On Thursday I sat in my car for lunchtime under the shade of the Arguello building scratching the thin plastic off a game called “Monster Hunter: Generations”. This would have been my first entry in the popular capcom made J monster grinder, as well as the last, and final game in the DS pile bought way back at the end of January. So I pop the game in, turn my DS on and load the start menu. I am quickly informed that the game cannot be saved and or loaded from the game cart without an SD card of atleast 24 mb of space. I watch the intro and then turn the DS off. Completely triggered, I lift the monster hunter box and carefully inspect the front and the back for any small print indicating the absolute need for for an SD card. Their was NONE! Fucking nothing. …ok.
It was at that moment I resolved to trade the game I had never gotten to play, and the DS in for store credit on something less likely to randomly fuck me over. Some used PS4 games or something.
So why did I do this? Do I hate Nintendo? Am I resoundingly entitled? Have ADHD? Well shit, it could be any of these, or none of these. But I will tell you that this was just anouther check in a growing list of things I’m unhappy about my latest experience with Nintendo. This isn’t about how Nintendo makes you rebuy games you’ve allready purchased on other systems, about how Nintendo intentionally creates scarcity in its own market enough the scalpers fuck you bad. It’s not about how they gave people a 70$ trade credit for giving up their old 3Ds for “The New” 3DS Xl and then forcing you to pay an additional 20$ for a charge cable that did not come in the box for The New* Nintendo 3Ds Xl. It’s not about how Nintendo created the New 3Ds and to this day it only has one game. ONE GAME: Xenoblade chronicles. A game I bought and was denied the ability to play because I bought the wrong version of now 5 different variants with very similar names. Its not about how Nintendo sold 1,2,Switch.. a pack in game for a full price amount as well as making Indy titles available on the switch for 15-20$ more then they are asking for new on steam. It’s not about Nintendos anti consumer policy’s in regards to YouTube streamers and games critics use of their footage under fair use protection…
its not about any of that. It’s about this 10$ optional SD card bullshit that was not mandatory and now suddenly it is for one game. “But Chris! You blow 30$ on dinner twice a week, where are your priorities?!” Under normal circumstances you’d be right 95% of the time. But more or less this is about wasting the consumers time. Having to get back in the car and drive or wait for amazon to mail me an SD card (prolly proprietary on the switch) for a game that did not indicate I needed such optional storage space just makes me think about all the pissed off mothers and sad misinformed children who got this game for Christmas or their birthday and are frantically trying to convince their parents to take them back to the store to spend an extra 10-20$ on something that wasn’t even nessesary before. “But Chris, this is the way of the future! PsVita has mandatory sd card saving why you so mad?” Yes well all of sonys systems had mandatory memory card or SD card saves from their inception years ago. But It’s mandatory and I expected it. Nintendo didn’t make it mandatory and nearly all games were saveable on the cart themselves. It wasn’t until just recently with the 3DS (possibly the wiiU) That Nintendo started to nickel and dime you on it’s hardware, like Many other companies. The should have made the SD card mandatory and stop wasting people’s time.
I just wanna reiterate that I don’t have a beef against nintendos game titles. Those are just fine. But as a company, this “giving you less product for the same price” shit might fly with younger gamers, It ain’t flying with me though. I’m seriously put off and a little scared to even consider buying into nintendos switch And I don’t know why Nintendo has SOO many diehard unapologetic fans for a company that refuses to get with the times.
I know mine is an unpopular opinion. But hey, I’m disappointed. I used to Love the fuck out of Nintendo. I thought Super Nintendo and the Nintendo game boy advance were some of the finest systems ever made. It just hurts me when a company I was cool with makes a lot of shitty decisions all of a sudden.
Stop dicking people around Nintendo.
* In my art hiatus I have also finished This game which I thoroughly enjoyed. However, A personal note to myself as I don’t have a lot of time for bullshit anymore: Don’t play on classic mode. You don’t have time for perma-death and shitloads of resets in a game about quick unit progression and match-making. The more units die, the less units you get in the future. In fact I almost named this journal entry “Wizards n’ Waifus” because it seems the fire emblem series is really doubling down on the whole marriage between units thing. Its to the point your kids come back in time to warn you that the future is fucked. Then they help you combat an evil army of purple dragon zombies. I don’t think time travel works this way- if I traveled back in time to slap my dad’s ass as he was making love to my mom, I’d probably cease to be (but this game totally glosses over that fact.) Its a good fun tactics game with some difficulty spikes here and there, but its very easy to pick up for 10-20 minutes at a time. Give this one a try if your hungry for some gold old fashioned jrpg/tactics.