Top Ten: Nintendo Blunders

Nintendo is king here at the Dojo, but it’s not all chuckola cola and mushroom pops at the house of N.

By Kyle England. Posted 01/30/2013 14:00 11 Comments     ShareThis

6. Nintendo Press Conference: E3 2008

You knew this one was coming. In fact, it ties into the previous entry. Where do I start with this one? The Nintendo 2008 E3 press conference was an abomination. Nintendo came out to celebrate mediocrity with a press conference surrounded around things that most people watching E3 don’t care about. The killer apps of the conference were Wii Sports Resort, Wii Fit, and the notorious presentation of Wii Music. We also got to see Cammie Dunaway demo the Shaun White snowboarding game and make incredibly forced jokes and awkward remarks to her co-hosts. On the hardware side, Nintendo showed us the new peripheral Wii Motion Plus, which had features the Wii should have had from the very start. Oh, and Nintendo assured us that Mario and Zelda games were coming. But that’s stuff that we probably didn’t need to see. We would rather see this:

I remember watching this press conference when it aired live. For a while I had been struggling to defend Nintendo, and I said that it cared about its fanbase. I said that Nintendo would still make great games, and not just cater to the new audiences of moms and grandparents it had gained with Wii. When I saw this press conference, I felt hurt and cheated, and I struggled with my feelings about Nintendo. This is perhaps why the E3 2008 presentation was such a blunder, because it was an embodiment of what everyone was afraid that Nintendo would become. The one good thing to come out of this conference was Reggie’s “my body is ready” remark. Luckily, Nintendo turned its game around, and every E3 since has been much better.

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11 Responses to “Top Ten: Nintendo Blunders”

  • 132 points
    gekslupis says...

    The funny thing is that most people I know who support nintendo also own a Playstation 3. Even though they betrayed nintendo, people who love nintendo still enjoy the playstation. I can only imagine what could have been if nintendo kept their deal.

    • 285 points
      Kyle England says...

      I’m a big PlayStation fan myself. If they had stuck together, we might have gotten some sort of awesome mega super console! Although, much of the PlayStation character did come from the fact that it was a brand new system from a company not established in games. Who knows what would have happened?

  • 745 points
    OG75 says...

    This list is one of the first “top 10” lists on this (or any gaming) site that I totally agree with. Not that that validates anything (I know lists are just opinions anyway.) Just wanted to say: great job on this well-rounded list. Not only does it cover many generations, but also strikes a balance with the kind of hardware (consoles, handhelds, and virtual boy) as well as software… and even the Super Mario Movie. It even made me think about Rareware. I had been of the opinion of “good riddance, who needs ‘grabbed by the ghoulies?'”, but you got me thinking about what could have been… Oh how I yearn for a Jet Force Gemini sequel. Love the site. Keep the great features coming!

    PS. I was worried from the picture on this feature that you were going to mention allowing Team Ninja to handle Metroid: Another M. While it’s not my favorite Metroid (I’ve beat them all the week they’ve come out. Yes, even the original.) I did enjoy “Another M.”

  • 1244 points
    lukas85 says...

    i love the n64 era and i know that cartriges have their limitations, but i cannot imagine playing ocarina of time with a loading screen.

    • 285 points
      Kyle England says...

      I agree, and I love those cartridges. But Squaresoft and Nintendo were such good buddies before N64. If Square had stayed Nintendo exclusive, Final Fantasy VII would have been on N64, and we might have even gotten some FF characters on Smash. Now that would have been pretty cool.

  • 1379 points
    xeacons says...

    History is tough to research, and many books tend to contradict each other. I wouldn’t blame a lot of this on Nintendo. According to my research, many were seemingly logical decisions that turned out badly because Nintendo dealt with the wrong people.

    • 285 points
      Kyle England says...

      Yeah, hindsight is 20/20. No business intentionally tries to make bad decisions, but some just turn out bad. Nintendo made the Virtual Boy because they thought it would sell, but it didn’t. I’m glad Nintendo takes risks like that, because then we would never have had systems like The Nintendo DS and Wii. I do think Nintendo has made better decisions than some other companies too.

  • 1379 points
    xeacons says...

    At any rate I totally understand when defending a cause looks pointless. I’m a member of a variety of groups (Nintendo fans, not least of all) that take a lot of bashing, and just when it seems we’re making progress, someone stands up and does something incredibly stupid in our name. Sometimes, I just want to believe it’s our opposition trying to make us look bad.

  • 60 points
    Dustin Grissom says...

    So relieved to see that you didn’t put Other: M on here! That game gets such a terrible rap for what is a fairly good, if not great, game! Good list!

  • 33 points
    mailorderninja says...

    Three words: Wii Vitality Sensor. I literally shuddered when I saw this. Luckily it never saw the light of day.

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