Nintendo’s Decision to go “mature”
Published by dasme 2 years, 2 months ago in News.A large number of titles has been hinted at for the Wii launch, and of those, quite a few are mature properties, breaking away from Nintendo’s track record of family friendly games. Here are a few that you may be interested in. Keep in mind that these are third party titles, so Nintendo’s first party games may stick to the normal themes.
Darkness - This Crossbeam Studios title is said to be Survival Horror game set in a world of Vampires. Not to be confused with the game called The Darkness though—we were. Crossbeam posted the following synopsis on their website:
There’s a world we once knew, lush, green, full of life. Today death and pain rule this world. It is a post-apocalyptic world, where humans once reigned free. It has since been taken over by the children of the night, vampires. The world we took for granted is under their control. We tried to fight against them once, and we suffered greatly in our defeat. Now, we have been driven underground into the sewers, living like vermin in a maze. We have gone into hiding from them so we may live to see another day. There are no heroes left in this world anymore, no one left to fight, no one left to stop them. Then again…
Open the door to the world of Darkness. A post apocalyptic world that revolves around the supernatural and your worst nightmares. Your sword and your abilities are your traveling partners. Meet new people who will help, or hinder, your quest as you wander a world under vampire reign. Learn about your estranged father, and discover the secrets deep within yourself. Your spirit and determination are mankind’s last chance.
The Darkness - the name similarity had us confused. Mea culpa.
Sadness - Another game hoping to break the mold at Wii’s launch is Sadness, a World War One period game centering around Narcolepsy, Nyctophobia, and Paranoid Schizofrenia. It has been stated by the developers themselves to “be only for adult players with strong nerves”. Could this be the Wii’s version of Eternal Darkness? I guess we will have to wait until launch to see.
Thorn - A futuristic game set in space centers around the colonization of a new planet. After being called to your friends death bed, you find his body to be missing, yourself a fugitive, and a web of lies surrounding the planets colonization.
The developer has said that they plan for the game to have a Teen or Mature rating, due to its mature content. This includes “a futuristic world steeped in paranoia and the occult, and a storyline exploring the occult underworld”.
Story edited on April 30th to correct a case of game confusion.
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14 Responses to “Nintendo’s Decision to go “mature””
- 1 Pingback on Apr 30th, 2006 at 9:35 pm
- 2 Pingback on Aug 10th, 2006 at 12:02 pm
The primary goal of Nintendo this round is to extend the definition of gaming. This means broadening their audience within gamers–but more importantly, engaging current non-gamers into being interested in the Wii.
So yes, it’s going mature, but not to the exclusion of every other single demographic imaginable.
I don’t think 2Kgames has announced The Darkness for the Wii.
Cross Beam Entertainment has an unrelated game call Darkness (no “The”) in developement, but this no based on the comicbook. /www.crossbeamstudios.com/projects.shtml
As you see they are also the developers of Thorn (and another game called Orb). CBE does not look like a power house developer (although never count the little guy out).
Sadness is from Nibris, out of Poland. http://nibris.net/
Also doesn’t appear to be a large company (notice that they categorize their DS game “Raid Over The River” a “Shotter” (I think they mean “Shooter”)).
You can’t look at 3rd party games to tell the direction Nintendo is going. I don’t see they are hitting any more adult than they did with the GC (see RE4).
I agree with Phyltre.
Sorry for the confusion, we’ve corrected the article replacing the game “The Darkness” with “Darkness”. The names are so similar we got confused.
its about damn time! i would take this with a pinch of salt though because nintendos impression of ‘mature’ is always slightly less than the rest of the market so im want to believe that we will be getting th GTAs and the Killer 7s of the gaming world but we’ll see.
Of course, the first paragraph is a bit missleading… As none of these have virtually any chance of being launch titles… The Darkness was full multi-platform slated for winter release last I checked, and there’s been no indication it will utilize the wii’s remote at all… Sadness could indeed be pormissing, but, well, Nibris doesn’t have a Wii devkit of publisher…. It’d be an amazing feet for them to magically put it out before launch… And of course, a similar story with Thorn and Crossbeam Studios, but even more dismal. Thorn, isn’t even in development, they’re in the concept stages, but CSE is primarily working on Orb, and doesn’t have a large enough staff to easily develop multiple games. They’re eating drinking and sleeping Orb right now, but napping Thorn….
All the same, congratz on getting dugg.
Ahhh, sorry about the double-post, but didn’t refresh in quite a while… ANYWAY, I was assuming you were guessing that The Darkness would in fact come out for Wii based on IGN’s early impressions a LONG time ago
“No systems have been specified, but it’s safe to assume The Darkness is being developed for PS3, Nintendo Revolution and Xbox 2. Those eager for a glimps of The Darkness in action will have to wait just a bit longer. The Darkness makes its debut at E3 2005 in Los Angeles May 18-20.”
Of course, since it has apparently been confirmed that it’s only coming out on PS3 and Xbox 360, so I was wrong when I posted anyway… Either way, with Darkness replacing it, lowers the status further. Darkness is the pet game of Greg Nichols of CSE, and in VERY early development stages… In fact he hasn’t really confirmed a desire to make it a Wii title… It was vaguely indicated that they’d like to bring Darkness to as many people as possible and whiule Greg Szemiot, producer of Orb seems to be nudging him in the direction of Wii with some ideas for Wii controls, nothing about Darkness has been shown to truly be Wii-specific…
Nintendo has had mature games for some time. Gamecube had games such as Eternal Darkness, Resident Evil 4, and Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes. Hell the N64 had Conkers Bad Fur Day which is about as Adult as you can get.
It’s been interesting seeing people’s perception of, “mature” over the years.
It’s not occurred to a lot of people just what they’re suggesting and the rather inept adjective they’re using to symbolise their desire to see gratuitous sex/violence/etc in Nintendo’s library.
Mature suggests *depth*, content fitting of a developed mind, not those who find the, “Governator’s” films engaging.
Mature *themes* is a different matter. Taking a darker approach opens both the plot and characters up to some deeper development. In essence, getting past the whole clear-cut, “good vs. evil”, cliché allows the spawning of those bitter-sweet flawed characters, the mark of the truly realized and great stories.
However, “dark”, is not to be confused with, “mature”, it’s merely a tool for creating a truly mature story, one where the recipient’s mind is challenged as much as their reflexes and their perception altered, translating beyond the game/book/film and into thier lives as the person grows from that which they have learned. Dark isn’t necessary to achieve maturity but it can help.
This *should* be the mark of a good game and the goal of a developer and I’ve heard similar statements regarding, “changing one’s perception”, from some of gaming’s great alumni, including Shigeru Miyamoto and Aonuma.
Look deeper into the games Nintendo and others have been making, perhaps you’ll find what you were really missing all along.
Or maybe I’m full of crap, gore me up!
Just like Nintendo will have 3 mature titles, Microsoft and Sony will have 3 kiddy games.
Guys, the fact that you have to point out that the Gamecube has mature titles is simply strengthening the point of this article. PS2 and Xbox has mature titles, and so many that we dont need to make a point of them, while on the Gamecube, seeing a M rated title on the shelf is somewhat of a rarity.
Another thing I want to address is that being mature does not mean M rated. It means having mature elements. Unreal Tournament is’nt “Mature”, but it is M, while other games such as Ico are rated T. There are more out there, but the point Im making is that Mature doesnt neccisarilly mean 17 . It just means it caters to the more thought hungry minds, after they have had their fair share of brain cell killing Halo 2 (which I do love BTW).
The only people I know who doesn’t have a GameCube but instead have a PS2 or Xbox are those who wants to play mature games (not necessarily M-rated games). These people want games with a compelling story, darker themes, and “non-cartoony” characters. All the Mario games, in fact, all the Nintendo games out there are lacking in these areas. If Nintendo wants to compete against Xbox 360 and PS3, then they better stop relying on the Zelda and Mario franchise to sell their consoles; they need to step it up and create franchises along the lines of Doom and Max Payne. That’s not to say that they should end their current campy franchises, but it would be nice if they could put more effort in bringing mature games to their system. They shouldn’t wait for games like Splinter Cell to be ported to their console, but instead should work so that Splinter Cell is first released on their console. It will give a good reason why everyone should get their console. Afterall, people hate it when the must-have game is not available for their console. That happened to me countless number of times ever since I got the GameCube. I hope Nintendo’s Wii will deliver ’cause I would love to play Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter using their novel controller. But first they need Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter… Too late, Xbox 360 had it first.
Just so you know, I have a grudge against Nintendo. I regretted getting the GameCube because they didn’t have the games I wanted to play (except for Metroid Prime). However, inspite of my grudge, I would still like to get the Wii because its controller seems to hold a lot of promise and might be able to compensate for the possible lack of mature games.
i’m a new gamer. does anyone have any recommendations for games for a 29 yr old female? how would u all rate mysims, sims city, harvest moon, and the ocean discovery games for wii? i look forward to hearing yall’s comments.