Topic: A Rare Moment of Brilliance

This might be the best article I've ever read on IGN. This Rus McLaughlin guy is awesome.

Sorry, don't do links.

brb

EDIT: Good read that, cheers backwardsNintendodude. Nice to hear him being entirely neutral for the sake of that piece. I agree with everything he said tbh, especially... "Once upon a time, Nintendo was the hardcore, and while it won't overtake the competition in that respect, it can easily carve out its own niche in the badlands. "

The future is bright! The future is h-core!

Do you want me to post the whole freaking article?

Wow you're right that is a good article, but unfortunately its true, fans of ninty have been waiting too long (you can sense it here too, many people are talking about buying other consoles lol)

I'm glad I just got a Wii about 2 months ago. So many good games coming out.

As for the article, I've read similar (but angrier) ones on Destructoid, but it doesn't make it less true.

I hate these articles. I don't feel like I've been left in the dirt. Some of these "casual games", are actually darn fun, and Nintendo's "hardcore" efforts have been though-the-roof amazing.

You know there's a cure for all these gaps between big releases---DON'T PLAY VIDEOGAMES SO MUCH. It's worked for me and I'm doing just dandy.

From his perspective, though, it was great.

It's a sad but true article.

Lol, "sad but true."

I thought it was quite positive to be honest. Let two or three casual games bring the cash in, while they please the real fans with half a dozen fan faves every year. Why Ninty haven't been doing that the whole time, I will never know. 0_o

We should be grateful for Natal and friend, as now Nintendo will hopefully be looking in a different direction. They should try n pinch some of the 'h-core' back, the ones who can't be bothered to stand up while they play 360/PS3. I sense irony and backtracking may come into play, when motion control starts pwn'n the pwners. At least I hope anyway.

I'm expecting Nintendo to announce a release date for Pikmin 3 and the new Zelda.
F-zero, Star Fox, Kirby, and Kid Icarus will be here shortly I assume...

im happy that nintendo is providing us with a new mario galaxy, mario bros., two zeldas, a new metroid, and a couple others. Nintendo definitelly has a bigger slew of characters than its rivals. I mean, for Xbox, its Master Chief and a couple others. For nintendo, they can make a whole elaborite fighting game with their roster, and all of the games are high quality

This. I still haven't caught up on some of my favorite Nintendo franchises, and all I own are Nintendo systems. I don't see how people have so much time to play games that they complain constantly when we've seen more great gaming from this generation (on Nintendo alone) than I'll every catch up on.

Agreed, what with wiiware's seemingly endless production line of clever indie titles, the VC giving a chance to visit old favourites without the hassle of tracking down obselete bits of kit and the life destroying qualities of titles like Animal Crossing, PES's Master League, MarioKart(the games I own that occupy MY time), etc, combined with wife, job, ten-year old and actual social life, I do wonder how people find the time.

This. I still haven't caught up on some of my favorite Nintendo franchises, and all I own are Nintendo systems. I don't see how people have so much time to play games that they complain constantly when we've seen more great gaming from this generation (on Nintendo alone) than I'll every catch up on.

Since when the hell has Nintendo left its hardcore fans in the dust? Has anyone been playing the games which have come out on disc, VC, and WiiWare all this year or is it just me? Sure, there's plenty of casual mixed in there as well, but that doesn't make a game bad! I'm sick and tired of people equating "casual" with "sucks." A game like Wii Sports Resort is casual but certainly has a lot of hardcore elements to it and even the basic gameplay itself is a blast. Plenty of hardcore titles have come out on the Wii this year, despite some of the selling sluggishly. That doesn't make them any less what they are: hardcore titles released on the Wii at the behest of the minority of gamers who want them.

Nintendo has gone above and beyond to satisfy the hardcore gamer this year and we've still got big titles like Muramasa, Fragile, Dead Space: Extraction, Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles, Spyborgs, New Super Mario Bros. Wii and more ahead this year. And please don't get me started on the lineup the Wii has coming its way next year in the hardcore department: Super Mario Galaxy 2, Red Steel 2, No More Heroes 2, Metroid: Other M, Zelda Wii, probably a new Pikmin game, Dragon Quest X on the horizon, Sin & Punishment 2, Silent Hill Wii, The Grinder, etc. And this doesn't even touch the countless great-looking WiiWare titles that are coming out soon (Contra ReBirth, Furry Legends, LostWinds 2, Cave Story, La-Mulana, Chronos Twins DX, Earthworm Jim remake, Night Game, Rage of the Gladiator, Super Meat Boy, et al) and those which have yet to be unveiled.

Exactly WHAT MORE do people want Nintendo to do? I find it impossible to keep up with all the great games coming out on both the Wii and DS regardless. NES and SNES may have been the hardcore systems back in the day, but you have to remember that games didn't come out with anywhere NEAR the frequency that they do today and that the technology of the day pretty well kept the majority of games coming out specifically for the growing-up hardcore gamers at the time. This whole hardcore/casual nonsense didn't even really get wing until the tail end of a couple gaming generations ago.

If any console owner has a right to complain, it would be 360 owners who seem to be having as down a year on their system as Wii users did in 2008. There just hasn't been a whole lot of original, 360-only material coming out on their system. When you can play most of the great games on the 360 on the PS3 as well, you know Microsoft's beast has a bit of a problem when it comes to tacking down on exclusives. This is certainly a problem the Wii does not have, even amongst the majority of third party titles.

Rus' article, by the end, hits the nail on the head. More is coming and there's plenty to get excited about (I, in particular, am most excited about what Retro Studios is up to down in Texas at the moment).

Wii cannot compete in the hardcore world with anything, the console limitations would not allow it except in an area where graphics, world online extesion, etc might not be so critical and where other consoles are not so strong yet (lack of games): RPGs.

But again, it seems that even RPG game makers prefers anyother console but Wii, including NDS.

I think this is more of a generational "problem" than anything else; which was touched upon a long time ago by The Game Overthinker. Basically the issue seems to be that people who got into gaming during the Playstation era and who didn't necessarily have as great an appreciation of the 8/16-bit era dominated by Nintendo have never been interested in much more than sports titles and action games. Now that's a pretty broad brush, but I cannot explain any other reason for the Wii to be as shunned by "hardcore gamers" as it is when in fact there's a nice mix of games on offer such that I have no problems buying a game a month; even skipping Nintendo's core franchises, which I'm frankly not interested in (see I include myself in that group that didn't play NES/SNES games -- other than arcade ports at friend's houses -- but then I also am of the earlier 8-bit Atari generation).

Of course without 3rd parties coming to the Wii my game library could be counted on both hands. I don't really feel like anything has changed; maybe the author is trying to offset the usually crappy anti-Wii editorial tone? If they can do something about their reviews then that would really be something...