Nintendo's downfall (Nintendo N64)

Member Name: cloudbt

Product:	Nintendo N64
Date:	26/07/00 (211 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Zelda

Disadvantages: crap games, expensive, carts, short games, no fmv on a lot of games...................

The Nintendo 64 has simply never realized its potential and now looms as the largest mediocrity in Nintendo history. "Quality over quantity" was Nintendo of America's ex-president Howard Lincoln was repeatedly quoted as saying, and this mantra, while well-intentioned, was one of several flaws that sealed the fate of the system as disappointing and showed that Emperor Mario has a tragic flaw after all. Generally unimpressive graphics, weak sound, genre imbalance, and the fatal selection of cartidge format over CDs also can be attributed to the near-collapse of the Nintendo Empire.

When the Nintendo 64 was domestically released in late September of 1996, Super Mario 64 was hailed as revolutionary. A 3D platformer with astounding graphics and impeccable gameplay, this game continued Nintendo's great Mario tradition, solidified Shigeru Miyamoto's place in video gaming history, and was the perfect system seller. Even the upstart PlayStation unit from Sony had nothing to offer like this. Gamers were unhappy with the £50 price tag, but caved anyway. Now, over three years later, Super Mario 64 is still one of the prime games for the console. Gamers have not seen very many titles for the Nintendo 64 that have been blockbusters the way Super Mario 64 was; in fact, third-party offerings were generally lousy with poor graphics and poorer gameplay. Duds like Milo's Astro Lanes and Knife Edge tarnished Nintendo's already teetering reputation with new-school gamers, and that reputation was only bolstered by quality offerings from Nintendo and their second-party house of genius, Rare. Titles like GoldenEye 007, Zelda: Ocarina of Time, F-Zero X, Diddy Kong Racing, and a few others seemed to make the system worth its money. The third-party race, however, had already been won by Sony, as their PlayStation had already won over the big guns, like Capcom, Electronic Arts, Konami, and... Square. The defection of Square to Sony was the coup de grace,
as the loss of the Final Fantasy franchise meant the death of the RPG for the Nintendo 64. Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII broke sales records worldwide, and was a large slap in the face to Nintendo.

The Nintendo 64 console's success has indeed been curtailed due to the lack of RPGs, or role-playing games, for the system. Other genres also were not represented well. Sports games, overall, were better on Sony's unit. Nintendo also seemed to abandon their older gamers as a lot of the titles were geared towards youngsters; many Nintendo loyalists were angered by this trend as they grew up with Nintendo and complained that the games were only for kids. Although Nintendo tried to bridge this gap by working out a deal with Capcom to release Resident Evil 2, this effort seemed to be too little, too late.

With the exception of Super Mario 64 and a few other titles, the graphics and sound quality of Nintendo 64 software has been consistently criticized, with complaints ranging from the overuse of fogging to mask pop-up to continuously looping soundtracks to fuzzy-looking graphics. The light sourcing and polygon manipulation that the PlayStation had demonstrated many times wasn't really attempted or bettered on the Nintendo 64 that often, and, because of Nintendo's selection of cartridges as their format, full CD soundtracks and redbook audio were simply impossible. As a matter of fact, the selection of cartridge over CD triggered more problems than limited storage space; price became an issue as the average price of a new Nintendo 64 game was about £8 - £12 higher than a new PlayStation game. Kids and parents alike complained about the higher game prices and this eventually converted some Nintendo 64 owners to Sony. Other costs were incurred by add-ons like rumble paks, memory cards, and the 4MB expansion pak(£30!!!!), which came out in order to improve graphics quality and AI in new games; older games weren't affected and no
t every new game utilized the expansion pak. The unimpressive graphics and sound quality were not warranting the amounts of money to be spent, and Sony's increasing popularity grossly shifted market share to Sony from Nintendo and it was clear that the damage to Nintendo was serious.

Now, as the 128-bit era is poised to begin, Nintendo is left licking its wounds and planning its next move. While not a complete failure, the Nintendo 64's mediocrity proved to gamers that Nintendo is not the juggernaut that they once were. Sega is valiantly making their comeback behind their fairly successful Dreamcast console, Sony is readying their PlayStation2 for a mammoth domestic release, and even Bill Gates has thrown his virtual hat into the gaming ring with the X-Box, bound for release in 2001. Nintendo, too, has a new system coming, tentatively code-named Dolphin. Nintendo has finally shed cartridges and will use a DVD device in their next system. Gamers everywhere hope that Nintendo will learn from the mistakes that they made with the Nintendo 64 and again become prominent. Sega seems to be back on track after their Saturn debacle and they seem to have learned from their mistakes... let's hope that fall of the Nintendo Empire is only temporary; love them or hate them, the success of Mario and friends will only bolster the state of video gaming as a whole.

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