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Comment by Wowfunhappy | Hacker News Reader

> That said, I try to insure that nothing I make wastes the players’ time by having them do things that aren’t productive or creative.

And this is why I like Nintendo games.

Miyamoto has had plenty of misses—Star Fox Zero comes to mind—but I never feel as though his games are trying to waste my time, much less manipulate me into wasting my time, as is so common nowadays.

This is also why Nintendo never had much success on mobile. Mario Run was a legitimately great game—it's just that it was short, and cost $10, and we're used to mobile games that are "free" and rely on whales to subsidize the cost.

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Mario Run had a major flaw for me. It would have been the perfect subway commute game, but it required an internet connection to play. I'm still baffled why Nintendo made this design mistake; they excluded a large market.

I forgot about that! I actually played most of the game on the subway, but I had to wait until the train was passing a station to enter a level.

Here in Tokyo I've not encountered an issue with signal on the metro yet. I had big issues back in London but since moving to Japan 2 years ago it's never been a problem. I've seen similar oversights by Japanese companies when it comes to disregarding or just not really understanding things from a Western perspective so it could be as simple as that.

The London Underground doesn't have 4G/Wifi in the tunnels. As with most things with the tube, the reason is that the infrastructure is very old and installing extra equipment inside those old, narrow and twisty tunnels is quite difficult and expensive.

Here's a decent article on the topic: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/london-undeground-wi-fi

My guess would be that they just never considered that there would be first world countries without cheap mobile data everywhere.

When I was living in Asia, even in poorer countries and/or rural areas, there was mobile internet. $1/mo for 4G 1GB. People took it for granted at a level that would be impossible in Germany, because here you can still be without even 3G just a few km outside of city centers.

Also, mobile internet repeaters for tunnels are a solved problem. Singapore had no offline areas in their underground metro. Germany has lots of em.

> mobile internet repeaters for tunnels are a solved problem.

True. Unfortunately in Canada (Toronto at least) the big 4 telco oligopoly can't agree on pricing for this one. The result is a single company offers subway coverage!

Nevermind that data here is more expensive than even the US.

Where's that Silicon Valley disruption spirit for the telco oligopolies worldwide?

Here, and probably making its move in the not too distant future:

https://www.starlink.com/

Mobile data is cheap in southeast Asia but not very cheap in Japan.

I remember one of the reason was because of software piracy. On iOS it shouldn't be required since you cant install anything other than from App Store anyway. And so to make it fair for both iOS platform and Android platform they had it on.

But you can install software on iOS without the App Store, you don't even need to be jailbroken

It’s a weird quote because a lot of nintendo games are endless tutorials or interactive menu that take away from actual play time. I remember this being especially annoying in wii fit as I would just wait a lot between exercises.

Chalk it up to cool down time, so you don't over-exert your muscles!

Well, that's a different sort of time waster—they're trying to make the games more accessible. You can (and I would!) argue the approach is misguided, but it's not an attempt to optimize engagement metrics or some such.

It’s also an approach Nintendo has finally begun to avoid in the past few years, with games like Breath of the Wild.

I guess it's best because even though it's time wasted there's no twisted hidden benefit for them (unless more sales but that's kinda expected)

I don’t think they’re necessarily getting better, I think some games have always been better than others at that. I’ve never been bothered by intro tutorials in Zelda games or mario games. Time to an actual game in SSB is super fast too. But for some reasons some games are uber slow (mario party, animal crossing)

> I’ve never been bothered by intro tutorials in Zelda games

I'll take it you didn't play Skyward Sword? :P

I think Animal Crossing is also a bit different—it's an experience that's designed to slow you down and make you relax. The speed is a part of what makes it comforting.

> I'll take it you didn't play Skyward Sword? :P

I think Skyward Sword gets a bad rap. It's one of my favourite games, probably tied for my 3rd favourite Zelda game.

The tutorials are super annoying.

Oh, I loved Skyward Sword, I was just talking about the tutorials! I really enjoyed the motion combat, and I think the dungeons were the best in the series.

The motion combat was fun but it's pretty brutal if you have a Wii MotionPlus that slowly drifts :(

I think this is just how Motion Plus is for everyone? I got into the habit of re-centering my sword after each swing, which eventually become relatively natural.

It will be interesting to replay the game in Dolphin some day with a more accurate motion controller.

I want Skyward Sword to be released on the Switch for exactly this reason.

Actually, it appears possible to use Switch controllers with Dolphin using this[1]. I may have to set this up in the near future.

[1] https://github.com/yuk27/BetterJoyForDolphin

By going through the thing where you place it on a flat surface?

There's a button you can press that recenters it. Down on DPad maybe? It's been a while since I played.

Yep, you press the down arrow on the d-pad. Fi does tell you about this, but I guess that's the other problem with giving too many instructions—you start ignoring them!

Once it picks up pace, Skyward Sword has some of the best dungeons and bosses of the series. Ancient Cistern alone is probably the pinnacle, but it's also got Sandship and Lanayru Mining Facility. Wind Waker and Twilight Princess are replete with weak dungeons aimed at more novice gamers. You'd have to go back to N64 or Link to the Past to find something that challenges the player, and none of these are as thematically satisfying as what Skyward Sword offers.

Skyward Sword's overworld is oozing with rich and evocative atmosphere, too. If you take away the Gothic veneer, Twilight Princess is almost sterile in comparison.

It's a great game that gets blamed for small pitfalls.

Twilight Princess is actually my favourite Zelda game. I enjoyed the darker atmosphere, and found the level of emotion in the game to be on par with Skyward Sword <spoiler type="rot13">(Gur frpgvba jurer lbh genafcbeg Zvqan gb Mryqn, naq jura Zvqan yrnirf ng gur raq ner gjb bs gur zbfg zrzbenoyr zbzragf va nyy bs tnzvat sbe zr)</spoiler>. I also still enjoy the dungeons and boss battles, The City in The Sky, Icepeak Ruins, and Arbiters Grounds all stick out in my mind as having difficult components. I also think that combat in general peaked in that game with the number of techniques you could learn. All of that being said, it's the first Zelda game I beat, so this should be taken with a grain of salt.

I do also love the dungeons/bosses and atmosphere in Skyward Sword however, and have to agree that it is where bosses peaked.

Twilight Princess is its atmosphere, though–it's just not the one that Skyward Sword is. Skyward Sword has more compact dungeons, sure, but I actually found them to be easier than Twilight Princess's. Sure, Twilight Princess is pretty big and a bit empty at times, but I feel this is just a setting thing. (Skyward Sword's overworld is kind of a weaker, larger dungeon to be honest.)

> Skyward Sword's overworld is kind of a weaker, larger dungeon to be honest.

Notably, if you read interviews with the developers, this is precisely what they were going for with the overworld.

It was a great idea that didn't pan out because, for whatever reason, the over-world areas simply weren't as well designed as the real dungeons. Fi interrupting you every 30 seconds didn't help either, of course.

At least Fi is no Navi ;)

It's my favourite. I really mastered the motion controls, to the point that BotW felt like a big step backward in being able to get Link to do what I wanted him to. And I managed to tune out Fi.

I think if I hadn't been able to do either one of those, I would have gotten really frustrated though.

I streamed all the 3D Zelda games to Twitch except for Skyward Sword because I couldn't comfortably sit at my desk and hold/swing the controller as the game wanted without whacking my hand against all the infrastructure around me (stand mics, lighting stands, etc.).

Between it being incredibly uncomfortable to play (in my situation) and Fi coming up every five minutes to hand-hold me, it was not my favourite thing.

BotW felt freer. I could explore at my own pace and defeat enemies in many more ways than using my weapons. I could use Sheikah Slate abilities, push rocks, send them marching off cliffs, freeze them then plonk them in deep water, etc.

Skyward Sword punished me for sitting still at a desk. BotW didn't. I gave up on Skyward Sword partway during the first temple — which took two four-hour streams to arrive at!

I totally understand! I probably wouldn't have been able to play it at a desk either. And BotW is better suited to the portability of the Switch as well. I can't imagine trying to play Skyward Sword on the subway or in an airplane seat, but BotW works perfectly for that, and lets you feel like you're roaming an open landscape even when you're being crammed into a sardine tin.

But I miss being able to break into a sprint, then at the right moment, jerk my left hand to roll through an enemy's legs and get behind them, spin around and draw my sword while they're figuring out where I went. Or chase them off a cliff with my little remote controlled dronebug. The combat does eventually get a lot more creative than at the start, and the enemies in Skyward Sword (bokoblins especially) felt like they had a lot more personality.

I've never felt a game to be more disrespectful of my time than when playing Animal Crossing. The number of completely unnecessary menus, transitions, loads, and otherwise flow-breaking elements is astounding. That game was simply not for me.

I see those as QoL issues especially with New Horizons and not flaws in the core of the game.

I actually didn’t play that zelda!

If you get the time, you should. It's really a great game.

Animal Crossing is supposed to be slow. The point of the game is to "waste time"

A recent-ish Nintendo design hallmark that i've grown to hate is hiding bits of the game behind a naked hours played counter. I get that there's a call for it, especially for creative games like Mario Maker, but the annoyance is that they don't provide a way for people who know what they're doing to bypass it.

Nintendo have some very profitable gacha games, Dragalia Lost, Fire Emblem Heroes.

Yeah, as of January of this year, they've made over a billion in revenue with mobile games: https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/28/21112029/nintendo-mobile-...

Nintendo said earlier this year they were moving away from the mobile market, which is what made me think they didn't see it as a huge success: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-21/nintendo-...

I suspect Fire Emblem Heroes is a result of competing interests inside Nintendo. Miyamoto has said publically several times that he doesn't think they should be making games like that—even after Fire Emblem's success: https://gamedaily.biz/article/197/nintendos-shigeru-miyamoto...

> Nintendo said earlier this year they were moving away from the mobile market, which is what made me think they didn't see it as a huge success

I think it has been financially successful—but when the WiiU was failing, Nintendo needed a backup plan, badly. Now that the Switch is incredibly successful, they’re not as desperate for a Plan B, and so mobile ports are mostly a distraction, even if a profitable one. But their biggest bottleneck is time and developers, not money.

> But their biggest bottleneck is time and developers, not money.

I'd -gladly- write games (and software) for the switch if it was a more accessible platform to develop for.

Developing software for Nintendos previous platforms was difficult for anyone who didnt have 'connections' in the industry.

I believe the GP meant developers within Nintendo, e.g. making first party software.

Yeah, well I'd gladly play basketball for the New York Knicks if they'd just make the hoops more accessible to people my height.

Register at developer.nintendo.com, download the free tools, and off you go. Switch development is much more straight forward than previous Nintendo consoles. You'll need a dev console eventually which will cost a bit, but you can get quite far before spending anything.

Plus the Pokémon games, not directly Nintendo but still.

I play and follow Dragalia Lost. Used to play FEH. It's co-produced by a company called Cygames which makes a number of other gachas. Gachas are kind of scummy, but for what it's worth, Nintendo has pulled the reigns on them pretty hard. They've publically stated they don't want kids spending too much money on the games as it hurts their brand. Cygames has stated they have lost potential revenues due to Nintendo's influence. I think this is true as a free to play player who has pretty much everything in the game and zounds of currency (although it's gotten a little bit stingier now).

> That said, I try to insure that nothing I make wastes the players’ time by having them do things that aren’t productive or creative.

> And this is why I like Nintendo games.

I've sold my copy of Animal Crossing because I felt it did just that: wasted my time on meaningless repetitive tasks

That's what came to mind for me as well. The games have some fantastic elements, but a lot of the gameplay loops are designed to be slow.

I recall reading that preventing 'assembly line' mechanics was a deliberate choice. As a result, in New Horizon you can't do bulk crafting, you need to perform multiple button presses and watch an animation for every single one.

Shopping is equally bad, where buying stock from a visiting NPC takes orders of magnitude longer than it might in an RPG, because you need to button through multiple pages of dialogue after each purchase.

Nintendo defined mobile gaming for decades, and they currently sell the leading game console in the world which is designed to switch between mobile and console gaming.

Op probably meant apps on mobile phones, not special purpose gaming handhelds (which have been defined by simple mechanics usable in touchscreens, and the most profitable / popular of which use loot crate mechanics to exploit whales). There's an argument that the distinction isn't meaningful, sure, but I definitely think it is.

> > That said, I try to insure that nothing I make wastes the players’ time by having them do things that aren’t productive or creative.

> And this is why I like Nintendo games.

Really? Nintendo is absolutely notorious for stuff like this.

> That said, I try to insure that nothing I make wastes the players’ time by having them do things that aren’t productive or creative.

Like replaying entire games because they won't let you back their console up?

Mario Run was great, I personally bought my family a copy each :)

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