Topic: Nintendo is Lazy and Doesn't Care?

Oh yea, because some obscure advertisement that most people who played the game never saw is really a basis for an in-game personality. For most people, there is nothing outside of the game. And really that's how it should be. If I have to start treating the personalities from the movie as part of their character just because it exists, I'd rather them have no personality.

Comparing to enemies isn't fair because enemies aren't player-controlled. It would be pretty bland to fight the same enemy over and over. But the main characters should not shove personality in your face because they are your personal representation in the game. It's not cutting corners, it's intentional. Like how Link isn't allowed to talk because Nintendo wants the player to be able to imagine whatever personality he wants. I still think the princesses would have been better choices myself to even the genders out at least, but no biggie.

Fact is, the brothers are pretty much palette swaps, same as the Toads as far as the side-scrollers go, with the exception of SMB2 (in terms of game play) and the end scene of NSMBW (in terms of a personality to associate with him). We were satisfied with this for years and years. Why we suddenly aren't for two new characters, I can't understand.

Right, "obscure advertisement" from Nintendo itself. Back then there was no internet so all people had to go on was advertisement in (videogame) magazines or on tv. And mind you, gaming wasn't that big at the time. But whatever. Fact is that Nintendo had the idea what to do with Luigi from the very beginning and the character is exactly as it turned out in the later games when technology permitted facial expressions and voices. Same with multiplayer. This is the first game since SMB2 where you can choose between more characters then just Mario and Luigi.

I don't know why it wouldn't be fair to compare them to enemies just because the player don't control them. Nintendo went through the trouble to give each of the Koopalings special things. Different hairstyles, clothing and other characteristics, so why should the good guys be neglected with two generic, bland toads. And I'm not asking much. Just there names and the reason why they would join Mario and Luigi this adventure. This could have easily been done with two or three lines of dialog.

The Toads always felt like they had their own personality to me. * Shrugs * In Galaxy they were given very specific, distinct personalities (moreso than usual) but before then, I just thought of all Toads (minus the RPG series of course) as having one type of personality.

Or you could use your imagination. Like, they are the inhabitants of the Mushroom Kingdom and would like to join in the quest to save their own princess.
Other characters would actually require altering the story. How did Daisy end up in Mushroom Kingdom? How did Wario end up in the Mushroom Kingdom and end up fighting with the good guys?

Toadette did not appear in Super Mario Sunshine, at least from what I can tell in the Super Mario Wiki.
She's appeared in MK:DD, Paper Mario, Mario Party Advance/6/7/8, and Mario Kart Wii.
And she does have those weird... toad-locks. Like hair but... made out of mushrooms. So I guess it's not just a palette swap.

I don't know, if Nintendo had, let's say, 8 hours left of labor in their budget.
And you had a choice between having Toadette as a playable character, or having world 8-7 as a playable level, what would you choose? I know where my vote lies.

I would hardly deem skipping the smallest thing in a massive project as lazy.
I would see it as merely misunderstanding the importance, or deciding to use the budget on something that more people will care about, such as world 8-7.

Sure if they need to create Toadette from the ground up. But they already have here model and all from other games (she has a cameo in Galaxy too).

Well maybe at one point someone said "Hey I know, let's use that character that was introduced in Double Dash and re-used in multiple other spin-offs and use her as part of the main series!"
Then Shigeru said, "that's stupid and you're fired" (he was joking with the you're fired part).

And if they had the model already, and it was that easy to add into the game, don't you think they would have done so if that was the correct choice? We're talking less than 1 tenth of 1 percent of development time. That's cutting a very very very very very small corner, if it's really cutting corners.

Well she is related to Toad in some way (I think romantically). So she and Toad would make perfect sense. Besides, she and Toad have an cameo in Galaxy and she was in Paper Mario for the GC. Concerning your last point, maybe that is why we are discussing this in this thread.

It's an obscure advertisement. I'm sure they had tons of ads. To expect that everyone who has ever played that game (which now includes many, many people born after that ad long ceased circulation) to be familiar with it is ridiculous. Nintendo's intentions are irrelevant. The fact is, most people have never seen that. You act as if advertising is the only way people can learn about the game. Most played it in arcades long before and only had to see it on a store shelf to know about it. Advertising is only one means, and this particular ad is old. If you download the game on VC, you don't have this information, therefore it's not part of the game. Characterization can only occur in-game or it does not exist for the vast majority of players.

I already explained the difference between playable characters and enemies. You characterize enemies for the sake of variety. You leave playable characters silent and with a somewhat empty personality so that the player can project his own personality over the character. This is how Nintendo has been doing it for years. Mario, Link, Samus... they have little in the way of personality in their actual games (excluding spin-offs like the RPGs). Yes, they have names, but that is a pretty much all they have going for them over the Toads. Who cares what their names are? My Toad's name is Adam. Works for me. And he joins Mario because Princess Peach is his kingdom's princess. Sounds good. Oh, and he jumps over holes so that he doesn't fall down. I mean, what more do we need?

This whole argument over the inclusion of a single character in a single game making Nintendo lazy is so incredibly petty, it's embarrasing just to read.

Adam's right. Simple as that.

You want to make a real argument for Nintendo's laziness, then talk about how recycled everything Nintendo does is compared to a Square Enix. I'm getting bored playing through Spirit Tracks, because I've played this game a hundred times already in Ocarina of Time, Link to the Past, Twilight Princess and all the other Zeldas. The characters are irrelevant. They're just an avatar you play through. It's the actual game that counts.

Meanwhile Final Fantasy 13 has absolutely nothing to do with the 12 previous ones.

But then Nintendo's recycling of ideas works for other IPs it owns - such as the 2D Marios, so that's not a great argument either.

Just different strokes for different folks. =)

If Nintendo truly didn't care, then it would not be as successful

You missed my point <_<

I wasn't criticising Zelda games (that's for a different topic), I was just pointing out that arguing over a single character to appear in a Mario game is just ridiculously petty.

Nintendo cares about being a business. That's the one and only concern it is obliged to have, and it's the one and only concern that it does have.

It just happens that Nintendo's philiosophy to business is to produce quality products.

@WaltzElf We got tired of that conversation last generation. Now it's time to move onto another one.

@WaltzElf

Yeah, it is a petty argument, I agree. But I was just talking about one thing that you stated in your post rather than discussing the post in its entirety and focusing on your main point. MY main point was that you can take any game and say its redundant. I know I didn't write much previously, so here:

All these FPS's. They're exactly the same thing. I run around the world that the character is put in, and I shoot stuff. Every Mario Platformer, I run and jump, run and jump. I can kill enemies if I want but don't have to. Every single level all I do is run and jump until I reach the flag. Every level. For Zelda, I do a bunch of quests, go to a temple, get some new item, repeat till the end of the game. RPG's, I fight a bunch of enemies, just wasting time until I can finally fight the boss at the end.

You can take any single game out there and make it sound worse than it actually is or may be for some people.
It doesn't bother me that you don't like the formula for the Zelda games because it hasn't changed. You want them to mix it up a little. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm just sayin', you can take anything and make it sound redundant and horrible. That was my point. =)

Also, to make sure I'm not misunderstood, I don't hate any of these genres or games. I was just making a point.

I like this line of reasoning. You should participate in more of the arguments I get involved in around here.

@Adam
I just showed the ads to show that Nintendo knew what they wanted to do with the Luigi character from it's introduction. If you compare the ad to how Luigi is now, it's spot on. Sure, NOW everybody knows Luigi and his character from other games, so they don't need the information, they already knew. But that was different back then.

The first SMB had the same end boss over and over again. The only variety in there is how he attacked, and that's challenging enough. But why give the characters there one personalty and the good guys not. It's like The Dark Knight with The Joker as an awesome villian, Two-Face as a very interesting character. All the while Batman is just there, being overshadowed by them.

And you act like I want full talking characters with there complete background, family history, favorite food and who know what. If Nintendo is going to use generic Toads, is it to much to ask to just give them a name and two text blocks with "O no, our princess." "We wanna help." or something like that. Just something to explain who those two unknown Toads are and why they go with Mario and Luigi. Is that to much to ask.

@WaltzElf
You can't just say that Adam's right and that's it. If Adam's happy when he calls his Toad Adam, then I'm happy for him. But as I mentioned above, that's not enough for me. And if you read this thread back there are enough complaints about Nintendo being lazy. True, there are 12 pages by now, but enough examples have been laid out. This is just one that we have been going on about.

Actually, I can. Opinions are only legitimate if they have a rational backing, and claiming a company is lazy on the basis of one, minor character within a single game of the dozens it releases annually is not a rational argument.

I have no problem with people thinking Nintendo is lazy. I don't agree, but that's where debate comes in. I do, however, have a problem with this particular line of argument, because it is incomprehensibly silly.

Oh come on. If I haven't backed my opinion up enough the last couple of pages why I think Nintendo should have done something here, then I don't know what to say. Like I said in my post you quoted, there have been 13 pages now with enough complaints (not only from me) why Nintendo is lazy. This is just one point that have been picked out and discussed about further.

I don't even know what you're getting at with the ad now. Most people do not have any idea of a personality for Mario and Luigi. Nintendo reaches to an expanded audience who does not look up age old ads, watch the terrible old cartoons and movie, and mostly don't play the RPGs. These people have no way of knowing Nintendo's intentions, so Nintendo's intentions don't matter.

I played with my sister the other day. She had no idea that playing as Luigi she was the clumsy, cowardly brother, and it had no impact on our enjoyment at all. Who knows, maybe she wouldn't have wanted to play as him if she knew. Maybe that characterization doesn't fit with her idea of her avatar. She is the one jumping around the Mushroom Kingdom, not some marginally developed Nintendo character.

And no, I wasn't acting like you wanted a grand story. You made it clear what you want, but it's such an odd request. If all you want is a name and a line of text, make it up yourself. I would find it insulting if Nintendo thought I needed to know that the Toads' motivation was "Oh no, our princess." "We wanna help." Seriously, as if that isn't evident enough. Mario and Luigi didn't say these things, and no one complains about that. Their motivation is the same, "Oh no, our princess."

But if you eliminate the dialogue, that just leaves names to give them. But why give names to them? What is the benefit? Why force a name on the player who might have a better name in mind? I understand what you want, but it's such a small thing that you can do for yourself. Gamers are expected to use their imagination, at least in Nintendo's games.