Game On: The latest ‘Mario’ game highlights Nintendo’s anti-consumer antics

Video game giant Nintendo has a long history with product scarcity stemming back to the 2006 release of the Nintendo Wii, the console that pushed motion controls to the mainstream and dominated family rooms for years. At age 12, I remember struggling to acquire one for several months before my dad chanced upon a unit in a local Best Buy, brought it home and had me pay him back with my saved-up Christmas cash and chore money after the fact.

It’s a fond memory now, but it was an annoyance then – I had no issues picking up a Nintendo Gamecube in previous years and just wanted my hands on the newest games. Even as a pre-teen, I scoured headlines, news releases and early reviews in anticipation of what I saw as a game-changer in the video game industry – motion-controlled games right in your living room at the low price point of $250.

With Sega forced out of the hardware market a generation before, it was this innovative spirit that made the forced transition from Sega kid to Nintendo kid easy. But the scarcity of the Wii console supply was what first began to sour me on Nintendo’s sometimes-questionable consumer relations. In 2006-07, it seemed like the company made an honest mistake under-supplying its hardware to the Western Hemisphere – there is often a sizable gap between what appeals to consumers in Japan versus the West, so such miscalculations aren’t uncommon.

But this is an oft-repeated mistake for Nintendo. The trend of under-supplying its products continued with “Amiibo” figurines, the NES Mini and the Nintendo Switch console – even Paul Tassi of Forbes, who says the publisher’s alleged artificial scarcity tactic is “a myth” admitted the Amiibos have been kept intentionally rare to fuel hype and cause a collector craze in a ploy akin to Ty’s Beanie Babies.

Fast forward to today – “Super Mario 3D All-Stars” releases Sept. 18, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a physical copy. Worldwide pandemic aside, the Japanese publisher announced it would limit supplies of the game and only manufacture copies until the end of next March.

Unsurprisingly, this caused online pre-orders to skyrocket and scalpers to resell pre-orders on eBay for as much as $265 – the retail price is $60. Even more shockingly, Nintendo will pull the game from its digital storefront the same day like some kind of sick April Fool’s Day joke.

I’ve been unable to acquire a copy of “Super Mario 3D All-Stars,” but the details I’ve heard thus far are unimpressive: None of the games are “remastered” with new graphics or features. They are simply ports of old games from 1996, 2002 and 2007 to new hardware. If you already own these games on older consoles, there is no point in picking up this new collection. “Super Mario 64” doesn’t even play in widescreen, a feat hobbyist modders could likely accomplish.

This leads me to believe Nintendo knew “Super Mario 3D All-Stars” would be little more than a quick cash grab. Rumors of such a collection surfaced early this year, but ultimately the compilation was announced and released within the same month, which is a very rare occurrence in the video game industry.

The title itself is a nod to “Super Mario All-Stars,” a well-crafted re-creation of several 8-bit Mario games to the graphically superior 16-bit Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The effort that went into that 1993 compilation is nowhere to be found in “Super Mario 3D All-Stars,” whose only new feature is a music player.

I admire Nintendo – its employees have created imaginative and incredible worlds with excellent gameplay for decades, and I hope they continue to do so. Few people truly hate Nintendo because they’re just that good at what they do.

But the company uses artificial scarcity to fuel hype, charges boatloads of money for cardboard “Labo” peripherals, re-releases old games at full price in favor of supporting backward compatibility and is currently facing a class-action lawsuit for the commonplace “drifting” manufacturing defect that plagues Switch controllers.

Due to these grievances and more, Nintendo might be the least consumer-friendly publisher in the video game business today, rivaling even the likes of Electronic Arts and Bethesda. The company needs to be held accountable for its actions.