Switch
- they love weak, outdated hardware. They justify this by saying shit like "they want everybody to be able to afford their shit" but if that's true, then why for instance is the Switch still just as expensive as in 2017? That was SEVEN fucking years ago.
"The Switch was officially released on March 3, 2017, worldwide in Japan and most English-speaking and Western markets. It was released with an MSRP of ¥29,980 in Japan, US$299.99 in the United States, £279.99 in the United Kingdom, [...]"
Current price from Amazon in the UK: Nintendo Switch (OLED Model) - White: £269.99 - basically still the same price as at its launch.
Current price from Amazon in the US: Nintendo Switch (OLED Model) - White: $348.00 ...wow, thank you for adding an extra $50 Nintendo!
Yes, I am comparing the price of the launch model to the one of the OLED version here, but come on, I take that little upgrade for granted. Plus it came years after the original one.
So when it comes to their marketing, they act like they just want all of us to be happy and that's why they only use the worst hardware available so even the poorest of the poor can afford it to have a little fun in their miserable lives. That's so kind of you Nintendo! But in reality it's nothing but supply and demand, meaning as long as enough people buy their shit, they won't make it cheaper, or rather charge even more.
- the Switch adds extra input lag to ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING by default. It seems like there is no way around and it doesn't matter which input device you use.
- the Switch does not even come with a normal fucking controller! You have to pay extra just to get something that should have been included! It's not even like the default d pad and buttons are bad or anything like that, no, there is no d pad at all!
- recently I bought a second Switch and then I wanted to play a game on my Switch OLED (using the TV) after first playing the game on my Switch Lite. The game is on a cartridge so I assumed my saved progress would be on this very cartridge that I was using when first playing the game on the Switch Lite. So I took the cart out of the Lite, put it into my Switch OLED, updated the system, launched the game, and: There is no saved progress. I thought ok, maybe I have to enable the cloud save system or something. Went to options and it tells me: In order to use the cloud system, you have to have their monthly subscription, for only $$$ per month.
This is beyond ridiculous! I basically buy the same system twice from them, and they still want me to pay extra for accessing my saved progress on both devices? It really takes some creativity to come up with the idea of linking someone's saves to their hardware, although I already use one account for both devices to play the games on both devices. You only have to buy a game once to play it on both devices, but even if you buy it on cartridge, you can't carry over your save files by putting the cartridge into the other device. They really deserve a punch in the face for this.
Imagine you are going to visit a friend and want to bring one of your games, to play it together with him, on his Switch. And let's say it's a game where you have already unlocked all characters, something like a fighting game or I don't know. You take your cartridge to your friend's, turn it on, and: You can't select those unlocked characters you and your friend were going to play with, because your progress is not saved on your cartridge, but on your console.
- I just said "You only have to buy a game once to play it on both devices" - that's actually not true. After buying a game, you can play it on both of your Switch consoles, but not at the same time
obviously, that's because buying a cartridge doesn't come with another digital copy of the game, you might think. So of course you need to buy that cartridge twice, if you want to play it on two consoles at the same time, right? Fair enough, but the thing is I am not talking about physical games. They have a rule that you can only play one game at a time if it's a digital game. What this means is this: Let's say you like Hamster's ACA games and a friend comes over to yours. You are playing Metal Slug on your Switch OLED and you want to let your friend play Metal Slug 2 on your brand new Switch Lite. As soon as both games are supposed to run at the same time, one of them will shut down and an error message will pop up, telling you to fuck off because it is not possible to play two games at the same time. You purchased both games, they are both linked to your account, but you are not allowed to run both at the same time, on your two Switch devices. Why? Well apparently because Nintendo thinks "what, you want to let someone else play a game that YOU bought? LOL have you lost your mind? That fucker better creates his own account, buys his own Switch, and buys Metal Slug 2 if he wants to play that!" The only thing they let you do is play a cartridge on one device and play a digital copy of a game on the other device at the same time. But as I explained, you will never be able to play e.g. Splatterhouse and Raiden at the same time, on your two Switch devices.If you think this is no big deal, then think about what they might do next, if they are so strict about everything and don't want anybody else to play your games, while you play them at the same time: On the Switch 2 they might scan your finger prints and as soon as you put your toy down, it will automatically lock itself and only you can unlock it and use it with your finger prints. Because they really want to make sure everybody buys their own Switch and copy of a game if they want to play it!
- the eShop is still as bad as on the 3DS. You can have the fastest broadband ever, Nintendo does not care. Everything will still take forever to appear, it feels very unresponsive, and there is a lack of options and filters.
- the joy cons are 100% useless. I refuse to use them, neither in handheld mode nor as a controller.
- obviously you want a proper d pad for handheld mode so you buy something like the Hori Split Pad Pro. It's alright I guess, but not as sturdy and neat as if those things were not just attached to the screen! It's just not ideal, you want a device that's just one thing, not a few pieces stuck together. It feels wobbly and not solid.
- the SFC/SNES style controller does not even have a home button! There is a button combination that replaces/triggers the home button, but it only works when using the app for the SNES games
Although countless other games work perfectly with this controller (Hamster's ACA games (incl. NeoGeo), Crimzon Clover, Contra Anniversary Collection, New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, SEGA Ages, ...), it's like they really want you to only use it for their SNES games. - Mario Odyssey is another game you can't fully play without motion controls. Most actions are also assigned to buttons on the controller, but there are two (iIrc) commands that can only be input by using motion controls. As if there weren't enough unused buttons left on the controller. Just as always, this is 100% unnecessary and could have been easily avoided or patched, but Nintendo does not care and apparently people don't really care either because I am sure Nintendo would care if enough people complained.
- in New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe it is not possible to turn off the detection of motion controls. This results in Mario doing the spin jump every time your controller vibrates hard enough to trigger it. If you turn off the vibrations, which is a more than an unfortunate and questionable work around, the spin jump will still be triggered if you move your controller fast enough for any reason, so you better hold it as still as you can. Luckily I have a controller that does not have the motion feature thing at all. So it's all good if I play with this controller. Plus it rumbles so I don't miss out on that either. But my point is it is fucking ridiculous how it is impossible to simply disable the motion controls in order for the player not to trigger certain commands by accident!
3DS
- the 3DS was region locked!
- if you look at the DSi XL, that is basically the prototype of the 3DS XL. So what do they do? Make you buy the small 3DS first, then act like they just improved it and invented the XL version, just to charge you again for something they should have offered at launch. Let's not even talk about the "New 3DS XL", that has only like two games (I know the actual number is different), both games are not even exclusives, and their other excuse for the upgrade was that the original 3DS was not able to handle SNES games (from the eShop). Yeah right, of course. More like you force people to buy the New 3DS if they want to play the SNES games on it.
- they forgot to add a second "circle pad", so they released the "Circle Pad Pro" not very long after launch (same year!). It looked stupid, but I saw it as an improvement because it improved the ergonomics drastically. The downside was you had to remove the whole thing every single time when changing the cartridge. And also when turning the wifi on and off, if I remember correctly. So then the 3DS XL came out, and although that was about half a year later, it STILL did not feature a second circle pad and you had to buy the circle pad pro AGAIN, the Circle Pad Pro XL!
"The Nintendo 3DS was released in Japan on February 26, 2011"
"The Circle Pad Pro was released in Japan on December 10, 2011."
"The Nintendo 3DS XL was released on July 28, 2012 in Japan."
"The Circle Pad Pro XL was released in Japan on November 15, 2012."
WTF?!
I guess they were like "yeah, we could add a second circle pad to the 3DS XL, but we already have the 3DS XL ready in the drawer since the launch of the 3DS, so we can't really change it up anymore. Well, even better, it will justify another revision!
"- even with the circle pad pro XL and everything, it just gets painful to play the 3DS after some time. The d pad, the buttons, the overall ergonomics, Nintendo has just never been good with these kind of things, or hardware in general. Compare this to the Game Gear! The Game Gear is ANCIENT but still has an amazing d pad and buttons compared to this crap, it just feels rock solid overall, ready for long sessions of fun.
Wii U
- the Wii U has no optical sound out. By now I don't even expect anything like this anymore but at the time all other consoles still had something like that. It mattered to me because at that time I had to play on a 24" monitor if I wanted to play with no input lag (because big TVs were rarely good enough for games in terms of IL). So since there was no extra output for the sound, I had to use the crappy built in speakers of my monitor until I bought another cable that would add an extra outline for the sound.
- Star Fox Zero. How do you ruin a game made by PlatinumGames? Easy, you just get Nintendo involved! Once again, they enforced motion controls. And probably a lot more, we will never know how the game would have turned out if they would have just let PlatinumGames do their thing. That leaves us with Star Fox 64 3D (3DS, 2011) as the most recent entry of the series. It is only on handheld, and it's merely a remaster, or remake at best, of a game that's much older. That leaves an amazing series with only two or three relevant entries. The original Star Fox from 1993 and Star Fox 64 3D (2011). Star Fox 2 is not bad I guess, I haven't played it much yet, but again, they didn't want to make "the same game again" so it's not a straight rail shooter like the first one. Star Fox: Assault by Namco is also good I hope, but so far I haven't played it much either, so I don't know.
Wii
- in defense of the motion controls, people always say shit like "well, this is just an option! Developers don't have to use it, they can implement classic controls for any game if they want!" - yeah, obviously this is correct. In theory. But the problem with something like optional motion controls is that it encourages developers to make use of them, and that pretty much always turns out bad. Also, many among those "developers" are just as full of shit as Nintendo themselves. Which results in things like the Metal Slug collection on the Wii forcing you to shake the Wiimote to throw a grenade. This game does not support the classic or Gamecube controller at all. Fortunately I was not one of its victims, but imagine playing the crappy PS2 collection of these games, then expecting a better version on the Wii, actually buying it, being excited about it, only to realize you can't even use your classic controller with it. It's just mind blowing. Imagine how extremely sad all those people must have been who bought it. Nobody would ever think of this game not supporting a normal controller. This would have never happened on a different platform because even if the people responsible for the game are terrible, at least the absence of motion controls would have prevented them from making use this feature and making it the standard control method of a game with no alternative.
- Donkey Kong Country Returns (Wii). Same thing as with Metal Slug basically. When this game was announced I was very excited and happy about it, but then I never bought it because I learned that you can't even just play this game with a normal controller, how you used to play the DKC games on your SNES before. Some of the essential moves can only be input/triggered by using motion controls, which is nothing but dumb and unnecessary. I was actually happy about the down port of this game for the 3DS, because I knew that time it would not be possible to implement stupid shit like motion controls. I have also played the hack of the game on my modded Wii, where there are no motion controls whatsoever, which just shows how easily they could have given players this option in the first place.
- the Wii and its sensor bar. Seriously, why always force people to do things they don't like. You can't even use this God damn console at all without its silly sensor bar. No matter how much you hate motion controls, you can't even select a game and run it without the sensor bar and the Wii remote. Every single other console just needs its video cable, power cable, controller and you're good to go. Not with Nintendo! If you just set up the Wii with a Gamecube controller plugged in, there is absolutely nothing you can do with it. I just don't get it. No navigating anything. You really have to set up the sensor bar, use the dumb Wiimote to select and run a game, then have it like on your lap or next to you because it's tied to the controller of your choice. There is the classic controller, the classic controller pro, and I even have the Wii SNES style controller. But none of them can be used without the remote, which means extra input lag, changing batteries every other day, and making sure the remote is always connected to the sensor bar.
On top of this the cable of every single controller is SO SHORT, you literally have to have the remote right next to you or even on your lap. That's how short those cables are. It's like they just hate you.
- so far the Wii has been the only console ever where I got it (new!) and the game that came with it in the bundle (Mario Kart) SIMPLY DID NOT WORK! Obviously, the seller or Nintendo themselves would deal with something like this, but imagine how pissed off and disappointed I was! The CD had no scratches because it was new, the console was new, but the game just did not work! Any other game worked on it, but not the one that came with it, how crazy is that.
- the SNES controller for the Wii was only available in their stars shop or whatever it was called. Luckily I had enough stars to get one. But imagine you don't have any of those stars and you can't even just buy it from Nintendo! Then resellers on Ebay are your only way out but that won't come cheap.
- by default, the Wii is region locked
- this is something most people don't even know about. Either because they don't notice it, or because for some reason they are super lucky and it never happened to their Wii. So basically what it is, it's just a matter of time until the Wii overheats and something breaks, which causes it to display some faulty pixels. Here is a video for you to see how it looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wg33i_tirVM
I have a few Wiis and I think two of them already have this issue. On one of those two it is worse than on the other. According to my knowledge it was never fixed with any revision of the console, and obviously Nintendo have never addressed it because they'd rather brush it under the rug because they don't want you to know about it and hope you will just forget about it once you move on to their next console.
- New Super Mario Bros. Wii is also not 100% playable without motion controls if I remember correctly. 99% of the game is. But there are very few bits where you have to balance a platform and it's only possible to be done via motion controls.
Gamecube
- the Gamecube controller was shit. It is great for some games, but a controller needs to be an all-round input device for a range of genres.
- you need one memory card per region for the Gamecube! So let's say there are exclusives to NTSC-J, NTSC-US and PAL, you need THREE memory cards if you want to play games from all three regions. I know there is a fix for it now, but we are not talking about things that consumers came up with to make things easier for us, no, we are talking about Nintendo here and how everything is shit by default if you don't mod and hack the shit out of their stuff!
- the Game Boy Player for the Gamecube adds a significant amount of input lag to the point where some people consider it unplayable. It also lacks display options. Again, this needed to be fixed by people so at least it can be improved on, but if you want the best experience you can't even just buy and use this thing with no extra hassle.
- No F-Zero ever since. Because they want to be seen as the genius who "never makes the same game twice". So no matter how much you want more of the same, they won't just make another F-Zero unless they have a reason in terms of a groundbreaking new idea never seen before in a F-Zero game. But since F-Zero games were always fine the way they were, any new groundbreaking idea that might possibly result in a new F-Zero, that very idea would most likely be dumb and ruin the game anyway.
SNES/SFC
- the blurry image. How could that even happen? At that time there had already been countless other consoles on the market, including some buy Nintendo themselves. They all have a straight sharp image, then Nintendo comes up with the idea to layer two images over each other, but not have them in line, to make sure you get a blurry picture. I still remember how mind blown I was the first time I saw Cho Makaimura on the Saturn. It looked so sharp! Up to this day there is no ideal fix for this that is readily available to a wider audience if I'm correct. There was this guy who made a fix but then his house was trashed or something. There is the Junior, but it is not compatible with all games, so if you want the best image possible for any game, you have to get the MiSTer!
Other
- their games are too easy. They always feature great ideas, they have a great presentation and pamper you with cuteness and charme, but all that doesn't help if the game is too easy. Like WAY too easy. This is already expected because the last time their own games featured an appropriate difficulty were during Famicom/NES days (with exceptions, e.g. Super Mario Bros. 3 is already too easy in my opinion), but I need to point it out anyway because it just ruins every single game that would have been perfect if they had just made it harder!
If there is a single more challenging stage at the very end of the game (e.g. Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Super Mario Galaxy, etc.), that doesn't save the entire game. I would still like to play Super Mario Galaxy 2 because I was told it is more challenging than the first one but again, I am tired of those controls where I have to do that wank motion a billion times because it triggers one of the most basic moves (attack). Maybe I will play it on Dolphin one day but that just shows how ridiculous they are because people have to come up with all kinds of workarounds and hacks to make their stuff playable.
- their games are (almost) never on sale and never get cheaper. Another example of them acting like every Nintendo game is some kind of timeless masterpiece that has been and will always be perfect. Therefore, even after 10+ years they would still charge you the same price on the eShop as when the game first came out.
That's all I can think of right now, but I am sure there is a lot more!
'tude