3. Refusing the Disc
While I love cartridge games, they just aren’t a good format for holding the most technically sophisticated games. Nintendo disagreed during the development of the Nintendo 64 and stubbornly clung to the cartridge format when games were clearly going the way of the disc. Cartridges only offer a few advantages over a disc: they have little to no load times, and they are hard to pirate. That’s all. Discs are better than cartridges in every way. Discs can hold more data, are cheaper to produce, and are easier to store.
Nintendo lost a lot of third party support on Nintendo 64 because of high prices to make cartridges. Some lifelong Nintendo partners like Enix and Squaresoft left to join Sony, leaving the Nintendo 64 high and dry when it came to great third party support. Nintendo made up for it with some truly stellar first and second party games, but the ramifications of losing third parties because of the cartridge medium is still being felt today. It pained me to write this entry, because Nintendo 64 cartridges are like precious treasures to me. However, the rational gamer inside me knows that Nintendo could have done so much more with the N64 had it used the CD-ROM.
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.
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?
It’s not betrayal; it’s connoisseurship. You can’t limit yourself.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Three words: Wii Vitality Sensor. I literally shuddered when I saw this. Luckily it never saw the light of day.