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Nintendo Lovers-

Times change, they truly do. I remember some years ago before the 32-bit technology had profited through the market, when all there was to such an extent was the Panasonic 3DO and 16-bit systems were all the modest American buyer spoke on a daily basis. There were two major players, if you recall (it wasn’t such a long time ago), the SEGA Genesis and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. During these times, a bloody competition began to take place, actually beginning with the SEGA Master System and NES, SEGA and Nintendo started to bite at each other’s necks. Who suffered? Only the companies, since the buyer ended up with the better part of the turmoil, games improving every month. In time, Nintendo’s superiority with the SNES forced SEGA out of the competition, but the victory was short lived in the wake of systems such as the SEGA Saturn and Sony’s PlayStation. Where am I going, you ask?

Nintendo lovers. They are an unbearable force that attempts to influence the rest of humanity into taking blind assumptions. These are the people we mocked because they kept waiting for the Ultra 64. They are drones, simple minded people that force their eyes to squint at every mention of a different system. I am so sick and tired of their everyday arguments. "Final Fantasy 7? Wait for Zelda 64!" Perhaps not all Nintendo lovers are stupid enough to disregard FF7 and such, but the problem is, I have never met one that doesn’t. I will proceed to discuss what my problem is with this.

I owned a SEGA Genesis before the 32-bit revolution, but I admitted the SNES to be a superior machine. The reason was that I understood the graphical advantage of the machine, as well as its ability to handle longer games, such as the Final Fantasy franchise and Zelda. In a way, however, I was also able to say that the Genesis could handle itself on many different grounds, even better than the SNES. SEGA provided us with excellent sport titles and faster gameplay (most notably in a comparison between Mario and Sonic). Sure, I owned a Genesis, because I preferred it, but I never said anything bad about the opposing company, I admitted the competition’s obvious advantages (I eventually purchased an SNES myself). Nintendo fans, on the other hand, would never even glimpse at a picture of a Genesis game without blurring "crap."

Today is a different world. A world, I regret to say, in which SEGA has unfortunately lost its share of the market thanks to the downfall of the Saturn, and will continue thus until the Dreamcast. I liked the Saturn, I have never said it was better than the PSX, but I have pointed out its ability to produce far better sound quality than the latter on several occasions. Sony fans never minded this, because they have the awareness of the fact that their machine is far better in every other aspect. What I don’t understand is why a person blinds him/herself to facts in order to literally engage in worship for the company that supplies them with games. There are perhaps, loyal SEGA fans and loyal Sony fans—for crying out loud there may even be loyal Panasonic fans—but as far as company lovers go, there are only Nintendo ones, and they are the blind worshipers. I was shocked at the amount of anger that was directed towards me when I pointed out the greatness of the Saturn (VF2, Sega Rally, etc.) to Nintendo lovers friends of mine. They ridiculed me, to say the least; still, I believe the Saturn to be better a game processor than the N64, particularly now with the release of Last Bronx and Panzer Dragoon Saga.

Their system is crap. I have personally been in possession of an N64 and have played a majority of the games, at least all of the popular ones so far, and I still have one available to try the newest additions. The truth is that Nintendo has not supplied the system with a decent title since Goldeneye. I honestly hope Zelda 64 displays a hope for the system, so far none none exists. Fear has often griped my mind when I see friends with "Nintendo Power" magazines, talking about the latest racing game or the latest Mario 64 clone. My fear is: Is Nintendo brainwashing them? Under what criteria do they categorize the dull new games as decent or good?

And friends, what games have we seen so far worth mentioning for the system? Mario 64, Goldeneye 007, and Wave Race 64 (and boy do I hate the fact that all games end with 64) are the only ones that come to mind. These three came out in the first and second round of waves from Nintendo and are by far the best three. Of course these three have had tons of clones, of Mario we have Banjo Kazooie, Conker’s Quest, Mystical Ninja, Quest 64 fits, even racing games such as Mario Kart 64 and Diddy Kong Racing use the same engine—come to think of it, even Pilot Wings fits here!—; then we have clones for Goldeneye such as Turok: Dinosaur Hunter and Mission Impossible. After these we have games that pissed everyone except Nintendo lovers, such as Cruisin’ USA and War Gods. All attempt at recreating the genre of fighting games for the N64 have been drastically unsuccessful even till now, the only decent fighter thus far ended up being Mortal Kombat 4 (want Killer Instinct? Go to your SNES for reasonably equal experience). Sadly, that pretty much covers all of Nintendo’s lineup so far. Starfox 64 was okay, I have to say, but compared with games like Rebel Assault II, Wing Commander IV and Colony Wars it is a pitiful shooter. Why are these other games superior? The stories are somewhat smart, the characters are not pukable, the graphics are not stupid and cute, and the difficulties are challenging. Racers such as San Francisco Rush look silly when compared to new PSX games like Gran Turismo or older ones such as Wipeout XL. There are some other games out there for the N64, but nothing special. Sure, we’ve seen Duke Nukem 64, Quake 64, Mortal Kombat Trilogy, and the Star Wars game Shadows of the Empire. Unfortunately, all of these suffered a lack of graphical detail and a decay in fluidity of motion; their PC and PSX counterparts outdo them in every way (except speed and loading, of course). I will not include comments of sport games simply because I haven’t played enough of them to judge, but I doubt them to be very satisfying.

The N64 offers no loading time, but in the progress removes all that loading is necessary for. The system is sorry for many other reasons. The controllers are the worst in the market—the worst. They would have done wiser to preserve the SNES pads. The games can have no FMVs and no CG movies. The sounds are reduced to cartridge quality, which is a step back from CDs. And the cartridges themselves make for terrible storage. The cartridges also makes the machine inapt to support long games, such as most RPGs, or complex games, such as most war strategy games. For these reasons and others, I doubt the upcoming Zelda game will ever truly prove the system worthy of someone's money, nor do I think it will compare to Final Fantasy 7, or, for that matter, its upcoming sequel.

Nintendo designed the system, in my opinion, to simply get a good laugh at their followers. Here is a system that could not have been intended for mature gamers. The anti-aliasing or blurring of the screen effect that is so hyped about actually makes even bloody games like Duke Nukem look gorgeous. In their cuteness, all N64 games are Mario 64 clones, and this frightens me.

The people at Nintendo are laughing, I can see that now. They have brainwashed the players somehow, there is no way a logical mind can otherwise stick with this system. The funniest thing is, they didn’t even bother covering it up! The machine is so retarded is so many ways, yet they called it "Nintendo 64" which implied "64 bits" or "better than 32 bits" or simply "better." Yet they held on to technologies from a decade ago—the cartridge—and gave the product no opportunity to evolutionize, unlike Sony, whose Playstation continually receives additions that show further hardware ability. Games such as Goldeneye will never be surpassed in quality. The prolonged and thus cancelled 64DD was supposed to adhere a new technology to the system. Ha. Why would Nintendo bother doing such a thing, though, when every stupid Nintendo drone keeps buying more and more extra copies of Goldeneye and Mario Kart just to sustain their beloved company?

By SteveDogg