Super Mario - Jeff Ryan [90]
In addition to Super Mario 64 DS (the original title was even worse: Super Mario 64 x 4), the DS launched with a healthy spread of olderskewing titles. There was Sonic creator Yuki Naka’s Feel the Magic: XX/ XY, a minigame collection. There was The Urbs, an achingly hip Sims spinoff about building up “rep.” There was a Madden, a Spider-Man, and a driving game called Asphalt Urban GT—sense an “urban” theme?
Trying to attract another underserved audience group—females—brought Super Princess Peach, a game where Peach finally avoids being princess-napped. Bowser kidnaps Mario and Luigi instead, and it’s up to her for once to save them. The second-wave feminism lasts as long as it takes Peach to acquire a magical talking parasol. Peach’s powers manifest through her emotional states. When she is calm she can heal herself, when happy she can fly, when glum she can water plants with her tears, and when angry she literally catches on fire. Using emotions as part of basic game play is a daring concept, and feel free to sub in “insulting” or “outrageous” or “awesome” for “daring.” The concept might have been taken more seriously if not for touches like the pink umbrella, and Peach having unlimited lives—core gamers hate being unable to die.
Another game that showed off the new controls was Yoshi Touch & Go. It was essentially a Game & Watch title, with Yoshi running to get Baby Mario to the end of the crayon-drawn level in time. Players controlled neither Yoshi nor Baby Mario but used their styluses to draw clouds that Yoshi walked on, letting him lemming his way to the level’s end. To get rid of a cloud, players blew into the microphone. It was almost pure game play, an Aristotelian demonstration of how the DS changed how people could play games. But the cartoonish look and kid-friendly vibe made anyone older than eight—aka the target audience—stay away.
Miyamoto wasn’t involved in producing Super Princess Peach or Yoshi Touch & Go. He was too busy walking the dog. His family had gotten a new pet a few years ago, a breed called a Shetland sheepdog that looks like a collie without shins. Miyamoto named his family’s Sheltie Pikku, after banjo picks. Games were fun, but dogs were responsibilities. Dogs could play with you in unexpected ways. They had their own lives, likes, and interactions. It got Miyamoto thinking. The virtualpet idea was not new: Tamigotchis were a big hit in 1996. But that was simple button-pushing: give it food every X hours, water every Y hours.
Dogs needed more than kibble and walkies. They needed to be petted: hey, look, a touch screen. You could teach dogs to understand your commands: hey, a microphone. You could take them to the dog park: hello, Download Play. You could choose what type of dog you adopted: therefore the simulation would come in one of four cover breeds, Chihuahua, Dalmatian, Dachshund, and Labrador Retriever. You could unlock up to fifteen breeds total, plus a hidden characters named “Shiggy” and his Sheltie Pikku. It would be a simulation, not a game. That was okay, since the people Nintendo was luring to the DS weren’t gamers, but casual fans. After decades of making shonen games for boys, Nintendo finally hit upon making a true shōjo game for girls.
Thus did the distaff Nintendogs launch, going on to rack up over twenty-one million copies worldwide. It won awards from places expected (GameSpot, IGN) and unexpected (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the Associated Press). Such was the power of the girl gamer. One strange consequence of the game’s success was a company ban on Miyamoto talking too much about his personal life. He thought of Pikmin while gardening, and Nintendogs while playing with a pet. If the world knew he, say, liked to hang-glide, or swim, imagine the industrial sabotage . . . ! Unfortunately for Nintendo, it was already well known that he was a fan of music, tilting their hand of an eventual music game.
One thing everyone already knew that Miyamoto loved was his alter ego, Mario. His