I love Nintendo games.
Problem is, they rarely ever come from Nintendo anymore.
Fortunately though, they DO come from other people, all-the-more. People who grew up with Nintendo et al. and now are grown-ups making games themselves.
Games like Fez, Minecraft… and the two Portals.
Here's why I consider Portal 1 & 2 typical, classic Nintendo games. The way Nintendo USED to make them:
DIGIPEN is an institute focused on educating future computer/video game creators. It's located on the very same campus as a little company called Nintendo of America – which also just-so-happens to be the institute's PATRON and all-around main supporter.
Thus, the portal-loop closes…
This has also stirred a heated discussion over at www.reddit.com:
Problem is, they rarely ever come from Nintendo anymore.
Fortunately though, they DO come from other people, all-the-more. People who grew up with Nintendo et al. and now are grown-ups making games themselves.
Games like Fez, Minecraft… and the two Portals.
Here's why I consider Portal 1 & 2 typical, classic Nintendo games. The way Nintendo USED to make them:
- Takes a popular genre: FPS. Makes it all family-friendly, removing virtually all graphic violence, lethal weapons etc.
- witty puzzle-based gameplay design
- (then-)up-to-date graphics and rock-solid visual design (Yes, Nintendo games used to have that, too!)
- The protagonist is silent.
- The protagonist is an anti-hero (a young “next-door” woman vs. the traditional muscle-bound warrior hunk)
- Chell = Samus
- GlaDOS = Mother Brain
- Atlas & P-Body = Mariobot & Luigibot
- a fetish with boxes (Companion Cube)
- the protagonist is promised A CAKE
- the promised cake is of a German Schwarzwald Cake variety
- strong comic relief (Wheatley)
- the regular enemy characters act very Japanese (“Sorry, I have to kill you now. Have a nice day!“) and, like many other things Portal, feature typical elements of Japanese industrial/robotics design
DIGIPEN is an institute focused on educating future computer/video game creators. It's located on the very same campus as a little company called Nintendo of America – which also just-so-happens to be the institute's PATRON and all-around main supporter.
Thus, the portal-loop closes…
This has also stirred a heated discussion over at www.reddit.com: