We’ve
seemed to scream ourselves hoarse on how some company should take
the initiative in developing a sort of Criterion Collection for video
games. There’s nothing quite like having a physical object that wholly
celebrates a title, a series, or the artists themselves. Valve has
shown some spark in this area through the spectacular inclusion of
commentaries in games like Half-Life 2
and Portal,
but this idea still deserves to be taken further. It’s going to take a
company with a rich, stories history; a company whose fan-base who its
past and is keen on its preservation. A company like, say, Nintendo.
be perfectly honest, Nintendo completely botched Mario’s 25th
Anniversary. As Jeremy
pointed out in last year’s lamentation,
Super
Mario Bros. deserved better.
Arguably the most influential game of all time, it deserved to have the
vaults opened wide for fans to have access to every bit of content
related to the original title. After consuming the disc, we should’ve
been left utterly full, yet definitively satiated. But that’s not the
route Nintendo decided to take — instead, we got a disc with a rom of Super Mario
All-Stars for the SNES, a flimsy
book sprinkled with pull quotes, and a CD containing a shamefully bare
selection of tracks. In essence, Nintendo celebrated the 25th
anniversary of their iconic mascot by making a quick buck. And while
this left us undeniably disappointed, hope remains.
Kirby is turning 20 this year,
and at the most recent Nintendo Direct press conference, Satoru Iwata
announced that they will be celebrating this milestone by releasing a
retail disc for the Wii that includes undisclosed Kirby goodness.
Outside of promising a variety of “fan-favorite” Kirby titles, Nintendo
has left the rest of the details to our hopes and fears. This could be
Nintendo’s chance at historical preservation redemption. They could
right all of the wrongs from Super Mario
All-Stars Wii by giving us a
fully comprehensive look at Kirby’s past, present, and future.
