Why Nintendo Kicked Square Out of their Good Graces: The Alternative Truth

As we are all aware, when Nintendo released the Nintendo 64, relations with Square kind of took a nose dive. It should also be known that the last decent Final Fantasy game was for a Nintendo system. Final Fantasy seemed to keep getting more crap like with each installment from number seven on. Now, was it so much that Square left Nintendo in disgust of their cartridge system? Or perhaps Square felt Nintendo was being too limiting on the games they could make.

As we all know, Nintendo at least tries to make their games resemble a quality game for the whole family. At least... out side of Japan anyways.

It was during discussions of what Final Fantasy 7 would entail that Nintendo and Square had their big dispute. Generally listed that Square wanted to "do more on a game than the system would allow."

Now, let us suppose that the System here is not the N64 cartridge limitations--which were not nearly as severe as people make them out to be. Consider what all was done with LoZ: OoT and LoZ: MM. We STILL have people tearing though the code for those games and finding new stuff. Including a few things that were just thrown in as junk. Like the reports of code for Arwings and a Pirate Ship in OoT. OoT was in development for some time--and it was fairly impressive how they set it up.

Likely Square was talking to Nintendo about Cloud and some of the other characters in Final Fantasy 7. You know Cloud, Mr. "I cut myself, because I only know I am still alive if I hurt."

The writers likely presented Cloud and a few other characters--and the concept of Aeris dying to Nintendo, and I really doubt they would have any of it. I mean, if they had stayed, there would have been a quest to revive Aeris. And Cloud would have been a lot more chipper and happy in the game. Perhaps generally enjoying life--for just as little reason as Cloud currently is a--to put it simply: an Emo bastard.

I mean, yes, he did seem to have developed and got better by the end of Final Fantasy 7, only to have had the writer's decide that merely was a high point in his otherwise overly chemically depressed life.

Now then, compare this to other Nintendo Characters:

Mario is a large over weight plumber. Generally looks about as ugly as something that gets his face smacked in with a shovel every third day. He has a happy simple life. Gets hit on by trannies (like Birdo or Vivian)--and has a few Princesses shove him around, generally being various teases. Including Peach who instead went to "her" (see last blog entry) kidnapper for a relief.

Then to Link. If anybody has any right to be emo, it is Link. Link generally starts off every game with his parents killed off in some fashion, and an evil entity out to kill all his friends and people he cares about. Followed by this evil entity poisoning the land he grew up in. Then he usually has to grab three tokens followed by seven tokens to even see him. Yes, he does get some decent weapons--but he generally starts off his every incarnation getting the short end of the rope.

Never mind the four Legend of Zelda CDi games that he has to him. Samus Aran, Mario and Fox McCloud do not even have this to them. Oh--right... you only know about the first three. The fourth LoZ CDi game, known as The Death Disk colloquially, is said to be a component in the Necronomicon for the summoning of the final days, where the elder things from worlds outside our comprehension shall rise from the depths, and feast on us all. The Death Disk is currently being guarded in secret. The lucky ones are the first to be eaten, should any body find the Death Disk.

Kidding about fictional games aside--if anybody has any right of Nintendo mascots to be an emo kid, it would be one of Link's many incarnations. Though, I doubt any Emo kid would be known for the lines associated with Link from the old cartoon, such as: "weeeeeeeeell, excuuuuuuuse me princess."

I mean, and then Link also has Navi for a reoccurring character. If I had Navi even appear in my life, I would probably start talking about how I want to kill myself and being all depressed. I mean, seriously--living with Navi is probably a lot better reason to do emo blogs on livejournal than anything else I can think of.

And yet--nobody can possibly think of Link and Emo--until now. Eris damnit! I just invoked Rule 34 on Emo Link--probably mixed in with Shadow Link. If you desire to kill me, this would be another very good reason to do so. I am personally surprised with the sheer lack of lynch mobs in my life. I am going to need to change this.

Next, we move onto Fox McCloud. His father was shot down by his father's wingman. His father exists only in a state of his own mind, where every now and then, Fox will hallucinate his father coming to help him. Or sometimes this element in his mind will be used against him, by entities with telepathic powers, such as the Aparoids.

Now, Fox has not had much for games. His first game was on the SNES, which he seemed fairly calm and confident. Able to choose his path. The second game, Star Fox 2, was never released. It looked like it may have been a fairly decent and well done game.

Then Star Fox 64 was a remake, of sorts, of Star Fox. With some differences to the comic made of Star Fox. The Star Fox comic had Fox McCloud going on all three routes to try to get to Andross generally getting a lot of collateral damage done on his home, the Lylat System. Even then, in Star Fox 64 there are a lot of remnants of a really fierce war. Fox pretty much grew up in a war torn home.

I mean--this kind of puts Fox McCloud on a similar level to child soldiers in Africa.

Next game, he meets the love of his life, Krystal. Then has to deal with a Borg-like enemy consuming the Lylat system with technology that was hard to really face. There was a lot more that could have been lost in that war.

Then we move onto his involvement in Star Fox: Command Missions. Generally having a lot of character development elements show up in the game. Even at one point, with Krystal going off to join Star Wolf--his arch nemesis.

And yet, Fox does not seem Emo. If anything, he seems to be a little bit gruffer around the edges after this. Rather than blog about it on the Lylat Equivalent to live journal, he is more likely to kick somebody's ass in a bar fight. Orrr... go on a hot steamy date with Falco. I am personally waiting for this to show up as canon myself. As it is, there is no sign of any form of torrid love affair between Falco and Fox out side of slash fiction.

It really does not help, that Star Fox games generally tend to be few and far between. I personally love the series.

Next we move onto Samus Aran. Samus Aran has no idea who her parents were. They were killed long ago by a space pirate raid. She was left alive to be raised by the Chozo. Which she then went on to get her revenge mission, and become a well known bounty hunter.

While she may lament about fallen allies in Fusion--I must admit, I never really saw her as Emo. More just likely to kick your ass for looking at her the wrong way. But then, this was never a series I particularly enjoyed. I enjoyed Metroid on the NES--it has been a while since I played Metroid 2. Super Metroid I generally consider very over rated, and really, not worth my time. Metroid Fusion I got stuck in--there was a puzzle that refused to be solved. This puzzle is never able to be solved any time I head there either in the game. Metroid Prime, I am staying away from until I can find a copy of Metroid Prime Trilogy. Though--even then, I have never really been that interested in FPS, after all the really bad FPS I have seen over the years.

Then we have Metroid: Other M, and Metroid: Zero Mission, that I may check out--but well, I just cannot get into the Metroid series. I also really do not get why people are such huge fans of it. I just do not see the connection people have with it.

But then, I also consider Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past one of the biggest scrap heaps I have ever had the misfortune to play. Generally looking like an NES game, with only minor increases in functionality for the SNES. The graphics look horrible, even by other SNES games of a similar release date. I mean, compare the graphics in Sword of Mana (originally a SNES game) and Secret of Mana to LoZ:LttP. This is without going into what we found the system to really be capable of, when they released Yoshi's Island and Kirby's Dreamland 3. Kirby's Dreamland 3 generally having better graphics and much nicer look to it than Kirby 64: the Crystal Shards.

Also, around the same time as the release of the N64, Pokemon would have been gearing up. Creating Nintendo's mouse mascot we all know: Pikachu. The idea of Pokemon is the world is filled with monsters that generally could destroy you by breathing on you. There are many Pokedex entries about Pokemon who can destroy entires cities and militia forces in their general goals. You play as an 10/11 year old kid, who runs around, and shoves these monsters in tiny little capsules. I mean, I just want to see them try an Emo protagonist with this game. I honestly do not want to know it is possible though. I mean, even Wes, who was 17 did not seem Emo. Well, not to me anyways.

-=-

So--I dunno it just seems that very Square was going with the Final Fantasy series. Particularly FF7, FF8, FFX and FFX-2, may not have been a direction that Nintendo would have been happy with. If they did stay with Nintendo, the series likely would have ended up being way different than how we know it. Even without technology constraints measured in.