The Lost Art of the Mixtape

I'm not one of those people that looks upon things from the past with longing. I'm not nostalgic by nature. Maybe it's because I didn't have a happy or fun childhood, so I have no desire to look at the past lovingly.

That being said, there's one thing that I truly miss: The mixtape.

Allow Rob from High Fidelity to explain the rules:

Now, the making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. Many do's and don'ts. First of all you're using someone else's poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing. [...] You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don't wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules. [...] [It's] hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem.

Here were my mixtape rules:

1) The first song had to catch attention, but you could not use Side 1, Track 1 of any album. That's cheating, since artists usually put their punchiest songs at the beginning of an album.

2) Avoid tape clicks. I would pause the tape after each song, change out the CD, then unpause the tape. However, you had to time it right so that there was the right amount of pausing in between each song. It was a very specific process.

3) Don't play the same band twice in a row. Just bad form.

3a) However, if a song by a band moves into another naturally and you want to preserve that flow, OK. Just don't make a habit of it.

4) The last song on the tape couldn't be an album's last song. For example, you can't use "Everything's Ruined" by Fountains of Wayne to close out the tape, because it's the last track on their self-titled album.

5) Try not to use the same songs on multiple mixtapes. Mix it up. Get creative.

6) Better to be a little short than too long. If the tape ends in the middle of a track, you've just failed at mixtapes.

All of this requires that you really, really know what music you own. You had to know not only what tracks were the best for each situation, but you also had to know specifically how long each one was so you knew how much time you had to work with. Could you squeeze in that extra track, or would you run overtime?

A lot of artists would put the length of each track on their albums. Bless 'em. A lot of them wouldn't. Curse 'em. When they didn't put the track times, you really, really, really had to know how long your music was.

One of the other quirks of the mixtape is that you had to sit there and put the tape together. If your tape was 90 minutes long, you had to sit there for all 90 minutes or end up ruining your tape. It was a labor of love that required a bit of sacrifice.

At the risk of sounding like an old man, making a mix CD doesn't have the same charm. You can literally click a few times on a program, have it check to see if there's too much music to fit on a CD, step away, and let the program make the CD. I know we can carry lots of music on our iPods too, and that's great. Really. It is.

However, what made mixtapes so challenging is that you had to pick just a few tracks that were important to you. You couldn't include "everything by Radiohead." You had to pick, "Which song is more important to me? 'Black Star' or 'Let Down'? Would this person like early, guitar-rock Radiohead, or more unusual tracks like 'Pearly'?" (This was before Kid A came out, by the way.)

There was nothing worse than sending out a mixtape that you slaved over and spent time arranging carefully and getting a tape back to you that was recorded on the quick. I remember setting up a tape with all of my rules and carefully curating a collection of music for a girlfriend and receiving a tape slapped together with 10 songs by the same person. That was a warning sign if I ever saw one.

I know mixtapes were a lot of work, and I know it sounds like a hassle, but it was a lot of fun too. When you felt the urge to carve out a couple of hours of your life to make a tape for someone, you knew they were important to you. A mixtape wasn't just about the music. It was about carving out time to do something important, to share something about yourself and take pride in the way you were doing it.

What's the Best Kirby Game? (Part 4)

The final three best Kirby games! Who wins?

3. Kirby Super Star (SNES, 1994)

Any game that has the phrase “Six games in one!” on its title is just asking for trouble. Games that try and be compilations generally fail miserably and play terribly, as they try to do too much and can't handle any of it.

Kirby Super Star is an amazing exception.

While the box art says that there are six separate games, think of each game in Kirby Super Star as a separate Kirby idea that wouldn't pan out to a full game on its own. They're interesting enough, like making your special powers something you find throughout the world and can use at any time, or having Kirby do a large treasure hunt. By putting them all together, it makes for something much, much better.

There are just so many ideas in Super Star. For example, one mid-level boss is a turn-based battle that looks just like an old-school RPG. One power makes you cling to the walls and enables you to vanish in a puff of smoke when you're damaged. The game turns into a side-scrolling shooter at one point, and one game is a timed offensive where you desperately try to destroy Meta Knight's ship. Really, there is just too much to go on about here.

Kirby Super Star also includes drop-in multiplayer, great bosses, varied locales and sharpened-to-a-point controls. The recent DS re-release is even better, with even more ideas, including a separate game for Meta Knight himself and full animated cinematics. If you like Kirby games at all, pick it up.

2. Kirby’s Dream Land 2 (Game Boy, 1994)

Kirby’s Dream Land 2 was packed full of cool moments, and it’s hard to believe they fit the whole thing in a tiny little Game Boy cartridge.

Here’s an example: Throughout the game, there are special bricks that can only be broken by certain special powers. Toward the end of one level, you come upon long corridors that lead up to three doors. Two are blocked by the special bricks, and one is wide open. If you go through the wide open door, you reach the end of the level. So what’s behind the other doors?

If you break the special bricks and enter one of the doors, you find yourself in a similar corridor with different special bricks. Go the wrong way and you end up at the end of the level with no special destination. So what are you supposed to do?

Well, early in the level there’s a darkened room. If you use the electricity power in conjunction with your animal friend Kine the Fish, it lights up the room. When the room is lit, you see tiles on the back of the wall that show the order in which you need to destroy the special bricks in the end of the level. Follow that order, and you get a special item that helps you achieve 100% completion in the game.

That’s the sort of thing I’m talking about. That’s a surprising amount of depth for a Game Boy game that looks like a simple platformer at first glance, and one of the reasons that Kirby’s Dream Land 2 deserves to be remembered as one of the greats.

1. Kirby’s Adventure (NES, 1991)

Kirby games always are cursed to show up late in a console's usable life. Kirby 64 showed up after everyone had moved over to the PS2. Kirby Super Star showed up in 1996, a week before Super Mario 64 launched. Kirby's Dream Land 2 showed up in 1994, when the Game Boy was moving toward the Game Boy Color. No game suffered more indignity than Kirby's Adventure, a sprawling epic of a game that showed up in 1991, after everyone had already set aside their NES consoles in favor of the 16-bit generation.

Kirby's Adventure stands alongside Super Mario 3 as one of the best games of the NES generation. Huge bosses, inventive levels, tons of powers (including the UFO power, the best Kirby power ever), bunches of secrets, and genuine challenge. You're not going to find a better Kirby game than Kirby's Adventure, and it's a fantastic achievement that's still fun to play 20 years later.

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Agree? Disagree? Tell us in the comments!

What's the Best Kirby Game? (Part 3)

Three more games today. Now we're getting into the really good stuff. View the previous three right here.

6. Kirby Canvas Curse (DS, 2005)

I was fairly ambivalent about Canvas Curse when it was first released, but over time it’s become much more of a flashpoint for the DS and a much more important game.

It’s hard to picture it now, but there was a time where developers didn’t know how to use touch controls properly. It was like they looked at the touchscreen and exclaimed, “No buttons? What is this sorcery?” They tried to make games like True Swing Golf or Yoshi’s Touch and Go, completely missing the point of what touch controls could do and making them more of a trifle, a worthless gimmick that brought nothing to the table.

Canvas Curse really was revolutionary in the way it demonstrated how touchscreen controls could be used to make a real game and make it incredibly fun at the same time. It was easy to learn, hard to master, and, most importantly, very fun to play, with the boss fights being a highlight. Just talking about it makes me want to fire it up again.

5. Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (N64, 2001)

A lot of console games from the first generation of 3D-capable consoles really don’t hold up well. Developers were still trying to figure out how to take their game design principles that they had honed from years of 2D design and transition them into 3D. A majority of them look muddy with ugly textures and nasty clipping, and playing them on an HDTV can be an exercise in agony. It was a pretty ugly time.

With that in mind, Kirby 64 was surprisingly great and still holds up well today. It doesn’t suffer from the same problems that lots of other early 3D games dealt with. First, it looks clean and sharp owing to the clever camera placement that meant that more system memory could be used on details in the environment, and the bright primary colors make it stand out like a lost Super Nintendo classic. Next, the powers are fantastic and lead to lots of experimentation. “What happens if I combine electricity and ice? What about fire and bombs? What about rock and needles?” And so on.

The levels are varied, meaning that you’re never quite sure what the next one will look like, and it also follows the typical “easy to beat, hard to finish” road that the best Kirby games have had. It’s a winner, through and through.

4. Kirby’s Epic Yarn (Wii, 2010)

Kirby is an incredibly malleable character. He’s a cipher who can squeeze into any mold that the designer sees fit, and in Epic Yarn he was shoved into one of his weirdest situations yet: A world of yarn, cotton balls and pipecleaners, where he defeats his enemies by pulling on their loose threads and unraveling them.

Against all odds, Epic Yarn is fantastic and a highlight for the Wii. It's cute, fun to play, easy to learn and hard to master. It’s a surprisingly tactile game, as everything looks like real cloth. One of my personal highlights was quicksand that, in reality, was just realistic-looking cloth slowly unraveling.

However, it doesn’t just have the neat aesthetic going for it. Even if you remove the cool graphics, you still have some neat and varied levels. Sure they still fit into the water world / ice world / fire world templates, but they work and they’re a lot of fun. They're constantly different, and that keeps you going until the very end. The music ramps up as the game goes along too, until by the end you can’t help but smile along with Kirby and friends.

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Click to read part 4 here.

What's The Best Kirby Game? (Part 2)

Let's keep going with the Kirby Countdown! Part 1 can be read here.

9. Kirby and the Amazing Mirror (Game Boy Advance, 2004)

Kirby and the Amazing Mirror isn’t great, but it’s at least different. Mirror is a Kirby game in the style of a Metroidvania game, full of backtracking, using special powers to open up new areas, and exploring a giant map. It’s a decent game, if a little confusing.

The problem is that Mirror demands more attention than a normal Kirby game should demand. If you play it without realizing right off the bat that it’s a Metroidvania game, you’ll quickly end up running in circles and feeling incredibly dumb. This is a game that would have been great on the DS, where the bottom screen could function as the map. Because it's on the Game Boy Advance instead, it just feels like a confusing tangle of rooms.

8. Kirby Mass Attack (DS, 2011)

Kirby Mass Attack had an unusual idea: Make Kirby into a platformer/real-time strategy game. It mostly works, aside from some control issues. The game puts you in control of ten Kirbies, and it can be difficult to single out one at a time with the stylus. That’s a problem when the main form of control is selecting and flinging Kirbies.

Still, the game is interesting and you’re always doing something new, like balancing all of your Kirbies on a giant tower or mobbing a larger baddie to take him down. There are tons of unlockables, including a faux-RPG that’s fun to play. It’s all right if you're not expecting anything earth-shattering.

7. Kirby: Squeak Squad (DS, 2006)

Kirby: Squeak Squad opens with a really weird intro: The titular Squeak Squad steals a piece of cake that Kirby is about to eat. Kirby proceeds to kick the crap out of all of Dream Land just to get it back. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Kirby is a psychopath. That cake better have been worth the string of bodies left in Kirby’s wake.

Anyway, Squeak Squad gets almost everything right for a Kirby game. There are tons of powers, the levels are quick and snappy, the music is excellent and the boss fights are fun. The only problem is that it’s way too easy to get 100% completion. It’s so easy, in fact, that once you do finish the game, the developers see fit to tell you, “You’ve finished this game 100%! Really!” I’m not kidding. I wish I was. It’s still a fun ride while it lasts, and if you can pick it up for cheap it’s highly recommended.

Click to read Part 3 here.

What's The Best Kirby Game? (Part 1)

Kirby sucks.

Years ago, I put together a ranking of all the Kirby games. Being that this is the little pink bulimic’s 20th anniversary, I think it’s appropriate to revisit him and re-rank his games while adding in his most recent releases. As before, we’ll be leaving out side releases like Kirby’s Air Ride and Kirby’s Block Ball and focusing instead on the main entries, ranging from the Game Boy on through to the Wii.

Let’s get to it!

12. Kirby’s Dream Land (Game Boy, 1992)

The first, and still the worst. Kirby’s Dream Land was short, clocking in at only an hour long even on your first playthrough. I’m not even exaggerating: There are literally only five levels in the entire game. I paid $30 for this game back in the 90’s and I’m pretty sure I only lost one life on my very first playthrough. On top of that, you can’t even steal your enemies’ powers. All you can do is inhale your enemies and spit them out. That’s it.

Kirby’s Dream Land looks great for a Game Boy game, the music is catchy and it’s fun to play for the hour that it lasts. Beating it opens up a much harder mode, but beating the hard mode only unlocks a sound test. Don’t get me wrong, Kirby’s Dream Land plays very well, and it’s easy to see why Nintendo thought Kirby would be a good character after playing this game, but Kirby’s Dream Land is not a great game by any means. In retrospect, it feels more like a warmed-over tech demo than a full game.

11. Kirby’s Dream Land 3 (SNES, 1997)

Kirby’s Dream Land 3 had potential. It used a graphical style that looked like the entire game was drawn by crayons, which could be uniquely suited to Kirby games. It had some really neat ideas in it, but it was hampered by two things.

One, there weren’t enough special powers. There comes a point in every Kirby game where you get to a later level and find a new special power that you’d never seen before. It’s something that keeps you interested until the end, because you never know what you’ll find. That didn’t happen in Kirby’s Dream Land 3. By the time you’ve been to the second world, you’ve seen every special power already. There’s not much else to see.

There’s another problem: Kirby games live and die on punchy, straightforward levels that come in, surprise you, and move on. Well, Kirby’s Dream Land 3’s levels are all dreadfully long. You spend a long time moving from left-to-right or right-to-left killing the same few enemies and using the same few powers while pastoral, boring music plays in the background. It’s horrid.

10. Kirby's Return To Dream Land (Wii, 2011)

I’m starting to detect a pattern: The games with “Dream Land” in the title are bad. Or are they? There’s one exception to this rule, but we’ll get to that later.

Anyway, Kirby’s Return to Dream Land made the same mistakes as Kirby’s Dream Land 3. It looked fantastic, but it was too long, the levels were boring, and you’ve seen every power by the midpoint of the game. This is a game that managed to take giant, screen-filling special powers and make them dull.

It’s weird, because it’s like the designers of Return had no new ideas whatsoever. It’s a really run-of-the-mill Kirby game. The music is uninspired, and for a game that’s supposed to be a great big homecoming for Kirby, there are no nods to Kirby’s past at all. It just repeats the same few ideas over and over again and hopes that you won’t notice.

I have to move on. I’m getting depressed.

Read part 2 here.

Downwards Compatible's End Of Year 2011 Game-Stravaganza

"The only End of Year Awards that wait until after the year is over."

This year was a disappointing one here at Down-C. Since we usually play in the Nintendo sandbox, there wasn't much going on. The 3DS started slowly. The Wii barely had any releases. The DS is on its last legs. Some of these games ended up as year-end greats only by default.
Still, there were some genuinely good games released this year, and it’s time to give them their due.

Most Disappointing Game:

Kirby: Return to Dreamland

Kirby games are great because they're usually pretty unpredictable. You may not always like the direction they go, but you can't fault them for trying.

Return to Dreamland, sadly, was entirely predictable and didn't feel like it was trying. The levels were bland. The new powers were dull. Heck, even the screen-filling superpowers got boring after a while. How they managed to pull that off I'll never know.

Nicest Thing Of The Year

Humble Bundles

The Humble Indie Bundle is a group of games that you can pay whatever you want for. They used to only do this every once in a great while, and this year they decided to do, like, 20 of them in a row.

If you participated in the Humble Bundles, that meant that you picked up games like Braid, Super Meat Boy, Cave Story+, NightSky, The Binding of Isaac, Shank, And Yet It Moves, Machinarium, and tons of others for a really low price. That's awesome, and I hope they do some more just like that in the new year.

Best Game I Played This Year That Wasn't Released This Year, But Whatever (Tie)

VVVVVV

Look, if you haven't played VVVVVV, I don't know what to tell you. It's cheap, only about $5. It's hard, but not unfair. It's short and the music is tremendous. Play it. I won't ask again.

Uncharted 2

Before I got a PS3, I was completely content not to play games in HD. Even after having the PS3 for a bit, I was still fine with it. It was only until after I played Uncharted 2 that I saw exactly what HD gaming could accomplish, and there's no turning back now.

It's not just the graphics, although those are nice. It's the facial expressions, the detail of the world, the way that things look lived in, everything. It also got me through a painful recovery time after having my tonsils out, so thanks, Nathan Drake! That extra horsepower that the PS3 delivers accomplishes some amazing things, and it reminds me that we're really in a Golden Age for gaming.

Worst Thing Of The Year

3DS Launch

Let's release a new handheld with a high price and no games and missing half of the promised features! Then let's drop the price by a third! Then let's give free NES and GBA games to the people who bought the system! Make sure they're our crappiest NES games, though! Let's also not tell anyone when we're going to release those GBA games until the moment they're released! Let's delay Kid Icarus, the game that we essentially announced the 3DS with, until after the holiday season!

I like the 3DS. I really do. It turned quickly from a debacle of a system into a must-have with the addition of Mario Kart 7 and Super Mario 3D Land, as well as the phenomenal eShop. But it's shocking how poorly Nintendo almost completely bungled the launch.

Announcement of the Year

Wii U

When Sony and Microsoft inevitably release their next system, we can bet that it's going to be expensive, incredibly powerful and very similar to what they've already released. And why not? While motion controls made a huge splash at the beginning of the last generation, the waves have died down somewhat, so it makes sense that the major companies provide more of the same.

Nintendo can always be counted on to do something completely out of left field. Whether it's releasing a handheld with a touchscreen, a video game system powered almost entirely by motion controls or a 3D handheld, they've never marched to the same beat as everyone else.

The Wii U looks interesting. Note that I didn't say "promising," just "interesting." I'm interested to see what they plan to do, and if it turns out all right, I'll probably pick one up. It's just cool that Nintendo tries new things when other companies don't.

3DS Game of the Year

Mario Kart 7

I liked Super Mario 3D Land. It was really, really fun. However, I'm pretty sure I'm going to get more long-term enjoyment out of Mario Kart 7, and it might turn out to be the game that's the 3DS' main system seller.

Like I mentioned in my review, it all depends on how much you like Mario Kart. If you don't like Mario Kart, Mario Kart 7 won't win you over. If you like Mario Kart, then there's far more to do than there ever was before.

Game That I'm Sure I'd Love If I Had Time To Play It

Zelda: Skyward Sword

I've played about two hours of Skyward Sword. It's good. I like it. It's just that Xenoblade Chronicles is so good that I can't put it down long enough to play Skyward Sword. My gaming time on the TV is limited since the TV is usually held captive by women. Some day I'll figure out a way around that.

In the meantime, Skyward Sword is on my to-play list, I swear.

Game of the Year That I Played and You Probably Didn't
(Ha Ha Ha)

Xenoblade Chronicles

This game is probably going on my shortlist of favorite games of all time. I've spent 60 hours in its world and I'm still not close to seeing everything it has to offer. The plot is interesting, the locale is fascinating, practically everything about this game is incredible.

Fortunately for the gaming public here in the States, it's coming out in a few months as a Gamestop exclusive. I'm almost tempted to delete my save files and just wait for the US release just so I can do this all over again.

Almost.

Ranking Nintendo's Systems: Part 9

We continue our look at Nintendo's best and worst systems. Click to read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7 and part 8.

Super NES

History: The NES was a juggernaut, but toward the end of its lifespan it was vulnerable. New games were barely trickling out, and other hardware bypassed it. Sega's MegaDrive, or Genesis, marketed itself as the cooler alternative to Nintendo's fuddy-duddy NES, and they quickly started to take over in Europe.

What would Nintendo do? They couldn't stick with the NES forever, no matter how successful it was.

1991 saw the release of the Super Nintendo. Whereas the Sega Genesis could display 512 colors, the Super Nintendo could display 32,768. The Genesis had 136 KB of total memory, while the Super NES had 256 KB. The Genesis' audio had six channels, and the Super Nintendo had 8. This led to some of the richest sound and graphics of the generation.

Results: Nintendo won the battle once again, selling almost 50 million units compared to the MegaDrive/Genesis' 25 million.

That's not the only reason the Super NES was Nintendo's best system, though. In the past,
developers had used the NES as an experimental ground, learning what worked and what didn't in games. Now that they had several years of design under their belts and had made their mistakes, they were able to create masterpieces that still hold up remarkably well today.

With the Super NES, we were finally able to see what games could do, and it was glorious.

What Went Right: Nintendo was at the height of their powers during the Super NES years. They opened up with Super Mario World and never let up, with SimCity, F-Zero, Pilotwings, Zelda: A Link to the Past and Super Mario Kart coming one right after the other.

Third parties also made the Super Nintendo great. Street Fighter II, Super Castlevania IV, Contra 3, Secret of Mana and others launched almost immediately, with many, many more great games to follow. Even middling offerings showed promise, like The Lost Vikings and Joe & Mac.

Of special note were the offerings by Square. RPGs were popular in Japan, but were still very primitive during the NES years, with lackluster stories and little characterization. In essence, they were level-up simulators, with little depth. It wasn't until the Super Nintendo era that RPGs finally came in to their own, and Square was at the forefront of this new movement. Finally they could tell honest-to-goodness stories, and with the shackles off, games like Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger and others could spin amazing stories with deep characterization and amazing music that sticks in your head for years.

The graphics were also unparalled. When Donkey Kong Country was released, there was shock that such a detailed game was being released on a 16-bit system. It was that sort of thing that led Sega down the path of addons as they desperately tried to keep up with Nintendo, but they simply couldn't. The Super Nintendo, with transparent layers and seamless colors, just plain outclassed Sega's Genesis in every way.

The hardware was also solid. Super Nintendo consoles still work 20 years later, no matter what abuse they've dealt with. The gamepads hold up remarkably well, too, due to their ergonomic feel and having just enough buttons so as not to overwhelm new players.

We haven't even gotten to the murderer's row released by Nintendo in the system's waning days, with two excellent Donkey Kong Country games, a sequel/prequel to Super Mario World, Kirby Super Star, Super Mario RPG, and a raft of other games exploding onto the scene right before the system gave way to the Nintendo 64.

Plus, it had Super Metroid, only one of the best games of all time. Seriously, just about any game you're looking for was on the Super Nintendo.

What Went Wrong: There was no rating system in place during these years, which became a problem with the release of Mortal Kombat. Nintendo didn't want to release a violent game like Mortal Kombat with no rating or warning, since games were still primarily purchased by parents for children. To that end, all blood in the game was replaced with "sweat" and fatalities were removed. Sega came up with their own rating system, relieving them of responsibility. They released Mortal Kombat virtually intact with the inclusion of a "blood code" to unlock every fatality.

That sealed the deal for Nintendo's status as a "kiddie" company. As the advertising tagline went, Sega did what Nintendidn't, and that's an accusation that's dogged Nintendo for years. Even in 2010, it was major news when Nintendo released Zangeki no Reginleiv in Japan, since it was a game with honest-to-goodness blood.

Never mind that Nintendo had perfectly good reasons for not releasing Mortal Kombat intact, and when a rating system was adopted shortly thereafter, Nintendo indeed allowed Acclaim to release Mortal Kombat II whole. Nope, Nintendo is a kiddie company, and forever it shall stay in the eyes of many gamers.

The Super Nintendo's processor also wasn't quite as past as the Sega Genesis, clocking in at 3 Mhz instead of the Genesis' 7 Mhz. That affected sports games, primarily, meaning that faster sports games were on the Genesis. This hurt the SNES at the time, but in retrospect the only sports game anyone seems to remember is NHL '94, while the rest have become a blur.

Lessons Learned: Once again, Nintendo had it pounded into their head that their advantage lay not in the hardware they produced, but in the games they created. If they continued to release quality games at a good clip, no one could stop them.

However, they also got too big for their britches. As stated in the article about the Nintendo 64, instead of teaming up with Sony for the next step in gaming, they assumed they knew more than anyone else about consoles. They kept their heads firmly planted up their butts until it was almost too late.

Fortunately for all of us, Nintendo has realized their mistakes of the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube years, and the future appears bright. Here's to 100 more years, Nintendo.

Ranking Nintendo's Systems: Part 8

We continue our look at Nintendo's best and worst systems. Click to read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6 and part 7.


NES

History: Console gaming was on the ropes in 1985. The console crash of 1983 had almost taken out gaming as we know it. It was so bad that retailers didn't want to stock videogame systems anymore, lest they be stuck with inventory they couldn't move and couldn't send back due to the company folding.

Into this breach walked Nintendo. While we may look back at Nintendo's run of success in the last thirty years and view it as inevitable, it's hard to forget that there was no guarantee that they would be able to pull off a console. Nintendo had never made a home console, cutting its teeth on arcade machines and Game & Watch handhelds.

Would Nintendo be able to make a successful game console in a time when retailers didn't like them, consumers were sick of them, and the country was in a recession?

Results: The NES was an instant success, selling 60 million units. It revived the fortunes of the video game industry, released several classic video games, and became a staple of households all over.

They did this by basically tricking stores into selling it. Remember, after the crash of 1983, no one wanted to stock video game systems. Nintendo called their system the "Nintendo Entertainment System," downplaying its video game roots. The console was a "Control Deck," and the game pad was a "Control Pad." It shipped with a toy robot, so it would be confused for a toy.

The ploy worked as people bought the system for its toy roots, then realized that it was a pretty awesome video game system too. For many (including this writer) the NES was the first system they ever played.

What Went Right: Nintendo launched with one of the best launch games of all time in Super Mario Bros. Reading interviews about the making of Super Mario Bros., it's amazing to see how much thought was actually put in to things we take for granted. Nintendo knew they weren't just making an introduction to the NES, but also to video games as well.

Nintendo laid down the pattern for multiple franchises during this period with games like like The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Kid Icarus, Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, Kirby's Adventure and Tetris. Once the NES became popular, other companies leaped into the fray and started pushing out games like Mega Man 1-5 (we won't talk about Mega Man 6), Metal Gear, Tecmo Bowl, Bases Loaded, Blades of Steel, Castlevania, Contra, Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior (released as Dragon Quest in Japan) and on and on.

Nintendo also pioneered the control pad. Most previous systems used wonky joysticks that could break, and some used weird remotes that needed plastic overlays over the keys. Nintendo laid down the template for the Control Pad that almost every single controller has followed.

While some houses might have had an Atari or a system like it, video game systems weren't a need until the NES. The NES made video games a part of the culture. It didn't take long until every video game system became a "Nintendo" to moms and clueless grandparents. The console industry revved up in 1985 and never looked back.

What Went Wrong: Look, let's be honest. We all love the NES. We do. We have fond memories of blowing on cartridges and renting games from the local video store, and the first time we played Super Mario Bros. We were entranced.

But it's time to face the facts: A lot of these games were only good because we didn't know any better.

We were mostly dumb kids who had never picked up a controller, so we would play literally any game just because it was a game. Kids are stupid like that, and game companies took advantage of that fact, pumping out poorly-made licensed games by the truckload.

Not only that, but a lot of the "great" games are horribly primitive by modern standards. Now, I know that's like judging cave paintings by the standards of the Renaissance, but we need to be honest here. For example, Final Fantasy is a boring grind-fest. It's monotonous battle after monotonous battle. Same with Dragon Quest. Metroid isn't very good. Ditto Kid Icarus. Metal Gear is laughably primitive ("I FEEL ASLEEP!").

There are several games that still hold up. Mario 3 works, as well as almost all of the Mega Man series. Tecmo Bowl holds up too. Of course, Super Mario Bros. is still one of the best gateway games of all time.

Still, if we're totally frank, we only liked the NES because it's inextricably linked to a time and place, memories of giant tube TVs, shag carpeting, sleepovers with your friends, poring over strategy guides, arguments on the playground about doing the hair-pull kick in Double Dragon, waiting for that issue of Nintendo Power to come in the mail, having your mom turn off the system so that you'll "go outside and get fresh air," and getting completely lost in a virtual world for the first time ever and realizing that you'd like to do this for the rest of your life.

Nintendo also had issues with the 72-pin connectors in the NES. How the cartridge system works is like this: A cartridge gets inserted into the connector. The pins on either side of the 72-pin connector separate slightly to allow the game in. When a game with a slightly larger size gets pushed in to the connector, that widens them ever so slightly, making it harder for them to snap back in place.

So which game had a slightly wider size? Only one of the most popular games for the system, Super Mario Bros. 2. That, in turn, led to the infamous "blinking NES syndrome," where your screen would blink blue and black instead of playing a game. And, no, no amount of blowing on the cartridge could help you.

Lessons Learned: First all, Nintendo found out that people would be playing their systems for a long, long time. To that end, future systems had to be durable, more durable than the NES. Every system that Nintendo released after the NES pretty much works as well today as it did when it launched. I've used a Super NES that I had to clean dried cat vomit off of, and it still powered up like a champ.

Most importantly, though, Nintendo's advantage during the NES years didn't come from superior hardware or sound. It came because Nintendo understood what people wanted to play. Their games were just plain better than everyone else's, and that's what made Nintendo into the juggernaut that they became.

They took that to heart. No matter how good your hardware is, it needs good games or else it won't sell. In the years since, Nintendo has hammered that home, which is what's made them the best and most consistent gaming company in the last 25 years.

Ranking Nintendo's Systems: Part 7

We continue our look at Nintendo's best and worst systems. Click to read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5 and part 6.

Nintendo DS

History: All gamers wanted was a Game Boy Advance with better graphics.

That was the general consensus after the Nintendo DS was announced in 2004. Nintendo was shooting themselves in the foot bylaunching a system that wasn't as powerful as the upcoming Sony PSP. Besides, with two screens and a touchscreen, it looked absolutely ridiculous.

Nintendo even backed off carefully from the system, stating that it would be a "third pillar," not something that would entirely eclipse the Game Boy Advance. The internet responded with "Yeah, right," and continued deriding the DS for having a weird shape, for being underpowered, and for using a touchscreen, which no one ever asked for in the first place.

Results: The DS series was Nintendo's most successful system ever, pound for pound. From its launch in 2004, 149 million units have been sold. That's over 21 million units per year.

To put that in perspective, the Game Boy series, including the Advance, sold 199 million units from the launch of the original model in 1989 to the end of the Advance line in 2005, at a rate of 16 million units per year, give or take.

In fact, the touchscreen idea worked so well that it became the de facto standard for all handheld devices, including iOS and Android devices. Even the newest Sony portable will include one. Clearly, Nintendo knew what they were doing.

What Went Right: Nintendo knew there was a huge market out there for handheld gaming after seeing how quickly the market had grown since the launch of the Game Boy. The one market that hadn't been touched, though, were non-gamers.

It seemed silly. If someone doesn't like to play video games, why would you try and and sell them video games? However, Nintendo instead asked the question, "If someone doesn't like to play video games, why don't they?" After researching the question carefully, they released games like Brain Age, which went on to sell over 17 million units worldwide, and Nintendogs, which sold over 21 million copies worldwide.

Nintendo also laid down the template for how to make an engaging touchscreen game with Kirby: Canvas Curse, then launched Mario Kart DS and New Super Mario Bros. and made the DS a must-have.

Since the DS sold like crazy to non-gamers and gamers alike, other companies decided that it was now safe to create games for the system as well. That led to some of the best third-party support for a handheld ever. RPGs, a normally disregarded category among handhelds, called the DS their home. There were wildly ambitious RPGs, like the space opera Infinite Space. There were real-time strategy RPGs, like Knights in the Nightmare. There were puzzle RPGs, action RPGs, platformer RPGs, Rogue-like RPGs, any type of RPG you could ask for.

The DS ended up, all told, with one of the deepest libraries of any handheld gaming system, and frankly, one of the deepest libraries of any system ever. We're going to be seeing articles unpacking the many pleasures of the DS for years to come.

After a well-received redesign brought about the DS Lite, Nintendo made even more money. Battery life for the DS Lite was as good or better as the GBA. The screen was bigger and brighter. While Sony's supposedly superior PSP faltered and became a niche product, the DS continued to establish itself as the premier destination for all handheld gaming.

What Went Wrong: The original DS and the DS Lite were both painfully easy to pirate, and Nintendo had no way to stop it. They couldn't release a firmware update to combat the piracy, since the DS and Lite didn't have that capability. Developers put in code that would make pirated games lock up, but the pirates always found a way around it.

That almost killed the DS' library for a time. Developers got really concerned that their games weren't going to sell, and for good reason. That led some to take their talents to iOS and Android devices, others to create more complex lockout systems to try and disable pirated games.

Nintendo launched the DSi in an attempt to combat the growing problem of piracy and also to make an "App Store" of sorts for the DS. In both fields, they failed. The flashcarts continued being made, although this time for the DSi. DSiWare never took off due to a poorly organized online store and lackluster selections. (Who wants a Mario calculator? Anyone?)

Lessons Learned: Nintendo took to heart several of the criticisms of the DS. For one, they made piracy much more difficult with regular firmware updates that add substantial upgrades to the system.

For instance, one new update allows developers access to more system resources. Imagine if you've been building a flashcart for the old firmware. Now this new update comes along, which means that you may have to start all over from scratch in order to pirate any recent games. I'm sure that those who make flashcarts will find a way, but it's going to be a tough row to hoe.

Nintendo also learned from some of their mistakes with DSiWare. The new eShop for the 3DS is easier to use, allows people to rate games (along with showing how many ratings there are for any given game), has demos, decent games, and more.

However, Nintendo seemed to have forgotten a few lessons as well during the launch of the 3DS. It was priced too high. There were virtually no games to play. Still, in recent months they've recuperated and brought the 3DS closer to the principles laid down by the Game Boy Advance and DS.

Ranking Nintendo's Systems: Part 6

We continue our look at Nintendo's best and worst systems. Click to read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5.

Game Boy Advance

History: As the long-in-the-tooth Game Boy series wound down, Nintendo needed a successor. They unleashed the Advance, which was, at the time, the most powerful handheld system ever seen. The original incarnation had some issues, so Nintendo revised it with the Game Boy Advance SP.

Results: The Game Boy Advance sold over 100 million units during its lifespan and propped up Nintendo during the lean Gamecube years. Great games came out at a furious clip, the likes of which no one had seen up to that point. It served to further help legitimize handheld gaming.

What Went Right: Nintendo had previously experimented with downwards compatibility with the Game Boy Color, allowing users to play original Game Boy games with the system. Now, with the Advance, they truly unleashed its power.

When the Advance launched, not only did it have Super Mario Advance ready to go along with a stable of other quality games, but the entire library of the Game Boy at its back. Combined with the cheap price of the Advance, it just made sense to get one.

Because it leaped out to such an early lead, game after game came out for it. We saw platformers, sports games, RPGs, action games, you name it. And here's the thing: Because there was money to be made, most of these games were actually really good.

Nintendo kept up the onslaught as well, with the Advance Wars and Golden Sun series both making a splash, as well as the Fire Emblem series seeing release in the States for the first time. We even saw a new Metroid game in Metroid Fusion, which was glorious.

They also set to work re-releasing a lot of their old favorites, with the Super Mario Bros. games all getting released as the Super Mario Advance series, as well as the original Metroid getting remade and released as Metroid: Zero Mission.

What Went Wrong: The original hardware was poor. The screen wasn't backlit, so it made it hard to play in all but the brightest light. This led to a company, Afterburner, selling a backlighting solution that relied upon opening up your GBA and soldering in a light. It wasn't for the faint of heart.

In 2003, Nintendo fixed those problems with the GBA SP, which was a clamshell design that included a rechargable battery. It's one of the best hardware redesigns Nintendo's ever done and fixed the vast majority of the GBA's issues.

They tried one more redesign of the GBA toward the end of its lifespan with the GBA Micro. It was a really small system, but it didn't sell very well. The GBA SP was just that good that most people didn't feel the need to replace it with a different model.

One issue that lingered, though, was the remake issue. While it was great to be able to play Super Mario World on a handheld for the first time, game after game was re-mastered and re-released for the GBA. Sure, it was nice, but it was a little excessive. Still, being able to play Final Fantasy III on the go was worth it.

Lessons Learned: Nintendo kept themselves alive during their rough patch with the Gamecube. If it wouldn't have been for the GBA, who knows what would have happened?

Nintendo used the GBA SP redesign principles when designing the followup to the GBA, the Nintendo DS. The clamshell design has stayed permanently for their handhelds, as well as the rechargable battery.

They also were reminded that the principles they learned during the making of the Game Boy would hold true through all their handhelds: Keep the price down, keep battery life reasonable and provide good games and consumers will beat a path to your door.

Ranking Nintendo's Systems: Part 5

We continue our look at Nintendo's best and worst systems. Click to read part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4.

History: The Gamecube was a harsh lesson for Nintendo, which made them rethink what they knew about consoles. They realized they couldn't keep going after the same market that everyone else was going after or they would go the way of Sega. They needed something different.

Nintendo had always experimented with motion controls, with peripherals like the Power Pad and Power Glove representing early (and terrible) forays. Now, though, the technology caught up to the dream, and in 2006 the Wii was unleashed.

Results: The Wii was a runaway success. 89 million units have shipped worldwide, and during the beginning of the Wii's lifespan, it was frequently sold out or unavailable.

Other companies, which derided the Wii's motion controls as a fad and a gimmick, found themselves scrambling to make their own solution. Sony made the Move, which is almost identical to Nintendo's Wii-mote + Nunchuk, and yet more expensive. Microsoft released Kinect, which is actually a surprisingly revolutionary device on its own.

What Went Right: The amazing thing about the Wii is still how simple it is to control. Baseball feels like baseball. Tennis feels like tennis. Golf feels like golf. That alone led to millions of people buying Wiis within the first two years of its existence. It was easy to pick up, understand, and play.

Nintendo also opened up with a flurry of excellent games. Within two years of launch, Zelda: Twilight Princess, Wii Sports, Rayman Raving Rabbids, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Guitar Hero 3, Mario Strikers Charged, No More Heroes, Super Paper Mario, Zack & Wiki, Mario Kart Wii, Rock Band 2, Okami, Mario Super Sluggers, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl all landed. That's not to mention one of the finest games of the generation, Super Mario Galaxy.

The Wii wasn't as powerful as the Playstation 3 or the XBox 360, but that didn't matter at launch. Only about 30% of homes had HDTVs at launch, so the HD boost that the other systems promised was negligible. For most people, the Wii looked good enough, and that's all that mattered.

Nintendo also started selling classic games through the Wii using the Virtual Console. Finally, gamers could play games that they knew and loved from the past, like Super Mario Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog (for the first time on a Nintendo system!), and Super Metroid. It was a fantastic service that reminded people how much they loved Nintendo in the past and rekindled that old flame. Everything seemed to be going great.

What Went Wrong: Nintendo released a game called Wii Play, which had some silly minigames and an extra controller. It sold like hotcakes. Other companies saw this and wanted in. Instead of realizing that the high sales were due to the extra controller included with each purchase, other companies churned out title after title of crappy minigame collections with names like Game Party and Carnival Games.

The problem was that these games sold well, since the people buying the Wii were generally first-time console buyers and didn't know any better. Once the first few collections started selling well, other companies hopped on the minigame bandwagon, and soon everyone was putting out crappy minigame collections for the Wii.

Nintendo didn't help matters, either. After the release of Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Mario Kart Wii in successive months during early 2008, they released almost nothing for a solid year aside from Wii Fit and Wii Music. That left the system entirely in the hands of minigame makers for a solid year, and they did what budget minigame makers will do: Release games until there are no more games to release.

Once Nintendo snapped out of its yearlong funk, the releases continued flowing, but the damage was already done. HDTV adoption made the Wii look like a dinosaur, publishers didn't want to make real games for the system because the audience wasn't there, and without viable options to keep them playing, consumers quickly moved on from the Wii.

It's a shame that Nintendo was caught sleeping on the Wii. One wonders how it would have fared if they would have made some better choices early on.

Lessons Learned: The successor to the Wii, the Wii U, promises to have better graphics while still incorporating the motion controls that made the Wii popular. They're also continuing a history of controller innovation with the Wii U's amazing tablet controller.

Nintendo also learned that while it's important to have buzz around their systems and an exciting hook for consumers, it's also important to release games for it. That's what people buy gaming systems for, after all. They started rectifying this for the Wii with a great lineup of titles, from Punch-Out to New Super Mario Bros. Wii and beyond, although the damage is mostly done.

Still, we won't rightly know what lessons, if any, Nintendo will have learned from the Wii until much further down the road. While they may have sold copious amounts of units and made piles of money, one can only ask the question, "At what cost?"

Ranking Nintendo's Systems: Part 4

We continue our look at Nintendo's best and worst systems. Click to read part 1, part 2 and part 3.


6. Game Boy / Game Boy Color

History: Handheld games have been around for a while. Mattel made a football game as early as 1978, and Nintendo got in on the action in 1980 with their long-running Game & Watch series. These LCD handheld games were cheap games, usually only costing about $20. I was the proud owner of several of them myself, such as Super Mario Bros., Mega Man 2, Ironman Off Road and, embarassingly, Bugs Bunny.

In retrospect, they kind of sucked. They were black images superimposed over an LCD screen, they had no sound to speak of aside from squeaks and squawks, and all you had to do in order to see ALL of the graphics was press the "Reset" button and it would display every available graphic. In short, they were a good stopgap solution, but they had their problems.

Enter the Game Boy, a lightning bolt out of the blue when it released in 1989. We may look back at its green, blurry screen and roll our eyes, but the Game Boy was a definite upgrade over what we had to play at the time. With the Game Boy, you could play bona-fide real games on a portable system wherever you wanted, swap out cartridges and play new games, and have real sound instead of weird blip noises.

Results: The Game Boy series sold 118 million units over ten years before giving way to the Game Boy Advance, which sold another 81 million. To put that in perspective, other companies saw how much money Nintendo was raking in and wanted a share of the handheld market. All of them died quick deaths.

First came the Atari Lynx. It launched in 1989, sold five million units and died. There was the NEC TurboExpress, launched in 1990, which sold 1 million units and died. The most successful challenger to the Game Boy was the Sega Game Gear, which launched in 1990 and sold 11 million units, then finally succumbed in 1997.

What Went Right: Nintendo leaped out to this early and commanding lead in part because of Tetris, the now-famous puzzle game. Tetris was incredibly addicting, easy to play, hard to put down and almost perfect for simple pick-up-and-play sessions, which made it the ideal launch game for the Game Boy. No other handheld system had anything close to it.

The low cost of the system worked in its favor too. While, yes, the screen was subpar and the graphics monochromatic, if it meant you only had to pay $89 for a fully-realized handheld gaming system it was worth it. Because it was using underpowered components, that also meant that battery life was amazing, in the range of 10-20 hours.

The Game Boy survived almost entirely because it was the only game in town that would stay well-supported. While other systems didn’t have recognizable mascots or anything worth playing long-term, Nintendo had Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong and Kirby to keep people’s interest, and they leveraged them repeatedly. There were three Super Mario Land games in the span of 4 years. Link’s Awakening hit in 1993. Kirby had two entries. Donkey Kong came back, triumphantly, in 1994.

Still, it took a while for the full potential of the Game Boy to be unfurled. The Game Boy finally had its killer app in 1996, when Pokemon launched in Japan. It didn’t require you to have a link cable and other friends to share Pokemon with, but if you did you could level up your Pokemon faster and have a lot more fun, which made it one of the first social games. It brought an excitement to the Game Boy that had been missing up until that point and all but guaranteed that other handheld makers would have a hard row to hoe in order to compete.

Nintendo released the Game Boy Color in 1998, which finally brought colors to a Nintendo handheld and kept the fires lit at Nintendo for another three years until the Game Boy Advance could launch. There wasn’t much to talk about with it. They released remastered versions of games like Link’s Awakening, but a lot of the plans they had for it fell through, as Nintendo shifted its focus to the upcoming (and much more promising) Advance.

What Went Wrong: Handheld games simply weren't very good for the most part. There were a lot of crappy ports of bigger console games out there, and what few original games that didn't have "Nintendo" stamped on them were pretty lame. and though the games were still below-average,

The poor library combined with the lame screen meant that the demise of the Game Boy was prophesied repeatedly and emphatically. I had a copy of a EGM from back in 1993 that rated all of the video game systems on a scale of 1-10. Even back then, EGM was saying that the Game Boy only rated a 4 and that it was destined to be discontinued in the coming year. They weren't alone in that assertion, as it seemed that there was only so much more mileage Nintendo could squeak out of the handheld.

I thought of separating the original Game Boy and the Color, but there wasn't much difference between the two. Yes, the Color had color games, but most of those games worked on the original Game Boy as well. The Color did introduce new Game Boy models that had different colored shells, but aside from that the systems were virtually identical. Think of the Game Boy Color as version 1.1 of the Game Boy.

Besides, the games for the Game Boy Color were mostly the same. There were a few bright spots, like the Pokemon series and Metal Gear Solid, but mostly the Game Boy Color was a great system with a mediocre library that survived because it was the most reliable game in town.

Lessons Learned: The key takeaway from the Game Boy was affordability. Nintendo handhelds have never been graphical powerhouses, but they were always cheap to make, which meant more money in Nintendo's pocket. They would take that lesson with them through the creation of the Advance and the Nintendo DS and then, somewhat inexplicably, forget the lesson with the 3DS.

They also were reminded once again of their distinct advantage: Their stable of mascots. The most successful games on the Game Boy were Mario games, Zelda games, Kirby games, Donkey Kong games and the like. That was an advantage that Atari and NEC didn't have, and it was an advantage that Sega exploited excessively to their detriment.

Nintendo also learned that it was important not to listen to the hardware critics. Hardware critics were bashing the Game Boy's green screen since the day it launched and wondering how on earth anyone would want to use such an inferior piece of hardware. However, the market clearly stated that they had no problem with the hardware, so Nintendo could safely ignore the naysayers. As long as consumers were on the side of Nintendo, they knew they would be all right.

Ranking Nintendo's Systems: Part 3

We continue our look at Nintendo's best and worst systems. Part 1 and part 2 can be found here.

7. Nintendo 64

History: Nintendo and Sony were flirting quite a bit during the Super Nintendo years. It got serious enough that Nintendo started wearing Sony's class ring, and Sony even got to third base with Nintendo this one time at a party. Nintendo abruptly called off the relationship when Sony started getting a little too handsy. The rest was history. Sony went off to make their disc-based Playstation, which launched to rave reviews. Nintendo had to make due with the cartridge-based Nintendo 64.

Results: Nintendo started strong, but ended up stumbling to the finish line at the end of the generation. Sony ended up selling 100 million Playstations, while Nintendo finished with 30 million Nintendo 64s. That was still good for second place compared to the limp Sega Saturn, but not what Nintendo was hoping for.

What Went Right: While other companies were fumbling around with 3D games, Nintendo had it figured out right from the get-go. Super Mario 64 still plays and looks great 15 years later. Other companies struggled for years afterwards with camera placement and movement, while Nintendo had it perfected with Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

The Nintendo 64 also became a party console pretty quickly, due to having four controller inputs and a crapload of great multiplayer games. Goldeneye was the first great console shooter, Mario Kart 64's battle mode still gets play years later, and Mario Party showed people what's it's like to get raped by a computer.

They also took the lead on adding force-feedback rumble to controllers. It's now to the point that if a controller doesn't have rumble, we laugh at it. It's that integral to the gaming experience.

What Went Wrong: Nintendo was absolutely terrified of piracy and was terrified that the coming wave of CD burners would make their system a free-for-all. Releasing a cartridge-based system made sense to them at the time, but it hurt them in the long run.

Cartridge technology had a few benefits over discs, such as minimal loading times and a much more difficult copying process, but they were far more expensive to make and produce. That meant that Sony could drop prices on their games after a fashion, while Nintendo was stuck selling their cartridges for the same prices permanently.

Game sizes quickly became bigger and bigger too, and cartridges, with their limited storage capacity, couldn’t handle it. Companies such as Square simply walked away from developing for Nintendo and ran to the open arms of Sony. In turn, that meant that one of the flashpoint games of the generation, Final Fantasy VII, never touched a Nintendo console and became a Sony exclusive. It was arguably that game that made Sony's Playstation into a monster hit, and Nintendo could have had it had they not stubbornly insisted on using cartridges over discs.

Besides, Nintendo 64 emulators quickly caught up. UltraHLE hit in 1999 and quickly brought Nintendo 64 emulation to computers. To reiterate: Before the Nintendo 64's lifespan was over, there was a Nintendo 64 emulator capable of playing these games on any computer with a halfway-decent graphics card, despite Nintendo's best efforts to stave off piracy.

In fact, what made piracy so attractive at the time was the small size of the cartridge ROMs. Mario 64's ROM was only 8MB in size. Even over a dialup connection, that's something you can download with ease. Compare that to the 650 MB held on a CD-ROM, and it's clear that Nintendo made entirely the wrong call by going with cartridges.

The quality of games for the Nintendo 64 was beyond reproach. The quantity of them was another matter. Owing to the high cost of making cartridges, games were few and far between. It came to the point that there was one high-profile release every six months, and the rest of the time there was nothing. Quite literally, nothing.

That's not exaggeration, either. The Nintendo 64 had 287 games released in all regions during their 7 year history. The Playstation had 2,418. So while the Playstation had a steady stream of decent-to-great games to keep gamers interested, the N64 had about 20 games total in their 7 year history that were worth playing at all. But when the games were good, the games were capital-G Good.

Lessons Learned: Nintendo knew they had to back away from cartridges for their next system, but they also wanted to continue avoiding piracy. They selected a disc-based system using minidiscs that were difficult to copy but still provided the benefits of a disc-based system.

They also knew they had to reach out to third-parties more in order to keep a steady stream of gamers interested. They brought companies like Capcom back in to the fold and encouraged Square to make games for their new system.

It also made sense to keep Nintendo’s consoles as multiplayer havens, so Nintendo kept the four-controller layout for the Gamecube. However, as we discussed in the previous article, it wasn’t enough. Even with the harsh lessons they learned, they couldn't quite capitalize. The lessons Nintendo learned wouldn't quite be fully realized for another generation.

Ranking Nintendo's Systems: Part 2

We continue our ranking of Nintendo's systems. Part One is right here.


8. Gamecube

History: The Nintendo 64 limped to the finish line toward the end of the last millennium, and Nintendo needed a jolt in order to remain viable in the home market. To that end, Nintendo announced the Gamecube and promised improved third-party support and lots more games. Instead of using cartridges, they got with the program and started making games on discs. For the Gamecube, Nintendo thought they were going to give everyone exactly what they were clamoring for.

Results: The Gamecube only sold 20 million units during its lifespan. To put that in perspective, we're in the worst recession in 30 years right now. People have less money than ever before. And yet, all three major consoles have managed to sell more units than the Gamecube ever did. The widely-maligned 3DS, in less than a year, has managed to sell six million units, about a third of the entire amount that the Gamecube sold over their entire six-year lifespan.

What Went Right: Some of the games were absolutely amazing. Metroid Prime is one of the best games of their generation. Zelda: Wind Waker is fantastic. Super Smash Bros. Melee is still a multiplayer standby. Plus, for all of the Gamecube's problems, it was a profitable system for Nintendo. That has to count for something.

What Went Wrong: The problem was that the Gamecube did a lot of things OK without excelling at anything in particular. For example, the graphics on the Gamecube were great, even better than the dominant Playstation 2. The XBox had better graphics, though. The multiplayer was well supported, with Mario Kart Double Dash and Super Smash Bros. Melee leading the charge. However, the XBox introduced unified online multiplayer with XBox Live and negated that advantage.

Nintendo still hadn’t figured out modern controllers. After the bizarre three-handed controller of the Nintendo 64, the Gamecube controller further convinced people that Nintendo had lost their minds. The controller was a byzantine mess of buttons that befuddled newcomers, although, in all fairness, it made perfect sense once you started using it.

Since the Gamecube never gained traction in the marketplace, third-party developers started moving their business elsewhere. That meant that earth-shattering games like Grand Theft Auto III never made it to Nintendo's console, which rendered Nintendo's claims of third-party support moot. The type of third-party support they received was a steady diet of sports games and licensed games, which probably wasn’t what Nintendo had in mind.

Plus, the other systems of the time had DVD capability, which Nintendo refused to offer. That doesn't sound like much now, but at the time it was huge advantage for both Microsoft and Sony. DVD players by themselves were $300, so buying a video game system that could handle both DVDs and games gave those other companies an advantage that Nintendo couldn’t claim.

Even Nintendo's vaunted stable of characters wasn't enough to eke out a lead. While there were a few amazing games, the Playstation 2 had a far deeper stable of quality hits and was developing mascots of its own. Their old standby Mario wasn't even pulling his weight, as Super Mario Sunshine was a subpar outing.

In other words, Nintendo tried fighting an arms race with other console manufacturers while skimping on the things that consumers cared about. They ended up alienating people who were casual console buyers, chasing away people who were in to Nintendo games, and pleasing no one.

Lessons Learned: Clearly, Nintendo had to make some major adjustments. They started by changing everything they knew about consoles. They realized they could either compete on graphics or compete on originality, but not both at the same time. Since competing on graphics was expensive and a losing battle, it made sense to compete on originality.

Their crazy controller with 12 buttons and two control sticks was replaced with the Wii-mote, which had exactly 6 buttons and a D-pad. If you added a Nunchuk, you had just two more buttons and an extra control stick. It was much more manageable for newcomers, who enjoyed the low barrier for entry.

They also learned that their strength lies not with how powerful their hardware is, but the strength of their tentpole franchises. No longer would franchises such as Mario lie in mothballs, waiting interminably for a release that never came.

Whether or not you think these are good lessons is entirely up to you.

Ranking Nintendo's Systems: Part 1

Nintendo has a longer history than any of the major players in the industry right now. They've released five console systems and four handheld systems, have sold millions of games and have the most recognizable mascots is all of gaming. Recent struggles aside, they're gaming's most consistent company, with high marks for quality across the board.

For as long as they’ve been in the video game business, there have been really, really highs and some tremendous lows. We're going to count down all of their systems from worst to first and see what lessons they learned from each system. We'll exclude the 3DS, since there's not enough data on it yet to be able to rank it properly. Here are the systems we'll cover:

Portables:
Game Boy/Game Boy Color, Virtual Boy, Game Boy Advance, DS

Consoles:
Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Gamecube, Wii

Let us begin!

9. Virtual Boy

History: Nintendo struck gold in 1989 with the Game Boy, but six years later it was time to put it out to pasture and usher in a new portable system. It's hard to remember now, but in the 90's, people were obsessed with virtual reality. It was going to be the next big thing, and Nintendo wanted to be there first.

So, after carefully considering all of their options and ingesting large quantities of peyote, Nintendo created the Virtual Boy. They figured that gamers will gladly pay upwards of $150 to play a system that has to sit on a stand with a separate controller and play monochromatic 3D games that gave gamers headaches after extended play sessions.

Results: Needless to say, gamers did not bite, and only 800,000 units were shipped. The creator of the system, the venerable Gunpei Yokoi, was fired from Nintendo even though it wasn't entirely his fault. I mean, inventors make wacky stuff all the time. That's what they do. Unless Yokoi physically forced Hiroshi Yamauchi to sign off on this project by holding the president's daughter hostage, this one should have been stopped before it got out the door.

What Went Right: Not much. I mean, Wario Land was a cool game, I guess. The 3D effect, contrary to popular belief, actually looked pretty good. I can say this with authority since I actually played a Virtual Boy several times when it launched and thought it looked promising, aside from the weird red tint for everything.

What Went Wrong: Oh geez, where do we begin? The high price? The monochromatic blazing red display? The way the system was too big to actually wear without propping it up on a headstand, making it too big for a handheld and too useless for a console?

Here's what I don't get. How can this system even get out of product-testing? How can you put a system like this through QA, have people complain of headaches and neck pain, and then rubber-stamp this for shipping? Who looked at this and said, "Yes, this is exactly what the public is clamoring for"?

Lessons Learned: Some might say that Nintendo didn't learn their lesson from the Virtual Boy when releasing the 3DS, but that's not true. The Virtual Boy's problem was never the 3D. The 3D effect was the best thing about the Virtual Boy.

No, the problem is that the system wasn't mainstream enough. If you didn't want to stick your head in a visor, you weren't going to play the Virtual Boy. Since most people didn't want to stick their heads in a visor, that left out a huge chunk of Nintendo's potential audience.

Also, while the idea of a system that could do 3D was good, the technology simply wasn't there yet to make it work right. Nintendo learned that just because something is a cool idea doesn't mean it's a good idea for mass production.

These lessons revealed themselves in the Wii and the DS. The Wii and DS had multiple ways to play and mostly gave the gamer the option of playing the way they want to play. They also didn't cram those systems full of the latest technology, but stayed just a step or two behind. That kept the cost down for the consumer and manufacturer while still providing the consumer with something "new."

For part 2 of this series, click here.

Downwards Compatible's End Of Year Awards

Most Disappointing Game

Metroid Other M

It wasn't the cutscenes that bothered me about this game. It wasn't the storyline or the characterization of Samus that annoyed me either. What annoyed me was this: They removed the essence of Metroid and then called it a Metroid game.


For example, in a normal Metroid game, you would have been subjected to the hot areas or the slowness of the gravity areas until you found the Varia or Gravity suit. Then you could gleefully traverse the areas that you couldn't before. You could also take out enemies that you couldn't before since you now had the tools needed to handle them.

I think Nintendo discounted how important that feature is to the long-term appeal of Metroid. Metroid has always been about seeing things you can't open or defeat, then finding the tool on your own and pushing past the problem. It's a sense of satisfaction knowing that YOU did something.

Other M instead keeps you from doing anything because you're just waiting for permission. This kills one of the biggest battles at the end, because you're not told that you have permission to use a specific weapon and since it hasn't been demonstrated since the very beginning of the game, you've forgotten how to use it.

Also, Metroid is about backtracking. It's about returning to previous areas stronger to show you how far you've come since the beginning. It's only until AFTER the game is over that you can finally play Other M the way you SHOULD have been able to at the beginning. Sigh. Such a missed opportunity.

Most Pleasant Surprise

The Wii's Emergence As A Real Gaming System

The Wii had one of its best years this year. Super Mario Galaxy 2 is an all-time classic, and they've had decent game after decent game come out. The only thing Wii gamers are missing is a major RPG, but that will never-

OH LOOK THERE IT'S "THE LAST STORY!"

Love it.

Most Shocking Decline That I Saw Coming a Mile Away

The Death of Guitar Games

As recently as earlier this year, I said that the massive amounts of Guitar Hero spinoffs would kill not only the Guitar Hero brand but also Rock Band and anyone else who tried to make them. Didn't I? Didn't I call this one from a mile away?

Then Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock launched and everyone was surprised that it flopped. Then Rock Band 3 fell on its face undeservedly. I'm telling you, Activision is driving every single one of its franchises into the dirt and the next one up is Call of Duty. You heard it here first.

Game That's Like Eating A Really Good Sandwich That Has Poop In It Every Ten Bites

Donkey Kong Country Returns

I love DKC Returns. I really do. It's fun, it's smart, it's just the right amount of difficult. However, about every ten levels, you're presented with a level where you have to fly a rocket around the level. This rocket is difficult to control, and you only have one hit until you're dead. Save points are few and far between in these levels.

Add to this the Super Guide system, which starts bothering you after you die eight times in the level and you CAN'T TURN OFF, and you have a recipe for rage quitting.

Great game, though.

Game I'm Most Looking Forward to Playing Now That I'm Not Writing For Gaming Trend

InFamous

I've been writing for Gaming Trend for the past two and a half years. They're a fine publication, and we left on good terms. However, for the last two years I haven't been able to do what I love doing: Buying piles of games dirt-cheap and playing them at my leisure. I used to do this all the time. I bought the original Ghost Recon for $2 used. I've bought games like Viewtiful Joe for $1.99. At that price, almost any game is fun.

Now that I own a PS3, I want to do the same thing. The first game on my list was Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. I played it for a while and had a good time, and I intend to finish it before I move on to Uncharted 2. However, I also now have InFamous, and everyone tells me it's better than Prototype, which I loved. Looking forward to it.

Downwards Compatible Games of the Year

3) Kirby's Epic Yarn

Kirby's Epic Yarn exists to make you smile. If you play games to take out your aggression or the equivalent of punching a pillow when you're angry, you won't like Kirby. However, if you play games to have a good time, relax and smile, then you'll enjoy Epic Yarn.

2) Dragon Quest IX

I've now put in about 80 hours in DQ9 and I still haven't finished it. It's not even like I've done a ton of side quests or anything: I've just been goofing around and levelling up characters. It's a turn-based JRPG in its purest form, and it's magic.

1) Super Mario Galaxy 2

Super Mario Galaxy 2 is remarkably confident. It's hard, it sounds great, it's clever, and it looks beautiful. It's the new game against which all 3-D platformers should be judged, and it should stand as one of Nintendo's crowning achievements in a long list of them.