Really, Nintendo? Really?!

One in a million... mistakes.

Alright, so by now it's pretty old news. In early 2009, it was confirmed that  Nintendo of America wouldn't been releasing the fourth installment of the hit Fatal Frame franchise in the states. When Tecmo was interviewed, they released a statement explicitly noting that they had no  part in the decision, which had been made entirely by NOA. What happened next is my personal favorite part of the story. Rather than launching useless petitions, fans carried out their battle in a far more productive way. A (brilliant, beautiful, genius) programmer created a patch, which would be downloaded to and run from  the Wii's SD card, that translated a Japanese distributed copy of the game into English. Thus, the fans were pleased.  

However, while fans in the states got a happy ending, the same can't be said about Nintendo of America. I can't help but think about all the money they must have lost because of this misjudgment. Mask of the Lunar Eclipse was the first and only of the Fatal Frame series to  be released for the Wii. What made it an even better catch for NOA was that it was exclusive to that system. A game from a hit franchise to be released for only one system? It's every gaming corporation's wet dream. Yet, Nintendo refused to distribute. Um... I'm sorry... what?

Fast forward to today. The Wii is, quite frankly, the joke of the gaming world. Any decent games it has can either be found for another (less frustrating) system or have a control system that becomes tedious after awhile. Honestly, it's my personal belief that  this is the result of NOA focusing on such a narrow audience. They aim their products primarily at children and casual gamers, with a disturbingly large portion of their selection being party games. Let's be honest, while these games are fun at times, most gamers want a game that they can have just as much fun playing on their own as well as in a group. Trust me, if you try playing Just Dance 2 on your own, you're going to feel like an idiot. The point is that, for a long time, Nintendo has ostracized the majority of their audience.

When I was a kid, one of my first gaming systems was the PS2. What makes this system so brilliant (and my favorite to this day) is the fact that I could grow up with it. It had great games that I loved when I was a kid, like the Spyro series and Crash Bandicoot, as well as games I enjoyed when I got older. (Oh, Castlevania, teehee.) Sony and Microsoft have always been great about  having a great selection of games for all audiences. Yes, the Wii has a couple of games for older gamers but it is easy to find these games on other systems. Fatal Frame IV is just another example of the way NOA continues to screw itself over. Basically, Nintendo, you dun goofed.