Nintendo once ruled gaming with an iron fist. Sure, for the most part, the methods behind them gaining and keeping all that power were mostly illegal but why get trivial. There were a few things they did back in the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System days that I actually think were good actions on their part. My question is, should they bring these business practices back?
The first business practice that made a lot of sense to me only recently in life was the whole "quality control" process they would put third party games through prior to giving them the green light to be released to fans. Part of this control involved a scoring system, if the game scored extremely well, it did not count towards the yearly number of games that third party developer could release.
The idea was pretty simple. Nintendo just wanted to make sure that we did not see more games like E.T. or Pac-Man released into the NES gaming sphere and ruin a good thing they had going. After all, gamers trusted Nintendo to do better than Atari did.
We all know this was something that caused many a gamer headache after seeing some great games in magazines back then, only to eventually realize that those cool games were never going to be released for whatever reason. Of course, had Nintendo not been controlling the number of games a third party developer could release, and worse still if that game did not meet the minimum requirements Nintendo set, it simply did not get released. Considering most third parties did not have the money of Nintendo or Capcom or Konami, they could not go back and retool large portions of the game to make it meet Nintendo's quality requirements so a lot of games were simply lost.
Whether that is a good thing or not is something only history, and some lucky prototype ROM owners, can tell us.
I personally think this would be a good business practice to bring back. Why? Just look at the Wii. While there are some great games on that platform, even the most die-hard fan has to admit that there is a lot of crap on it as well.
Gaming today has become what the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer was trying to do back in the early 90's - literally anyone that could produce something that fit on a CD-ROM and could afford the packaging and production of the retail product could make games. Much like the PC market. There was no real quality control going on. That is what we have now but it is much worse than just one console and the PC Master Race. From Android and iPhone to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, there seems to be no real quality control in place beyond whatever each company implements.
That can be bad. Very bad.
This is an area that I think Nintendo could stand tall in and actually bring in more support from gamers. If there was a quality control process in place for the Switch and Nintendo 3DS with a more controlled release of games I think it would benefit gamers more, as well as game publishers.
Why? Because if game publishers know they have to compete for the right to reach the millions of fans that own a 3DS or Nintendo Switch then I think the quality of games will rise on its own.
Then there is that little gold seal...
That brings me to the Nintendo Seal of Quality. Both Sega and NEC tried their own versions of this with varying degrees of success. Obviously their seals didn't mean as much as Nintendo's due to fan recognition and parents trust in Nintendo. Didn't stop them from trying though.
If the Nintendo Seal of Quality returned, I think it would help Nintendo stand out a bit on the shelves against Sony and Microsoft. It would be a selling point again - "Our games carry the Nintendo Seal of Quality and theirs don't." type slogans or ad sound bites are easy to get into the heads of parents. We saw how well this worked in the NES days.
Am I crazy? Who knows but let let me know your opinion below.
The thing is, there were plenty of garbage titles developed for the NES (and future consoles) that were published, got the Nintendo Seal of Quality, and still sucked hard enough to satisfy Ron Jeremy.
Having the seal on there was no guarantee you were buying a good game, it just meant a company had managed to check off enough boxes on Nintendo's list that they could pay more money to Nintendo to purchase the cartridge shells, a license to sell the game in stores, and a promise that they wouldn't develop for any competitors.
Games like Platoon, Predator, and The Uncanny X-Men are all objectively terrible titles. They're not like Friday the 13th, where as soon as you figure out what to do and how to do it they become awesome, they're the 8-bit equivalents of norovirus, where exposure to them for any length of time produces physical illness.
If Nintendo revived the Seal of Approval, it would have to be more than a cosmetic touch to the game's cover artwork. It would actually have to mean something to the consumer, not just to the publisher. I don't see how that's possible in this day and age, and more to the point, I'm not sure it's necessary. Thirty years ago if we wanted the scoop on a particular game, we had to cross our fingers and hope that a magazine like EGM or GamePro reviewed it--and even then we had to pray the reviewer knew what the hell they were talking about. Without that, we could rent it (if there were copies available), possibly play it at a friend's house, rely on the testimony of the guy behind the counter at the game shop (who would never consider hyping an awful game for the opportunity to earn a bit of extra money) or just cross our fingers and hope our allowance wasn't wasted on something lousy.
Today, within hours of a game's release, you can find independent reviews of it all over the internet via blogs, YouTube, Steemit, aggregation sites like Metacritic, and even Twitter. We don't need Nintendo's seal of approval, because the gaming community at large will be swift to fill in the more consumer-friendly version of that service, and they won't be lining Nintendo's pockets at the same time. :)
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I agree, it was no guarantee that only good games got released as the examples you presented are truly horrible games that indeed earn their publishers that coveted seal on the box.
You bring up a good point about the underlying, not so well known, consequences of earning that seal - a promise to not support the competition. This is one reason that I believe some of the best Turbo Grafx-16 games never saw release in North America - Gradius, Salamander, Castlevania, Street Fighter II, etc. Notice a pattern there? Three out of those four games were considered AWESOME games on Nintendo platforms and if you wanted to play them at home you did it on a Nintendo console. Well, at least until Capcom screwed Sega by making those fans wait for the SNES version of Champion Edition to be finished be fore the completed by at least six months Sega version could see the light of day on store shelves.
The point is, even though Nintendo had to loosen their grip, they still had quite a firm position with third parties through the SNES days and it showed in what games saw cross platform release - even though there were still over 250 games that hit both the SNES and Genesis.
Thank you for bringing up this point and knocking the memories loose in my mind to put them down for others to learn about the dark side of that seal of quality.
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I'm kind of on the fence about this subject I've heard about this a lot in the last few months, it seems like there is a lot of shovelware on the switchot really anymore than any of the other consoles. I keep thinking they should have I strict policy but only on physical releases it's kind of a catch 22 though
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Yeah, there is definitely a catch 22 with this idea. For one, Nintendo is no longer the "big dog" so to speak. While gamers are buying their consoles, many of those gamers are also buying either the Sony PlayStation 4 or Microsoft Xbox One. This didn't happen back in the day as Nintendo was able to keep what little competition Atari with their 7800 and Sega with the Master System at bay by illegally blocking retailers from carrying those platforms and games or risk losing access to Nintendo, and third party, games (since Nintendo controlled manufacturing and distribution for many third parties).
Nintendo no longer has that stranglehold on gaming.
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I remember borrowing a friends Micro Machines game (I think it was this one), I remember distinctly it did not have the NES seal of quality on it, AND, the game never worked on my system no matter how much I blew in it.
I think we are living in a time where it would be harder for Nintendo to do this. Here is my quick serious thought on this. Nintendo would have I am guessing some set of standards before a game could get this seal of quality or approval. I think this could knock down a portion of indie developers who may want to try some different ideas that may not be in tune with what Nintendo wants to have on their system or fits with what they consider their standards. I like Nintendo taking a back seat in this process rather than involved in all the games on the system that are made.
On the other hand, if it isn't that serious, I think it would be cool to have the retro seal sitting on their products again just as a neat visual, but with little meaning behind it. Which btw, I don't know how much meaning was behind the original seal or what their standards were, if any.
This post reminded me of this horrible thing that I hope never comes back
Lastly, this:
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That last bit was quite funny. At first I thought it was serious. Lol
To the other parts you bring up, it could indeed be a detriment to indie developers that work the quirky side of gaming and that clashing with Nintendo wanting more mainstream releases on their platform. I could see that happening.
On the other hand, it might force indie developers to do more testing and bug crushing PRIOR to the game being released - which might cut down on "day one" patches and patches in general being so prominent (at least I would hope so). Back in the day when developers and publishers had one shot at making a good game they had to test and test again. With digital though, it is easy to simply release an obviously broken game knowing they will release a "day one" patch or close to that to fix those errors that may have held back releasing the game on time. Even digital games have a wait period before they go live, it is not instant like many gamers think.
I think if Nintendo were to bring the Seal of Quality back it would be more than just a graphic on the cover. That just doesn't seem like something Nintendo would do. How they would implement the return of a high level of quality control and such is beyond me.
I have read horror stories from developers back in the day and how it was sometimes completely off the wall requests from Nintendo for edits in the game. I am surprised games like Nightshade, Deja Vu, UnInvited, and many others such as Monster Party (pic below) got released. Just how did Bandai get THAT by Nintendo's censorship policies?
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I agree they've let the brand slip a bit! God knows if the seal would help or not but it's a shame either way!
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I think after the whole garbage to quality ratio of the Wii library that it certainly couldn't hurt.
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Haha true!
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