This Year In Gaming - 2003

Well being a games journalist with an eye so critical it twitches with venom I am not going to pussy foot about saying all was good and that the sun shines out of Nintendo ass, it doesn't and I don't think it ever will. 2003 has been a disappointment; it has been a year that in the whole Nintendo will want to sweep under the proverbial rug faster than you can say 'old company failing to modernise to new industry standards and methods'. That bad? Yes it is and the people who fail to even see a hint of that when they look back on 2003 might as well go and cry into their cold sprouts and New Years fireworks. Where to start, in fact I am almost spoilt for choice. Criticising Nintendo for 2003 is very much like putting like taking candy from a baby, its superbly cynical but most of all easy.

Now I'm not going to reel of a calendar at you, that's what the news archive is for and other publications that have in-depth content comparable to the political awareness of an ITN newsreader. You know what happened last year, I don't want to patronise you. So what am I here to provide? Analysis, views on what has happened and the hard cold facts of what is right and what is wrong. It's the right way, it's the best way and most importantly of all it's the News Hound way.

January, the start of 2003 and expectations were high 'The year Nintendo show us all what they are made of' 'Step aside XBOX and PS2 it is the GameCube's time to shine' 'Da cube is da bezt' any idiot you found with a mouth and hideously tunnelled view on the world would run of this sort of stuff for you. Of course there was no reason why they couldn't be right, Nintendo had the muscle and the strength to take on the industry and come out on top (sort of) by January of 2004, the fact that they didn't is irrelevant, at the time they could have.

As the year moved on through February, March and April all was quiet on the GameCube front. It was almost as if the Big N were waiting for something to happen, that something was E3. However, all was not lost, the GameCube's first birthday played as a nice event for the company. They were able to boast, or lie through their teeth, as to just how many GameCube's had been sold. Link broke Wind and released another rather excellent
title, indeed at this point there was not one qualm regarding their games, it was simply that good old Nintendo attitude. Being around for over 100 years and arguably knowing what they are talking about when it comes to industry knowledge Nintendo prance about with what many might call a 'healthy arrogance' I would call it a 'terminal disease'. Now before you go about slamming your fist on the table and getting all irate think about it. How many adverts did you see for Zelda on the GameCube, I often have the TV on as background noise and I saw no more than three. A triplet of adverts seen by an avid television watcher for what is arguable Nintendo's biggest game of the year. Put that way you can hardly call it healthy...

So along comes E3 and off buggers E3 and up steps an awful lot of confused Nintendo fans. Whilst the array of games was no doubt good on the GameCube and GBA but it all seemed to lack that killer app. Mario had jumped about like an idiot in 2002 and Zelda was all done and dusted leaving the perfectly respectable but somewhat anticlimactic titles to fly the Nintendo flag. The PC wiped the floor and then sat on the competition before smearing them in its own faeces and walking off with all the attention. Nintendo, of course, were quick to label us all idiots for ever doubting us and that there three step, flat-pack, business class delivery plan for world domination would be in place soon.

Sadly the postal service went on strike and it all went tits up for Nintendo and their precious GameCube. Thankfully the GBA came to the rescue as it proved to be Mr. Consistency. The money was still coming in for Nintendo, there was no danger of massive financial problems but when the first ever loss of money over an annum came into the public eye it all looked far less rosy. Hiroshi Yamauchi was never one to be flippant when spending money; he was the human equivalent of a hamster, stashing everything away for a rainy day. Now is the rainy do, Nintendo needed to spend some money to reboot things after the summer drought. They had enough titles out there on the market and all it needed was one thing: adverts. Did they come? No they didn't, in fact we got something even better. The masses had been screaming it for weeks and months on end, I would have kissed Iian Duncan Smith to get Nintendo to do it, thankfully I didn't have to resort to desperate measures as the GameCube finally got a price cut to a glorious 99 Euro or