Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

Unpopular opinion. I don't want indie "Retro wannabes" - I want the actual retro titles I have nostalgia for. I firmly disagree with "protectionist policies" for indie games. I've heard over and over that companies like Nintendo hold back on their retro catalog to help indie games flourish. But I feel indie games should succeed or fail based on their own merit - not as an weird substitute for classic titles.

Indie games like Stardew Valley, Hollow Knight, Celeste, Night in the Woods and Iconoclasts are all just great games that can compete in their own right. But then you have piles of shovelware retro-wannabe titles that can't. They are releasing on Switch or other platforms that don't have access to classic titles because if asked to compete on their own merit - they would lose.

And that's my unpopular opinion - they should lose. There's no reason we can't have the best classic titles on the same platform as the best indie titles. And doing that would help motivate some indie teams to go back to what makes indie games great - their freedom from having to fall in line with the norm of AAA or AA trends.

Nintendo avoiding re-releasing all its old titles made sense in the first year of the Switch in order to bring the spotlight to indie games in general.

It's not a valid reason to do so now. Granted, it was never the real reason, the reason was they wanted to use it to sell NSO (or at least, the new retro game service Nintendo was making was decided to be used to sell NSO). And NSO took a while to become a paid service so...yeah. It just happened to work out to be a good thing that people were more encouraged to check these games out in 2017, instead of staying in their first party Nintendo bubble forever.

But the main thing is that Nintendo just likes re-releasing their games slowly. I don't think anyone at Nintendo has said why, so we can only speculate.

@Heavyarms55 I don't buy the argument that Nintendo have been holding off releases to give indies some space. If that's the case...why would they release their games under a subscription model? For a small sum you have access to dozens of Nintendo classics - sure, you have to continually pay to have continual access, but you could easily try the whole library with one month's subscription. I think this has more appeal than outright purchasing an Indie game where you may have less idea about what you're getting.

That said, as @kkslider5552000 mentions it could well have been their strategy in the first year.

Personally, I think it's probably one of two things. (i) Perhaps they're avoiding bloating their system with retro games to maintain a solid release schedule / have retro titles as a fallback between big releases; (ii) perhaps they just don't realise how much demand there is for their legacy content.

@Heavyarms55 I agree, but I also don't believe it's true. I really think the only reason Nintendo is holding back its library is to hold them hostage behind the NSO paywall, a paid service that is somehow worse than what was available for free in the previous generation .
Good games stand on their own, Indie or not. I was playing great Indie games when VC was a thing. Why? Because they were good. I'm not now suddenly paying for and playing bad or even mediocre Indie games just because I can't get retro ones on Switch. I'm still getting the good Indie games I'm interested in and instead just playing retro on older systems (or, in what's an unpopular opinion, via 'alternate' methods).

@Cotillion @HunterLeon I don't know how true it is - but that's the most often excuse I see for it. I've mentioned before I don't care if the games comes to NSO, in collections on cartridges or just VC style one by one on the eshop - I just want them to come to the Switch.

And it's starting to feel like an unpopular opinion that I don't want to mod a system and pirate everything. I do actually want to buy them legitimately at reasonable prices - and I do think VC was reasonably priced - I even think NSO is shockingly cheap. I actually think because NSO is so cheap that might be related to Nintendo's reluctance to bring games beyond NES and SNES to the service.

Another unpopular opinion, I would pay more for NSO if it added more game systems and features.

I've never been on the "the pricing sucks" bandwagon for Nintendo's old game releases. I mean, its good and smart that Nintendo went the way they did with Switch (well for the retro game service on its own anyway), but I do really feel like some people act like after a while those VC prices were unforgivable.

I guess its a reminder that you can't take quality alone into account for how much a game is worth. Because otherwise, anyone saying Super Metroid or Super Mario RPG isn't worth 8 dollars sounds like a complete tool.

@kkslider5552000 I kinda agree with this. I do wonder...if you're not willing to pay $8 for a game, is that game even really worth your time in the first place?

Although perhaps that's just the limited perspective of a 29-year-old whose time is more a limiting factor than money when it comes to games.

@Heavyarms55 I would also gladly pay more for more games. Before NSO actually launched and when Reggie was touting Switch as 'the best place for Legacy content', I was half expecting a full fledged retro service. The Netflix of retro games; because they were saying how it was going to be the place to play them.
Mind you, not for the price of NSO, but I thought NSO might be step 1 with limited access to a few games, then there'd be another option when you pay more for full access to as many as they could offer.

What gets me is that there is no work involved at this point. They have perfectly fine working emulators for the NES and SNES running on Switch. There's nothing to port, to fix, to make work. It's just copy/pasting ROMs at this point and either putting them on the service or selling them (granted, there are some with specialized chips that may need extra emulator work, but those are the exception, not the rule).

@Cotillion Like, I get that there are plenty of licencing issues for a lot of well loved legacy games. And I even understand them not wanting to just dump everything onto the service at once. But they add to it SO infrequently that it's like they go weeks at a time having forgotten about the service at all, and then some intern remembers and digs around in the closet to find a couple roms to throw onto the service and call it a day.

Unpopular Nintendo opinions:

• Nintendo's recent Direct mini was probably one of their most exciting Directs to date. I absolutely loved it.
• In the first seven months of this year, we've received: a Xenoblade game, Animal Crossing, two Atlus releases, a high-profile Mana game, and multiple excellent AAA ports, making this very easily the best first seven months of any year for the Nintendo Switch to date since the end of 2017. People are entitled to their opinions, but anyone who says this isn't far better than comparable periods of time during 2018 or 2019 are nuts, IMO.

In a similar vein, and I've kind of said it before, if you are ever in a video game drought, you have way too much time and money on your hands. I want all of those games that you've listed above, and I have 2 of them (Animal Crossing and Bioshock). I simply don't have time for any more (I don't have time for those, to be honest). Even in the "dreadful" Wii U days I never came close to running out of games to play, and I don't own any other consoles. Surely even in these quarantine times, people can find something else to do with their lives.

@Xyphon22 I agree. Switch is my main system and I feel I've barely scratched the surface of everything I'd like to play on it. And some of the biggest games are on my list to replay (e.g. Mario Odyssey, BotW, Three Houses, Xenoblade 2).

@Ralizah What was the other Atlus game? (only Catherine comes to mind)

@HunterLeon the other Atlus game is Tokyo Mirage Session.

@Ralizah Not to disagree, but I think the term "drought" means different things to different people (beyond the obvious). I think this year has been light on hype, and that's driving some people a little crazy.

@jump oh wow I feel really silly for forgetting that considering it's probably my most-played Switch game of the year!

@Ralizah The silence is strange but I don’t think 2020 has been bad or is over quite yet.

Nintendo have always been strange and unpredictable when marketing their products, but I think 2020 has really “taken the cake” in this regard. As @Losermagnet has pointed out, it’s just as much about the releases as the “hype train” leading up to it. Nintendo has basically parked the party train post-AC and this has upset the core Nintendo fan.

It’s actually a bit of a shame the above is the case for the “social media adept” gamer to be pleased, because there is actually quite a lot out there to play. At the same time I think I’m done watching these 2020 “digital events” live because they really feel like a waste of time and effort. I’m confident everyone has better things to be doing even if you’re building playing card houses next to wind turrets.

But I’m looking forward to SMT as well. Been wanting to get into the series.

@NotTelevision For me Its a combo of the E3 conferences being cancelled, Evo being cancelled, nintendo avoiding doing proper directs, and the Sony Xbox events being a bit lacking.

This year I've really enjoyed FFVII Remake and Animal Crossing, but the lack of interesting news is a downer. I think I enjoy chatting about games more than playing them, and theres not much to talk about.

Here’s a few:

• Breath of the Wild’s story is pretty good overall. It’s not perfect, but people are a lot harder on it than is reasonable.
• Breath of the Wild‘s weapon durability mechanic gets far too much hate. It works effectively in the context of level progression in an open world game.
• Super Mario Bros: the Lost Levels is one of the best 2D Mario games. As Dave Bulmer would say, this game has earned a place on the shelf with the good Mario games - which is all of them! (except Sunshine, obviously)
• Super Mario 64 DS’s control scheme isn’t all that bad. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s more than capable of comfortably managing precise platforming. Overall superior to the N64 version.

@Wargoose Ohh yeah for real. We pretty much knew about everything interesting coming so far at last year’s E3. At least for the first 8 months. There have been significant delays (which I don’t think are bad btw) but have certainly taken the wind out of some people’s sails.

Though I’m not sure too many can justify being too upset given the embarrassment of riches that was 2019. Only made it halfway through DQ 11, didn’t yet start Luigi’s Mansion 3 or Persona 4 Golden on Steam. There are just an extraordinarily amount of games that you can’t help but miss unless you devote all your free time to one hobby.

But yes precious few new surprises were revealed. That’s been the story so far.

Don't know if these opinions are unpopular, but I'll throw them out here:

• I don't care about FPS (frames per second), and I don't see how this should be a factor that deters a person from playing/buying a game. It's only an issue if a game's framerate is unstable, as in it fluctuates as a result of performance issues. So when I see a person complain when a game is locked at 30 FPS, I can't help but think "...so? Why should a fixed stable framerate ruin your experience?"
• I think Skyward Sword is the best-looking Zelda game in the series so far, in terms of presentation. Better than Breath of the Wild. I won't defend the story pacing and gameplay, but this game is gorgeous. I feel the art style is a successful fusion of Twilight Princess and Wind Waker, treading a fine line between TP's semi-realistically proportioned characters and detailed environments and WW's vibrant colour schemes and stylized tweaking. Using watercolouring textures was a great choice too, as the Wii's low-graphic capabilities actually compliments this watercolour style to help make the environments feel dream-like thanks to the blurriness. Turning your weakness into your advantage.
• I don't like simulation games anymore. (e.g. Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley) I get these games are relaxing timesinks, but the lack of any challenge turns me away, and the thought of playing a game over and over with no ending in sight terrifies me.