Nintendo is the type of gaming company that is exceptional at fostering a loyal, dedicated fanbase that constantly and consistantly purchases their various gaming products out of loyalty, nostalgia and a love of the quality of their products. However unlike the other two big three gaming console manufacturers, Nintendo is far more consistent in the quality of their software, yet exceptionally not so when it comes to their hardware.
This whiplash Nintendo gamers experience going from a truly great dedicated console with tons of quality games, adequate 3rd party support, a functional controller and hardware specs capable of relatively comparable performance to its chief competitors, to rather suddenly being tasked with the challenging test of loyalty to support a console with inferior specs that cost it sufficient 3rd party support, a wonky non-standard gaming controller that turns a portion of gamers away while also being confusing and alienating to its 3rd party partners and some insuficient game titles that lack the charm gamers expect in exchange for making games that heavily push that consoles weird gimmick at the expense of what gamers were expecting.
Because Nintendo is not consistent on when they will make a console that meets the needs of the most consumers to one that barely only their trulty most dedicated fans will even bother with, makes it exceptionally frustrating as an older Nintendo gamer who has experienced this quality of care whiplash multiple decades throughout their life. This can make a dedicated Nintendo gamer become jaded, frustrated and leave Nintendo for a time to seek out the gaming experiences they crave elsewhere. More often than not when Nintendo’s antics are sufficiently infuriating to push these gamers away for that console cycle they often turn to either Playstation, which is the console the most similar to Nintendo, or PC gaming which comes with its own challenges but also offers emulations as a bare bones consolation prize.
I have to admit I am one of those gamers that put up with a lot more of Nintendos frustrating antics than most. Despite their extremely lower userbases and software libraries compared to their immediate predecessors and successors, I remained loyal to Nintendo from the NES through every major release, home console and handheld, all the way up to the Switch.
Some years were better than others. During the NES and SNES era if you chose to pick Nintendo only or over the other guys offerings you wouldn’t have been too disappointed. Sure you would miss out on some Atari arcade to home console ports or the Sonic and friends Sega was offering but you would be too busy playing superior games on the Nintendo from Capcom, Square, Konami, Namco and Nintendo itself. Things got a lot tougher during the N64 era when the software droughts were tough enough to endure made even worse when a game did release it was some local multiplayer fare you had little to no interest in. During those years you were kinda forced to either pick up a second console for the games not going to the Nintendo machine, fiddle with a PC that wasn’t built for gaming but could handle it if you tinkered enough, or just settle for inferior but still fun enough versions of Nintendos games on the accomanpying handheld.
Some Nintendo console cycles the console-handheld pairing made sense as it provided more than enough gaming experiences to offset the software droughts and the wonky gimmicks that were shoehorned into the machine to support its wonky controller interface that generation. The GameCube was much easier to endure the long droughts and gimmicky games as it paired well with the GBA to bring over SNES level games, which at that time really weren’t that outdated of a play/graphics style.
It was less bearable during the Wii years because while the DS did get a steady stream of interesting games to counteract the really headscratching Waggle crap the Wii was infested with, it too compromised some big franchises in ways some Nintendo gamers were put off by to accomodate its own controller gimmick. But truly the most painful time to try to be a Nintendo fan was during the 3DS and Wii U years.
The biggest problem plaguing the 3DS/Wii U combo for those who went that route was both consoles were yet again experiencing long software droughts, insufficient 3rd party games to supplament those fewer Nintendo releases and the 1st party games that were also infected with some of the most egregious gameplay compromises to fit the gimmick of the console and the handheld. What made that console cycle even more unbearable to the Nintendo loyalist was the fact that even when a quality 1st party game did come out that didn’t force the controller gimmick too hard and was desireable to the Nintendo fan, it was often the same game on both platforms. At least in the N64-Wii era if the console version of a Mario, Zelda or Donkey Kong was unappealing due to controller shinanagens, there usually was a comparable handheld game in those franchises that still felt like a traditional outing, for the most part alas the DS took some weird risks itself.
The Nintendo Switch was such a sigh of relief for those gamers who suffered through the N64-Wii U years that were some tough ups and downs because for the first time since the mid-90s we didn’t have to buy TWO dedicated Nintendo consoles just to get all the games we signed up for. You just bought a Switch and it WAS both the home console AND the handheld all in one. This meant that while you would still get handheld level games and console level games, along with the best 3rd party support Nintendo has had in 2 decades at that point, you onloy had to buy one machine to get all those games. No longer did you have to sacrifice or skip the console game to settle for the handheld game or endure long, extremely boring droughts with little to nothing interesting worthwhile to play. This is the primary reason I was so excited for the Switch it was the first console I pre-ordered before launch to guarantee I got one at launch without having to fight scalpers.
Unfortunately for me personally I had to sell my Switch back during the COVID lock downs because I lost my job and had to pay rent. This left me with having to stick with just my PS4 as it didn’t offer enough resell value compared to the Nintendo stuff to procure funds for covering bills between job searches, back then. Despite my best efforts to make the Playstation work as a decent enough Nintendo alternative while I endured economic hardships that prevented me from getting another Switch, it was never enough. Sure Playstation does get ALL the 3rd party games but like when the vast majority of those are just annual Call of Duty crap you were never interested in in the first place, it didn’t provide the same experiences as any Nintendo console/handheld combo ever did. As a result I sorsaked the vast majority of the Playstation offerings and settled into nothing but primarly a Minecraft gamer.
What I realize spending the last 12 years trying to be live without Nintendo in any meaningful way and sticking to just Playstation and PC for my gaming fix was, damn I sure missed Nintendo games. Sony, Sega, Konami, Capcom, EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard and Microsoft COMBINED can’t match the ultimate level of top notch gaming perfection you get from your standard Mario, Donkey Kong and Zelda offerings. Even the lesser games in those franchises nearly always best the BEST games from anyone else not named Nintendo. Yes, sure they also have lesser tier franchses too but even a Spaltoon, Metroid or a Pikmin is still leaps and bounds superior to the majority of A Last of Us or a Gears of War and immeasurably superior to every single Call of Duty game COMBINED. Y’all I was missing out on Nintendo games like nobody’s business. That is why I am glad to finally be back in the hands of the gaming company that, yes has jaded me more than I would have liked, still brings me far more joy and good times than all other gaming platforms put together.