We're only a week away from November 18 now, the day that will mark the 10-year anniversary of Nintendo's GameCube. The Big N's fourth home console after the NES, SNES and N64, the Cube made it out to market at a time when Nintendo's fans were in a similar situation to where we finds ourselves today.
The circumstance we're experiencing now, at the end of the Wii's life cycle and looking forward to the release of the Wii U, is a lot like what the fan situation felt like 10 years ago. We first started drawing those parallels earlier this week with our article The Final Days of the N64, where we looked back on the Nintendo 64's final successful Christmas season, its last wave of notable software and the failure of what would've been that console's swan song, Conker's Bad Fur Day.
We left off our story in Spring of 2001, when there was still another half a year to pass before the Cube would finally go on sale in November. So what happened next? How did Nintendo's fans deal with zero new first-party releases for the home console for six months straight? Read on as we continue the tale, and continue drawing parallels to today's events. These were the days before the GameCube arrived.
THEN: The N64's Mario Party 3 went on sale on May 7, 2001. When it did, it became the last first-party console title Nintendo would ship in America until November 18, when the day one launch software for the GameCube arrived. So what did the company sell to its customers in the six months in-between? A brand-new portable, of course!
The Big N's console business went almost entirely dark while the spotlight turned to the launch of the Game Boy Advance. The GBA was the long-awaited successor to the aged original Game Boy and transitional Game Boy Color handhelds, a true 16-bit-esque upgrade to the 8-bit style that Nintendo had been pushing in the portable space for over a decade.
The Game Boy Advance's arrival on store shelves was an important precursor to the GameCube's launch, too, because Nintendo had plans to bridge the gap between its portable and home console businesses. A wave of "connectivity" software was being prepped behind the scenes, and anyone investing in a GBA unit in the summer of 2001 was also buying an early GameCube controller, in a way. Later titles like Pac-Man Vs., The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles would all make use of the handheld's screen as a secondary display for what the Cube was projecting onto the TV.
That was a little bit beyond 2001, though, and probably the more prominent memory for fans who experienced the GBA launch were the problems that plagued it. Nintendo's software selection was criticized when the day one release Super Mario Advance ended up being nothing more than a slightly tweaked port of the old Super Mario Bros. 2.
And gamers were not at all pleased with the default screen in the first wave of GBAs. It had no lighting solution built-in and so was frustratingly difficult to see without tons of external lighting set at just the right angle. Aftermarket lighting kits did big business as Nintendo dealt with consumer complaints, and ultimately the remodeled Game Boy Advance SP was launched in early 2003 to officially address the issue.
NOW: Any of that sound familiar? It should, since the events here in 2011 have played out very similarly to those of 2001. Only this time the portable taking precedence has been Nintendo's 3DS.
Company president Satoru Iwata has recently gone on record to admit that the resources dedicated to shifting portable development from the DS to the 3DS has had the side effect of sidelining work on new Wii games, resulting in the current gap in the release schedule similar to what the months preceding the GameCube saw - they seemed to be saying, "If you're a Nintendo console gamer, sorry. But wouldn't you like this nice, new portable in the meanwhile?"
The 3DS has been a mirror image of the GBA's other issues, too. Its screen has been criticized for its own shortcomings, along with the rest of its hardware design - leading many to predict that a redesigned "3DS SP" will be coming along soon. That prediction has only grown in strength as the system heads toward the end of this year, with the release of the Circle Pad Pro acting much like the aftermarket lighting kits sought to alter original GBAs.
The 3DS launch lineup was torn a new one by disappointed fans across the industry and Internet, and the outcry has been much more intense than it was with any previous portable. Nintendo has apologized for this too, and thankfully the final months of this year leading up to the Christmas season have addressed that issue well (just as the arrival of great original titles like Advance Wars and Golden Sun helped offset early concerns about the GBA library being nothing but SNES ports.)
And, just as much as the promise of the Game Boy Advance wouldn't be realized until the GameCube came along, Nintendo once again seems to be in the position of lingering portable potential right now. Connectivity between the 3DS and upcoming Wii U won't be as much of a focus as what the Big N was working on 10 years ago, but the Wii U's own screen-equipped new controller is absolutely an echo of that decade-old idea - and hopefully now, having seen the solid design of Nintendo's multi-screen games during the GameCube's life cycle, we can be a bit more encouraged and patient in this current console transition waiting period.
Source: http://feeds.ign.com/~r/ignfeeds/all/~3/fyMLpvPjpqw/1212291p1.html
video games xbox games arcade games best xbox games computer games download xbox games free pc games history of video games new video games online games
No comments:
Post a Comment