***Disclaimer***
This article is a satire, so it’s not meant to be 100% dead serious.
So I was just talking to some friends the other day and joking about Nintendo and American politics, but then something hit me like a ton of bricks. You see, Nintendo does much better under Republican Presidents than under Democratic ones (hear me out, just hear me out). Well, for starter. The NES launched in 1983, but hit mainstream in 1985, when Ronald Reagan, a Republican, was in office.
The SNES would launch in 1990, when George H.W. Bush (Reagan’s Vice President) was President. Obviously, both the NES and the SNES were monster hits with the public and helped pave the way for Nintendo to become the giant it is in gaming. The Gameboy came out in 1989, when President Bush was in office. Now, of course, this is just a coincidence, surely there’s nothing to support it. Well, look at what system came out for Nintendo in 1995…The Virtual Boy (Bill Clinton was the US president back in 1995). I don’t think I need to remind anyone who knows games how much that flopped.
Granted, Nintendo would release the N64 a year later, but compared to the Playstation 1; it wasn’t too great. Even so, the N64 was still a modest success. The Gamecube, while not as successful as the Playstation 2 or even the Xbox, was still very successful, though not as much as the N64, had a much larger selection of games, over 550 compared to the N64’s 296, and it came out in 2001, when President George W. Bush was in office.
And then in 2006, near the end of Bush’s second term, the Wii came out. While it had a lot of shovelware games on it, it did have great games like Super Paper Mario, Metroid Prime 3, Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and, of course, Wii Sports. Needless to say, it was the best-selling console of that generation. The Wii U came out in 2012, in fact, shortly after President Obama was re-elected. I don’t think I need to explain how bad of a flop the Wii U was compared to the previous two game systems, do I? And now, with President Trump in the White House, Nintendo has released the Nintendo Switch, which is selling like ice cream on a hot summer’s day.
But even Sony isn’t immune to the effects of Presidential Elections. After all, the PSP was released in 2004, and while not as successful as the DS, it was THE go-to system for remakes and RPGs for the longest time. The Vita came out in 2011 and while it has amazing games, has been a failure in the West.
Doing some more research I discovered, to my amazement, that even Sega was affected by the same forces that affect Nintendo. When the Sega Genesis launched in 1989 (seriously, it launched then?! wow!), President Bush Sr was in office, but when the Sega Saturn and Sega Dreamcast were launched when Bill Clinton was in office in 1995 and 1998 respectively. Funny how the system that made Sega a household name came out when Bush was in office, but the two that doomed Sega to becoming a third-party company came out when Clinton was in office, huh?
So, obviously, the only way to make gaming awesome is to vote Republican in the United States, for Democrats somehow screw gaming over. The above is satire for those who can’t figure it out, everything noted was just random coincidence unless the pattern continues after words, in which case, you heard it here first.
And with that said, what’s your take on this matter? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section down below!
Credit:
Robin Ek – Editor
Phil Weigel
The Gaming Ground
Twitter: @SilverScarCat
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Tags: American politics, Gamers, Gaming, Microsoft, Nintendo, SEGA, Sony, Video games