to please everyone and Nintendo is the same way. Whether you like them or not, it's not going to matter. If they stay the same or change up, someone is going to complain. If you're disappointed with the storylines Nintendo is pulling, play something else. That's why they have more than one gaming console out there.

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Ace Attorney has its own set of contradictions and unanswered questions you know....

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Why is it that you think that I didn't send this thing in?

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I don't think they care for backstory, as long as their games sell.

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