Topic: Retro Studios is the hospital for dying Nintendo franchises

Retro Studios is the hospital for dying Nintendo franchises.

Metroid was dead in the N64 era. Retro brought it back to life with Prime.
Donkey Kong as we know it was dead since RARE was bought out by Microsoft. Retro brought it back to life also.
I would argue that Returns and Tropical Freeze are good games but nowhere near as good as the RARE SNES trilogy. Still Retro brought Donkey Kong back to the spotlight.

And now Starfox is basically dead, thanks Star Fox Zero. Retro bringing this IP back to life totally fits what Retro do. That's if you believe the Star Fox Grand Prix rumour. I do not, but saving dying Nintendo franchises is what Retro does.

F Zero in Retros hands would be heaven on earth, and i would take it over star fox any day. seriously. the last good star fox was SF64. its been dead

Did you even read any of the critic Star Fox Zero reviews? Mostly hated on the game. Star Fox Zero was not a good game. Personally I think Star Fox Zero was a bad game for totally different reasons to the critics but the fact still remains.
It's no different to Other M damaging the Metroid IP.

That's exactly why Star Fox is a good IP for Retro Studios.

Star Fox Zero was fine, even if the concept of shooting and aiming in different directions threw a certain portion of the gaming 'hardcore' into disarray because they had to learn an input method different any those they'd been hammering into their skulls for the last 20 years.

However, launching a 'fine' arcade-style shooter with a very steep input learning curve wasn't a great thing in a year with very few other releases on the system. It had the weight of nostalgia, and the responsibility of reviving an entire console on its shoulders, which was basically unattainable. Not to mention that the arcade space shooter genre was about as modern as a Streets of Rage title.

The hysteria surrounding Zero was dumb. If it had released in a year full of meaty releases, possibly on something like the 3DS which was known for smaller, quirkier releases with less pressure riding on them (e.g. Pilot Wings), then it probably would have been received more fondly. But releasing a 'difficult to play' arcade game as 'the Wii U game that year' was sending it out to die. It also gave birth to this ridiculous 'Star Fox Zero is evil and killed the franchise and is responsible for most major diseases' meme. And if it had genuinely killed the franchise, there would be no Star Fox Grand Prix (not that we know there actually will be).

It's like saying "Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash killed the franchise" when we've got an excellent looking new release just around the corner.

Apart from that, I think it's fair to say that Retro has been tasked with breathing new life into franchises that have lain dormant for a while.

I agree 100% with you about the controls. However there's many features present in SF64 and SF SNES just not there in SFZ. Also SFZ has other issues. I personally really enjoyed the SFZ controls, just other parts of the game got to me.

Ultra Smash did kill the franchise. However Nintendo is working so hard to resurrect it. That's why we have so much advertising for it now and the online demo coming soon. Nintendo know they need a big push to regain our trust of this franchise.

I can agree with this statement.

I really don't know what you mean by "kill the franchise" then. If a game doesn't sell well or isn't that good, it doesn't necessarily mean it's "killed the franchise". It just means an unsuccessful title was released within the franchise.

If the franchise dusted itself off and carried on soon after, it doesn't seem very apt to call it "dead". "Dead" implies 'inactive', but if we use this as a metric then it's much easier to argue that Power Tennis/Tour in fact killed the franchise as it would be 7/8 years until we got another new Mario Tennis game (Mario Tennis Open in 2012), and another 10/11 years until the next home console version (Ultra Smash in late 2015).

It just seems weird to think that during the ten year gap between Power Tennis and Ultra Smash, the series was 'alive' but in the two and a half years since Ultra Smash it's been "dead".

I wouldn't argue that Zelda II killed the Zelda franchise. It was just a less successful title within a franchise that kept on going.

@Maxz You forgot about the Wii port of Power Tennis in 2009 so Mario Tennis has been rather stable. No need to have a new Mario Tennis game if you port an older one (same applies to other Mario sports titles, Mario Kart, etc.).

@Grumblevolcano I didn't class that as a 'new' game. There were some Virtual Console releases at well, which I omitted.

Anyway, my main point is that the 2.5 year gap between Ultra Smash and Aces doesn't really signify a "dead" franchise to me.

@Maxz Have to agree with you. In fact: no other option is possible. A killed franchise is dead, completely out of the catalog, NEVER to return again. As in the actual death of things. It cannot be resurrected.

At most, I could give the label "dormant" to a title that has been gone a long or longer time (so, rather than resurrected, it would be dusted off), but to say that a franchise has been killed and dead, to subsequently be "resurrected" again only two years later, is rather ridiculous and over-exaggerated...

@Maxz I agree that the gap between Ultra Smash and Aces doesn't signify a dead franchise. But I don't think the gap between Power Tennis and Open meant anything either given the Wii port of Power Tennis. Releasing a new Mario Tennis for Wii would've been a waste just like releasing Mario Kart 9 for Switch would be a waste.

@Grumblevolcano Yeah, I agree with you on this, really. It wasn't very necessary to pump out a brand new title for the Wii when the GC port sufficed, and the franchise wasn't really ever dead. But that's sort of the main point I'm making to the OP; the franchise wasn't really ever dead, and certainly not after the release of Ultra Smash.

As @ThanosReXXX has said, equating 'releasing a dud entry' with "killing a franchise" is a pretty hyperbolic (and unhelpful) way of phrasing things.

Rare SNES DKC trilogy is one of the most overrated things in gaming ever imho. One single game by Retro studios is much better than the entire Rareware library of games. Expecially Donkey Kong country Returns and Metroid Prime 1 that are their best games.
Rare games as a whole are extremely overrated imho. They were bland, boring, monotonous, sometimes frustrating, and never as good as 1st party Nintendo games.

@LuckyLand Wow... well, that's one completely outlier opinion, then. The general consensus is that the Banjo Kazooie games for example, took what Super Mario 64 did, and expanded upon that in gameplay, story and graphics in ways that people at first didn't even think was possible on the N64, and the gaming industry media at the time agreed on that, so in fact it WAS certainly as good, and probably even better than Nintendo's own effort in the 3D platforming genre. And that's not even an opinion...

And a number of their other games are classics too. It can of course always be true that a certain type of game simply doesn't appeal to you, but objectively speaking, Rare was responsible for a large part of the higher quality titles available on the N64.

I mean: Killer Instinct Gold, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie, Diddy Kong Racing, Mickey's Speedway USA, Jet Force Gemini, Blast Corps and Donkey Kong 64.

I would agree that the 3D Donkey Kong game was probably one of the lesser title in that list, but still entertaining enough in its own right.

But agreed on Retro Studios making brilliant games. Unfortunately, the current Retro Studios isn't the same one that made the Metroid Prime trilogy, and even part of the team that worked on the Donkey Kong Returns games, has since left, so I'm kinda cautious about being too optimistic about whatever the heck it is that they're making now. Seeing is believing in this case, I suppose, so I hope they've got something to show at this year's E3.

EDIT:
As for the SNES Donkey Kong Trilogy: regardless of any personal opinions, these too raised the bar on what was thought to be possible on the hardware at the time, much like a number of Rare's N64 games, and considering their scores even today in 'best of" or top 20/top whatever lists for the SNES, I'd say that in that regard too, your opinion is clearly stranded on a lonely, lonely island somewhere in a galaxy far, far away...

@ThanosReXXX I even like Banjo characters more than Mario characters! But the games themselves in my opinion are worse. Mario 64 was much more fun, Banjo games soon became chores. The controls were more stiff and the gameplay less intuitive.

Children are stupid.

@LuckyLand Yeah, Nintendo does of course have that gameplay down, and it usually does click with the player, but what always attracted me to Rare's games is that besides the whole cosmetic thing, the entire package just seemed so coherent and well-thought out, at least in my opinion. But fair enough to anyone who doesn't agree. We all have a right to our own opinion, so I have no issues with that.

So basically, if the last released game in a franchise is poor, then the franchise is dead, otherwise it's dormant, or retired in the case of Earthbound. Also, death makes for more internet drama which apparently is needed to do anything worthwhile.

Star Fox has almost always been a series about pushing the unique capabilities of the system it's on, the original used the Super FX chip to the fullest, 64 had the Rumble Pak (and the 3D remake has, well, 3D graphics plus gyro controls), Command has near complete touch control and of course Zero has the Gamepad. Adventures and Assault are the main exceptions in this regard, which speaks to how traditional the Gamecube really was.

The gyro controls really do improve the flexibility of Star Fox gameplay (and if you think they're bad, I dare you to use gyro STEERING on 64 3D for longer than the opening ocean segment of Corneria), just tone the reliance of cockpit view for precision aiming via smaller all-range areas (but still bigger than 64's, can't go two seconds without bumping into ships there) and reintroduce the radar and it'd be perfect.

Do you think this could be nostalgia? I never had a SNES back in the 90s, but bought a SNES Mini. I thought DKC was very much worse than Tropical Freeze. I also never played any of the Metroid Prime games, so it should be interesting to see if I like Metroid Prime 4.