A look into the Nintendo Ambassador Program: Or how the game Yoshi is the greatest threat to democracy.
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When a company is in the video game market, it needs to be on top of the community, understand its user-base, and interface with them to sell product and keep them coming back for more. The company as an entity needs to be just as big a fan as its patrons, in the trenches of the hobby rubbing shoulders with its core users. Or it can ignore all of those things and just do whatever the hell it wants, like Nintendo. It worked with the Wii, where they basically ignored every trend of the industry and every last fan to deliver a waggle simulator unrivaled on the market. As you may recall, this thing would consume the souls of disappointed gamers and shit cash all over Nintendo’s offices like one of those yappy dogs that managed to eat laxative chocolates. Like that yappy dog, it would eventually expire in a pool of filthy money, prompting Nintendo to rethink its system, and cause them to release a handheld for its core base to help bridge the gap to its next console release. Since this article is anything but timely, you of course know the punchline to this joke. Nintendo didn’t learn anything: it released the 3DS with confetti, fanfare, a whole bunch of people talking about how crazy glasses free 3D gaming is, and no games. The early adopters for this handheld are faced with what amounts to a calendar year of uninteresting releases and semi-interesting re-releases. Buyers couldn’t return or sell the things fast enough once the first week of making Mii’s fight through crappy dungeons had run its course. Nintendo needed to do something to keep people interested.  I love that this was included with the games. Enter the Ambassador program, where early adopters and people who had no problem buying from Walmart for the early price drop would be rewarded with twenty free games. I won’t lie to you, I bought this paperweight from Walmart FOR those twenty free games. I, apparently, do not make the best life decisions. Unfortunately for an ambassador like myself, this wasn’t twenty free games all in one go. We get ten NES games now, and we get ten GBA games… one day. What has driven me to write this angry article today is the fact that I didn’t get ten NES games like I was promised. When I went to download my reward, I got the following titles: Super Mario Bros.
Donkey Kong Jr.
Balloon Fight
Ice Climber
The Legend of Zelda
Metroid
NES Open Tournament Golf
Wrecking Crew
Zelda II – The Adventure of Link
Yoshi
I count seven games, two hate crimes, and one affront to The Flying Spaghetti Monster or your hideous sky god of choice. Let’s all just be honest for a second: does anyone recall ever seeing anyone enjoy playing Donkey Kong Jr. who wasn’t covered in blood? Can you honestly even remember NES Open Tournament Golf? At all? No. You can’t. It didn’t exist until recently, when all of your tears of boredom that have ever seeped from your eyes coalesced into a malignant entity that resides at the center of Nintendo of America’s headquarters. It alternates between screaming in the voice of a thousand angry babies and distributing its brood to 3DS systems around the world, so that it may generate more tears of boredom, and that it may grow even mightier. If you were a sensible person, had loving parents, or simply were born too late to be exposed to either of these yawn simulators, then count yourself lucky.  The prequel to Dunk Hunt would have been a better addition. Donkey Kong was a classic arcade game. It was simple in its mechanics, and it provided a competitive environment for high scores, everything an arcade game needs to be if it wants to bring in quarters and create obsessive shut-ins for people to make documentaries about. Despite all that, I would argue that even Donkey Kong isn’t all that great outside of the arcade environment. High scores don’t mean that much on a console, death doesn’t require precious quarters, and in the comfort of your home you are probably looking for more compelling titles made for the console environment. Now replace Donkey Kong with Donkey Kong Jr. and you have the same problems, but they are compounded by unresponsive controls, terrible level design, and a frustrating key gathering system that makes me give up after two levels without fail. It was frustrating as an arcade game, it was pointless as a port to the NES, and now it’s a terrible addition to what should have been a list of classics. No one remembers NES Open Tournament, and I’m pretty sure that it’s important it stays that way. Kind of a Lovecraft deal I bet, an unknowable horror best left in the shadows of the unseen. Just go play one of the Mario Tennis games while hitting yourself in the head or something, and pretend I described that experience here. Then we come to the affront to all that is good and decent in this world. Yoshi. When the Geneva Convention finished its war crime trials following World War II, it was forced to stay in session for an additional week because someone in the room wrote a description of this game down on a napkin. Every terrible thing that has ever happened can be marginalized and trivialized by placing it next to a copy of this game. When you suck all warmth, love, happiness, and fun out of a room, the resulting vacuum is more entertaining then this game, which exists only in the shadow of that vacuum. The Lament Configuration is more fun to play, and it is a more satisfying puzzle to boot.  Not even Cenobites will touch Yoshi. This game is so bad that it nearly killed me, but to hear that story you first need to know about the game itself. Like any child, the character of Yoshi captured my heart and imagination. It was a fucking dinosaur, could eat bad guys, had special powers when it ate certain things, and some of them were rare breeds with even more special powers. This game says to hell with all that, what people want is a painfully slow simulation of crap falling and filling eggs once in awhile. You play Mario, and Mario’s job is to swap any two columns out of four so that falling monsters become paired and wink out of existence. If you let any one column touch the ceiling, then you are either dead, or you fled the television out of desperation. In either event, this causes a game over. The enemies fall slightly faster than feathers in the vacuum of space, there are only four enemy types you need to worry about matching, and sometimes Yoshi egg half-shells fall and allow you to fill the eggs with mismatched baddies to wink the package away. That’s it. That is the whole of the experience. Everything is randomized and skill isn’t available for comment, much less involved in play. It gets boring before you even finish one round. Notice how I said you play Mario? Yoshi isn’t involved in this game named after him; he just stands around and watches Mario struggle. As a jaded adult, I can’t help but imagine this is some kind of dream Yoshi is having, a Saw like fantasy where Yoshi is exacting his revenge on Mario. Think about it, for years Yoshi has been letting some fat, sweaty plumber punch him in the back of the head whenever the plumber felt like letting him eat something. He gets used as a disposable double-jump, just tossed into pits like trash. Its an abusive relationship, and only worse when you consider the events of Yoshi’s Island and how that baby would grow to become such a dick. So Yoshi dreams of locking Mario in a box and just pouring enemies in after him, along with the broken eggs that represent his shattered dreams. Of course, like so many of these relationships, Yoshi has a bit of Stockholm Syndrome going on, and his subconscious keeps the enemies moving slowly and allows the eggs to help the plumber. As emotionally unfulfilling as that dream is, its nothing compared to the experience of playing the game.  Just look at the freaky baby Yoshi that is birthed if you fill an egg! Once, long ago, a friend and I had stayed awake for several days in a row. Being intelligent young men, we added alcohol to the mix, and decided that if we were going to die, it would have happened already. We were laughing at anything, and it didn’t matter if it was funny or not; we were entertained by carpet. To put it bluntly, you could have slapped us and threatened our families, and we would have had a good time with it. We were the perfect audience for a shitty game to finally entertain! We jumped on the Wii’s virtual console and downloaded it, because the name Yoshi still meant something to us. After one round, I was suddenly cold, as if all joy was lost to me. After two rounds my friend died for five minutes, before I managed to revive him. We fell asleep in the middle of deciding if a third round was worth trying, and the game somehow managed to leave us arranged in compromising positions, and then it uploaded the pictures to my Wii’s friend list. All of that was on the highest difficulty and the fastest speed. A baby falling down a flight of stairs could win a match of Yoshi. It’s not a game. It’s a mean joke, and its inclusion in the Ambassador program just magnifies its evil. Its like if Netflix had an ambassador program that included a snuff film, an edit of The Room that had only the sex scenes, and that video that kills you from The Ring. The other seven movies could all be classics, but every time you thought about them your mind would wander to those three unspeakable things that they shipped along for the ride. You can watch some sad souls play these three, “games,” on Youtube if you don’t believe me, or you can hunt them down and actually play them if you hate yourself that much.  The eggplant wizards made me kick puppies out of anger, so this would have been a twofer. It’s not like it would have been hard to fill those slots with other titles either. Here, watch me do it on the fly. Kid Icarus could be one, to go along with the new version coming out… one day. See, no thinking was even involved to find a classic and it pairs with a future release. Lets do another one, shall we? A swift kick to the balls. It’s more entertaining then Donkey Kong Jr.and more rewarding then Yoshi. Alright, one more. Any other game that has ever existed on the NES. Any of them! Super Mario 2! The Lost Levels! Fucking Tetris! It doesn’t matter, you could have replaced Yoshi with a picture of a dead puppy and I would have rated that as a better addition to the ten. Surely they will do better with the GBA releases, right? Lets look at whats been confirmed thus far, and what has been rumored. Confirmed thus far are: Yoshi’s Island: Super Mario Advance 3
Mario Kart: Super Circuit
Metroid Fusion
WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$
Mario vs. Donkey Kong
Yoshi’s Island is one of my favorite games of all time, so that forgives Donkey Kong Jr. in my eyes, and Metroid Fusion was also pretty great, enough so that I will forget about that tennis game I already forgot about. The other three are just fine. I never played Mario vs. Donkey Kong, but it was received positively, and it actually looks fun to play. WarioWare and Mario Kart are always fun to some extent, regardless of where in the franchise you look. So far so good Nintendo, but I still haven’t forgiven you for Yoshi. How about the rumored games?  Seriously, the worst tennis game ever. Rumored inclusions thus far are: Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3
Kirby & the Amazing Mirror
These two are all but confirmed from what I can tell, with most places just outright saying they will be included. So its a safe bet that these two will be included in the package. Mario 3 is one of the best iterations of the series, and it tied in with the new 3DS Mario game that will come out… one day. Kirby is basically incapable of doing wrong in my eyes, so these two are good choices by Nintendo. Those of you with pattern recognition skills are now realizing that we have seven GBA games listed, much like how we only had seven NES games listed. Will Nintendo include more awesome games, like The Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap, Mario and Luigi: Super Star Saga, Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire, or just hedge its bets and go with the gold standard of Super Mario Advance 2: Super Mario World. This program is supposed to be Nintendo’s way of saying sorry to anyone who rode the hype train they put together. It was supposed to be a big box of games for a device that actually seemed like it was going out of its way to have the saddest release library it could. The NES has a massive library full of classic and memorable games, and picking just ten great ones isn’t hard, so putting together a mediocre spread as the introduction to the program just feels like an insult. Including the crappy sequel to a classic arcade game, the tennis game that time forgot, and one of the least compelling puzzle games ever made doesn’t make me feel proud to own this thing. Which is why they really need to nail those last few GBA games. They need to be either great gaming experiences, or nostalgia filled milestones of the company; they need to remind us about the good times we had with Nintendo, and make us think that perhaps we will one day have some great new content on this handheld. Or they can just give us Pitfall! Mayan Adventure and force me to take drastic measures toward ending all of mankind.  I would watch the world burn if they did this to us. |
So I take you don’t really like the game Yoshi, then?
I may hold a grudge, yes.
Hmmm… Honestly, of the 10 nes games i have recieved, i enjoy playing “yoshi” the most.
I’ve tried them all.
Donkey kong jr – Get to the top, its filled with enemies waiting in ambush. Can’t go under them because of barrels, and cant jump barrels because every enemy the game can handle is stuck at the end.
Stopped at level 2 – don’t think i’ll play that again.
Super Mario Bros. – Brutal on such a tiny screen. Has its moments, but i find myself rushing through levels as fast as i can, taking every warp pipe along the way. Get to the 5th world in less than a minute, then die, stare, and play yoshi.
Balloon Fighter – Need to give this one a better go. Far too easy and repetitive.
Metroid – Painfully difficult. Enemies get stuck on the side, and remove twice as much health as you can find in 10 minutes. Good luck finding enough missiles near the start to pass that one bit…
Ice climber – Jumping system makes me want to cry. Finally jump up 3 ice stacks – fall – then sit there jumping straight up over and over again…
Wrecking Crew – I cannot for the life of me figure out what the hell i’m supposed to do on this game.
Zelda – A good game, but i really can’t be bothered playing it again.
Zelda II – This game raises my blood pressure till i pass out. Finished this once, and i don’t think i’ll ever want to finish it again.
And lastly – Nes Golf something something.
After taking 20 minutes of my life just figuring out how to hit the ball, i hit it, watched it land, didn’t understand, gave up, and declared it the worst game ever.
So again, Yoshi is my favorite of the nes games so far, and i don’t know why. Its easy, its slow, its painfully random, and offers no challenge or competitiveness at all.
Never cared for nes games. My own nes only ever saw me play mario 3, duck hunt, and battle toads.
If you lack nostalgia or a real love for older games, then the NES collection just doesn’t have the power to appeal. At least some of them are classics that are nice to have around: Zelda, Mario, Metroid.
A few others are nice time capsules, Wrecking Crew is the Mario game no one remembers (you need to break everything in the level to win, btw.) Ice Climbers is just weird and somehow endures the ages despite a lack of sequels. Then we have Balloon Fighter, which is a strange Joust clone that materialized for no reason.
I can understand all of those games being included as fond memories and interesting points in history, just not those evil three. Four really, but I let Zelda II slide as an anomaly in the series that Nintendo acknowledges unlike the laser disk games.
As for you liking Yoshi most of all, this is actually a symptom of several very dangerous disorders, and I urge you to seek medical help for enjoying a game like that.