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News 
Nintendo Gamers' Summit Interview -- Into the Abyss [page 1]
- Posted By Mike
Schneider, 08.16.2000
Although initially under the impression that we would be interviewing a different person at the Nintendo Gamers Summit, we instead walked away with this tell-all interview with Faron Thompson, Associate Product Producer Acquisition and Development of Nintendo; and a future interview lined up with who we were originally supposed to interview. So then, read on for thrills, laughs, and a gargantuan ride through the roller coaster known as Nintendo Media PR. Enjoy our first hand experience with the joy of the Fifth Amendment, complete with our own witty analysis and the likes, in bolded italics.
***Witty analysis added for humor value only, no offense should be taken from it by Nintendo. We still love you Nintendo, and are grateful for every opportunity you give us. We just like having fun with what we get.
Faron Thompson: Hi, my name is Faron Thompson, I’m an Associate Producer here at Nintendo, [and I] work in the treehouse. [I’m] pretty much responsible for many of the game boy games, upcoming ones including Little Mermaid 2 and Alice in Wonderland, and we just completed Warlocked for color game boy.
Andrew Weatherton: So you mainly do game boy?
FT: Mostly gameboy stuff.
| Okay then... We love you wonderful Nintendo PR Coordination. We are an N64 site. Oh well, it could be worse, couldn't it...? |
AW: All right, so you wouldn’t be able to answer some of my N64 stuff?
FT: Ah, shoot it at me, we’ll see what happens.
| 'shoot it at me.' We're N64Shooters.com. Get it? Ah never mind, it isn't that funny anyway. But so far, so good; perhaps this "make up interview" will work out...? |
AW: All right, I wanted to know what genre would you classify Dinosaur Planet as?
FT: Actually, that is Ken’s game, so you should probably ask him.
AW: Yeah, that is what I was going to do…
FT: Yeah, you should probably ask him.
| Good thinking there... That's what our original plan was. Perhaps IGN64 is on to something when they speak of the Nintendo PR Jedi mind reading mumbo-jumbo high jinx. |
AW: Ok, we’ll just run through, and if anything comes up…
FT: Ok, that’s fine.
| It better be fine. Andrew didn't skip out on go-cart riding with the rest of the people attending the Gamers Summit to get blank expressions as responses to questions. |
AW: You wouldn’t know much about Conker’s Bad Fur Day then…?
FT: No, you should probably ask Ken.
AW: Who do you view as Nintendo’s biggest competitor in the next-generation war, and why?
FT: Probably Sony, just because they’re so big and have a lot of distribution and marketing power throughout the whole world, and, some of their games are good. I’ll give you some, maybe a few…
| Sound the alarms! A Nintendo jedi-master is perhaps submitting to the dark side! |
AW: We’re going to have like 4, 5 companies battling it out in the next-generation war, do you think that many can survive? Do you think it’s going to narrow down, or what’s going to happen with that many companies?
FT: My guess is just due to the nature of business, it’ll probably narrow down to 2 or 3, but clearly Nintendo will be at the top of the heap because we’ve got the reputation and have been around for so long, and our games are synonymous with good game play. Clearly Sony has the strength of a lot of money and muscle – but they have very few good games – whereas almost all our games could be considered classic video games. And Sega has got a lot of really good games but really lacks the marketing and distribution power they had 10, 15 years ago. So, I think we’ll probably come out on top, and Bill Gate’s Microsoft… They’ve got a lot of money to put out, but I don’t think they have any real knowledge of the reality of the video game industry.
| Deju-vu alert: "But I don't think they have any real knowledge of the reality of the video game industry." Wasn't that what people said about Sony as they first entered the game industry? |
AW: In what ways does Nintendo feel that withholding of information about their next-generation system is a good thing?
FT: I cannot necessarily answer that now, I’ll probably defer you to the PR people.
AW: Defer me to the PR people? Alright…
FT: [laughing] I’ll have a no comment on that one.
| Uh-oh, young Andrew. The Jedi-Master has found your weakness. "I'll defer you to the PR people," Faron laughs, while using his psychic powers to foresee the many, many more times he will be able to use that phrase on your poor, defenseless soul... |
AW: How do you think the next Nintendo 64 games are going to be able to compete with Dreamcast and Playstation 2 as you are waiting for the Dolphin?
FT: Well if you look at Mickey’s Speedway, that looks pretty much better than anything you’re definitely seeing on Dreamcast right now, and I think we’ve got a lot more different, exciting games that nobody thought we’d come out with, things like Conker and Eternal Darkness; and all those games have a look that is comparable to next generation and games on other platforms. Plus, all of those games are going to have really good gameplay, whereas currently on the Playstation2 if you look at the current crop of Japanese games, some of them look good but play awful, and some of them look awful and play awful. And one thing about Nintendo is that we’re really reliable in regards to quality of games – in terms of graphics and game play.
| "We're really reliable in regards to quality of games." And that Nintendo 'seal of quality' got a whole new meaning with the recent releases of Daikatana 64 and Carmageddon 64. |
AW: Looking at Conker, you can see that you’re definitely taking a more adult approach for once; is that something that is going to continue to happen?
FT: I’m sure it will happen as we see it fit for particular games.
| Faron's been studying the work of Peter Main quite well; that response could not have been too much more broad than how he responded to it. Bravo. |
AW: So you don’t have a problem releasing that type of stuff?
FT: I’ll have to defer that to the PR people.
AW: The PR people, alright…
| We are guessing that Nintendo must train all employees to learn many ways to use the Fifth Amendment to their advantage. |
AW: All right, how would you feel about Nintendo sponsored tournaments; Nintendo used to do the Blockbuster Tournaments and stuff, and they did the Pokemon tours, how about doing a Perfect Dark tournament?
FT:I think you’d have to give that one to the PR. Sorry about that.
| By now, doesn't 'PR' and 'PR people' seem to be a prevalent phrase? |
Continue to the Second Half. It only gets better from here.
-Interview conducted by Andrew Weatherton on 8.8.00, typed up complete with witty analysis by Mike Schneider; put on site on 8.16.00
***Witty analysis added for humor value only, no offense should be taken from it by Nintendo. We still love you.
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