[ipodopt]

"When I developed the Famicom, I put all the basic functions that were necessary to make it as a gaming device. For the Switch, it's inherited all that over the years. All the successes and failures of the Famicom are inherited by the next generation of consoles and onward."

What did he consider to be the failures?

EDIT: Added the first sentence of the quote.

The way I read the quote is he felt there where fundamental designs decisions that have been passed down all the way to the Switch. Some of which he considers to be failures.

I imagine he is talking about the hardware/software stack. OS seems pretty custom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Switch_system_softwar...

[conductr]

I think the quote isn't meant for such literal interpretation. Basically, saying they have all learned from good and bad things which puts them to where they are today. It's like one of those "I regret nothing because without my failures I wouldn't be the person I am today" type quotes.

[ipodopt]

Yeah, I like that interpretation.

[GhettoComputers]

The virtual boy was a failure by any measure, 64DD, the Wii U sucked, and the 3DS wasn’t very popular compared to the DS, and wouldn’t have had any success if it didn’t have backwards compatibility.

[com2kid]

Wii U was a marketing disaster.

It was a very fun console. It is unfortunate that asymmetrical game play wasn't explored more.

It really was the first step towards what the Switch is now. Being able to remotely play games anywhere in my house, or have someone else watch TV while I played on the Wii U, was super cool.

[silveira]

I loved my Wii U. So many features that I still miss today. So many great games, I'm glad many of them were ported to the Switch.

[the_doctah]

I wonder if some are even portable. I would love to have Windwaker HD on Switch but I remember the touchpad screen being pretty integral (and part of why it was a lot better than the original)

[GhettoComputers]

It was overpriced, the small screen sucked, and it had no games, polar opposite of the wii, it was just the DS in console form which was forced into using this for every game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameCube_–_Game_Boy_Advance_li... like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_Crystal_Chronicl...

[com2kid]

> It was overpriced, the small screen sucked, and it had no games

And $ for $ I had more fun with my Wii U than my Xbox One.

Nintendo's Wii U games were full of joy and happiness. They are all an absolute delight to play.

[danbolt]

Wait, you didn't like Crystal Chronicles? Maybe I'm just a nostalgic millennial, but I thought the game's aesthetic was pristine and the multiplayer super clever.

It's up there with Pac Man Vs. for that sort of thing.

[GhettoComputers]

I didn’t get to play it with others since they didn’t have the cable and it was pointless on my own.

[danbolt]

I own a few of the cables. If we ever somehow meet in real life someday, would you want to try it with me and some friends?

There are moments where it feels like a bit of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign with the towns, or roadside scenes, or everyone receiving individual letters from home.

[maxsilver]

The Wii U and 3DS were some of the best consoles Nintendo ever made.

I get that they weren't large hits in the general market, I get that they were not financial successes.

But for dedicated folks, these consoles represented some of the very best design and product packages that Nintendo had ever offered. (A good chunk of which was lost in the transition to the Switch, like proper Virtual Console support, or Nintendo Mii's getting heavy usage, or StreetPass).

Yes, they also offered backwards compatibility, but that's not "why" they had success -- they were successful as products entirely in their own right.

[GhettoComputers]

They weren’t “good failures” like Dreamcast. I can’t think of any game that was great on either off the top of my head, but the Dreamcast I can name several exclusives that were. A lot of the good games were just remakes, like Devil Survivor Overclocked.

[maxsilver]

> They weren’t “good failures” like Dreamcast. I can’t think of any game that was great on either off the top of my head, but the Dreamcast I can name several exclusives that were.

Really? The Wii U lineup is like a perfect Dreamcast-like example of a "good failure". It was so good, that half of the best selling Switch games from it's first two years, were just past Wii U exclusive games (or 3DS games), ported up to the switch.

Zelda: BotW, Mario Kart 8, Lego City Undercover, Pokken Tournament, Bayonetta 2, Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, Hyrule Warriors, Super Mario Brothers U, Tokyo Mirage Sessions, Wonderful 101, Pikmin 3, Super Mario 3D World, Fatal Frame: Maiden of the Black Water, Super Mario Maker, and Xenoblade Chronicles (1).

All of those are either Wii U / 3DS exclusives ported forward, or planned to be exclusives and got last-minute ports near the end of development cycle (like Zelda BotW).

[salamandersauce]

The 3DS isn't really a "failure". It still sold 70+ million units. Only in comparison to the 150 million of the DS is it a failure. Both Wii U and 3DS have some fantastic exclusives (although most of the good ones on Wii U ended up Switch or 3DS or both).

Super Mario 3D Land and 3D World are IMO the two best 3D Mario games made, 3DS has a trio of fantastic Fire Emblem games (granted one is a remake but for English audiences not really), excellent JRPGs in stuff like Bravely Default, SMTIV, Pokémon X&Y, Mario Kart 7 and Smash were as good as always and LoZ: A Link Between Worlds is really good. Yes, there was plenty of ports and remakes but they were ports and remakes of great games made portable like Ocarina of Time 3D, DQ7 and DQ8, etc.

Wii U had great exclusives like Mario Maker, Bayonetta 2, the aforementioned Mario 3D World, Mario Kart 8, Breath of the Wild, Hyrule Warriors, Splatoon, Pikmin 3, Xenoblade Chronicles X, etc.

My bet is you have more fondness for the Dreamcast because you spent more time with it. Wii U was a fantastic system and still is.

[GhettoComputers]

I have a bias to Dreamcast, I was able to pick up any random game and it was gonna be good. The Dreamcast has a total of 624 games compared to the Wii U with 783, and if we remove remakes the good ones are mostly Nintendo, Dreamcast has 3rd parties that made good ones too. BoTW was a backport, but odd that list, I can confirm splatoon was pretty good.

[salamandersauce]

BoTW is not a backport. It was announced originally for Wii U and came out the same day. There's not really very many remakes or remasters on Wii U, there's some enhanced ports of PS3/360 games but if you remove enhanced ports a lot of DC games disappear too...

The 783 game list also doesn't include any of the virtual console games and there's some really good stuff there that getting a hold of on the original system is pricey like Metroid Fusion and Ogre Battle 64.

Wii U games have the benefit of still being good today. Most DC games you need to add the caveat "for the time". There's also plenty of trash on DC too. I'm sure if you actually picked any random game it would more likely be trash than good. Wii U also has that problem but all consoles do.

[scrame]

3ds and wii U were marketing issues in that it wasn't clear that it was the next version of the system, like nes->snes but just a slightly different version of the same thing, like DS->DS Lite. It doesn't help that Nintendo rereleases their consoles multiple times a generation, or does things like the New 3ds which is only a slight improvement over the 3ds (extra joystick, slightly improved hardware). But yeah, virtual boy was a failure by pretty much any metric.

[GhettoComputers]

N64 wasn’t a continuation of SNES and 3DS sounds like a new DS, as does the Wii U unless you’re stating Xbox one failed because it’s name is 359 less, and was not an obvious continuation of Xbox 360. They went N64, GameCube, Wii which don’t have any continuity nor does Wii U to switch.

Seems like continuity hurts rather than helps Nintendo.

[Talanes]

I don't think GP was saying that Nintendo had full continuation, just that they assumed people would see Wii U and 3DS the same way they saw the SNES. But by the time those were released people had just been through multiple models of DS and Gameboy Advanced that were just modified versions of the same hardware.

[ipodopt]

Hardware on the Switch seems standard:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Switch#Hardware

I wonder if his comments mean their Switch OS is emulating antiquated calls that have lineage to the original NES hardware.

[noobermin]

There are no "antiquated calls" on a machine which had no os or standard library :)

Anyway, the switch not being special technology wise is very inline with the nintendo philosophy actually[0]. The NES wasn't that special for the time either, having not as that great specs of consoles in the late second generation, but it was how it was used, the games that came with it that made history.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpei_Yokoi#Lateral_Thinking_...

[monocasa]

There wasn't any system software on the NES, even to the point of no ubiquitous libraries, so it's doubtful.

[Aeolun]

Blowing on the cardridge? It didn’t work for the Famicon, and it has even less effect with the Switch.

[foo_barrio]

Perhaps the repeated insertions/removals did clear off any light oxidation or slightly reposition the contacts?

[conductr]

I'll never believe it. Blowing was required and technique mattered.

[aidenn0]

Insertions and removals did work well on the Famicom, but not so much on the NES; the famicom had a typical edge-connector while the NES had a zero-insertion-force (ZIF) connector.

The pins would be repositioned with each insertion and you had to hope that all 72 pins made a good-enough contact. If the 10NES made poor contact you got a 1Hz reboot loop. If other pins made poor contact the game would kind-of sort-of work until it crashed.