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Source: Nintendo (screenshot)
If you’ve been paying attention to Nintendo Switch news recently, then you know that the Japanese game company celebrated Mario’s 35th anniversary by announcing that four classic Mario games are coming to the hybrid gaming system in the coming months. Super Mario 3D All-Stars will be released in September and contains Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy. Then in February 2021, Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury will also be out on Switch.
However, Super Mario 3D All-Stars will only be available until March 2021. Then, it will return to the “Nintendo Vault.”
I don’t know about you, but once the initial excitement was gone from hearing these announcements, I honestly felt a little pissed off. Nintendo has made it difficult, if not impossible, to play many of its classic games on modern consoles. These ads only emphasize how troublesome this has become.
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This is especially true considering how other gaming companies treat classic games. Since 2017, Microsoft’s Game Pass has not only allowed gamers to play new and old PC and Xbox games, but has also worked to update these classics for a more modern gaming experience. All you have to do is pay a monthly fee and then hundreds of games are at your fingertips, including things like the new Wasteland 3, which sells for just $ 50, and the classic Halo: The Master Chief Collection, which alone worth $ 30 even though it includes six games.
Meanwhile, Nintendo makes you buy their ports at full price, as we’ve seen with recent Wii U ports like Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. In the case of Super Mario 3D All-Stars, Nintendo even gives it a time limit release. Perhaps Nintendo is still making up for the horrible failure of the Wii U era, but it would treat its fans so much better if it learned a thing or two from Microsoft and made these Mario games available through the Nintendo Switch Online (NSO) subscription. .
Even Wii U offered a virtual console and gave us more classics to play with than the NSO membership. Unfortunately, the NSO subscription only gives you the ability to play multiplayer online games and a handful of mostly random and unwanted NES and SNES titles. Nintendo seems to be saving all the good things that gamers really want for money like the ones mentioned above.
Source: Nintendo
Comparisons don’t stop with Wii U. Many of Nintendo’s classic SNES, NES, N64, Game Cube, and DS games can only be played on the original system for which they were designed, as hardly any ports have made them playable. on later consoles, including the Nintendo Switch. Do you need an example? If players want to get their hands on the Pokémon Heart Gold or Soul Silver games, they will have to pay more than $ 100 for the original DS cartridge and play on a DS or 3DS, as these classics cannot be played on any other system. .
Let’s move on to another popular franchise. Nintendo has released 19 Zelda titles in the last three decades, and yet only three Zelda titles are available on the Switch eShop. I would love to play The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time or even Majora’s Mask on my Switch. However, since both are such important games, we will likely never see them on the Nintendo Switch, or we will have to wait for them to get a Link’s Awakening-like remastering. It is also possible that they are packaged to us in a similar way to how they sell us Super Mario 3D All-Stars.
I love Nintendo, but this game company is much more disconnected from its fanbase than its competitors. I’m sure that if Sony or Microsoft operated like Nintendo does, there would be riots. Somehow Nintendo manages to get away with these stunts.
Putting a time limit on a popular game collection in the midst of a pandemic when many people are struggling to stay employed seems like a silly move.
It probably has something to do with how nostalgia for Nintendo’s past consoles, its iconic characters, and the brand itself still manages to be powerful. I daresay it has an even stronger connection to its audience than both Microsoft and Sony do to theirs. Still, this is no excuse for Nintendo to treat its fans this way. Yes, we can’t wait to get our hands on these classic Mario games, but Nintendo could have found a better way to take them away.
We won’t know what life will be like in the next six months, but putting a time limit on a popular collection of games in the midst of a pandemic when many people are struggling to stay in employment seems like a silly move. If anything, this only opens the floor for price speculators to take advantage of people in the future.
Like other Nintendo fans, rant and rave, but obviously I’ll end up grabbing these ported Mario classics for my library. It just seems like this is a one-sided relationship.
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