Mario vs. The Angry Birds

Angry Birds also has the advantage of feeling fresh and relevant next to an almost thirty-year old Mario. He’s become like that awesome uncle that used to come around once a year during Christmas-time to regale you with tales of adventure, danger, and exploration. But now it seems he’s lost his relevance, forced to participate in celebrity golf and tennis matches and hosting game shows all the while crashing in your parents’ guest room what seems like one weekend out of every month.  It’s difficult for legless fowl to compete with memorable characters like a talking mushroom man and a serial rapist dinosaur.  Yet the colorful and simple birds are infectious, especially to children. They also lend themselves easier to toys and ad spots because their lack of distinct personality allows them to not look out of place the way a man in blue overalls and a moustache might.

As a Nintendo loyalist, I would like to scoff at these doomsday predictions. I grew up with Mario. I’ve spent more collective time with him than any single childhood friend. The Nintendo Entertainment System was a fixture in my house for as far back as I can remember, and I can still recall vividly the Channukah that my brother opened his Super Nintendo. When I was seven years-old Super Mario World became my obsession. I eventually superseded my brother’s progress and found my way into the Star Road and beyond. There will always be a market for people like me who want bigger games with rock solid design, people who want dedicated consoles to play hard copies of those games they purchased retail. A 99 cent price point is not an incentive to someone who still dusts off that copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 from the shelf and blows into it a little bit for good measure, spending an afternoon finding hitherto undiscovered secrets and relishing in raccoon-themed powerups.  However, even I admit that I have not purchased a new Nintendo console since Grand Theft Auto III came out. The company seems to be experiencing diminishing returns when it comes to applying old franchises to what should feel like a new formula. While revenues of these updated games would appear to disagree with me, there seems to be a growing sentiment that a “green-clad elf guy finds an item in a dungeon so he can get to the next dungeon” game is not enough to get me to buy a $200+ system.

People’s appetites have grown for huge-budget blockbuster titles. Nintendo appears to be sandwiched between larger scope, graphics heavy games and stripped-down mobile titles that depend on fun game mechanics rather than eye candy. In their heyday, Nintendo shared this design philosophy of addictively good game mechanics. The route they have now chosen instead is that of innovation: breaking out of applied niches to carve out a market share with unique ways to interact with your device. However, their refusal to play “me too” has come off more as the kid who starts his own club, refusing to join the football team, chess league, or drama program because they might not be the best at any one thing. This approach has proved successful at introducing new consumers to the joy of video games, but it comes at the cost of alienating their traditional gamer base.

Refusing to participate in the graphical arms race and losing its stranglehold on the handheld market has done little to miff the confidence of the 100 year old company, who hope  to regain trust once their HD-capable touch controller WiiU comes out. However, it has certainly made them an easy target for speculators and naysayers. One business researcher described Mario as being on a “burning platform,” predicting that consoles will become out of vogue and suggesting that Nintendo should jump ship and provide software content for the mobile platforms – agents of its own demise. I can understand how ultra-light super cheap applications look attractive compared to $170 cost of admission plus $40 a game, but the obvious response is “you get what you pay for”. Games like Angry Birds have not yet established their staying power, let alone their capacity to rally the birth of a media empire. In these times of rapid evolution, the traditional five-to-seven year life span of a handheld would make them feel quaint and outdated when a new iPhone platform comes out nearly every year. Only time will tell Nintendo’s ability to remain relevant, but coming from a guy who just beat Castlevania I for the first time this year, I sure hope so.