Nintendo: Is history repeating itself?

You know Nintendo, right? That one game company that used to be hot shit but has become kinda... not great? What the hell happened there? The obvious answer is "shovelware and ignoring the hardcore fanbase," but is that really all? Something iffy is going on here, and it is so bad that I am fully willing to make the controversial statement that if Sony and Microsoft weren't around right now, we would almost definitely be experiencing a repeat of the Video Game Crash of '83.

What the hell am I talking about? Follow me into a magical land of history and wild alarmist theory to find out!

First a history lesson. It is the early 1980s, and you are a fan of this newish thing called "video games." You have the latest in Atari technology, the 5200, and while its not as great as your old 2600, its still decent...ish. But the mediocrity of the system eventually drives you to get a new system. You go to the store, and are swiftly overwhelmed. Intellivisions and F-Channels and Odysseys as far as the eye can see, and this isn't even counting all of the older systems like the piles of Adams and various Coleco products. You say the hell with it, and just decide to get some new games for your good ol' Atari 2600. You buy a good stack of games... and they all turn out to be garbage. The market has been flooded with shoddy merchandise, burying all of the quality games under a huge mountain of shit. Also, keep in mind that there is no such thing as the internet, and any magazine coverage or advertising is going to be minimal and misleading at best. You have no idea if a certain game is going to be any good, or even work properly, unless you talk to someone else who has already played it. You, understandably, are frustrated beyond belief.

This is the process that almost all gaming enthusiasts went through. The success of the Atari not only spawned a huge pool of competitors, but also unleashed a flood of games in an era when anyone and everyone could create a game to sell on the popular system. Gamers eventually became sick of the whole damn headache and simply abandoned the pastime. This is the Video Game Crash of '83, the result of everyone simply taking their collective ball and going home. It seemed as though video games in North America were dead.

Then Nintendo came to the scene. They marketed their new system not as a video game console, but as an "entertainment system," and even packaged the thing with a GUN AND A ROBOT to make it seem more like a toy than an accursed video game. This seems kind of familiar, but HOLY SHIT WHO CARES IT HAS A GUN AND A FUCKING ROBOT.Yeah, it was sneaky, but by the time people realized what was up, they were already addicted to Mario, so nobody cared. Even the problem of floods of games was addressed with the "Nintendo Seal of Quality," a promise made by Nintendo that they personally approved each and every game made and assured its quality. In reality, this was mostly a placebo, and the seal really just meant that a company had to go through Nintendo to make their games, but it still worked. ROB and his shiny stickers played the role of Trojan Horse perfectly, and Nintendo had revived video gaming in North America. It's entirely possible that if Nintendo had never stepped in, we'd still be avoiding video games like it was some kind of wallet plague.

So... how did they fuck this up? Even ignoring the company's steadfast refusal to get with the times and fully implement internet support or powerful processors, there's a slew of problems here. The most glaring is their eventual abandonment of their seal of quality. At first this didn't really mean anything, but with the advent of the Wii, Nintendo lightened up their game making rules and allowed for a greater variety of games to be made for their system. Yes, this means shovelware. It's less the fact that tons of people want to cash in on the Wii ponyride, and more the fact that Nintendo has become more lax over the years, and has hired more lenient bouncers for their club. So they have turned around and removed the primary safeguard they established in the '80s to prevent bullshit from happening all over again. Nice job breaking it, hero.

But what about that other problem, with all the competitors? Well this was first handled by the backlash of the Crash and the sheer awesomeness of the NES. Everyone was too shell shocked to enter the race, and when competitors did pop up, they were met with very little fanfare, as everyone was too busy stabbing Octoroks in the face and blowing up planets with that Metroid guy. At least until Sega came around, but this was a long while after the Crash, and both systems had very different draws. Flash forward a few years. Sega has risen and fallen, and Atari has made a few efforts to resurface, but kept getting beaten back down. Sony came about, but Nintendo was still going strong. Now we even have Microsoft to add to the pile. But each of these companies make very different systems, with different perks for different people. They're not all exactly the same, like everything before the crash was. Most games are even made for all of the major systems, eliminating a good amount of dividing between the systems. So people can decide what they want, and get just that.

The problem here is that Nintendo is becoming that expendable company of the bunch. Sure, the DS is amazing, but whats to say that their next handheld doesn't end up like the Wii? Nowadays, you'll find very few people that praise the Wii for its excellent games. It does have some gems, but they're all buried beneath a mountain of garbage. (Sound familiar?) Almost everyone that isn't Grandma vastly prefers the 360 or the PS3. And what would happen if we didn't have Microsoft or Sony? I see a big bunch of crashing happening, that's what. Not exactly the same thing as the '83 crash, but still pretty damn similar.