Topic: ORAS, Majora's Mask, Mario Sunshine... what happened?

So I definitely remember that at least 5 years ago all of these games were despised unloved games from their respective franchises. Now everyone loves these games? What happened?

• Kids who had these as their first in the franchise are now getting old enough to make accounts on sites like these (these are the "nostalgic" games for the GCN era kids. Yes, I know MM was a late N64 game...).
• Sites like these are generally frequented by more "core" gamers who may be more likely to go back & revisit a game they disliked before, to give it a second chance (and going back in with different expectations, may come to appreciate them for what they were really trying to do).

Yeah, RR529's first bullet point there. All the GCN/late N64 kids (like m'self) joined the Internet.

Majora's Mask hasn't been hated for like a decade, dude. At least the cool kids haven't.

I always liked these games.

They came out during my late childhood and I spent a lot of time with them.

This has always been the case. I believe this sums it up quite nicely.

http://irategaming.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/4f3491_7315... (Beware language and possibly offensive racism)

The kids who may have really started out gaming in gen 5/6 (myself included) have grown into young adults and they're joining message boards and being a little more vocal. Nintendo is starting to realize this, so I think we're going to start seeing them trying to target and rope in that 18-25 year old group a little more (hence Wind Waker HD, Majora's Mask 3D, Pokemon OR/AS, Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, Pikmin 3).

[quote=brewsky]This has always been the case. I believe this sums it up quite nicely.

http://irategaming.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/4f3491_7315...

EDIT: and this is completely true.

Unless a game is near-universally praised or detested (the overused Sonic '06 comes to mind, Final Fantasy XIII does not however) or you've browsed a ludicrous portfolio of forums and comments sections, there's a good chance that any series of opinions you've heard was actually a very small sample of the game's overall user base.

In the case of these three games, all of them sold well and were critical successes. Nonetheless, online opinions on it are going to be broad and, most likely, overstated; that's perfectly natural for any game that exceeds 1 million units sold, especially when all of these games toyed with established franchise formulas. If we're going purely by anecdotes here, I've seen consistent praise and malice aimed at all three titles over the years; some saw the original games as classics, some recognize their flaws and enjoy them as they are, and others weren't fans of the changes they made to their respective franchises.

In other words, diverse userbase + diverse gameplay = diverse opinions. Absolutely nothing implies to me that there was a sudden shift of consensus or attitudes for any of these games. People often construct fallacies like the "Zelda Cycle" to explain what they perceive as a trend in some vain an attempt to parse the minds of the populace, but opinions on games like Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess truly can't be summed up with such empty generalizations as "everyone hated it then loved it when the next game came out".

Quite a lot of hardcore Mario and Zelda fans liked games such as Majora's Mask and Mario Sunshine even when they were new. Add some people who grew up with them joining Nintendo forums, and hey, opinions change.

I think its the opposite for me, at least for ORAS.

Honestly Mario Sunshine is the only one that I feel people still don't like in any way. Having such a large gap between Mario games only to release a weird, weird title that had that came out right when more universally liked games like Sly Cooper did...tough thing to overcome. It doesn't matter though, Mario Sunshine's still more popular and sold more than nearly all of my favorite games. People hating it is not worth your time caring about in 2014.

Well, back in 6th gen, people "hated" those games, because PS2. Seriously. Also, most of the people who didn't like Majora's Mask are the ones who thought OoT was amazing, and that the next Zelda was going to be "mature". Nintendo is basically getting the same criticism they have been since N64.

I hope this is exactly the reason, because that would some amazing irony.

But no I think it's mostly because younger people got annoyed at the time limit and everything else. It is a game that you need to know what you're doing to be any good at it arguably. Being weird like this is unfortunately a great way to alienate people.

There are more reasons for people not liking Majora's Mask, like PS1 existing. The reason I said really is true from the type of opions I've read/heard before, but you are right that people just didn't like the 3 day thing, most of all. I thought it was amazing, because if you messed up, it's not like you died. You just had to go back and try again. There was alot of suspense in that idea that alot of people didn't like to deal with, but there was and always has been more pressure on Nintendo to be more mature since way back then, and most of the gamers who don't like Wii U now, are still part of that group that wanted "mature games" when they were like 15. My cousin was part of that whole PS1 crowd about more games and "mature" games. I mainly just think it's hilarious that people want better graphics, but that didn't happen for Nintendo when they had better graphics in N64 and GCN, which is why Wii happened, and also why Wii U exists from that, but I ultimately don't really care.

Hmmm... to me it seems there's more SMS haters today than when it had just come out.

Back then, EVERYONE (except myself) seemed completely HYPED and PSYCHED that they got a new "3D Mario" after, what, 6 years of waiting. It was only a couple years later that critical voices started gathering.

One advantage old games have is that people cut them more slack later, as it's more difficult to sort them into perspective then. However, if a game — like SMS — was originally grossly overhyped and overrated, the inverse effect can occur.

There WAS a lot of hype, but there were also a ton of people who already had a PS2 and were going to have that as their main console, so they either didn't care to begin with, were unable to care. Most of the people I knew that had PS2 basically didn't know what GameCube had at all, and only a few people had both or all three(GCN, PS2, and Xbox). More people obviously had PS2, so a lot of it had to do with that.

Most people still recognized Super Smash Bros. Melee and Metroid Prime as being awesome, but otherwise everyone thought Pikmin and Luigi's Mansion were stupid as f***, so people stopped caring right away. Even I thought Pikmin was a dumb game until the 2nd one was already out and I had ended up liking the series after I had actually played it. Most of the time, convincing people that a game is fun is usually when they didn't buy it themselves, but get a chance to play it from someone who has already bought it.

I'll admit, I was a Sony fanboy back in the day of PS1/PS2 and it robbed me of many, MANY Gamecube games because they were off my radar. I'm still going back and picking up the pieces though. I can't believe I lived without Baten Kaitos Origins and Thousand Year Door for so long T_T.

GCN still had a ton of games. A lot if the games that were on PS2 and Xbox were on GCN, as well. Most of the separation came from system exclusives and DVD. God of War and Halo were brand new exclusives that made it big, and all Nintendo had was Mario, Smash Bros, etc, like they always had. GCN was actually the console they've had the most brand new "core" exclusives on, and it was all an attempt to win back the "core" gamer, when they actually were offering a massive amount of "core" games that no one really cared about, anyway.

GCN had Luigi's Mansion, Pikmin, Baiten Kaitos, Resident Evil, Tales of Symphonia, Sega Dreamcast ports and exclusives that didn't go to other consoles(which happened to Xbox, as well), Eternal Darkness, Gheist, Odama, Metal Gear Solid remaster, etc. GCN had a TON of exclusives, most of the 3rd party support, better graphics than PS2, and the console was even cheaper than PS2, because no one was buying it.

GCN failing and being an awesome machine that sold poorly is why Wii happened.