Tweet

Share

Video Games

By Alan - July 25, 2011

Starting with Wind Waker I began to realize something. The Legend of Zelda series hasn’t grown up with me. And come to think of it, neither has Nintendo. Nintendo chases after kids like a pedophile who just got his van tuned up. Recently Mike wrote an article about how Nintendo has lost its way and I agreed with him. But it wasn’t until I saw screenshots of the upcoming Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword that I realized I’m no longer a Nintendo fan. At all.

See that picture above? No, not the one that resembles the photos you’ve been sending Justin Beiber, below that. That picture summarizes everything I’ve always loved about Nintendo games. That classic style  that foretells a cutting edge and memorable game. The art reminds me of sitting beside my dad on the way home from the store, holding the fresh plastic wrapped game box in my hands. I remember eagerly flipping through every page of the manual reading aloud the features of the game to my father, who was so ashamed of me he was fighting the urge to kill us both by driving into oncoming traffic. Ah, childhood memories.

But I’ve grown up. I now have lower back pain, I fear opening bills and I patiently await my rapidly approaching stress-induced heart attack. Every screen cap I’ve seen of Skyward Sword summarizes every reason I’m no longer a fan of Nintendo and why I won’t be buying this game. It hasn’t aged with me. The game looks like its built for Down syndrome children with overprotective parents. While Eiji Aonuma, a designer on the Zelda series, says the franchise is getting a serious mix up by no longer making Zelda a princess and putting the main characters in school, we know it’s going to play out exactly like the others. Which would be awesome, if I was 15 again and was so young I still got uncontrollable boners in the middle of class presentations.

The game just sounds childish. It’s been given a graphical overhaul but lets be honest and admit those characters look like shaved ball sacs drawn by someone with schizophrenia. The Wii’s graphical capabilities are about as low as your self-esteem, neither of which will change anytime soon. And as usual, we know the puzzles will be so dumbed down they’ll look like they were designed by a 12 year-old with a severe learning disability. From the small previews we’ve seen, Nintendo will once again be talking down to us like it’s our first experience picking up a controller. And lastly, you can put money on the plot being more docile than Dora the Explorer with carbon monoxide poisoning.

As much as I hate to say it, Nintendo needs to take a hint from Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling. She understood that as she was writing her books, her audience was aging. Rather than fight this, she made sure her books were mature enough to be enjoyed by her core audience. She wisely gambled that if she made her books appeal to the original fans, they would act as brand ambassadors and promote her work to others.  What she ended up with was one of the largest entertainment franchises in history that is hailed by both children and adults alike.

I get that Nintendo is targeting a younger audience and trying to appeal to the family demographic. But why couldn’t they have matured the Legend of Zelda series along with their original gamers? If the average gamer was 10 when they played Legend of Zelda, when it was released in 1986, he is now 35 years old. I don’t think you have to explode monsters into clouds when they die. I’ve jammed my dink into a woman’s anus, okay? You don’t need to dumb down the atmosphere by adding giggly creatures and pasting a smile onto everything that moves like I’m a socially stunted Care Bear.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword honestly doesn’t look interesting to me in the slightest because I’m an adult. For the past 20 years I’ve played that exact same game ten times over.  In the words of Sergeant Murtaugh, “I’m gettin’ too old for this shit.”

You may also hate:

• « Previous post
• Next post »

Ignorant Geek Wisdom

• Making fun of a guy who has My Little Pony bed sheets is more fun than going to retirement homes and swapping senior citizens’ heart medicine with sugar pills while they’re sleeping.

  -Mike

• Stay Up To Date

  

• Our Sponsors

  

• Twitter Feed

  • 

Your Input