Nintendo’s Project H.A.M.M.E.R: The Untold Story



The life & death of one of Nintendo’s most mysterious projects and how a storm of alleged discrimination and mismanagement tore Nintendo Software Technology apart, as told by the people who worked there.

For the record, I did reach out to Nintendo’s Japanese staff who these allegations were directed at to give them an opportunity to tell their side of the story. Only one replied, declining to comment. We have not accused NST of “racism/nationalism”, only reported allegations of such. Please distinguish between the two; they are very different.

Stay tuned for more revelations, including looks at Rayman 4 & an unreleased Kid Icarus game.

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34 Comments:

  1. +Chris vs The World This was the time when Nintendo wanted to go for the
    kids and casual audience exclusively and to lesser extent Nostalgic gamers
    and disconnect with the gaming community.

  2. +Pablo Martinez still the outcome could’ve been just okay or eh. Nothing I
    thought would’ve been too special.

  3. +LyR I just read that article. It has nothing to do with their relationship
    being bad. It just says that Nintendo could have gotten envious of Rare
    during the N64 days, which was fine. They don’t appear to have done
    anything to actually hinder Rare’s creative freedom, and they clearly
    placed a lot of trust in Rare. From most of what I read about Rare and
    Nintendo, I think that Nintendo mostly just let Rare do their own thing
    most of the time.

  4. SaintAlia_of_the_Games

    +JumpinJurassicPark Their ‘true’ vision could have been worse than this
    though. Besides if you can’t nail down basic gameplay mechanics then you
    might have trouble with your ‘true vision’.

  5. +PFBM
    Yes i played mario galaxy and no the cursor doesn’t disappear for the sole
    reason you have to do small fast movement and not big huge ass movement,
    the cursor shouldn’t even go out of the screen, that’s the proof you’re
    full of shit, heck even in the video the guy does the movement with the
    hammer the cursor doesn’t go out of the screen when he does it. I bet
    you’re the kind of guy who got his wiimote desychronized after every sword
    hit in skyward sword cause you swang it too much.

  6. +PFBM
    I feel like I’m talking to a wall. OF course the cursor has everything to
    do with the way the accelerometer trigger, just not everytime but in the
    video it does. If it moves fast that means it triggers because it’s fucking
    based on accelration so if it goes from full stop to sanic speed that means
    the accelerometer trigger AND THAT WHAT HAPPENS IN THE VIDEO. But you keep
    denying it. The cursor does do just moving, it moves accelerating really
    fast, the proof is the second time where the hammer happen but the first
    time it goes THE EXACT SAME WAY but doesn’t trigger. you talk about mario
    galaxy but even there everytime mario does a spin move the cursor move
    really fast (except in that game it work everytime).

  7. Serah Nyberg Is A Pedophile, look up her name and be shocked #PeDont

    +cormano64 how about the saying dont believe everything you read on the
    internet especially from 4chan?

  8. SaintAlia_of_the_Games

    +ejswe Not necessarily sucked. They could have taken the Skyward Sword
    route(albeit with motion plus), or chosen a better way to have motion
    controls, like Pandora’s Tower for example(simple timing based combos,
    while the motion controls come in to aim a grapple or shooting weapon).

    The overall art style, design and combat mechanics look pretty lame though.
    And the story isn’t standing out either. It’s like one of those games
    from the PS2/GC era that would come out, get slightly above mediocre
    reviews and everyone would forget about it afterwards because it did
    nothing new and didn’t stand out from thepack.

  9. +SaintAlia_of_the_Games I remember being somewhat intrigued on the initial
    reveal, since it stood out against the deluge of family-friendly stuff. Not
    to mention, no one knew how terrible the Wiimote responsiveness was at the
    time.

    All things considered, it was a terrible idea to make an action game tied
    to imprecise controls. The need to constantly waggle is not fun, and offers
    nothing that a button couldn’t replace. NoJ was right to step in and try to
    “find the fun”, it just sounds like it was managed terribly.

    Focusing on environmental challenges/puzzles is not a bad idea actually. It
    takes the pressure off the player to waggle constantly and can give the
    player really good feedback. Combat should have been stream-lined, with
    motion controls needed only for finishers or huge attacks. No pointer
    nonsense should be present while fighting – it looked like a huge
    distraction and only obscured enemies. It could have been salvaged, but it
    needed someone with a clear vision which this totally lacked. Someone had
    the idea “Wouldn’t it be cool if you could swing a giant weapon using the
    Wiimote?” and didn’t know what to do with it.

  10. +Nia Pierce Hmm I don’t think you can equate the upper management of NST to
    Nintendo as a whole in this case. The way they treated those particular
    western employees shouldn’t be put on Nintendo as a whole, since this
    happened internally in one of their subsidiaries.
    And seeing as the division got reduced to a developers of very small
    applications Nintendo wasn’t at all happy about what happened.

    Thanks for sharing by the way. It was a very interesting video!

  11. Nia Pierce (TheVideoGamHer)

    +GILLZONE The company mentioned in this video was a Nintendo studio, NST in
    North America. If they treat their own in-house studios like this,
    disregarding their voices simply because they’re not Japanese, it’s no
    wonder third party devs don’t want to deal with them assuming they still
    think and act this way today.

  12. +Nia Pierce Nintendo is handling Devil’s Third like pure shit and it is
    really annoying the hell out of me. That is one of the games I was looking
    forward to this gen and our region has no release date no promos or
    anything. Nintendo doing this to Itagaki as if they actually have options
    or something. Also gonna be annoyed if it is digital only in North America
    when all other regions got the retail version. I remember Project
    H.A.M.M.E.R. but you didn’t even see nearly anything about it years ago.

  13. +85kentray Why? Sticking with a boring game (and I don’t know what you are
    talking about, there is no story here, just a background to put a hammer
    on) without any reason instead of not wasting more money on it and creating
    something new and with some potential? WTF?

  14. +TheChillarmy madworld,they got inspired.

  15. +Wilford111 Gosh, it’s like you watched the video and actually understood
    the context.

  16. +D2K Prime No its not. This doesn’t expose the real Nintendo, it’s just one
    case of a dev trying to make a decent game that didn’t work no matter what
    ideas they could’ve agreed to put in or not. All you proved is that you’re
    another tin-foil hat wearing propaganda minister who hates on the company
    today for retarded superficial reasons and the sooner your kind is
    silenced, the better.

  17. +Brian J. Xiao It’s interesting to see that common defense pop up every
    time I (or someone else) criticizes Nintendo for their obviously
    inefficient ways of handling their business.

    1. I currently do not even own a single Sony product.
    2. I have 2x more Wii U games than your average “Nintendo Fan”.
    3 I have batter things to do than participate in this ridiculous fanboy
    war.
    4. Why must objectivity tie you to fandom of a single console?

    Not that it matters to me if you do or don’t, next time check the person’s
    channel before leaving a message swimming in ignorance and based off of
    some sort of fanboy logic. You just might avoid the embarrassment that
    follows. Just a Pro-tip…

  18. +LogiK Gaming Racist is a strong word. And you’re probably also a PS4
    fanboy. You just want to make them look racist because you hate them.

  19. Kirielson MaClaine

    Look, Sony and MS have both had issues with companies, but we’re not
    talking about them, we’re talking about Nintendo. +Falcovsleon21

  20. +Electrolysis It’s not that difficult. When you have a passion for
    shitposting on the internet like I do, nothing is impossible.

  21. +Pik3rob I can’t believe they think you’re serious when you’ve been
    obviously sarcastic. They really do have their heads stuck in their own
    asses.

  22. +Commander_Ninja Oh, so that’s why you were denying the superiority of 2d
    anime girls. It’s all clear now.

  23. +TreasureBoxReviews NST at this point makes a lot of utility software for
    their system peripherals and hardware and emulators used to play older
    games on newer systems.

  24. I understand that but I was referring to the fact that they are actually
    releasing new games and marketing them (Semi) Correctly. Also I think that
    what was said about racism seemed a little fishy, but right now it is the
    only source of this (That I have seen). I am sure there were other factors
    that were not stated.

  25. +Brainz Splatoon and Codename STEAM were all handled by old Nintendo dev
    teams such Intillgent Systems and EADS group No.2. As for NTS, I don’t
    think it was due to “racism” as Nintendo worked just fine with Rareware,
    Retro Studios and Next Level Games….

  26. Not the only thing, but it’s the main thing. a game could be perfect with
    gameplay, have smooth controls and run at 60fps but if the game is not
    enjoyable, it’s not worth it.

  27. no they don’t alex. they just need fun games.

  28. TheSuperNintendude64

    +Nollog Well in the article I posted Miyamoto said there were heated
    debates on whether the main character should be Mario or a squid. I’m happy
    they went with a new I.P.

  29. +Alex Pindell huh? i’m not following 🙁
    the truth is…i don’t have no wii u. my last system was wii. is wii u
    good? and why everyone’s complaining about nintendo? is it because the game
    they making isn’t good anymore?

  30. Don’t hate them I just wish they would do better like they used to I don’t
    want the. To fall like sega

  31. +Alex Pindell why do you hate nintendo so much? it’s just a company -_-

  32. +Tailslol
    is it possible to alter the controls to work on a controller, maybe so,
    maybe not, would it be beneficial to revive this game on any platform with
    ported controls? i highly doubt it, this game has been dead and buried too
    long now for them to see a benefit to such a thing.

  33. +Tailslol
    and? from the looks of things it was made with the Wii remote in mind, and
    bringing the game back for the Wii U or the NX (with the classic controller
    in mind, or some other controller of similar make) would most likely
    require a total reworking of the game, and it would just benefit them more
    making it an entirely new game instead of reviving this one.

  34. +Lee Stevenson Thank you 🙂

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