"What, another list of 15 essential Nintendo games? This girl must really like Mario." Well, you'd be right. I don't know what it was about Super Mario World that made me love Nintendo products so much (Mario in particular... well, Luigi, actually), but my very first game system was a Game Boy and every console I had between then and now that wasn't a computer was made by Nintendo. For about 15 years, I never missed a single Mario game, and even though I may not have shown up with a wad of cash promptly upon launch day, you could bet that you would find the newest Nintendo system in my sitting room.
So, you can understand how betrayed I feel when I read about takedown notices on YouTube videos and lawsuits and things instigated by Nintendo because "we must protect our intellectual property at all cost!" Seriously! When Nintendo announced they were shutting off the Wii U and 3DS eShops and Nintendo Network, and people responded by jailbreaking their devices so they could continue playing Splatoon and Mario Kart Wii with each other, Nintendo issued surprise firmware updates that were designed to brick them. As though that behaviour is going to make people even consider buying a Switch Lite for a single firing of synapses. And, of course, who can forget the freemium Android dreck? Super Mario Run and Mario Kart Tour were specifically designed so you had to keep paying and paying and paying. How much did that kid spend on Tour gacha again? 170 USD? Frankly, I don't care that they deprecated the lootboxes with a DLC shop, it's all the same with different labels. It's still requiring you to pay to play—all it does is take away the randomness factor. Protecting the brand? More like damaging it beyond recognition.
I still like Nintendo's old games, and a few of their newer ones look quite interesting as well. However, I like my privacy more than any videogame, and Nintendo Switch owners haven't got any of that. Advert-synchronisation, for a start. Amazon and Google are being fed data about your game library, how much you play a particular game, whether you bought anything the last time you went to the eShop, whether you play mostly on the TV or in handheld mode, and far more esoteric analysis than that every time you pick up the console. Nintendo can see your Nintendo ID, what software you have installed, what firmware revision you have, and whether you've cracked your system or not. To say nothing of the United States spy agencies; you wouldn't think they would want your gaming data, but if they should need that information, they've got it to correlate with your Spotify playlists, YouTube watch history, the contents of your browser cache, and whatever they can get from that keylogger built into your RAM. I guess when Nintendo were naming their new console back in 2016, "Elf on the Shelf" was already trademarked.
Maybe you can excuse unforgiveable infringements upon personal liberties by giant corporations and international spies. Let's talk about the Super Mario Movie. Nintendo specifically sought out Chris Pratt to play the voice of Mario in this film; by all accounts a terrible human being. Not only did he vote for Donald Trump twice, he campaigned for Trump on Twitter in 2016, and, when it comes to Jews and transgender people, he and Joanne Rowling would get along very well. Also, there's the bit where he wanted to be a policeman like his brother, but was thought too fat for the academy. Remember the first couple series of Parks & Rec? It wasn't until he starved himself so he could play the lead in Guardians of the Galaxy that he approached standard policeman's build, but by that time (fortunately for the people of colour who would have been on his beat), he was already the number-one leading man in Hollywood. The main thing people brought up at the time was that Charles Martinet "wasn't capable" of playing the Mario Brothers' voices in a feature-length film. Ignoring for the moment Charles's acting and announcing career, there's Shaun the Sheep. This is a television programme and 3 feature films where the voice actors don't have to do anything but grunt and imitate animal noises. There's series 2-4 of Courage the Cowardly Dog, where the title character is incapable of speech because he's a dog (sure, in series 1, Courage could speak, but only the viewer could understand him). Basically, Nintendo completely shafted Charles by seeking out a big name, and I can understand how that would impact one's enthusiasm to the point of retirement. "Look, Chucky ol' pal, I know you've been our Mario since the Super Famicom was in development, but you're just not bringin' in the bacon, you know what I mean?" As I wrote on Tumblr at the time, there would be cams of the Mario movie on all the pirate sites the day of release and Nintendo's entire back catalogue was available for free on the Internet Archive; you should punch Nintendo in the face for leaving Charles behind like they did.
The other reason I talk so much about Nintendo is that, by dint of being the most senior game company still in existence, they have a nigh-unfathomable back catalogue, the vast majority of which can be played on emulators alone. As anyone with a jailbroken Wii U knows, that system is a formidable gaming machine when cut free of its corporate feudal shackles. With the possible exception of the Nintendo 3DS and some Sony stuff, the Wii U can be every game system released between the years of 1977 and 2012. This is basically the Fairchild Channel F all the way up to the Wii U itself. In Nintendo games alone, the hacked Wii U is capable of playing 13,572 officially-licensed titles. Even taking into account the games that require special hardware considerations (the uDraw GameTablet, the Wii Balance Board, or whatever primitive cartridge-mounted gyroscope), we're still looking at over 13 and a half thousand games, just for Nintendo systems. My question is, why wouldn't anyone recommend the Wii U? Well, for a start, some of those old Game Boy games aren't going to benefit from getting blown up to TV screen sizes, which is what your jailbroken 3DS is for.
TL;DR, Nintendo may be your garden-variety corporate feudal duchy, but they used to make good games. Complete games. All-in-one jobs that you only had to buy one single time. At some point, it will be possible to jailbreak a Switch in a way that Nintendo won't bother trying to detect, and when that day comes, I'll be right here with a list of 15 Essential Games for Nintendo Switch. But, until then, jailbreak, emulate, stay private, and save your money.
Also, it's Monday. Go have a donut.
--29 January 2024--