Nintendo parodies Kickstarter | Hacker News Reader

Nintendo parodies Kickstarter

gameandwario.nintendo.com

104 pointserikj49 comments

Nintendo has a thing for these sorts of cute mini sites and widgets.

I was referred to a random Pokemon flash game (I know right??) once and found that it was really good!! (tetris-like puzzle game). I wish they would make a smartphone app out of it; it is perfect for the touch interface.

edit: found it! http://www.pokemon.jp/#/contents/enjoy/play_pass/2.html (it has great music too)

Nintendo has a history of making small casual games. Indeed, "Game and Wario" is named after one of their first systems, the Game and Watch, a series of small time-telling devices with a simple LCD game.

Wow! I agree with you. This would be a perfect mobile game. Stuff like this could really help to save their business.

Save their business? I thought that Nintendo was doing quite well with the Wii, while also dominating the handheld market?

Nintendo revenue over the past year has been pretty abysmal, and they've effectively admitted that the Wii U launch was an unmitigated disaster.

Thanks for sharing, would be a neat Smartphone game indeed!

Wow, really nice game - and yes, wonderful music. I wish there was a version in a language I could understand though.

This one perhaps? http://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-fun-zone/pokemon-online-ga...

Using Firefox on Windows.

Hit the back button to try to get back to HN... No luck. Try again... still no luck. Try hitting it twice really fast... No luck. Try hitting it twice really fast again... Frustrated. Right click the back button. Click Hacker News.

I hate webpages that get you stuck on their site like that.

This is because the website uses a badly-written redirect.

Chrome, Opera, and Safari have no problem with these redirects, though: their Back button doesn't become broken when they hit a redirect.

I think if every other modern browser has no problem with redirects, it's as much the fault of Firefox as the website...

"This is because the website uses a badly-written redirect."

Maybe I'm cynical but I don't think it's badly-written, I think it's deliberate. I agree that FF is at fault but I'm suspicious of these websites and believe they likely do it on purpose to improve their analytics for page retention. That probably also improves their SEO ranking since (as I understand it) Google will see the person is on their page for longer and will credit the page as having good content.

Github does this when you sign in, it's really annoying.

Same behavior with Firefox on Ubuntu.

The only other places I get this are nsfw sites and broken-as-hell asian pages.

‘broken-as-hell asian pages’

It’s Nintendo, so that sounds about right.

Back in 2008 Nintendo also had an amusing Wario Youtube channel. I can't find the live version anymore but here is a video of how it went down: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSU-z-t9Ku4

Ugly flash URL: http://1q1gafmnta4fm0riakrenq213o0sa9p9.ig.gmodules.com/ig/i...

This shouldn't be taken too far out of context. It's clear Nintendo doesn't mean this as a cutting critique of crowdfuding, just more riffing on Wario's characterisation as an idiotic selfish asshole.

Yeah, this is very much of the "Epic Movie" shallow parody school, i.e. it's not actually referencing anything or related to anything or meaningful, it's just saying "This exists! Eh? Eh? How about that? It exists!"

I'm glad the site exists, because I suspect kids will find it funny, I'm just a bit baffled as to why it's front page here.

Wait, you didn't like "Epic Movie"?

For those curious, yes, Nintendo did purchase http://crowdfarter.com

Wario really is the godfather of trolls.

Surprisingly accurate, unfortunately.

Thats a really well made ad. I'd never have normally sat through a game trailer and watched it all, but for that I did.

I think this is a great and honest parody, regardless of whether or not Wario has anything to do with it.

This is Nintendo... getting personality. At least in the Western world.

> Nintendo parodies the Kickstarter (nintendo.com)

Do you have a link to the specific Kickstarter they're mocking? Or is that an errant 'the' in the title?

Also, does anyone know the backstory?

This is just marketing for this game

http://mynintendonews.com/2013/05/03/game-wario-hitting-aust...

Starting a bad Kickstarter campaign completely fits with the Wario character, whose basic modus operandi is running get-rich-quick-schemes. This is, of course, not saying that is what Kickstarter is good for (or that it's what Nintendo thinks its good for), but it _is_ what _Wario_ would think it would be good for.

It makes sense if you read it with an Italian accent (Wario is supposed to be Italian).

As for background: Nintendo is crapping on crowdfunded games in general. Apparently, they feel threatened.

Why does everyone assume they feel threatened? Crowd funded indie games are hardly destroying their business, or look like doing so anytime soon...

Just because someone makes fun of something, doesn't mean they are threatened by it.

‘Just because someone makes fun of something, doesn't mean they are threatened by it.’

Usually, that’s exactly what it means.

People must be terrified by blondes.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/the#Article

4. Introducing a term to be taken generically; preceding a name of something standing for a whole class.

This is a very clever use of gamification, turning the kickstarter 'donation' into a seemingly harmless tweet or a like on FB.

It would be an interesting if they followed through with this model and started prioritizing game development based on this feedback.

Seems like someone is butthurt...

Funny thing is they are using their two decade old character Wario. About time they come up with something new after milking the overused Mario and Zelda franchises for so long.

Yes because the rest of the competition is completely coming up with new games and characters all the time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Gear

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_(series)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Turismo_(series)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_Fighter

There's nothing wrong with using a franchise. The characters are memorable, and perhaps even people really like them. As long as they are putting the characters into new worlds/levels it's all that matters.

Yes, Nintendo is notorious for re-releasing their older games, but it's not like the other companies don't do the same thing either.

Just look at the re-release of Combat Evolved, or SquareEnixs constant re-release of their older Final Fantasy games (with cheesy 3D added to them)

Edit: Don't know how to use HN markdown or something.

Well they are. If you count non-first-party titles from independent studios, yeah, the competition is making a lot of new games and characters all the time. If you just want to limit it to new first-party IPs, just compare the number of new IPs that Sony has put onto the market over the last generation vs. Nintendo.

I agree there's nothing wrong with using a franchise, but there's definitely something wrong with not putting out a decent amount of new IP (or at least significantly different versions of a franchise, e.g. comparing Paper Mario with Super Mario 64). Can you think of any new first-party Wii IP besides the various Mii-based games like Wii Sports, Endless Ocean, and Xenoblade?

What, so Nintendo is not only responsible for launching the platform, but needs to come up with an entirely new franchise each cycle as well?

They release the platform, and then they use their first party titles to bring the initial group of people so third party developers have an audience to sell to. As long as the first party titles are fun and interesting, I don't see any problem with that.

P.S. Are you really equating Paper Mario and Super Mario 64? As someone who played Super Paper Mario for the first time a few months back, beyond superficialities, they aren't much alike at all.

I'm talking about the original Paper Mario and Super Mario 64, both for the N64. It was my intention to compare them, not equate them, precisely because they aren't much alike at all and demonstrate that even within a franchise you can be quite unique, which is more or less as good as a new IP and Nintendo has shown itself repeatedly capable of doing that. What's not good are games like the last several Mario games since Super Mario Galaxy and New Super Mario Bros. DS, which have all, again more or less, been the same. (Note Super Paper Mario (fairly different from the original itself, and Thousand Year Door as well) was released before Super Mario Galaxy.)

Nintendo is responsible, yes, so long as they're a games company and not a hardware company. Sony does it, Microsoft even does it to a lesser degree. There was not a single new IP that Miyamoto worked on for the Wii apart from Wii Sports. Wii owners did get 1.5 new Zelda games though, and as a Wii owner of course that pleases me. Again, nothing wrong with using a franchise.

It's also in their self-interest to make new IPs, if for nothing else than to show what their console can do which is just one extra selling point for getting third-parties on board. I would have thought they learned their lesson with the Wii from its final couple years, but how's the Wii U doing? A lot of third-party developers (notably in the news recently, EA) aren't getting invested in that at all, especially with the PS4 and Xbox One on the way, and especially with the rise of mobile gaming. And there is still the audience that's always there, the glorious PC Gaming Master Race! (My own bias. Though the consoles have made it this way for me by no longer catering to the gamer.)

At some point, I don't think it's in their best interest to create new IPs. They have a well known and strong stable of titles they can choose, and adding to it may delay new releases for an IP even further than they are.

As for the SMB Wii-U, it is a bit of the same old, but it's the only title I have for the Wii-U I was gifted for Christmas. I'm not sure what the other titles have to offer. (It used to be when I was younger I could go rent games from the local video store or chain, but Netflix has killed them all off. What do people do now, just use something like gamefly?)

Other than that, I agree completely. The fact that the Xbox One launched with four EA sports titles - and that's it - made it pretty clear who their target audience is, and it's not me (not that I have the time to play games much anymore anyway, which is probably the point).

HN doesn't use markdown, it just has a very primitive system where italics can be created with asterisks.

Alas, Warioware mini games have in fact been around on every major Nintendo console since the Gameboy Advance: http://www.mariowiki.com/WarioWare#Games

And they have mostly been fantastic.

As long as the game quality is still good, people prefer to keep playing a series. I'd pick a Mario game, or a Metal Gear Solid game over some generic first in series game. I don't see anything wrong with mario, wario etc. They produce familiar decent games.

Wow. This is really juvenile and unfunny.

You've just precisely described Wario's character. Looks like they hit the nail on the head!

You are ignoring the big context clue: Wario. In relation to that, the page is what it should be.

Pointless and unfunny. Nintendo doesn't even produce the kind of hardcore games, that are most popular on KS. And not a one mention of Ouya - too scared to draw in that comparison?

Lol, yeah that tablet in a box with the crappy controller is a huge threat.

Maybe it's paving the way for the threat but that thing is craptacular.

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