Metroid Dread and The Nintendo Seal of Quality
On October 8th, Metroid Dread was released. I was super hyped because Metroid hasn’t had a game released in its main series in almost 20 years. In this climate of mediocre games, I was expecting to be at least a little disappointed in Metroid Dread and the potential it had that it didn’t utilize. I got Metroid Dread and didn’t put it down for most of the weekend. My god is that game good. I highly recommend it to fans of the series, and to newcomers. So many new mechanics, and revamps of old ones. Metroid Fusion stripped the Metroid formula to the bare minimum to advance the story. Dread didn’t cut corners. Things that have been terrible and clunky to use like the terrible excuse for a grappling hook have been fine-tuned to perfection. Nintendo takes full advantage of the new hardware available to them. The graphics are stunning, the combat and movement are fluid. The game and level design are better than it's ever been. The story was a bit confusing, even to a story fanatic like me, but can be understood if you think about it in a certain way.
After I beat Dread, I realized something. Nintendo puts out quality products 99% of the time. Why is this I wondered? Well, the need to put out quality video games comes from a time when video games were on the brink of extinction in America. Back in 1983, Atari finally crashed the video game industry. Atari let just about anyone make a game for their system, and thousands of which were terrible, poorly made “games” that also happened to be very expensive due to the hardware being expensive to produce. This led to a downward spiral that crashed the video game industry. Almost no one in America wanted anything to do with video games, due to the bad legacy left by Atari. In Japan, Nintendo was making cartloads of cash with their Famicom (Family Computer) game system. Classic games like Mario were smash hits in Japan. Nintendo wanted to set its sights on America, realizing the potential market for video games there were double the number of people in America as opposed to Japan. Nintendo knew the word “Video Game” had a bad connotation to the Americans, and I think it’s no mistake that they called the Famicom the Nintendo Entertainment System. To ensure that people knew they wouldn’t have an Atari situation all over again, Nintendo didn’t let just anybody make games for their systems.
This practice still remains today. The Nintendo Seal of Quality was also established. The Nintendo seal of Quality was put on things Nintendo themselves approved of, and anything bearing the seal is almost guaranteed to be well made. This same seal can be found on Metroid Dread. In a climate of poorly made, quickly churned out video games of Mediocre quality and little fun to be had, Nintendo is a shimmering beacon of hope for the games industry.
