Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch blog talked to Miyamoto (in person, via translator) about the Wii U, Star Fox, what he thinks about contemporary video games, and what it was like drawing the original maps of Super Mario Bros 3 on sketch paper.
If all the world is a stage, then Mario is adept at playing all the roles – something Miyamoto was very keen to tell us.
3 had a good balance of difficulty before crybabies stepped in and cried about the difficulty of SMW, which is why the game was made easier before release. Would also explain why most other games have been easier except for special worlds etc.. or ones you unlock after you beat the main game.
Isn't the reason we got a Doki Doki Panic sprite swap because Lost Levels was originally deemed too difficult?
This is a lot of revisionist history. All games back then had to be difficult or else they would be over in less than an hour. Super Mario 3 was actually super approachable because you could use the map and warp whistles to go right to the boss. And as with Super Mario World, you could farm stages for more lives. The beautify of Super Mario 3 was the abundance of secret areas and tools like Hammer Bros. suits. You didn’t really want to rush it. The lost levels were a different beast. They were never marketed as a mainline Mario game.
I watched an interview with a developer (I think it was for Disney's Aladdin) from years ago and he said they were required to raise the difficulty because so many games were rented back then. They didn't want the game finished quickly so you had to rent it longer. it was the home-rental equivalent of pumping more quarters into an arcade machine.
The cry babies? It was Nintendo’s perception that yanks didnt like difficult games hence the easing of the difficulty.
This is an odd statement considering the history of Japanese games that had you press X on your way to victory. Seriously, games like Ninja Gaiden in the 00s was born of the developer’s belief that Japanese gamers had grown too soft.
Nintendo has recently restored Wii U Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon online after five months of being offline.
WTMG's Leo Faria: "I respect the hell out of Star Fox for what it was setting out to do in 1993. You gotta love how feisty Nintendo was being, proving the naysayers wrong with their whole “bit wars” schtick. That doesn’t mean I have to like this game… as a game. It’s just not very good. It was a proof of concept, a big fat tech demo. If anything, we ended up getting Star Fox 64, one of the best games of all time (don’t at me) four years later, so that alone is enough to validate the original Star Fox‘s existence. It also marked the beginning of arguably Nintendo’s most neglected and disrespected franchise alongside F-Zero. One I sure hope won’t die with that disgraceful Wii U title as its swan song, its last hoorah. Happy anniversary, you weird, ugly, barely polygonal monstrosity. At the end of the day, we still love you."
I would love it if Nintendo finally did a Chorus type Star Fox game at this point. I think with their characters and their "Nintendo Appeal" - whatever that is - they could bring back Star Fox as a main franchise.
The Chorus game design, or even a Crimson Skies style to a lesser extent, would make for a great template to get Star Fox up and running again and get the franchise out of the rut it's suffering from.
Sure, they can go back to the SNES/N64 era gameplay but...really? Meh. Maybe they can use that corridor gameplay style for a smaller game, released between the big releases, or as Boss Levels at the end of each free roaming chapter for that added "Cinematic Flair".
Star Fox certainly deserves better.
Don't you mean a No Man Sky, only not really. Bit more scripted with an open world after game just in the Lylat system.
No. The game Chorus is the perfect way to bring Star Fox out of the old ways and into the new while still retaining the charm of the series. No need to bloat the game design with a No Man Sky type of open world. That would be counterproductive and just too much of a departure for the series. We'll have another Dinosaur Planet/Star Fox Adventure in our hands and tank the series once again. No thanks.
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Go watch a walkthrough of Chorus. That's a design Nintendo could excel at with this franchise while keeping the charm and concept close to the series origins but also moving it forward enough that it can flourish in a bigger scale. It's perfect.
"It’s just not very good."
You wash that filthy mouth!
--It really was something you had to be there for and experience during the early 90's, I understand haha
Really Interesting interview. We had months to hear news from Miyamoto and he returned more ready than ever! I can't wait to play his new games....
I love the guy but those tech demos were really underwhelming. I'm confused because all this time we thought he was working on a new IP.
I just wish metroid prime come soon
a game is only as good as the console its on,
I believe in it also. I'm positive it exists and no one can convince me otherwise.