captainsnoop:

jokes aside Splatoon was probably the most influential game to come out of Nintendo in the past decade 

not like, on the industry as a whole. internally. influential on Nintendo itself.

Splatoon was created by a team of young, inexperienced new hires assembled by Miyamoto as a sort of experiment to see what would happen if Miyamoto let a team do whatever they wanted without Miyamoto’s input. 

and we all know what happened with Splatoon.

they came up with an incredibly fun new play concept, they found a way to make a multiplayer shooter family friendly, the game had loads of fun characters and interesting character designs, the game had lighthearted yet deep storytelling with genuinely interesting lore, and the game was wildly successful despite being on the Wii U. 

interesting results, yeah? this game had fun gameplay AND an interesting story and people loved both aspects of it. the story didn’t get in the way of the game, it enhanced it and drew people in to it. that goes against pretty much everything Miyamoto believed at the time.

and then Star Fox Zero and Paper Mario Color Splash came out, which put “innovation” over fun and storytelling. both games are utterly ruined by their gimmicks and both games can have lines drawn from their failure directly to Shigeru Miyamoto’s involvement 

i know it can be easy to paint Miyamoto as a bad guy, lord knows I’m guilty of doing that, but I honestly think that Miyamoto kinda had his eyes opened by this sequence of experiences. people liked Splatoon, a game that put a Nintendo spin on a known concept and had rich worldbuilding. people did not like Star Fox Zero or Paper Mario Color Splash, which neglected the story and gameplay in favor of experimental control schemes for the sake of being different. 

so I think that once Nintendo did its major company restructuring, Miyamoto probably voluntarily reigned in his influence and put Koizumi in charge. Koizumi had actively fought Miyamoto for years on story in games and would always sneak story in to games against Miyamoto’s orders.

You know how Link’s Awakening has a bittersweet story about waking up the Wind Fish? Or how Majora’s Mask is… Like That? Or the storybook telling Rosalina’s origin story in Galaxy? Koizumi is the guy most responsible for all three of those things. Koizumi snuck those things in against MIyamoto’s wishes, and people loved the things that Koizumi did. 

Now, Koizumi is the guy that shows up at press conferences and Nintendo Directs. He’s the guy that told the Super Mario Odyssey team “go nuts and make whatever you want.” 

You know what the Odyssey team made? They made Mario 64-2. They took Mario 64′s proven gameplay formula, modernized it, added some new stuff that complimented the gameplay, and put it in a game world absolutely packed with new things. New characters, new fantasy races, new enemies, new settings, all of it new. 

And it’s the best Mario game to date. 

So, because Splatoon succeeded where Star Fox Zero and Color Splash failed, we got Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild. I think MIyamoto finally realized that he wasn’t helping anything by using his seniority to force his philosophies on others and he stepped down. 

and now Nintendo’s better than it’s been in years. 

9 months ago / 5463 
via: chefpyro
src: captainsnoop
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    While I do have to agree with some of this…Miyamoto didn’t “ruin” the Paper Mario series. He said to Intelligent Systems...
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