Nintendo 3DS and Ports/Remakes: A Troubling Trend?

Star Fox 64 3D. Snake Eater 3D. Super Street Fighter IV 3D. The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time 3D. Nintendogs + Cats. These are just a few of the games that are coming to the 3DS.

If they sound familiar, that’s because you’ve already experienced them in several forms. In fact, the youngest game in the port/remake list is Super Street Fighter IV. Considering that SSIV isn’t currently available for the PSP or the original DS, this port could potentially be amazing; key word being could.

However, aside from this one Capcom fighter, the 3DS is headed down a frightening path. I have nothing against the re-imagining of cherished classics. In fact, if the game stars Mario, Link or Solid Snake, I highly encourage developers to reexamine everything that has made those games great and work hard to top them. That seems to be what Nintendo is doing with Mario Kart 3DS, which is all but confirmed as a full-fledged sequel, and not merely an old game with 3D effects.

I was delighted to hear that Nintendo built a tech demo that featured old NES games (such as Mario and Zelda) with certain pixels popped out so that the game would run in 3D. No, this won’t change the dynamic of any old game. But is it a fun novelty that I and millions of others would be interested in checking out, if only as a cheap download? Absolutely.

What concerns me is that Nintendo didn’t stop at just one or two ports and/or remakes. It didn’t stop at first-party games either. The majority of Nintendo’s own games, and many of the big third-party announcements, involve old titles that are slated to receive a 3D facelift.

Yes, it has only seen one E3 thus far; next year, it will likely have a huge presentation with dozens of kiosks that offer more than a non-interactive look at what the 3DS can do. But if history is to repeat itself – let’s face it, Nintendo’s release strategy is fairly predictable – the first year of the 3DS will be comprised of the first games that were announced.

There will be a few showstoppers, I’m sure; Chances are Nintendo has a few brand-new games in development that it did not want to mention at E3. But the facts are hard to deny. Unless the publisher plans to release all of these ports at once (the release dates are likely to be spread out, are they not?), the 3DS will quickly become known as the port machine.

Now let’s suppose you’re perfectly fine with that. I’m a big Nintendo fan, so I get where you’re coming from. If Nintendo released five ports within the first six months of the system’s release, and had five to 10 original games within the first 12 months, could we really find anything to complain about, especially if they were all triple-A games?

Still, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or anyone as smart as Shigeru Miyamoto) to predict that third-party developers will pummel the machine with as many ports as they can muster. They are already doing that to an extent. They ravaged Wii with hundreds of crappy releases, and then complained that the first-party games — which were of a much higher quality — out-sold the third-party junk. Why are publishers surprised by this? Gamers aren’t. This is a conscious decision we all made at retail. We buy Nintendo systems for fresh first-party games because they are traditionally the best games released on Nintendo systems.

If third-party developers and publishers can’t grasp the simple concept that quality sells, they will be in for a rude awakening when the 3DS hits stores. There may be an opportunity to cash in at launch when every gamer is scrambling for three-dimensional excitement. But just as the motion novelty wore off on Wii owners, the 3DS technology will not sell games forever. In time, gameplay will persevere, and only the best games will survive.