Donkey Kong sucks. You know something YOU suck.

Nintendo sucks.

Before I explain that statement, I will give a little of my own back story with Nintendo. A lot of people who know me have heard this story, but I give Nintendo credit for me learning how to read. There was a game that came out in August, 1989 called Dragon Warrior. (I was four). It was a very basic console role-playing game, with all of the combat and dialog being completely text-based. When I first started playing my father had to read everything to me, but he eventually told me that he wasn't going to do that anymore and if I wanted to keep playing I'd have to learn to read myself. Very shortly after that I was exceptional at reading.

It was not long until I discovered The Legend of Zelda (even though it came out in 1987). As many can attest, there are few people you will meet who are more in love with the Legend of Zelda games. I have been a staunch supporter of Nintendo since I had the dexterity to hold a controller, and I have held the unwavering belief that no matter how much of the console market Sony or Microsoft had, Nintendo would always be the king.

I guess I was wrong.

Last week was the Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3). Now, E3 is not what it used to be, and all of the big console players had less than amazing presentations, but Nintendo was by FAR the worst. Almost anyone who has been with Nintendo from the beginning would almost certainly fall into their classification of "Hardcore gamer", which they quite clearly don't care about in the least. The biggest announcements from Nintendo this year were:

-Animal Crossing: I can recognize that video games aimed at kids are important, but I'm not sure women will be comfortable storing a wii-mote in their uterus.
-Wii Speak: A microphone!?! Amazing! Where has this technology been all my life?
-Wii sports resort: The only thing more boring than playing Frisbee? Playing Frisbee on the Wii.
-English version of DS Recipe application: W.T.F.
-Guitar Hero: On tour decades: OMG GUITAR HERO?!?! I'll bet it's totally new and different from ALL OF THE OTHER ONES.
-Wii Music: 50 different instruments! who doesn't want to hold a sweaty wii-mote up to their face and pretend to play a trumpet. Please gods let there be a kazoo option.

After their conference, and the out pour of rage and disappointment from the gamers, Shigeru Miyamoto said that Nintendo is not using E3 to speak to the core gamer anymore. Well that's super! Except nobody who isn't a core gamer gives a shit about E3. Most people probably don't even know that it exists. And if you're not going to use E3 to talk to the core, then what venue are you going to use? Oh, you don't have any idea? You couldn't care less about the core gaming audience now that you've found your money elsewhere? That's what I thought.

But no! Cammie Dunaway, executive VP of sales and marketing tells us that Nintendo has NOT forgotten the "Hardcore" gamer crowd! All is well! "The Zelda and Mario teams are hard at work, and even Super Mario Sluggers, which is certainly an expanded audience title, but what core gamer doesn't love Mario and baseball and finding out which combination of characters are going to do what kind of crazy things in the field?".

...

...

FUCK YOU!

Seriously? Have you ever PLAYED a goddamned video game? Of course, my life dream has always been to see which combination of overused Nintendo characters will have the wackiest baseball antics. I'm going to assume Yoshi will eat someone and poop out an egg, and then maybe Mario will hit said egg with a bat (Over the fence?!!?!? A HOME RUN!?!?). Hilarious.

Additionally Nintendo has already stated that there will very probably be a shortage of Wii's in North America this holiday season. Is this a joke? Three years in a row, and they can't get production high enough to meet demand? I call bullshit. Either Nintendo is intentionally keeping supply low in order to create even more hype for their soccer-mom machine, or the company is run by retarded chimps.

Screw you Nintendo. You've broken my heart.

Penny Arcade
VG Cats