Shameless Greed from a Video Game Giant

Super Mario 64 HD

When I was younger the first major console that I got was a Nintendo 64. Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros, even Hey You Pikachu—I had (still have) them all. Nintendo started to die down in hype though, Sony and Microsoft were becoming far more mainstream in gaming and even though I've always been using Sony consoles (PS2,PS3,PSP-3000,PSP GO) I only recently hopped onto the XBox train with a purchase of the XBox 360 Kinect back in 2012. But, I've always had a thing for Nintendo. Perhaps it was the nostalgic feeling of playing the Megaman Battle Network series on my GameBoy or just not wanting to try something new. Either way, I loved Nintendo. I loved the characters. I loved the company. That is, until recently.

A few days ago I found this awesome little demo someone made to show off their Super Character Controller script that they created for Unity3D: Super Mario 64 HD. It featured the famous Bo-bomb Battlefield and showed off what was possible with the hard work of the creator. I was one of the lucky few who actually downloaded the game before Nintendo took it down.
On his site the creator says, "I didn’t really expect for this project to get so popular, and was hoping it would function primarily as a educational tool and a novelty.". He didn't plan on monetizing or even completing it but Nintendo saw it as a threat. After having released their Virtual Console on the Wii U they didn't want any clones around. They took it down. People Noticed. Polygon noticed. I noticed.

Screenshot Provided By IGN

I wasn't going to write anything. I was going to look the other way like a lot of people have been doing. Then, scrolling through my Facebook feed, I came across this. Big Angry Joe, a Youtuber with over a million subscribers, had his video flagged by Nintendo due to the fact that he was Let's Play-ing one of their games, Mario Party 10, which came out a few weeks ago. Angry Joe then posted a video, talking about how wronged he felt. Then I remember, how a long time ago, I had turned a blind eye to something Nintendo had recently started doing: charging Let's Play-ers. Nintendo started to take a 40% cut in advertising revenue that the Let's Play-ers make via their videos.This is something that no other company, to my knowledge, has done and hopefully will never do.

I have a Wii U in my basement, and I play Super Smash Bros. on it every time I visit home from school. We bought the console, we bought the games, some have bought the accessories. Still not enough. They want more and they're willing to step on creators like Big Angry Joe to do it. They make great games (though they don't have a great variety), but they have too many scandals around them involving greed. I just wish Nintendo would start being the company that I thought it was as a kid.