No one can deny what Nintendo have achieved in the gaming industry.
Having practically invented gaming as we know and love today it's pretty obvious to say that they are a big company, but with so many games in their catalogue, how on Earth do they manage to get so many A list titles out every year? It just takes too long to produce a great game nowadays that without any help, Nintendo would only be able to release two or three games per year.
For the last few years Nintendo have allowed second and third party developers to use Nintendo brand characters in their own games.
This might be a good business decision; more 'Nintendo' brand games being developed and on sale. But are these games that are made on behalf of Nintendo as good as the ones created by Nintendo? Lets take a look!
The Donkey Kong Country series on the SNES (and subsequent consoles) was created and developed by Rare. They took a Nintendo character (Donkey Kong) and totally relaunched him with much success that it spawned many sequels as well as re-releases.
Other examples are;
- Smash Bros (N64, GC) were developed by Hal. A very popular and sucessful title which now has another sequel coming to Wii, which is being developed by an offshoot of Konami.
Now I didn't actually think that much of Smash Bros, but I can recoginise it was a quality title.
- Mario Party (N64, GC, GBA, Wii, DS) were developed by Hudson. Again, another very popular title, having seven straight sequels as well as two portable versions. I think Mario Party is crap. Awful Graphics, lazy design and sluggish gameplay.
- Paper Mario (N64, GC, Wii) were developed by Intelligent Systems. I've only played the latest Paper Mario title on Wii, but I was very dissapointed. It has the look, sound and cleverness of a Nintendo title, but it just doesn't feel quite right.
- F-Zero X GX (GC) was developed by Amusement Vision. A great title, sticking firmly to the roots of the previous title released on the N64.
- Metroid Prime (GC, DS, Wii) were developed by Retro Studios. Another step into the unknown, take one of the lesser known Nintendo characters (Samus), rip them out of 2D and put them into 3D. A very series and being a first person shooter helped Nintendo shrug off the kiddie image.
So is there a trend here? Yes, I think there is. Nintendo have made a wise decision in working with other developers to create more Nintendo games. Sure there are a few duffers, but over all the quality is quite high. I personally don't think they are up to the same standard of Nintendo's own fully developed games, but that is a near impossible task to ask of other developers anyway.