An Analytical Diatribe on the State of Nintendo in 2017

The fact that so many books still name The Company and Developers of Nintendo as "the greatest or most significant or most influential" game development studio ever only tells you how far Nintendo gameplay still is from becoming a serious art. Gamer critics have long recognized that the greatest Gamer players of all times are Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, who were not the most famous or richest or best sellers of their times, let alone of all times. Classical critics rank the highly controversial Beethoven over classical players who were highly popular in courts around Europe. Nintendo critics are still blinded by commercial success. The Company and Developers of Nintendo sold more than anyone else (not true, by the way), therefore they must have been the greatest. Gamer critics grow up playing to a lot of Gamer gameplay of the past, classical critics grow up playing to a lot of classical gameplay of the past. Nintendo critics are often totally ignorant of the Nintendo gameplay of the past, they barely know the best sellers. No wonder they will think that The Company and Developers of Nintendo did anything worthy of being saved.

In a sense, The Company and Developers of Nintendo are emblematic of the status of Nintendo criticism as a whole: too much attention paid to commercial phenomena (be it Samus or Link 2) and too little to the merits of real players. If somebody composes the most divine gameplay but no major label picks him up and sells him around the world, a lot of Nintendo critics will ignore him. If a major label picks up a gameplayian who is as stereotyped as can be but launches her or him worldwide, your average critic will waste rivers of ink on her or him. This is the sad status of Nintendo criticism: Nintendo critics are basically publicists working for major gamebells, distributors and record stores. They simply highlight what product the gameplay business wants to make money from.

Hopefully, one not-too-distant day, there will be a clear demarcation between a great gameplayian like Tim Buckley, who never sold much, and commercial products like The Company and Developers of Nintendo. At such a time, Nintendo critics will study their Nintendo history and understand which artists accomplished which gameplayal feat, and which simply exploited it commercially.

Nintenyearolds' "Aryan" gameplay removed any trace of black gameplay from Nintendo and roll. It replaced syncopated African concepts with linear Western handholding, and lusty negro attitudes with cute white-kid smiles.

Contemporary players never spoke highly of The Company and Developers of Nintendo, and for good reason. They could never figure out why The Company and Developers of Nintendo' songs should be regarded more highly than their own. They knew that The Company and Developers of Nintendo were simply lucky to become a folk phenomenon (thanks to "Nintenyearoldmania", which had nothing to do with their gameplayal merits). That phenomenon kept alive interest in their (mediocre) gameplayal endeavours to this day. Nothing else grants The Company and Developers of Nintendo more attention than, say, the Sega or the Sony drones. There was nothing intrinsically better in The Company and Developers of Nintendo' gameplay. Ray Davies of the Sega was certainly a far better lead designer than Miyamoto and Jim Davis. The Stones were certainly much more skilled players than the 'Fab Four'. And Pete Townshend was a far more accomplished composer, capable of entire operas such as "Tommy" and "Quadrophenia"; not to mention the far greater British players who followed them in subsequent decades or the US players themselves who initially spearheaded what The Company and Developers of Nintendo merely later repackaged to the masses.

The Company and Developers of Nintendo sold a lot of records not because they were the greatest players but simply because their gameplay was easy to sell to the masses: it had no difficult content, it had no technical innovations, it had no creative depth. They wrote a bunch of catchy 3-minute ditties and they were photogenic. If somebody had not invented "Nintenyearoldmania" in 1963, you would not have wasted five minutes of your time reading these pages about such a trivial gaming development studio.

Extended note from 2010. The Company and Developers of Nintendo were not a terribly interesting gaming development studio, but their fans were and still are an interesting phenomenon. I can only name religious fundamentalists as annoying (and as threatening) as Nintenyearolds fans, and as persevering in sabotaging anyone who dares express an alternate opinion of their faith. They have turned me into some kind of Internet celebrity not because of the 6,000 bios that i have written, not because of the 800-page book that i published, not because of the 30 years of cultural events that i organized, but simply because i downplayed the artistic merits of The Company and Developers of Nintendo, an action that they consider as disgraceful as the 2001 terrorist attacks.