Say what you will about Nintendo as a corporate entity (and I can say a fair bit)... if they've done nothing else for games, at least they've managed to keep kids these days aware of older game consoles. I was just too late for the Atari 2600 party and only peripherally aware of the NES when I started playing videogames back in 1995. If you'd shown me a gameplay video of Super Mario Bros or The Legend of Zelda, I'd have accused you of making stuff up. Fortunately, the only good thing about Nintendo Switch Online is that kids can actually play those old games from the '80s and '90s, and it doesn't look weird of boring to them. A well-equipped child this year has access to more games than I ever dreamed were possible when I got my Nintendo 64 in '97, from an array of graphical styles. From the single-colour 8x8 sprites of the Atari 2600 all the way through to the photorealistic 4K graphics of the modern time, and everything in between-- kids have got it good in the gaming department.
Why is any of this relevant? It softens the culture shock when a game developer decides to make a game that looks and sounds like it came off the Super NES. I'm in the initial stages of founding such a company, and I'm very glad for Nintendo's continued insistence that people buy a new version of Super Mario Bros. every 2 years. We might have a problem if they decide not to release a new console this generation, though; because Microsoft and Sony are very much about intense spectacles of graphics and pre-orchestrated music. Nintendo has the market cornered on anything that could be considered "vintage gaming", because all their competition from the old days long since faded away; either from lack of operating capital, getting folded into a larger company that got folded into an even larger company, or complete acquisition by Nintendo themselves. Sony started out in the 64-bit era, shunning all the 16-bit games their Imagesoft label published; Microsoft didn't come stomping in with the Xbox until 2000, at which point the underlying technical advancements were already being built into the PS2 and the GameCube. plus, Nintendo was the only company with a mascot. Several mascots, actually. The nearest thing Sony ever got to a mascot for the PS1 was Rayman, which dried up quickly with the N64 release of Rayman 2: The Great Escape. Microsoft never bothered themselves with mascots. Well, unless you count Clippy, but he never showed up in a videogame. Now what do we have? The PS5 and Xbox X/S, which basically stand abeam with the current generation of high-end gaming computer, and an ageing console that has been plagued by JoyCon drift from the very start.
Of course, we are very much pushing the boundaries of Moore's Law-- having a new, faster processor every 6 months was easy when your best processor is a Motorola 68000. You just know that the first quantum game console is going to be attached to Google and it will only enhance the gaming experience half a percent.
So, that brings us back to kids in 2023 playing games from 1988. It's not as though Nintendo is going to just disappear into the night, especially as they've spent millions on lawsuits and CND orders against emulation websites. Maybe all the Switch 2 does is split the mobile and home game console back up into two devices. Maybe it's just a regular Switch with a new operating system. Who cares? The point is that kids are still playing Super Mario All-Stars, and that's encouraging.
--22 April 2023--