WiiU's Road to Sucess must travel through Camelot

There is a company within the gaming confides that has had a perfect track record for the past decade, and has quietly mustered hit after hit after hit. Yet, they aren’t mentioned as often as Bungie, Valve, Square, among others. This development company puts plenty of effort to their games and can really step up and deliver something magnificent if given the opportunity. This company has been a great help to Nintendo in recent years but if the WiiU is to conquer the gaming industry, Nintendo needs to let Camelot fly a little more.



Camelot is responsible for the Mario Tennis series, the Mario Golf series, and the Golden Sun trilogy. All great games and some of them are among Nintendo’s best in the past 15 years. Mario Tennis for the N64 was arguably Mario’s greatest spin-off not called Mario Kart as it combined the Super Mario flair with some intense, varied, and surprisingly deep tennis gameplay. Golden Sun is one of the greatest handheld games of all-time as it transfers you back to the SNES days when the system had incredible RPGs with engrossing storylines and interesting battle systems. To add to that, Camelot made the greatest Game Boy Color game not named Pokemon Silver or Wario Land, as it made a Mario Tennis with heavy RPG elements. Camelot has succeeded in the console front and (especially) in the handheld aspect.

Here is where Nintendo needs to turn to Camelot some more: the console market. Surely Camelot has worked on console games, but they were limited to just the Mario sports games and they don’t have anywhere near the depth of the handheld games. With Mario Tennis and Mario Golf for the GBC/GBA, you actually played as a different person and worked your way up the ranks to becoming the best golfer/tennis player in town. You earned experience, could mess around with your stats, and even practice around the environment to sharpen your skills. This incredible way of playing the Mario sports games needs to find its way into the WiiU, as there’s more space to develop, more room to grow, and more opportunity to pull something special.

Imagine Mario Tennis WiiU which allows you to play offline and online with your created character to see who is the best tennis player in the gaming world. Imagine playing a full-length RPG but instead of fighting monsters, you are just bouncing from court to court taking on other tennis players. If Nintendo has proven something over the years, is that outside the Pokemon franchise they offer very-very little in the RPG genre. While Dragon Quest may quench the thirst a little, more can definitely benefit the WiiU. That example of “more” is the RPG versions of Mario Tennis and Mario Golf.

And Golden Sun, my oh my Golden Sun. This series is just begging for a transition into the big screen complete with its fantastic art direction, clever puzzles, decent storyline, and addicting battle system. Part of Golden Sun’s appeal is the fantastically creative spells and monsters that are summoned throughout the game. An HD enhancement will bring Golden Sun to a new plateau of quality. Golden Sun can be the game the puts the nail on Final Fantasy’s coffin as that franchise has been slipping and sliding for years and has survived because of lack of competition.

If Nintendo really wants to push the envelope, why not hand the Paper Mario series to Camelot as well? Camelot is arguably the best RPG developer since Square in the 90s. So why not give them a shot at the Mario RPG games? They might be able to muster the magic to make something as memorable as the best Mario RPG work of all: Legend of the Seven Stars. While Intelligent Systems did a fantastic job with Paper Mario (With Thousand-Year Door being clearly their best effort), I wouldn’t mind seeing the franchise shifting elsewhere.


Bottom Line: Nintendo has a gem of a company making games for them, but their scope has been small. Whether it’s because of the Big N or because the company is so small, they haven’t cranked out too many games for the consoles. If Nintendo wants to truly conquer the eighth generation, then they must allow Camelot to grow, and to expand to make more console games. The last time Nintendo has such a great second-party working for them was Rareware from 1994-2000---when that company shelled out masterpiece after masterpiece. Bringing some of the excellent Game Boy games to the upcoming HD system would be a great game to nab the hardcore audiences’ attention. Imagine an RPG Mario Tennis, a Golden Sun, or another new Camelot franchise for the WiiU.

Or better yet, imagine Pokemon or Paper Mario bring run by Camelot.

It could happen, and it should happen.