Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

@VoidofLight

We can keep going in circles, but it has been debunked for years that this simply isn’t true.

Most of the localization changes to both Xenoblade X and Tokyo Mirage Sessions involved underage characters wearing more clothes, while the gameplay was left intact.

I can get that some people are going to oppose such changes on principle but neither represent a hill that I'd be prepared to die on, and I'd think that we're far better concentrating our efforts on games that were banned, or had significant content changes imposed upon them by someone other than their own publishers.

Wow, I didn't think it was an unpopular opinion but yeah, I have literally zero issue with alterations being made to a source which removes objectively problematic material. I guess technically this is censorship but like who cares? I get the slippery slope fallacy, but is there any indication that is happening? I feel like if anything, exported products have never been truer to their source.

I am pretty sure there was a big fuss like this around P3 Reload and it turned out all the changed scenes were scenes which involved sexualisation of underage characters, like that's the hill you want to fight for? Cause like, I'm good...

depends on like what people mean by problematic. Because I think (from what I know I don’t know about sexual changes) that people were mad in persona reload is they changed a transphobic scene from the orginal 3 and yeah I’m fine with that, the joke wasn’t funny anyway when I went to go look and the one they replaced it with was actually funny so yeah if the changes are stuff like that and not then I don’t think it really counts as censorship honestly.

But if it’s something like what hey did with tomb raider not that long ago I count stuff like that as censorship.

The persona thing is fine and like I said was a pretty tasteless and not really all that funny to begin with joke.

@Snatcher - wasn't the Tomb Raider thing though just some posters? Like do people really, actually, genuinely care about that? I mean I guess based on your answer, they do, but I think its such a pointless thing to be mad about.

But then maybe it is just an age thing. I lived through the 90s where we got horror movies with all the horror parts cut out and anime dubs so brutally butchered they barely resembled the thing they were exporting. That to me is the kind of censorship people should be mad about, because its physically altered the product you are receiving into an inferior version.

@Pizzamorg well for me I don’t know for anyone else it’s the case that they are willing to do that I take issue with..like I really don’t care about the posters heck I haven’t even played the game but then again that’s just how little they should have mattered but they removed them for no good reason other then censorship, then went a head and said that those two very specific posters were removed by mistake which I don’t buy. So I’m not really mad I’m more against it, don’t know about anyone else though that’s just how I feel.

Age thing? I’m not sure, but I know I agree with those things you mentioned and are worse then the tomb raider thing honestly.

My take is generally that the majority of the complaints are overblown and not understanding that even at worst, its just a company pandering in different ways to different audiences when they remove those things. But sometimes its like...a piece of media is doing this sort of thing for like story reasons or the like. Or it just feels like a company cynically trying to avoid bad PR. But I would agree that the vast majority of sincere anger towards it is absurd, because the internet is hyperbolic and stupid. I don't have massive issues with the version of TMS or Xenoblade X I played, even if I strongly disagree with exactly one notable localization choice each.

If I can use an anime equivalent, the average anime fanservice thing is at best, mindlessly entertaining and at worst, incredibly cringe, but once in a while an anime will actually use that sort of thing for an interesting story. Most fanservice is not worth strongly defending, but I do get annoyed when even quality stories using that are put in the same box by a different type of too-online weirdos who think anything sexual is only liked by the saddest perverts on the internet. It's all just very weird to me, as someone who read more explicit stuff involving teenage characters as assigned reading in high school.

But for the most part, the discussion is really overblown and silly. I've tried my best to avoid talking about or thinking about it too much since I realized that Xenoblade X and 2 both had obnoxious controversies via how much they did or didn't change, respectively, and in both cases I agreed with one and only one part of it (for the record, that one blade character design does not work at all, even for the type of anime aesthetic it has).

(probably) an unpopular opinion: I don’t think there’s too many Mario games coming out this year

Hear me out, there’s a lot. I just don’t mind the amount.

The reason I don’t mind is that it’s a variety.
For instance, the recent games have been 2D platforming, RPG, puzzle, whatever Peach Showtime is (I guess it takes multiple genres?), and Action/Adventure. It’s a pretty large variety.

Also, a lot of the games aren’t even led by Mario. Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD will be led by Luigi, Princess Peach Showtime was led by Peach, and of course other games like Yoshi and WarioWare are led by Yoshi and Wario respectively. Mario probably isn’t even in Peach Showtime (I don’t know as I haven’t played it). The recent games where Mario is playable, other characters are too. (Mario Wonder has Luigi, Toads, Toadette, Nabbit, Peach, Daisy, and Yoshis as playable characters as well. Mario Vs. Donkey Kong has Toad as 2nd player. SMRPG has the other allies playable during battle. Paper Mario TTYD has Peach, Bowser, and the allies during battle.)

And I get the complaints. It’s likely people think that other series deserve the spotlight as well. That isn’t necessarily Nintendo’s fault. Nintendo’s sub-developers are the reason for Mario mania.

• Main Nintendo team makes 3D Mario
• Next Level Games makes Luigi’s Mansion and Mario Strikers
• Intelligent Systems makes Paper Mario and WarioWare
• Nintendo sub-team makes 2D Mario and Mario Maker
• Bandai Namco made Mario Baseball and helped with Mario Kart (some other Nintendo team works on Mario Kart as well)
• Square Enix made Super Mario RPG SNES and Mario Sports Mix and Basketball
• Camelot makes some Mario sport games
• NDCube makes Mario Party
• Ubisoft makes Mario + Rabbids series
• AlphaDream formerly made Mario & Luigi
• Good-Feel makes Yoshi and Princess Peach Showtime and previously *Wario Land Shake It!
• Retro Studios/formerly Rare made Donkey Kong Country

I’m sure there’s several I missed, but it proves a point that Mario has several different sub-series and several different developers. This is how we’re getting this many Mario games.

I do agree. I mean, you could maybe make the case that no series should be given the constant barrage of games Mario endlessly gets, but outside of that, Mario has long been established as a series able to do a wide variety of interesting games and as long as those games all stand out from each other, its not a huge deal.

I know because I remember when Nintendo released 3D Land and 3D World within two years, both 3D Marios taking far more cues from 2D games than 3D, and then also released 3 different NSMB games between them. Now that was an obnoxiously redundant time for Mario games.

Just wait until we get 4 more Mario games during the June Direct 😆 But yeah, Mario has a zillion sub-franchises and genres so even though there are 5 Mario-adjacent games in the Feb-July 2024 period, they really don't overlap.

Feb - Puzzle-platformer
Mar - hard-to-define genre
May - RPG
Jun - another hard-to-define genre but different than the March one
Jul - party game

That said, I do wonder if Nintendo is going for a record this year. I guess we'll see post-direct.

@FishyS Yeah we’re looking at a big year for Mario. Sometimes we’ll get just 2 games, yet we already have 4 this year (+1 that has Mario in it).

I’m still thinking LM1 will come to the Switch to promote LM2HD (Like Pikmin 1+2 for Pikmin 4) so that’s potentially 1 more.

We also don’t know this year’s holiday games and chances are, Mario’s in the mix.

I don't have a problem with so much Mario...it's just the context in which we're getting it. Like, basically every major Nintendo release we have this year is Mario or Mario-adjacent. I'd prefer the June direct to give us more variety in Zelda, Xenoblade, Fire Emblem, Metroid, etc.

That said, I'm behind on Nintendo releases as it is. They could release nothing for the remainder of the year and I'd have plenty to play.

Does anyone else remember that "Nintendo has forgotten about Mario" video on YouTube last year?

It got widely mocked at the time, coming on the eve of the announcement of Wonder as it did, but it it's as though Nintendo really wanted to rub it in thick with this year's releases.

If they were going to release Luigi's Mansion 1 on Switch to "promote" 2, they would've released a trailer for 1 and packaged it with 2. I doubt they'll reveal a 1 port this next direct.

To be fair to that video (and various related 'mario is dead' videos from the year before) , Nintendo did get randomly kill both 3D all-stars and Mario 35 partway though 2021 and then 2022 was arguably the slowest Mario release year in decades. Although we all knew Nintendo would make more mainline Mario, it was easy to be pessimistic about the 'when'.

But, yeah, they have definitely caught up.I assume the movie hype didn't hurt either.

Speaking of good ol' Mario, I have a potentially unpopular opinion... I think Super Mario 3D Land is the most underrated 3D Mario game. It's a nice, relaxing kind of Mario game for the most part (the last special level is especially challenging), and it makes great use of the 3DS's 3D screen. I used to play the heck out of this game when I first got it at launch, and it's one of the 3DS games that I played through more than once! I like the music in 3D Land, too... especially the jazz cover of the main theme! At the very least, it might just be my favorite Mario platformer on a handheld.

Loved 3D Land too. It's definitely up there as one of the very best mario games.

True, 3D Land is a great Mario game and I was also enjoying the 3D effect, because not only did it look good, but it also made the platforming better.

That I like Nintendo and don't think that they are evil.
There I said it.

@Mana_Knight I don't think that's really an unpopular opinion. While most are frustrated at Nintendo for doing things that are inherently anti-consumer, a good number of people who frequent these forums still like or care about the company in terms of game output.