Top 10 Nintendo mistakes

mortal kombat

1. No blood in Mortal Kombat.

2. The E-Reader

3. Virtual Boy

4.The Nintendo Gamecube GBA Cable

5. No online on the Gamecube

6. No Grand Theft Auto on the Gamecube

7. The Gameboy Camera and Printer

8. Pictochat

9. No Voice Chat

10. Lack of Wavebird Controllers

Read more about why these got the top and and list anything you think below in the comments.



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  • Max

    You could have just said GameCube.

  • Kevin K.

    I like Pictochat. Especially when you can actually find 20+ people at one time.
    But i think things like e-reader gc to gba cable and the gameboy camera were just failed attempts to make something innovatively work and they were still pretty fun for a while. The Gamecube did have some very good online titles, though only about 3. Phantasy Star Online was a very good online game and i still think that its better than the new ps2/360 version. Some of the errors like the anti-violence were very lame. but thoose have changed now like the mortal kombats on wii and ds or even manhunt lol. We can all hope for Voice Chat to join the Wii as well.

  • Adam

    Freind codes not make the list yet?

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  • http://www.mgroves.com mgroves

    I don’t think “No Grand Theft Auto” counts as a Nintendo mistake.

    And “lack of wavebird controllers”? What, is there a shortage?

  • skunkchop

    I think that letting Rare leave them was a HUGE mistake. Second to Nintendo, Rare was the best company during the Nintendo 64 era(IMO). They made games like Donkey Kong 64, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, GoldenEye 007, Perfect Dark, Banjo Kazooie and Banjo Tooie.
    They left by giving Nintendo one last game(an amazing game by the way), StarFox Adventures. Ever since they worked for Microsoft, Rare has been considered a dead company as they didn’t release any triple-A titles. It’s obvious Rare belongs with Nintendo.
    I guess it’s not really a NINTENDO mistake though.

  • skunkchop

    Mgroves’ post is completely correct.
    Also, Pictochat was a little side-feature which I enjoyed. If you have a class next to your friends’, you can chat with him. They could still make good use of it by allowing people to DRAW in the Pictochat stage in Brawl.

  • Joe

    No offense, but that was a poorly written list with no real research or proof to back up your claims.
    By the way, Rockstar DID want to put GTA3 on the cube but sony paid ridiculous money to keep the game exclusive on the ps2 for as long as they could. By the time the xbox and pc were able to get gta, the market for the gamecube wasn’t something that would be into GTA3.

  • http://wiinintendo.net/index.php?s=hey_suburbia hey_suburbia

    You can read the “reasoning” behind this list, here:
    http://wiidude.blogspot.com/2007/12/top-ten-nintendo-failures.html

  • JB

    Joe’s right; 1 and 3 are the only ones that can be considered huge screwups, with 4, 5, and 9 being maybes.

    However, Nintendo has done much worse mistakes in the past: The decision to use cartridges in the N64 was without a doubt the one that cost them the most. And you can’t forget their monopolistic practices during the NES era.

  • http://forums.wiinintendo.net/ SirVenom

    Hmmmm…. overly generalised IMO.

    1. Yes. That was a mistake.

    2. A pain. Truly.

    3. Ahh, here is where I come in. The Virtual Boy was cool, I own one. The problem is, they should have waited for better technology to make it.

    4. The GBA-GC cable was a good thought, and great for some games. But, Nintendo was going too far in making it a multiplayer requirement in certain games.

    5. Technically, there was online. The thing is, it required a stupid external modem… and there were only 1-3 online games for it.

    6. Meh, I don’t care for GTA… but it would have been a good business move.

    7. It was pretty cool, actually. Since it was not required for anything, I don’t consider it a mistake.

    8. The only thing I see could be wrong with Pictochat is that it is local-play only. It is a great feature, IMO.

    9. Metroid friend-play… but that’s it. I agree that it should be implemented in World-Wide somehow.

    10. What? There are wavebird GC controllers….

  • http://forums.wiinintendo.net/ SirVenom

    Also, the Wii can use Wavebird controllers; take off the top panel and it will fit.

  • http://shanoboy.com shanoboy

    I think a huge mistake I never hear anyone bring up is how Nintendo tried to go head to head with PS2 and Xbox with the Gamecube. There were just too many similar products on the market at the time (three consoles that all played the same games with varying degrees of graphics plus PCs).

    If they had tried to out innovate the competition like they did this time with the Wii they could have done much better with the last generation of consoles.

  • PaulT

    @shanoboy,

    That’s only really right in hindsight. Remember that at the time, nobody thought that Microsoft would be a serious player in the market. The original XBox was little more than a PC in a fancy box originally and the controllers were too large. It was only because of the acquirement of Bungie and Halo that the XBox beat the GC, and even then it was only by a small margin in terms of worldwide sales… Besides, it’s only as a direct result of that loss that the Wii was designed, so it’s a good thing in the long term.

    As for the list, I’d agree with the lack of blood in MK (also the removal of Nazi references in Wolfenstein) and Virtual Boy (a system you can only play for a few minutes without risking eyesight damage? WTF?). Things like the Pictochat, e-Reader and Gameboy printer were gimmicks aimed at a small market, so don’t count as ‘big mistakes’. Lack of online, voice chat and wireless controllers are only issues in hindsight (when the GC was designed, they had no was of knowing that these would become standards. Also, why not buy a Wavebird if you want one? – they’re not that hard to find). The GBA-GC cable is only an issue if you want to play multiplayer on Four Swords or Crystal Chronicles, otherwise irrelevant. GTA was Rockstar’s decision, not Nintendo’s.

    My list would be as follows:

    1. No CD drive for the N64. The collapse of that project led to the creation of the PS1, and left the N64 with a much higher per-game manufacturing cost while lacking the audio CD capabilities that justified a lot of early PS1 purchases.

    2. Insistance on continuing as a “family brand”. This alienated older games who wanted their GTA and Silent Hill, while not necessarily attracting new gamers.

    3. Censorship of games related to the above.

    4. The Virtual Boy. A hyped, expensive to develop flop that should never have gotten past the design stage when they realised its limitations.

    5. Hubris. Nintendo were convinced they could do no wrong, so were slow to react to many of the major changes that started to define the market during the N64 and GC eras.

    6. Wii regionalisation. It’s no longer technically necessary to split the world into PAL and NTSC territories. It’s not necessary to translate a US release for the UK market. So why do we have to wait 3-9 months for most releases? So Nintendo can market it to us and translate it into 5 other languages. Idiots! Next time they complain about the mod chip market and piracy, this is the decision that’s caused a lot of it.

    7. Luigi’s Mansion. I remember when the GC first came out, many people was hyped for its release. However, most of the people I know who were disappointed with it during the first year cited this game as the thing that put them off the console – they went in expecting the new Mario 64, they didn’t get it. Yes, it was a different type of game that showcases the console’s capabilities, but early adopters took a long time to get over that disappointment. Now, don’t get me wrong, I really, really liked the game myself, but I think that it disappointed too many people.

    8. Non-standard discs in GC. I love the little CDs myself, but this killed the design of the GC for many people. While people could play DVDs and CDs through the PS2 and XBox, even playing back their own music during XBox games, the GC had no other functionality. Also, I think it was too good at preventing piracy – you could preview games with dodgy copies “borrowed” from friends for the other consoles. If nowhere near you rented GC games, you had to pay full price before previewing, so you tended not to pay full price.

    9. Gimmicky rip-offs. The Power Glove, BOB, 201 accessories to make your Gameboy screen more visible. The list goes on…

    10. Franchise overload. To this day, the biggest problem a lot of gamers have with Nintendo is that they trot out the same franchises over and over. Mario, Zelda, Metroid, etc. are fun, but over the long term only appeal to hardcore fans of those series. Nintendo have done little work to either create or attract new franchises. The GC remakes of the Resident Evil games followed by the premiere of RE4 was a step in the right direction though. To attract gamers to Nintendo, even with the Wii, they need games worth playing that offer new experiences

  • deadluiigii

    @PaulT
    The collapse you speak of in your #1 was a Sony Nintendo project for the Superfamicom(snes) not the N64,

  • http://www.americanrecordablemedia.com/ CD DVD Printer

    Nintendo still lacks many features making it too late to catch up with Sony and Microsoft.

  • http://www.americanrecordablemedia.com/ CD DVD Printer

    Nintendo still lacks many features making it too late to catch up with Sony and Microsoft.