Break out the baseball bats; it’s about to get ugly, Nintendo fans.
A new Nintendo system always brings joy to fans of Mario, Zelda, and other franchise mascots, mostly because a promise of a new system is a promise of a new installment in beloved series like Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Mario Kart, and in recent years, Smash Bros., Nintendo’s free-for-all mascot beat-em-up. The game has been so popular among fighting game fans that it has even been picked up by EVO for it’s annual fighting game tournament, of which Nintendo ran afoul of just weeks ago. As a fan myself, it goes without saying that when the newest installments for both Wii U and 3DS were announced, I was ecstatic, and had planned to buy both, seeing as how there would be console specific elements to each. Today, any excitement that I had for the upcoming games has just been squashed however.
According to a post over at NeoSeeker, M. Sakurai has stated in his bi-weekly column in Weekly Famistu, a Japanese gaming magazine, that because of the cutscenes from Subspace Emissary from Smash Bros. Brawl being uploaded to Youtube, that the upcoming Smash Bros. releases would no longer have cutscenes or a story mode at all. Let that sink in. Smash Bros. will no longer have A STORY MODE, one of the most enjoyable parts about Brawl. Here’s the quote directly from the man himself:
“Unfortunately, the movie scenes we worked hard to create were uploaded onto the internet. You can only truly wow a player the first time he sees [a cutscene]. I felt if players saw the cutscenes outside of the game, they would no longer serve as rewards for playing the game, so I’ve decided against having them.”
What?!
So, because some people uploaded videos of cutscenes (which were gorgeous, btw) to the internet, ALL people no longer get to enjoy a story mode because of the “spoiler factor”. Let’s just call this what it is, folks:
Bullcrap. (Feel free to insert a stronger word here, if you want.)
On the already teetering Wii U foundation, this comes as a massive shakeup, making a completely solid, wonderful title that would’ve sold systems nothing more than a tournament simulator and online brawler, which makes me not want to spend $50 for. Sure, you can argue that the story mode isn’t essential to fighting games (honestly, name the last fighting game that had a really SOLID, ESSENTIAL story.) but to remove a core gameplay mechanic like this on an already struggling system….c’mon Nintendo, you can do better than this!
To make up for the loss of a complete single player mode, the team will be focusing on unique videos that introduce the new characters (probably the ones we’ve already seen via Nintendo Direct), which is paltry compensation for the gaping hole they are leaving in the game. Let’s face it, footage from most games are uploaded to Youtube nowadays, whether the publishers and developers like it or not. I’m not going to debate the morality of it, but if the footage is there, along with praise for the title, at least people like your work! However, news like this, and attitudes like this, can turn a population of devoted followers into a rabid fandom with a deathwish in the information age.
You can read the rest of the article from NeoSeeker right here, or sound off in our comments below to let us know what you think about this development. Can stuff like this sink entire systems, or am I just overreacting? Let us know!
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