Patreon Letter - 16th December, 2018

Boy I sure did just accidentally write 2019 in the header field, and my brain had a strange jolt as I thought about just skipping next year. Sounds like a pretty good plan to me.

Smash Ultimate is out, and I've been playing way too much of it. I've always been on paper into smash, but I spent most of my time with the first two games back when I was a teen and could have friends over for long game-driven sleepovers. It's the best game for that. But I thought Brawl was dire (whether the game is just worse or it was that it was on the Wii is anyone's guess), and while I liked Smash 4 I didn't really spend much time with it. 

My enthusiasm is almost entirely based on the constant dopamine drip of new spirits. I was initially very down on spirits as a replacement for trophies, because the trophies are my favorite Smash thing. Seeing obscure characters re-rendered in 3D for the first and probably only time was a treat. Some images taken directly from the art material around these games can't compare to new text and art. 

However, the challenges around acquiring spirits are so thoughtful and entertaining that it's become a thing I return to every day to grab a few even if I do nothing else in the game. Using the limited tools of smash's roster and color variants and specific level/item combinations to evoke a character reminds me so much of building things in Minecraft, or crafting levels around the transformation costumes in Mario Maker, or any fighting game create a character that I can't help but be incredibly charmed by it. The sort of natural impulse to recreate within strict boundaries is honestly such an imagination-fueling endeavor, it's heartening to see it extrapolated out on such a massive scale. 

The result of this has been an intense wave of nostalgia, as I've played through a good 80-90% of the games referenced in spirits. It's one of those things where I never think of myself as an expert in games but then seeing so many of the things I love thrown back at me has me remembering that no, I was totally the Nintendo kid, and all of it is right there if I go looking for it. It's honestly a bit overwhelming to consider just how much of Nintendo's reference canon I personally have already touched. Overwhelming, and a little sad.

I found myself, a half dozen hours into World of Light, thinking about some of these great games. Super Mario World, Earthbound, Link's Awakening ... I've played all of these games multiple times, to the point where they no longer have surprises for me. I could sit down and complete Mario World right now, it'd only take me an afternoon because I've done it plenty of times, but that knowledge makes me more sad than it does happy. Mario World is one of the best games, but it's been so excavated by my life that I can't just enjoy it the way I used to when I was young. And every time I try I get less and less for my efforts.

Frankly, that sucks. 

This is entirely a me problem, but World of Light has made me melancholy for just how much of the culture Nintendo is celebrating in Smash exists almost entirely in my rear view mirror. I played them, I might still own a good number of them in various forms, and very few of them are getting made in the same style again. Seeing so many Castlevania pulls knowing I've played all but a few Castelvanias makes the reality of no new Vania a looming pall over all of this. There will never be another Mario World, and Nintendo is happily selling New Super Mario Bros U again for full price. That's not even a game I enjoyed the first time. Mario Maker might as well never have happened. SMB 2, the best one, isn't even in the stupid Switch online app, where Nintendo puts out a couple NES games a month, with no plans to speed up or offer other platforms. 

Smash feels like it comes from another world where Nintendo cares about making sure people can play the games that form a huge chunk of video game history. A universe where anyone in power cares, outside of M2 and Frank Cifaldi. There are a ton of Mother 3 references in Smash, and yet that game still hasn't been given any sort of release, two years after there were enough rumors to have me convinced Nintendo has a version they intended to put on Switch at some point. Some people playing Smash weren't ALIVE when the last F-Zero game came out, and none of them are available easily anymore. Please consider spending over $100 on the two Nintendo Classic consoles, soon to be discontinued after this holiday season. 

The reality is that Nintendo's vision of remembering its history is empty and driven entirely but what packages they can sell for their premium Nintendo prices, and nothing to do with the gestures of warm nostalgia that form the backbone of Smash Brothers. It's a strange thing to grapple with because even if they did, I'm not sure I want to revisit them. But they speak to a time when Nintendo were putting out far more and more interesting games than they do now. A world where third parties were creating popular original franchises with iconography that speaks to us decades later. It's not actually good or healthy to think of video games as being better before, because in many ways they were not, but Smash shows us that for some companies and some types of games, that is definitely true. 

Nintendo isn't interested in doing anything about that, but for $59.99, they'll remind you just how vast the graveyard of their own success is.

I hope everyone has a good holiday, and I'll see you next time.

Em