Top 10 Nintendo Fails

Kicking off our list is the latest failure by the Big N, the 3DS.

Nintendo has always maintained complete handheld dominance, however it has recently made several poor decisions in the face of Apple, smart-phones, and Sony’s PlayStation Vita.

These included an overpriced launch price, a screen that causes 3D related nausea, a total absence of must-own launch games, poor battery life, and lack of a second circle pad for modern game design. Sure, Nintendo eventually dropped the price, released some games and created a hideous circle pad attachment, but the damage is done.

Okay, there’s no simple way to say this. The Wii has ugly standard definition graphics. It is also absent of many other basic features, like playable demos, a hard drive and a proper voice chat feature. Overlooking those issues, SD made sense back in 2006 when few people had sweet flat panel displays. Unfortunately, that decision has caught up to the company in recent years, costing it its earlier momentum.

This may not sound like a doozy in 2011, but in 2001 DVD playback was a big deal. Shockingly, Nintendo was the only one to omit it in favor of keeping costs down for the Gamecube. They have similarly steered away from supporting online play, something they haven’t really improved in the last decade, despite masterful offerings by the competition.

Related to the last point, Nintendo’s Gamecube went one step further than limit its own media playback options. Basically, it scared off mature gamers and the hardcore with the flamboyant use of purple as its flagship color, and its inclusion of a lunch-box style handlebar.

Gamers, like movie watchers, prefer to choose for themselves. Nintendo however had to learn the hard way that it shouldn't police what we consume. The major talking point here is their censorship of games like Mortal Kombat during the SNES era. Gamers began flocking to the Sega Genesis for the real deal, and Nintendo cemented itself as a “kiddie” brand.

There was a time when the Final Fantasy series, and its developer Square Soft, now called Square-Enix were synonymous with Nintendo. That all changed with the arrival of the original PlayStation and Nintendo’s refusal to adopt CD tech. As a result, we may never see another major Nintendo-bound major Fantasy release, or an epic team up between the companies.

Not only costing Nintendo high-profile partnerships, their Nintendo 64’s use of cartridges was enough to shift the entire balance of power in the console wars. Despite their loading speed, they couldn’t give developers the memory they wanted and were very expensive to manufacture.

The 3DS isn’t Nintendo’s first attempt at 3D. Virtual Boy was an ill-fated device that featured a monochrome display, tabletop head-mounted display and lack of games. Sure, the Virtual Boy didn’t destroy Nintendo, but we’re certain that many of the company’s top brass must still lose sleep over this failure.

In 1991, Nintendo abandoned their plans for a disk-based attachment for the SNES. Instead they broke ties with their then partner, a little company called Sony to partner with Philips. The result was a horrific system and a slew of so-called games based on Nintendo’s mascots. Trust us, these games were bad. So bad that they spawned the “YouTube Poop” series.

Taking the top spot on our list is the biggest and most long lasting fail in Nintendo history. Not only did Nintendo do the unthinkable by screwing over a fellow Japanese company with the SNES add-on and CDi fiasco, but also caused Sony to realize something. Namely, that their product could become its own system called the PlayStation, and it could kick major ass by themselves. Fail.