The Nintendo Seal -- Wtf?

[huntarus]

Does the official Nintendo Seal even mean anything today? There are so many crappy games released on the Wii and DS, that the pledge of old means nothing today. What happened to "This seal is your assurance that NINTENDO has approved and guaranteed the quality of this product.", the phrase that made Nintendo a hit?

[Jercurpac]

It was never really meant to assure people that they were getting their money's worth from a game. Back in the pre-NES days anyone could develop and sell a game for a console. Nintendo wanted to make sure that any developer making a game for their console had to go through them. I guess on some level it was to control content, but mostly that meant censoring and not improving games. The real goal of it all was to make sure Nintendo got their slice of the pie.

[Gustavos]

Nintendo was afraid of whiners like you, so they moved the seal to the back of the cover for all games.

I mean, what the hell else are they supposed to do? Not check each game being put on the Wii? Let it be like the NES days where people could (somewhat illegally) make games for the Nintendo Entertainment System?

[Meepster]

It just shows they made the game... although I don't see whats the difference between putting that sticker on another game.

[MaciekOst]

It never, I repeat, NEVER meant that the game was good. It meant that the game was authorized by Nintendo to sell.
I swear, this is just the same as "people NEVER cared about graphics in the 80's and the 90's" bandwagon.

[RollLip]

inb4 speedboard

[Braedon]

Gee, I didn't even notice the seal was still around these days.

[huntarus]

At 10/25/09 11:03 AM, Braedon wrote: Gee, I didn't even notice the seal was still around these days.

Neither did I, until looking on the back of my SSBB. Then looking in my old tetris guide.

[SoulMaster71]

Back then, it really had nothing to do with quality. There were probably loads of games on the NES and SNES that sucked, perhaps as much as the minigame collections all too common on the Wii. Rather, it was partially about censorship, as Nintendo knew all about Custer's Revenge and the rest of the unlicensed porn games on 2600 and the Big N wasn't going to let those kinds of games ruin the NES' family image, and it was partially about making sure Nintendo could control the flow of games, preventing a 1982-like overload of games where no store could have them all (one cause of the Crash). These were part of Nintendo's overarching purpose: make money, and let's not shoot ourselves in the foot by allowing another crash. Of course, as games became more expensive and complex to develop and as gamers grew old enough that nobody thought they needed censorship, the quality seal became less important to the point where it's now almost meaningless, an artifact from the old days.

[KeithHybrid]

At 10/24/09 10:50 AM, huntarus wrote: Does the official Nintendo Seal even mean anything today? There are so many crappy games released on the Wii and DS, that the pledge of old means nothing today. What happened to "This seal is your assurance that NINTENDO has approved and guaranteed the quality of this product.", the phrase that made Nintendo a hit?

It didn't mean squat way back when, neither, if what James Rolfe said is any indication.

[puddinN64]

Nothing with the Nintendo Seal of Approval has ever been bad. EVER.

[xscoot]

To clear this up in one sentence (which you all failed to do)

The Seal of Quality really means that the developer paid licensing fees to Nintendo, so they'd get a cut of game shares.

That is all.

[cool154]

At 10/25/09 04:54 PM, SoulMaster71 wrote:

...Big N wasn't going to let those kinds of games ruin the NES' family image...

Which is the main reason I stopped playing their games when I turned eleven. Not enough violence! When I play games, I don't do it to feel happy! I play them to release rage on nonliving things!