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Post by Boo Destroyer on Jul 13, 2014 19:40:30 GMT -5
Sega probably won't be able to revive anything of theirs at this point, except in stuff like Sega All-Stars Racing. Whatever else they do have around is niche as hell. |
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Post by Nester the Lark on Jul 13, 2014 20:32:23 GMT -5
Here's an interesting article that was published over at Sega Nerds last month called " SEGA needs to take a page from Nintendo's book." I think it underlines the problem with a lot of the big Japanese publishers, and how Nintendo has managed to maintain their identity. It's an interesting read. No big game publisher is the same as they were 20+ years ago, but at the core, Nintendo still feels like Nintendo. I dearly want the old Sega, Capcom, Konami, SquareSoft, etc, back, but maybe I'm just an old fart. Then again, even if Sega were still cranking out new Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, Panzer Dragoon, and Shenmue games, revisiting Alex Kidd would probably still be a pretty low priority for reasons already stated. |
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Post by TV Eye on Jul 13, 2014 20:53:41 GMT -5
Yay, so my complaints are validated. EDIT: For funsies, I'm gonna attempt a redraw of Alex Kidd. I'll post it soon so you guys can lemme know what you think. EDIT-dos: A'ight, here he is. Sorry for all the halftones, I'm trying to teach myself MangaStudio and I'm still not used to how they work... Attachments:
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Post by nocturnal YL on Jul 14, 2014 1:26:16 GMT -5
Here's an interesting article that was published over at Sega Nerds last month called " SEGA needs to take a page from Nintendo's book." I think it underlines the problem with a lot of the big Japanese publishers, and how Nintendo has managed to maintain their identity. It's an interesting read. No big game publisher is the same as they were 20+ years ago, but at the core, Nintendo still feels like Nintendo. I dearly want the old Sega, Capcom, Konami, SquareSoft, etc, back, but maybe I'm just an old fart. Then again, even if Sega were still cranking out new Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, Panzer Dragoon, and Shenmue games, revisiting Alex Kidd would probably still be a pretty low priority for reasons already stated. Interesting, although I disagree that every company should be like Nintendo. Replace SEGA with Atlus or NIS in that article, and everything will stop making sense. Just because SEGA used to be Nintendo's rival with exactly one game franchise created with battling Nintendo in mind doesn't mean everything else they do must be analogous to Nintendo. And Nintendo's actually the unusual one of the bunch, but like the x86 architecture, being unusual worked in their favour. I don't really know the other publishers too well, but do have quite a lot of comments on them. Maybe I'll start a topic sometime later to talk about those. |
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Post by kirbychu on Jul 14, 2014 7:09:03 GMT -5
Yeah, I think the problem with reviving Alex Kidd is that he was never popular anyway. His lack of success was what led to them creating Sonic the Hedgehog in the first place. It's nice to have him in the crossover games as a reminder of Sega's near-forgotten pre-Sonic days, but I doubt he could carry a game alone without some major reinvention.
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Post by Nester the Lark on Jul 14, 2014 12:54:12 GMT -5
Interesting, although I disagree that every company should be like Nintendo. Replace SEGA with Atlus or NIS in that article, and everything will stop making sense. Just because SEGA used to be Nintendo's rival with exactly one game franchise created with battling Nintendo in mind doesn't mean everything else they do must be analogous to Nintendo. And Nintendo's actually the unusual one of the bunch, but like the x86 architecture, being unusual worked in their favour. I don't really know the other publishers too well, but do have quite a lot of comments on them. Maybe I'll start a topic sometime later to talk about those. I don't think it's the case that other developer/publishers need to be more like Nintendo specifically, it's that a lot of them have lost their identities and don't seem to have any clear direction. They focused more on lazy business decisions, and lost a lot of integrity as game makers. Is it any wonder that Sega has lost the talents of Yuji Naka and Yu Suzuki? Or that Capcom no longer has Keiji Inafune, Shinji Mikami or Yoshiki Okamoto? Or that Square let the creator of its biggest franchise go? Sure, Konami still has Hideo Kojima, but that's basically amounted to them becoming the Metal Gear Company. Silent Hill and Castlevania are outsourced (do I need to mention Koji Igarashi's departure?), Contra is essentially dead, and the last time we saw Gradius, it was filled with scantily clad anime girls. Meanwhile, Nintendo still has Shigeru Miyamoto, Takashi Tezuka, Eiji Aonuma, Yoshio Sakamoto, etc. All of them are gaming craftsmen who have pull within the company, and I think that makes all the difference. Back in 2010, Keiji Inafune mentioned this in a New York Times interview: I’ve been fighting for many years now to change these things one by one. But the business side is resisting change. They think developers are stupid and don’t understand business. That’s why I can’t be on the board of directors.
That’s the difference between Capcom and Nintendo. At Nintendo, 80 percent of the board is from development. At Capcom, it’s zero. All the business side cares about is protecting their own interests. I bet this is not a situation exclusive the Capcom. However, I am starting to see hints that Capcom and Square are realizing it's time to wake up and change direction. Maybe other companies will, too. |
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Post by Shrikeswind on Jul 15, 2014 0:03:21 GMT -5
Inafune-san sounds sorta like he's describing what happened with Atari back in the early 80's. Business end basically gave the development end the finger, development end started breaking off, company nose-dived. Ah, history lessons. Will they ever stick?
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Post by Boo Destroyer on Jul 15, 2014 0:56:55 GMT -5
Contra is essentially dead The only one that most people play and talk about is the first one. Go figure. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 15, 2014 1:08:26 GMT -5
Nintendo is a long-term profit company. Most other companies should be, but evidently, they care most about short-term profit.
On other subjects, since I forgot to check back on this thread...
The ugly design is probably because of the vagueness of his character. Like Nester said on the first page, he really doesn't have much of an identity, and an identity is partly necessary to create a fitting design for him. Since there is no design identity, he just ends up looking bland. Seems pretty straightforward to me.
Also, his redesign by Sumo wasn't for an Alex Kidd game at all. It (might) have turned out better if they redesigned him for his own game, because then he would be of much more importance to the developers.
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Post by Shrikeswind on Jul 15, 2014 4:37:01 GMT -5
Ignoring the comment on the "redesign"...
I really don't think Alex Kidd's got the chutzpah to make it in the modern gaming world, even if Sega does make a serious comeback like that. By this point, Alex has been gone for so long, that without a serious attempt to advertise it, the game would basically just not get the publicity to sell well, and with a serious attempt, there's the issue of getting people to say "Oh yeah, I remember him" after 23 years of Sega being known for a smug blue hedgehog. Unlike Nintendo, Sega's got a history of ignoring anything before the Genesis. If it's going to happen, Sega has to put in a lot of effort beforehand to remind people "Hey, we're older than Sonic," which records show is rather unlikely.
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Post by Nester the Lark on Jul 15, 2014 14:06:42 GMT -5
Inafune-san sounds sorta like he's describing what happened with Atari back in the early 80's. Business end basically gave the development end the finger, development end started breaking off, company nose-dived. Ah, history lessons. Will they ever stick? Atari is an excellent example of what happens to a company that loses its identity. Even Nolan Bushnell said several years ago that the problem with the current Atari is that they don't stand for anything. I think they did try to regain it by rebooting some old franchises with stuff like Centipede: Infestation and the new Haunted House, but after so many years of neglect, the damage has been done. They're a soulless shell with nothing but a brand to their name. I hate to see Sega going deeper and deeper into that same hole. |
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Post by TV Eye on Jul 16, 2014 0:30:18 GMT -5
Inafune-san sounds sorta like he's describing what happened with Atari back in the early 80's. Business end basically gave the development end the finger, development end started breaking off, company nose-dived. Ah, history lessons. Will they ever stick? Atari is an excellent example of what happens to a company that loses its identity. I'd like to take this moment to point in the direction of a previous thread I made that features a video mentioning this exact scenario in detail. |
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