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How did Nintendo get away with deviating so consistently with the Paper Mario formula? Other examples?
- Thread starter hwarang
- Start date
Imagine being a fan of F-Zero and the first two paper mario games!
Miyamoto doesn't work on his own projects anymore but he oversees all of Nintendo's first party games. He has a lot of influence on how their games are created and handled. There are interviews where devs talks about how miyamoto throws out ideas or demands changes. He's also why we got a mediocre star fox on wiiu and f-zero has been shelved. He wants each game to play unique instead of straight sequels.
Except there's no way this game began development after October of last year, or even March when the BIS remake was released. Plus, at the time, Game Informer tried to ask a similar question about there being a mandate on keeping M&L the only RPG series to Nintendo's M&L producer, and they got a slightly different answer than the one Risa Tabata gave to GameXplain.
I guess it's up to interpretation as to whether the meaning of "they don't [overlap]" is similar, but it feels like he meant that they felt that the two different developers were what made the two series distinct.
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C'mon Hailinel don't you know anime is the #1 killer of anime strategy games?
Also, at the OP, that's just Nintendo's thing, man. At least Paper Mario isn't stuck remaking and rebooting the best one in the series forever and ever but worse like Star Fox's current situation
Having looked at the sales numbers, I don't really think they mean much. Paper Mario (64) was a late release. It came out just over a year before the Gamecube, and TTYD was released well over two years before the Wii, so it had an advantage over its predecessor, and sold more. Super Paper Mario was a Wii game and an early release, so it sold the most. Sticker Star was a 3DS game released in year two, and sold a little more than TTYD. And Color Splash was a late release on the Wii U, so it practically didn't sell at all.
Practically all of that information is uninteresting. The only thing that's even remotely surprising is the fact that Sticker Star only beat TTYD by a relatively narrow margin, despite the fact that it was on a much higher selling system, and was released with much more time remaining in it's system's lifespan.
I'm sure there are other factors that I haven't considered, but as it stands, I wouldn't argue that Sticker Star's sales are a vindication of the direction the series took.
Practically all of that information is uninteresting. The only thing that's even remotely surprising is the fact that Sticker Star only beat TTYD by a relatively narrow margin, despite the fact that it was on a much higher selling system, and was released with much more time remaining in it's system's lifespan.
I'm sure there are other factors that I haven't considered, but as it stands, I wouldn't argue that Sticker Star's sales are a vindication of the direction the series took.
There's nothing else really like it. Even Bug Fables, an indie game that touted itself as a spiritual successor to tTYD, lacks the whimsy and easy goingness of that game, despite having a similar battle system. What do we move on to?
There was a lot of that during the Wii U era, and while I wasn't being that toxic, I was definitely frustrated or let down by a lot of their choices. Launching the console with the second New Super Mario Bros. game of 2012, their big 3D Mario game Initially appearing to just be a new 3D Land, Retro making another DK game instead of Metroid / New IP.
Most of those games turned out great, but there was a general dissonance between what Wii U fans wanted and what they were getting. The first year of the Switch is easily the best year Nintendo has had in a long time, but they've been certainly improved from the Wii U era in general, as shown by the new Paper Mario, even if it is not *quite* what the hardcore fans wanted
Don't expect another turn based Final Fantasy any time soon.
.........Persona?
Name a pure on-rail shooter that exists in this day and age. That's the problem with Star Fox, nobody buys pure on-rail shooters and haven't since the death of the arcade. Pure on-rail shooters don't (or hardly) exist these days and the last I can remember was Sin & Punishment Star Successor which nobody bought. Even Kid Icarus: Uprising has land combat with the on-rail section only done for a few minutes at the beginning of each stage. F-Zero sold poorly as nobody was buying the new games either and they went through the trouble of attempting a multimedia campaign in hopes it could drum up more interest for the franchise.
I would love for F-Zero to get another chance, and I'm glad someone keeps giving Star Fox another chance.
Sometimes, series just move away from you, going in directions you don't like. It happens. If there's nothing in that exact fit to move on to, then maybe that's just it. Nothing lasts forever.
Nintendo often deviates from their formulas. That's why I love them as a developer. Even if it means that series sometimes go in directions I don't enjoy it. I'll take Paper Mario Sticker Star if I can also get Breath of the Wild.
In that case it's more of a branding mishap due to inconsistent localization choices. All standard action/platforming Kirby games are called "Hoshi no Kirby" in Japan, while the more varied spin-offs all have other titles that just keep the "Kirby" there. There's no equivalent to "Hoshi no Kirby" outside of Japan, so it makes it look like very different games all share the "Kirby" title.
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I'm not into GTA or Elder Scrolls, but 3D Mario has been literally all over the place.
Eh, I did a break down of this in another thread
I like TTYD door significantly more than SS, but acting like it only did slightly better feels like intentionally downplaying. An increase of more than half a million is pretty significant when comparing to a game that did less than 2 million.
So many posts about Paper Mario.
They've mixed up a series' gameplay with Mario Kart (Double Dash specifically), Metroid Prime (both as a deviation from 2D Metroid and Fed Force), Zelda (Triforce Heroes), Fire Emblem (you can argue Awakening and those after add drastic changes despite battles being similar gameplay wise), and I'd think adding the Smash Ball + Tripping in Brawl is a decent departure from what Melee was to an extent.
They've mixed up a series' gameplay with Mario Kart (Double Dash specifically), Metroid Prime (both as a deviation from 2D Metroid and Fed Force), Zelda (Triforce Heroes), Fire Emblem (you can argue Awakening and those after add drastic changes despite battles being similar gameplay wise), and I'd think adding the Smash Ball + Tripping in Brawl is a decent departure from what Melee was to an extent.
I would accept your reasoning if Sticker Star was not a much earlier release on a much higher selling platform. All other Paper Mario games are apparently affected by those factors in predictable ways, so I'm inclined to think this one is too. Under these circumstances, I don't think a sales gap of half a million is enough of an indication that the series went in the right direction.
Well, there's anime, and then there's a n i m e...
(Honestly early Shining Force had a pretty unique style, some anime influence but I think there's some Disney and Don Bluth in there too. Just my opinion, haven't read any staff interviews or anything.)
I think there's plenty of classic Persona fans who are fine with the current direction, myself included.
I've always kind of thought of the classic Persona fans who dislike the newer games (well, probably more accurate to call them Persona 2 fans, there are only a few poor souls like myself who like P1) as SMT fans who just like Persona 2 as well. The SMT games from SMT1 up until Nocturne all follow a pretty similar design style (and everything from Nocturne to now has a similar style), so I assumed people were just attracted to that.
Higher sales are higher sales, and Sticker Star was still a multi-million seller. You can try to place all of the asterisks on that you like, but that doesn't change the basic facts of those figures.
There are old-guard Persona fans that absolutely despise the direction the series took from P3 and beyond.
These threads always sound weirdly aggressive to me. What does "getting away with it" even mean? Firings? Trials? Guillotines?
Nintendo changes the formulas of their games (specially ones that dont sell super high) all the time. If they don't sell or arent well received thats usually the end of it, you should be happy they actually keep making new games and trying new things.
Nintendo changes the formulas of their games (specially ones that dont sell super high) all the time. If they don't sell or arent well received thats usually the end of it, you should be happy they actually keep making new games and trying new things.
Context matters too. I wouldn't want to compare TTYD to Super Paper Mario without mentioning the context of the sales gap between the Gamecube and Wii consoles themselves. I also wouldn't point to Color Splash's sales failure as a sign that it went in the wrong direction, because of the context of being a late release on the Wii U. I couldn't just say "low sales are low sales" and ignore why that happened and just blame the game.
When one game in a series sells 1.91 million, and another sells 2.46 million, I'd be remiss not to mention that the latter was on a much higher selling system, and was released much earlier in its lifespan.
Nintendo got away with it because they they pointed in the other direction and shouted LOOK OVER THERE and you fell for it smh
You're kinda contradicting yourself here.
The console a game it was released on, and the point in the lifecycle it was release, can have an impact, yes. But the argument that it didn't sell as much as it could have if released at another time can only go so far.
They deviated far more frequently and to a far greater degree with Zelda
Zelda went from an open world action sandbox with light RPG elements
to a linear puzzle game with light action elements
to a four-player co-operative puzzle game
to a stylus controlled puzzle game
and then back to an open-world action sandbox with RPG elements
and the swing in sales variability there is just unreal
Zelda went from an open world action sandbox with light RPG elements
to a linear puzzle game with light action elements
to a four-player co-operative puzzle game
to a stylus controlled puzzle game
and then back to an open-world action sandbox with RPG elements
and the swing in sales variability there is just unreal
It always makes me think of "He can't keep getting away with it!"
The thing is a lot of these people don't want Nintendo to keep making new games and trying new things. Like, I'm sure a lot of them would say that they would rather PM have just ended after TTYD, to protect the sanctity of the series from these inferior follow-ups that sully its name.
This is literally a series that has a dig at people who go on message boards and complain about games they've never played, and yet whenever a new installment is announced we have multiple huge threads of people doing precisely that completely without irony. It will never not be funny to me.
Not really. Everyone acknowledges that the Wii U console itself was a catastrophic failure. Nintendo was just releasing games on it in the final year to have something to sell until the Switch was ready to launch. If it wasn't Color Splash (which for all we know, might have had its dev cycle impacted by the need to get something out the door), it was Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash, which was so barren that it was obvious Camelot was told to ship the absolute minimum needed. (Aces is basically the game Ultra Smash should have been in the first place.)
Nintendo, in all likelihood, saw the writing on the wall when they released Color Splash.
Twilight Princess is the only time I can remember Nintendo ever doing what the fanbase is asking for. They generally just ignore the fans and do what they think is for the best. (Which is largely good but occasionally frustrating when it comes to things like online)
This. There's no "getting away with it" when it's their own thing.
Sure, but I think this is a good enough reason to reject any arguments that Sticker Star's direction is vindicated by its higher sales. Given the context, a gap of half a million just isn't enough to convince me of that. So in these discussions, I will always want something more substantial than "it sold more". That's all I'm trying to say.
The Video Game Crime of...not making another TTYD-style RPG, apparently.
It doesn't matter what you think about the sales, though. It matters what Nintendo and Intelligent Systems think.
Yea you kinda do. If nintendo is capable of seeing the context behind the release of Color Splash, why aren't they capable of doing the same for the other games? Like, the 3ds sold almost 4 times the amount of the gamecube. I personally think that is context worth considering.
The context does matter, and given the 3DS was only just starting to take off, Sticker Star selling half a million more on a smaller user base does make a difference.
In the context of the time when Nintendo and IntSys went forward with a sequel to Sticker Star instead of a return to form, the 3DS was still a smaller platform when Sticker Star came out as the GC was when TTYD came out on that.
Besides, we also have interviews where the people who worked on Color Splash made it clear they largely went in the direction of a Sticker Star sequel for multiple reasons anyway.
Sega alienated Camelot, who turned into a Nintendo-centric developer. The price was to make Mario Golf games until the end of time.
Meanwhile, a depleted Sega farmed out the franchise to various developers and the series lost its artistic coherence.
Shining Force III is a good game!
There's a difference between the amount of 3DS owners that bought Sticker Star when it released, and the number of 3DS owners that there eventually were.
Heck even then it was probably more of a timing thing. They had good reasons of their own to make TP the way they did and it just happened to align with the fan sentiment at the time ... but its not like it happened because of them.
I saw that behavior for my own game in the reddit community pretty often, people ask for things that are not super crazy and we were going to add anyways and when we do ... the fans take credit which is .. ok buddy, go ahead, whatever makes you feel good
Yeah, it's not like Zelda would be "Celda" forever. As much as I loved that look, I knew they were going to go back eventually.
I kind of wish it wasn't to, like, a universe where everyone got hit with the ugly stick, but okay.
I kind of wish it wasn't to, like, a universe where everyone got hit with the ugly stick, but okay.
StarFox I don't know how new ones keep getting green lit. They like the characters I guess but not the gameplay cause every entry gets a new gimmick or twist to not make it a StarFox game.