I would never be one to make the tired old claim that “video games are just for kids,” but it’s an obvious fact that Nintendo markets its products to the younger, more family-friendly crowd. Not making a judgment on who plays Nintendo games, only looking at all of the bright colored characters and overzealous censors they have over there. However, Nintendo seems to think that just because they market their products to kids, that all of their customers have the intelligence of a six-year-old.

Time and time again Nintendo tries to pass one over us, thinking we wouldn’t notice their obvious intentions or shortcomings. That, or they put features into their games designed to “help” their players. These features point out the painfully obvious and hold your little hand so much; they must assume that most of their players are some sort of video game playing shrub or fungus that can’t figure out where the jump button is.

People who play video games aren’t stupid; in fact, they are more intelligent and able to learn than people who don’t. So why does Nintendo treat their loyal fans like clueless babies regardless of their age? Well, money mostly, but also because Nintendo is the old dog in the video games industry. As the old timer, they assume everyone else is young and dumb, while at the same time unwilling to acknowledge that the future is already here. So let’s take a look at all the times Nintendo insulted the intelligence of its customers.

20 I Never Wanted This Reality

via: youtube.com (Retrospilling.no)

Remember the Virtual Boy? If so, sorry for making you relive that horrible memory. If not, get ready for a headache. The Virtual Boy was Nintendo’s attempt at virtual reality all the way back in the early 90’s. Nintendo thought “Hey, the concept of virtual reality is pretty hot right now, let’s make a godawful system with sub-par 3-D graphics. Our customers will hear virtual reality and come running no matter how bad it is!”

Yeah. No. The Virtual Boy had a clunky headpiece you had to keep your face pressed against, poor controls, a limited amount of games that were similarly awful and migraine-inducing red monochrome stereoscopic graphics. The idea of that console giving you a headache? Good, now you know how it feels to use one. The console failed, and production ceased after less than a year. Happily, Nintendo never assumed their customers were dumb enough to swallow anything they put out ever again. Yeah, no, we got a lot more entries.

19 I Can Think Of A Different “S” Word To Describe It

via youtube.com (Dugongue)

You’ve probably at least heard of the game Pitfall!. It was a beloved title from the Atari days that saw the protagonist, Pitfall Harry, exploring a treasure-filled jungle while dodging hazards like quicksand and… well… pits. Nintendo looked at how much everyone loved that game and thought, “Hey, let’s slap the Pitfall name on a crappy game, and people will buy it, not knowing the difference! We’ll even put the word “Super” in front of it, and they’ll think it’s even better!” It turns out, it wasn’t very super.

The game is legendarily bad, with strange animations, unresponsive controls, and invisible pickups and powerups that only appear if you jump a certain way in their vicinity. Harry packs a gun to shoot all of the harmless animals that populate the game like frogs and spiders, but he can only point the gun straight ahead. You would think aiming at the ground would be pretty important if all your enemies are tiny critters. The first instance of Nintendo thinking customers will buy crap if it has the right name, but not the last time.

18 Bring The Old Club Back

via youtube.com (henjo555)

Club Nintendo was a loyalty program back in the day that was loved by a lot of fans. You could get points by buying Nintendo products, then spend those points on cool things like Nintendo swag you couldn’t get anywhere else. This program was successful, but rewarding the loyalty of their customers was not profitable enough apparently.

Nintendo scrapped the Club, and replaced it with My Nintendo, believing that people would flock to this rewards program just because it resembled the old one. In the place of cool, tangible rewards, members can only earn lesser rewards like measly coupons of older titles and wallpapers. They thought their customers wouldn’t notice all the awesome things that they pulled out from under their loyal customers. Why would Nintendo believe their fan base would accept such an obvious cash grab?

17 It Just Isn’t The Same

via youtube.com (SomeOrdinaryGamers)

The Wii caught a lot of flak for being so underpowered. And rightly so, the other consoles of the generation had much beefier hardware than the comparatively weak Wii. The result was that the triple-A titles developed at the time couldn’t run very well on Nintendo’s machine. That didn’t stop them from trying to port over these games, however.

Nintendo, thinking people wouldn’t know the difference, put a bunch of ports onto the Wii of popular games that the system couldn’t handle. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is a prime example. So, we got a bunch of games with stripped down features, woefully reduced graphics and haphazard motion-control gimmicks. We know top of the line games when we see them, Nintendo, and those aren’t it.

16 Get Off My Lawn!

via Geek.com

Nintendo has gotten the reputation of the old man on the block; always telling kids how they don’t know what’s good for them and refusing to update from a rotary phone and a fax machine. This obstinance is pretty evident in their technology choices. Nintendo often adopts older technology or refuses to adapt to the changing times. They think that players don’t know what’s right for them. After all, they are Nintendo, the oldest console game in town.

Because of this, we get things like the Wii’s clunky online service and the system in place to transfer games from your 3DS to a new 3DS XL. Do you have an account on the internet that keeps track of your purchases so you can easily install them on your new device? No, no, no, you don’t want that, Nintendo knows best. How about you spend all day moving your games over, one SD card at a time while the system erases the original files so you can only play your games on one device. Sound good? Hey, where are you going?

15 We Don’t Think You Can Handle It

via videogamer.com

Super Mario Maker was a great idea in theory. Make your own custom Mario maps and share them with your friends. What could possibly be insulting about that? Well, it’s all in the presentation. At release, players had to wait days before unlocking all of the content that they paid for and was already on the disk. Why do this? Nintendo made it as a sort of days-long, intensive tutorials. They didn’t think audiences could handle all the features at once, so they drip fed it to them with only a few new features getting unlocked every day.

Nintendo eventually patched that system out after significant backlash from the fans. However, they didn’t quite learn their lesson. The 3DS port still required players to play through extensive challenge missions before unlocking the full suite of customization options. Jeez, Nintendo, we aren’t a bunch of babies trying to bake a cake, we know how to figure things out. Now a game where you are an actual baby trying to bake a cake in an adult’s world, that I would play as long as most of the ingredients aren't locked at launch.

14 This Thing Isn’t Super Either

via deviantart.com (BrokenTeapot)

We all get stuck sometimes, but getting through tough parts of games is part of the fun and gives a great sense of accomplishment. Even if it proves to be too much, reducing the difficulty or looking up a guide should be enough to get us through. Nintendo… does not agree. They think we’re so bad at video games that we need the game to be played for us.

Enter the Super Guide. This is a system in many Nintendo titles including Super Mario Galaxy 2, Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem!, Donkey Kong Country Returns, and New Super Mario Bros. U. If you die or fail in those games, Nintendo comes along and offers to do the level for you. Sometimes it will show you how to do it with an in-game character, and other times it just straight up plays the game for you.

13 It’s Not Cute, It’s Disgusting

via: YouTube (KitsuneMp9)

Pokémon! We meet again. Part of the reason for my eternal crusade against Pokémon is that it tries to portray itself as family friendly. Nintendo thinks that it can pass off a brutal dogfighting simulator as a kid’s game. It’s a game where you go out into the wild, capture exotic animals from their natural habitat and bring them into the city to battle their brothers and sister. Do they ever get a break from violent combat, even when they are too broken to continue? No! A quick trip to the Pokémon center, then it’s back to the fighting pit.

How stupid does Nintendo think we are? Do they think we aren’t smart enough to know when we’re being told to inflict harm on cute and cuddly animals? It’s time to throw off the shackles of our Nintendoverlords.

12 U Gotta Be Kidding Me

via nintendo.com

Oh Wii U, we hardly knew ye. It was supposed to be the second coming of Nintendo. They told us that this was the new generation of consoles with the power to match. The controller was so huge (huger than Xbox), how could it not be great? A lot of ways, it turns out.

Nintendo promised us the future and some of us, fools that we were, believed them. It wasn’t so much the revolution that the N64 was; it was more the lame duck that the Dreamcast turned out to be. Nintendo believed we would fall for the fancy new screens, and hoped we wouldn’t look under the hood. We did and found another weak system with poor memory options and no third party support. Luckily, people seemed to be fed up with Nintendo treating them like dummies, and the Wii U has gone down as one of Nintendo’s failures. Maybe not Virtual Boy levels of failure, but that’s a high bar.

11 I’ll Go When I’m Good And Ready

via youtube.com (gillesgee)

As we’ve discussed, video game players aren’t stupid. We don’t need people telling us what to do and when to do it. So when Nintendo comes along and starts suggesting I take a break and go outside, I say, “No, you!” and toss that system right out the window. You’re not my mom, Nintendo, you don’t watch enough Clay Aiken videos.

I guess Nintendo doesn’t think we are smart enough to manage our own lives and feels the need to remind us constantly that there’s an outside world. Sure, there’s plenty of NEET otakus out there with a vampiric aversion to the sun, but an annoying message from a console every hour isn’t going to change that. Instead of condescendingly telling us the correct way to live, Nintendo could put some real literature out about the dangers of video game addiction and support causes that fight it.

10 You Were Supposed To Be Better

Nintendo Online Switch Service
Nintendo Online Switch Service

There was a pretty big uproar when Xbox Live started charging people subscription fees to play games they already owned online. PlayStation fans had a good laugh until the PlayStation Network followed suit. For a while, it seemed Nintendo had better sense than to anger their fan base by going along with trends and charge for their online service. After all, out of the Big Three Nintendo has by far the shoddier online network. Critics widely panned the Wii’s online service as a poorly implemented afterthought by a company that was stuck in the past.

Well, all of that is over now. Nintendo will begin charging for its online service starting next year, banking on the fact that their customers are dumb enough to shell out cash regularly to use a formerly free service that happens to be the worst on the market.

9 Who Cares Where He Is?

via youtube.com (Jerry Martin Gaming)

Remember when people actually put stock into the Nintendo Seal of Quality, and we believed it was a true mark of quality? Me neither, because Nintendo put that seal on a lot of inconceivably terrible games. Nintendo tried hard to convince us that a little foil sticker meant the game was good and we should buy it.

One of the worst offenders of these seal shenanigans (great idea for a game by the way), was the Where’s Waldo? video game. That’s right; there was a video game adaptation of a book that you literally just stare at for hours and Nintendo put its seal on it. The game was horrible of course, partly because of the poorly implemented controls but mostly because you shouldn’t make a video game based on seeing minute details with 8-bit graphics.

8 Really? Soda Cans?

via: Univ. of Michigan

The American Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) was an odd looking duck. In Japan, where it was known as the Super Famicom, the design was grey, sleek and almost plain. By comparison, the American design was a purple and gray system that was oddly shaped with a large speed bump looking portion in the center. Why the change? According to Shigeru Miyamoto, one of the head designers and de facto face of Nintendo, it was because of soda cans.

In a strange interview, Miyamoto claims that at that time in history Americans were obsessed with drinking soda because get this, Americans had cup holders in their cars. Because of this wild theory, he said the SNES was designed that way so that Americans wouldn’t put soda cans on top of the system. For real? Because we have cup holders?

7 It’s Piracy, Then

This is a pretty hot-button issue at the moment, but regardless of your opinions on speedrunners, ROM hackers and Let’s Players are creators. They make something that did not exist before they came along. Nintendo, does not see it that way. Not only do they hate YouTubers who use their games with inconsolable rage, but they also have the gall to try and convince the public that these YouTubers are criminals.

Nintendo went through a time not long ago when they hunted down who they saw as “infringers of copyright” with dogged determination and passed out cease and desist orders like they were candy. They tore down multiple YouTube channels all in the name of combating piracy. They were actually stopping these people because they smelled money, but Nintendo hopes we don’t have the brains to figure that out.

6 Yeah, I Get It, Can I Play Now?

via theblogbox.com

Tutorials are a vital thing in video games. Complicated game mechanics need explaining and players new to the game or genre need a guiding hand. But, as I find out every year around Thanksgiving time, there is such thing as too much of a good thing.

Nintendo tutorials are famous for their long, bloated and condescending tutorials. They are not only longwinded and tedious but in many cases unskippable. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and the Mario & Luigi series are some of the top offenders of the drawn out and often invasive tutorials. Nintendo has it in there heads that we need upwards of 100 minutes of tutorials before being able to play their games. I get no respect, I tell ya.

5 It’s New! Kind Of…

via polygon.com

The Nintendo Switch hypes up its own innovation a lot. Play your console games on the go! Bring your console with you and meet friends! Play at parties! Tablet gaming! Nintendo is under the impression that we don’t know that you can already do all that stuff but don’t.

We’ve been able to play console games on the go for a while now, and why would we carry our consoles around with us? Do you think we’ll actually meet someone who also happens to bring their console wherever they go or that we like clumsily setting up Nintendo LAN parties in a park? There’s a reason you never see anyone carefully balance a tablet in a public space to play a game; it’s awkward and lacks the elegance of a Game Boy. Nintendo is trying to sell us last season’s trends as brand new. Hopefully, their game selection makes it worthwhile.

4 Um… Because?

Via: DeviantArt (logancure)

Nintendo doesn’t have the greatest track record when it comes to issues of gender. This was widely publicized when Nintendo responded to questions as to why the Legend of Zelda series still does not have a female main character. Their excuse? “It doesn’t make sense, because of these reasons that also make no sense.” Nintendo claims that if, say Zelda was the main character, Link would have nothing to do. Oh, you mean like how Zelda does nothing in the games? Remember Sheik or Zelda’s role as a pirate in Wind Waker? Characters can be supporting and still be active.

Ol’ Ninty also said that since Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf represent the three aspects of the Triforce, two female characters would upset the balance. Out of balance? Like what would happen if two male characters were representing the Triforce? The Triforce was created by three goddesses. Something tells me they would be cool with more women on it. Did they really think people would buy those excuses? Just tell people you are scared of change and fanboy backlash, Nintendo, it’s more honest.

3 We Can Get Them All!

Via: legendsoflocalization.com

You know what Metroid fans like? Complex games that require intelligence, exploration and an awesome bounty hunter armed to the teeth with weapons and power armor. Some things they don’t like? Unskippable and poorly acted cutscenes, plot and dialogue derived from daytime soap operas and needless skintight Zero Suit pandering.

Nintendo thought about that and said, “Nah, Metroid fans will like what we tell them to like. Also, let's get more female customers by introducing a soap opera plot, and more male customers by making Samus run around in a form-hugging body suit and high heels!” They boiled their fans down to caricatures of the melodrama loving woman and hormone-crazed man. There were some decent gameplay aspects to the game, but Nintendo assuming that their fans were so basic is inexcusable.

2 It’s A Game Because We Say It Is

Via: UploadVR

Fans were understandably hyped for the announcement of Pokémon Go. Using AR to catch ‘em all in the real world? Now I can live out my fantasy of exploiting exotic creatures for personal gain in real life! Sign me up. But what we got was a walking simulator with no actual gameplay beyond occasional simple swipes on a touchscreen. Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining, Nintendo, and stop trying to get me to go outside. My mom’s been trying to get me to do that for decades. I didn’t go outside when grandma died, and I’m not about to start, no matter how much you try to convince me that walking is gameplay.

Worse still, the game was rife with microtransactions. Nintendo thought that if they slapped the Pokémon label on a walking app, people would pay for it and continue to pay for it long into the future. Unfortunately, they weren’t wrong. The money they made will pave the way for future insults.

1 It’s Tactical! Honest!

via: Deviant Art (sciamano240)

Remember when the ending of Metroid revealed that Samus Aran was a woman? This boss bounty hunter with a sweet ship, radical body armor and gnarly weapons is actually a badass female. Nintendo made a progressive move for once. It was not to last, though, as Nintendo eventually began thinking that their fanbase was just a bunch of horny boys instead of thoughtful, well-rounded people.

Nintendo threw out any idea that Samus was a strong female character with the Zero Suit. This “suit” is nothing more than a skintight leotard designed to show off Samus’s… assets. “Well, maybe it’s just the under-layer to her armor, and it serves a tactical purpose!” I hear you try and justify. Well, then I would ask what exactly high heels have to do with intergalactic monster hunting. The Zero Suit just proves that Nintendo thinks all Metroid players are all pubescent boys who like being pandered to.