The Continuing Saga of Nintendo of America vs. Operation Rainfall

I can’t seem to write anything lately without it being related to Operation Rainfall anymore.  You gotta hand it to them, they’re being very persistent.  But can you blame them, when Nintendo of America and its president, Reggie Fils-Aime seem determined to stonewall them at every turn?  And just recently, Reggie lobbed the latest volley in this never-ending war between the fans who want to buy games, and a company that doesn’t seem to care.

First of all, let’s recap what happened on Twitter.  Reggie, feeling brave, decided to post some tweets about some of their upcoming additions to the Wii and the 3DS (some of which sound suspiciously US Only).  The majority of the responses called for news about a certain triad of games* that everyone’s waiting for, then called him a coward for not addressing them, since the description of Nintendo of America’s Twitter feed includes the phrase “We’re listening, too.”  It’s all well and good to listen, but you have to give some indication that you heard.

This little piece of wishful thinking was swiped from Twitter, source and credit probably dungeon_boss, the guy who tweeted it.

Reggie wasn’t done.  He also posted a video, presumably the first in a series where he presents to us in a stilted, Captain Kirk kind of way, the new features that are going into their products and the various things you can buy for them.  Naturally, he put my back up about half a minute into the video by asking me what’s wrong with me for having not bought a 3DS already.  Well, let’s see.  The launch titles left something to be desired, it was released with half of the promised features and it took a while to get them, most of the “good” games currently out are ports of N64 titles, and most of the promotional material still plays up the upcoming releases.  We have to wait until December for Mario Kart 7, for instance, yet they’re more than willing to use the game to promote the 3DS.  So tell me, Reggie, exactly who’s fault is it that I haven’t bought one yet?

Oh yeah, and getting confrontational with their potential customers wasn’t enough for Reggie.  He ended the video by lifting a figurative middle finger at Operation Rainfall and letting his utter contempt for JRPG fans show.  “And let me close by noting the game that Wii home console owners have been waiting for… The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword“.  Gee, thanks, we didn’t already know that one was coming.

At this point, it seems like all I’m doing lately is calling Nintendo of America out on their bullshit.  They have to know what’s going on.  It’s not like you can go to their Facebook page or see what everyone’s tweeting about them without running into pages and pages of people requesting a certain three games.  Even a grocery store will bring something in to sell if three or four people request it and a lot more than three or four people want these games.  I tell you, if NoA drags this out for any longer, we might want to stop asking them for the games and start asking the developers for PS3 or Xbox 360 ports instead.

*At this point, I probably don’t need to tell you which three games I’m talking about.