When Nintendo announced they were resurrecting their famed 1993 Nintendo World Championships for E3 this year, I praised it as potentially the must-see moment of the event. I went on and on about how awesome a new Nintendo championship could be using both Nintendo’s past and present classics, which have evolved a long way from the days of Super Mario Bros, Tetris and Rad Racer.
But now, hearing the first real details about the event, it’s hard not to be anything other than disappointed, and think Nintendo is missing a big opportunity to do something cool.
The “World” Championships is a bit less broad in scope than that, and is limited only to the United States, it turns out. That wouldn’t be the end of the world, considering the original tournament was also US-only, but there are only eight qualifying events in eight cities in the lead-up to E3, two of them in California alone. Here’s the list:
San Francisco, CA (1717 Harrison St.)
Torrance, CA (3675 Pacific Coast Highway)
Miami, FL (10760 NW 17th St.)
Schaumburg, IL (900 E. Golf Road)
Maple Grove, MN (12905 Elm Creek Blvd. N)
Long Island City, NY (5011 Northern Blvd.)
Dallas, TX (9378 N Central Expy)
Tacoma, WA (2214 S. 48th St.)
That’s somewhat spread out around the country, sure, but it leaves a hell of a lot of gap areas, and with only eight locations, fans are likely going to absolutely swarm them.
But even more disappointing is what the qualifiers actually consist of:
“Compete for the highest score on Championship Mode in the Ultimate NES™ Remix game for the Nintendo 3DS™”
When I wrote my original post, I was met with cynics who told me that Nintendo was probably just going to have people play the Championship Mode on Ultimate NES Remix, but I dismissed that saying that there was no way they’d be that uncreative. And yet, here we are.
While the Ultimate NES Remix challenge isn’t an exact reproduction of the original games in the Championships, it’s still a pretty limited selection of old-school titles, and this entire thing seems like a metaphor for Nintendo being both stuck in the past (by using only its oldest titles) and underprepared for consumer demand (by only setting up eight locations for qualifiers).
Watching people play NES Remix at E3 is not going to make for a fun spectator sport. I was picturing people doing speedruns or score-runs of SNES, N64 and Gamecube games, alongside maybe some competitive activities like Splatoon or Smash Bros. deathmatches. This, playing a handheld “Remix” of Nintendo classics is something to get far less excited about.
Some are saying that perhaps the final event will be more involved and the types of things I’m proposing could still come to pass. But why you’d have people qualify on one type of game and then switch to another, I have no idea, so I don’t see any way that NES Remix Championship Mode isn’t what’s played in the final. Still no word on the prizes yet, but at this rate, it’s going to be another 1994 Geo convertible.
I don’t know, maybe it was silly of me to get so excited for new Nintendo World Championships, but in this age where interest in eSports and competitive gaming is at an all-time high, I expected something a bit more…involved. Maybe the final event will be more interesting than I’m giving it credit for, but for now, this hardly seems like the can’t-miss spectacle I hoped it would be when it was announced.
Game development
The employees at Pixotri Game Studio have vast experience in creating games and are always trying to push the boundaries of technology and creativity. The games are created using the most popular game enigine Unity, which provides robust, high performance, platform independent solution to creating games.
Pixotri technology is a creative house developing quality web designs, E-Commerce solution. SEO services and Gaming development .
Contact us for your mobile gaming requirements email-info@pixotritechnologies.com. Visit our website: www.pixotritechnologies.com
No comments:
Post a Comment