For real this time.. (Hint: It's a reference to the 'About me' page.) Sure you can consider me a Mario fan circa 2026-. This is despite, to be honest, a disinterest in his contemporary fandom (because they're all children! I'm kidding.. it's the adults that are the problem), but it's time to be a frank on another matter:
I haven't been a 'Nintendo fan' since the WiiU's awkward little time. The Nintendo Switch renewed my waning zeal in Mario at least, but the cracks were showing. Actually.. if you're a true OG Nintendo person, the company hasn't changed their core principles of wanting to control everything since they entered the video game market. Tired of them being litigious? Well they were doing everything they could to stop piracy on the NES and for several console generations onward. What about censorship? People used to complain about that when discussing older games. I remember, but I guess that's now in style? I think what confuses people about them and Japanese companies in general is that they were blasé and distinct to Western companies. Gaming is super homogenized now outside of the smallest projects- and even those can unfortunately pick up the fleas of the AAA industry. Did you think this was a Nintendo rant? No, it's a modern gaming one. Something has been hollowed out. It's missing. I thought it was age, but being able to find it again in old stuff strongly suggests otherwise.
I believe that Nintendo has great talent and has created masterpieces I'm still discovering or revisiting, and some are relatively modern. Outside of that, I'm only really supporting Nintendo via my online subscription, and even that's partially because that's the only way I'm connected to a few acquaintances. I can't see handing them money for the current crop. Will I never ever touch these newer games? I won't say that, but I'm tired of the lack of creativity, laziness, greediness, derivative content (reissues, remasters, re-whatevers) that they think they can get away with because much of the audience wasn't born yet, not 'truly' owning content anymore, crap localizations, online markets ('ensh*ttification'), agendas and politics, and the dearth of community spaces that that aren't Reddit or Discord. The slow boil is too much!
In the meantime, I'll be checking out all of those gems I missed and doing what I do best. You know, autistically analyzing random stuff, working on supplementary material for my works, and else. Look for new articles on that.
