Please Rip-Off Nintendo

Please Rip-Off Nintendo

OPINION

Remember those early Nintendo titles? Great weren't they? More companies should take those ideas and re-imagine them because Nintendo certainly aren't.

I’ll admit it. I used to be a Nintendo fanboy. Early first-party titles like Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong Country, and A Link to the Past earned my die-hard loyalty. Later games like Wind Waker and Metroid Prime might as well have put my heart in a friggin’ vice grip. But sadly, things changed when we headed into the current generation and even two decades of great memories weren’t enough to keep me interested in the Wii. Time after time, I’d be let down by sub-par graphics, broken online play and the constant need to “waggle.” I lost interest in some of my favorite series' and it didn’t take long for me to stop playing Nintendo games entirely.

I know there are tons of gamers out there that are just as disappointed as me, so why don’t other developers take advantage of this? Nintendo rarely gets the competition they deserve, so it makes sense for other companies to toss their hats in the ring. Here are a couple of cases where I wish a new developer would step up and just rip-off Nintendo.

Pokémon


The idea behind Pokémon is great; you traverse the world, collecting seemingly endless amounts of monsters that you can customize and evolve into more powerful forms, and destroy anybody who stands in your path. Awesome, right? The only problem is that it’s directly targeted at kids. I can’t even mention the word ‘Pokémon’ without getting raised eyebrows and the fact that most people identify the series by the trading cards and the TV show doesn’t help. But if a different developer could take the core idea of Pokémon and bring it to an older audience, it would really hit home with a lot of the fans out there.

Please Rip-Off Nintendo


New monsters could be more mature, original and finally we could finally stop laughing at creatures like Mr. Mime and Luvdisc (don’t get me started on that ice-cream cone monster!) Other possibilities include a change to action-based combat rather than the current turn-based system used by Nintendo or maybe even an active-time-battle system (i.e. Final Fantasy), which could make the battles feel a little more intense. It would be great to see a real story motivating the player and more advanced role-playing-game features to keep them interested. Besides, even if a new series wasn’t revolutionary, it would be nice to get a fresh look on a franchise that hasn’t really changed since it debuted 15 years ago. Just please, please don’t let there be another anime!

Things to add: Different combat, more advanced RPG elements, actual story

Things to keep: Tons of monsters, evolutions, “super-effective” moves