Dear Nintendo,
Happy holidays!
What I really want for this fiscal year is a Pokemon brawler-type game in the same vein as Super Smash Bros. How you haven't seized this boner-inducing opportunity yet is beyond me.
That's right. Fuck that bullshit excuse of a "battle" series you Pokemon Stadium/Colosseum and let's produce what every pokemon nerd actually wanted out of those turdly cash-vacuums: that is, to pilot Gyarados around the arena whilst dragonizing shit, or to hit whatever button makes use of those hydro-cannons in Blastoise's back, or to fuck some shit seriously up with Scyther's and/or Kabutops's fore-blades.
In fact, just as a general rule from now on, you should probably quit pooping miserable spin-offs onto our well-meaning store shelves. Your name may be sacred, Nintendo, but your shit still stinks something awful. Now where was I? Oh yeah.
Fuck turn-based mechanics, fuck rock-paper-scissor-like (read: leaf-fire-water-like) handicaps, and fuck all that four-attacks-max-per-character RPG bologna you jimmied in for no good reason. No more Miracle Whip. We want the real mayo. RPG mechanics, like level-based or elemental-type handicaps, just throw off character balance in a fighting game and make it so certain characters are just never fun to use. I dream of a game where Sandslash and Dragonite have equal opportunities to kick each other's asses, where it isn't a terrible mistake to evolve Graveler into Golem before he learns Earthquake, and where Beedrill is finally as badass as he looks. You figure out the technicalities. You're Nintendo. If you can make a Kirby that is able to whomp Ganondorf when handled properly, then you can make anything.
Which isn't to say I don't want there to be all kinds of certain features from the original Pokemon framework. I'm just saying that real battles don't have menus in them. And, like, I'm fine with having to hunt down and unlock all kinds of rare, higher-order characters--I mean, what would Smash Bros. be without the thousand hours' worth of wonderful crap it gives me to unlock?--but once I do, I don't want these guys to hurl a bunch of characters that came before them into obsolescence. I don't want to unlock, like, Zapdos, and then never need to use Raichu again. Raichu's a pimp, and he should be able to hold is own with just as much finesse as any legendary thunder bird. When all is said and done, I want to have 150+ fighters to choose from, and I want each one to be totally capable of kicking much ass. I don't know, honestly, what it would look like for, say, Diglet to "kick much ass," but lord knows I'd be game to find out.
Which is to say: Diglet had *better* be able to kick ass, in his own wormy way. Every Pokemon should be allowed its own manner of handling, its own strengths and weaknesses, but these ought not to cripple/overpower them. Like, I expect that Voltorb would be confined to pretty much rolling around, maybe hopping, and occasionally hurtling himself at opponents; but this shouldn't be a drawback to his character so much as just an aspect of how he dominates. Same goes for Diglet: let him be the pudgy little worm-thing that he is, but don't rob of him of his chutzpa just for being adorable and limbless.
Mastering character variety is what makes games like Smash Bros. so brutally and unrelentingly replayable. Trust us to appreciate this sort of plumb-able depth. After all, once upon a time, you got millions of us kids to crawl around through godknowshowmany miles of pixelated grass and water and dirt trying to collect a hundred and fifty different fucking critters, each and every one of which we knew by name and stat and number and could dive into a little a monologue about, if prompted. And these fuckers didn't even move when they fought! They just sat there while impressionistic bleep-bloops flittered about the screen and text scrolled by, one or two heart-pounding lines at a time, and kept us informed as to how the imaginary bloodshed was ensuing. This quenched us, then. Which is to say, you should trust us. We all have a deep-seated OCD for the Pokemon mythos. If you churn out a brawler worthy of our compulsions, we will give you our money for it. And it will bring us joy heretofore unfathomable.
And what better time for ineffable merriment than X-mas?
May your holidays be bright, Nintendo.
May Scyther's fore-blades finally taste the carnage they deserve.
May this year see a line-up that doesn't totally fucking underwhelm.
Love forever and ever,
Towel
I woke up this morning and scratched my balls. While still in bed, I found a bit of plastic that holds price tags to new clothes tangled in my ballsack. it didnt say how much my nuts cost.
Posted by: Joel at January 5, 2010 1:06 PM