There’s a good reason this logo gives me warm childhood memories.

Nintendo is the oldest company in gaming, and in many regards it really shows. Commonly referred to as “conservative” and “frugal”, much about Nintendo’s business strategy is slow to change. But how did some of their positions in the video game industry take root in the first place? This week, I shall attempt to examine Nintendo’s position as the “kid’s company” of the industry. This moniker is one that has earned Nintendo equal parts praise and insult. Since their breakout success in this industry with the Famicom/NES, Nintendo has hewed close to a specific target demographic and regularly rubbed up against attempts to stray further up the age brackets. One of the earliest and most popular examples of this is in the SNES build of Mortal Kombat where the blood effects were recolored to look like sweat.

It would probably make for a nice story to suggest that Nintendo’s affiliation with children’s games stems from their lead talent and their design choices. Shigeru Miyamoto does often seem to design games well suited for children, after all. Satoshi Tajiri, creator of Pokemon and founder of Game Freak, is another cornerstone of Nintendo software also aimed at a younger crowd. It might then follow that Nintendo aims for a younger gamer because its games and game creators are best suited for them. This, however, I find ignores how figures like Miyamoto and Tajiri got picked up by Nintendo in the first place. Looking for talent to further Nintendo’s new video games venture before the NES, then-president of the company Hiroshi Yamauchi chose Miyamoto for his raw creative abilities. This creativity would prove to lend itself well in a field where extreme limitations would demand a creative mind (as I wrote about previously). From those early days, of simpler contemporaries the likes of Pong and Colecovision, the NES would see the home console market boom and bring video games into the home and out of public spaces like bars or arcade halls. This, in turn, would expose a much younger crowd to gaming and give rise to the prime target demographic for a new and whimsical electronic toy. With the average age of gamers at the youngest it would ever be, Nintendo enjoyed massive success and formed a great deal of its franchises and strategies during this time throughout the life cycles of the NES and SNES. By then, firmly entrenched in their ways, Nintendo would seek out Game Freak founder Satoshi Tajiri and later buy majority control of his company. Yamauchi was brilliant at culling the necessary talent for the time and these men, among many others, proved to be the right talent at the right time.

Moving forward, in the twilight of Yamauchi’s tenure and after his company’s fall from pole position with the release of the Nintendo 64, Nintendo would show signs of wavering on their old strategies. With exclusive games that aimed at a decidedly older crowd, Nintendo would begin to question their position as a content creator and distributor primarily for the child demographic. Prominent examples include Goldeneye 007 and Perfect Dark, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, and most tellingly The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. Later examples exist on the GameCube, a system that further tested the resolve of Nintendo’s strategies, but I think the development of Majora’s Mask marked a kind of “low point” (to say nothing of quality, as I adore the game) wherein Nintendo was willing to really test new waters. It may not seem like the most adult or extreme example of a game on a Nintendo platform, but to allow development of a mainline flagship title like Zelda to dabble in darker tones was a big move for them. The first title in the series not directed by Miyamoto, instead by the now-current series director Eiji Aonuma, Nintendo took a big risk on this entry in the franchise and in some regards it did not pay off. Though critically praised, Majora’s Mask would only hit sales numbers half as good as Ocarina of Time‘s. These steps may seem anemic, but small steps indicate big ideas bubbling under the surface at a company like Nintendo and it would take a great deal to shift them from their original trajectory.

Majora’s Mask marked an odd time for Nintendo, but not one that lasted very long.

As much as the N64 and GameCube may have tested Nintendo’s resolve, neither console’s lackluster performance would prove enough for Nintendo to give up on the younger markets. All along their console missteps, Nintendo’s handheld business had been booming ever since the original Game Boy and remained essentially unchallenged in their market space. Indeed the home of Pokemon would prove for Nintendo that their image as a kid’s game company was lucrative and foreseeably evergreen. Though the game industry has since begun catering to older and older gamers, with the average age now sitting somewhere in the mid thirties, Nintendo has found themselves as the only demonstrably dedicated child friendly console maker and game publisher. And with a name still synonymous with video games, they have a brand and legacy all too easily tapped into to appeal to parents of young children. Perhaps that legacy is a bit of a curse (something I will expand on later), but Nintendo has even cemented themselves as the console maker no one expects to push the technological limit. Once truer of their handheld division, as Gunpei Yokoi’s mantra of “lateral thinking with withered technology” is how he crafted success with the Game Boy, Nintendo has adhered the philosophy more completely to their home console designs of late.

I still feel like Nintendo’s home console strategy is very uncertain, but perhaps it is not any more so than the state of console gaming is uncertain. Many outside factors threaten to change both the handheld and console markets and it is Nintendo’s plight to navigate these changes as much as it is their competitor’s, though it should be interesting to see if a company as rigid as Nintendo is up to the challenge. Whatever the industry faces, Nintendo’s past as a hardware and software producer for children is as certain as it has been profitable.

What are your thoughts on Nintendo’s strategy? I never even mentioned the new 2DS, a move aimed squarely at children. Is this a course Nintendo can continue to chart or will they have to give in to their older fan’s demands if they hope to survive? But if the WiiU is any indication, Nintendo needs to pick a path and stick to it!

Certainly the various adorable mascots the series has picked up cannot hurt.

The first two games in the series, Pocket Monsters: Red and Pocket Monsters: Green were released in Japan in 1996. Pocket Monsters: Blue, released a few months later, featured redesigns of the Pokemon sprites. The third game also formed the basis for Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue, the 1998 American releases of the first Pokemon games. Their massive success astounded even series creator Satoshi Tajiri, and the Pokemon series would go on to be one of the most successful in gaming history. The initial games were buggy, glitchy messes, and the battle mechanics were not particularly well-balanced. The nostalgic reader may recall a time before Special Attack and Special Defense were different stats, a time when Psychic types were not easily countered. Despite their many flaws, though, the original Pokemon games were still extremely popular, and gamers everywhere fell in love with the franchise, myself included. What separated Pokemon from other RPGs at the time was the “gotta catch ‘em all” mentality of the games: while other RPGs had, typically speaking, five to ten party members to choose from, the first Pokemon generation had 151 species of Pokemon for the player to hunt and capture.

Yes, I know that it is June. I like this picture.

The Pokemon battle mechanics were and still are very easy to pick up, with the player’s six Pokemon knowing up to four moves each and combat being a simple turn-based affair. As the series has developed, mastering the Pokemon games has become a more difficult endeavor, with mechanics such as EVs, IVs, and Natures becoming an important part of the Pokemon metagame. In short, the Pokemon gameplay formula works because it is easy to learn but difficult to master. The franchise’s appeal to both casual and hardcore gamers is among the chief contributing factors to its massive and continued success. While other game franchises usually appeal to casual or hardcore gamers, Pokemon was and still is one of the rare titles that manages to appeal to both.

One other contributing factor to my personal love of the series has always been the sense that the player is in control of their party and their team setup. This sense of control is another major contributor to the Pokemon success story. Unlike many RPGs, the player is truly in control of their Pokemon team. In most JRPGs, the player controls a set of characters with predefined personalities in their quest or quests to achieve a specific goal. The Pokemon player assembles the party alone, choosing from among the many Pokemon species to form a team based on the player’s own choices and likes. In this way, the main character of a Pokemon game is not the young child going on an adventure; the main character in each Pokemon game is actually the player. The adventure is the player’s adventure, and the Pokemon team assembled is dependent on the player and not the storyline of the game. The different take on the typical JRPG formula of predefined characters is among the key features separating Pokemon from other games within the genre, and one of the reasons for the franchise’s smashing success among both casual and hardcore gamers.

A screenshot from the third generation of Pokemon games, the GBA releases.

The Pokemon series is here to stay, and it does not look like the games will lose steam any time in the near future. The games’ easy to pick up, difficult to master battle mechanics and their player immersion continue to draw in gamers, both young and old. I personally have been involved in the series almost from the beginning, and while my interest in Pokemon constantly waxes and wanes, it is always one of my go-to game series when looking for a fun way to unwind. What about you, dear readers? Have you played any of the roaringly popular Pokemon games? If so, which ones, and what did you like or dislike about the game(s)? Why is it, in your minds, that the otherwise unremarkable game series has enjoyed such massive success? What separates Pokemon from so many other game franchises? Let me know in the comments what you think, readers! I am interested to see what the Lusipurr.com readership has to say on the matter. The Pokemon series shows no signs of losing momentum after five generations of games, and when the sixth generation is inevitably released, I have no doubt that gamers the world over will jump at the chance to play more of the wildly addictive Pokemon games.