Innovation or Fun?
By Andy Robinson

Some times I feel that Nintendo try too hard to be innovative, innovation is after all not why people play games all it does is separate a game from another and create a fresh new experience. Creating a game where you play as a giant potatoe with magic powers that can be used to sweep the floors of a shoe house may be innovative, but chances are it’s going to be boring as hell.

Take Majora’s Mask on N64, Nintendo could have simply created Ocarina of Time but with more dungeons and it would have been a very fun game but Nintendo instead opted to go for the three day time thing which only limits the game. Don’t get me wrong here, Majora’s Mask was a great game but all I hear from my over eighteen friends is that they didn’t have the time to complete the game because you couldn’t save in the middle of a dungeon.

Which brings me to another subject: game length. Whether you like it or not Nintendo’s games are going to get shorter and shorter as time goes on, unless of course Nintendo opt to release about 3 games a year which I doubt they’ll do after the complaints during the N64’s reign. Graphics are getting increasingly more realistic looking and thus the standards for how good a game must look are rising, this will focus development time more and more on graphics as systems become increasingly more sophisticated and it becomes more difficult to get a game upto standard in the looks department.

Looking back now this is probably one of the reasons why Mr. Miyamoto and the Zelda GC team decided to use cell shading in the next Zelda game, people have come to expect a huge epic from a Zelda title and the Gamecube Zelda would have to be in development for years if the game was to have good graphics and be the same length as Ocarina of Time. Of course cell shading is not easy to do but it’s certainly easier than all the graphic techniques that go into a realistic looking game.

Another reason why Nintendo’s games will become shorter is the industry’s demographic increasingly shifting to the mature audience. Adults don’t have the time to play through a 50 hour game and will usually have a quick play after work or on a Sunday morning, if they buy Nintendo titles and find that they keep stopping half way through they’re going to turn to other companies with shorter more arcade style games.

Perhaps in this generation Mr. Miyamoto’s industry innovation will be to create a game that can be played for a quick 10 minute blast and a 6 hour game-fest. I love a good epic (which is not the equivalent of an interactive movie) and so far I havent found a game that can be enjoyed for both a long and short game, Animal Forest coming the closest to what I’m looking for.

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