Nintendo is a company that’s usually pretty easy to root for. It takes its time to make great games. It continues supporting a beloved console even with a shiny new one waiting in the wings. It’s synonymous with the likes of Mario, Link, Samus, and Kirby. Unfortunately, at least from a legal standpoint, Nintendo is also evil. This week’s Palworld lawsuit has been yet another rude wake-up call in that regard. On the latest episode of Aftermath Hours, we discuss the wolf in Pikachu’s clothing.
This time around, we’re joined by comedian and streamer Tom Walker to discuss the latter’s self-made nightmare: an ongoing Grand Theft Auto IV playthrough in which traffic speed is cranked up to max. We talk about how livestreaming comedy differs from traditional forms of comedy like standup and how Twitch chat facilitates a unique sort of chaos that might involve, among other things, a naked person announcing that they’ve spilled wedding cake on their dick. Also, we get two separate Peter Griffin impressions, so you know this is a good one.
Then we move on to the big news story of the week: Nintendo suing Palworld, the Pokemon-alike with guns that got big earlier this year. Nintendo might be the purveyor of more beloved family-friendly faces than any other video game company, but its legal team is about as black-hearted as they come. Why, then, do people give Nintendo more grace in these sorts of situations than they do other companies? Finally, we talk about an obscure Australian holiday that has resulted in, as one chatter put it, “mass horse death.”
You can find this week's episode below and on Spotify, Apple, or wherever else you prefer to listen to podcasts. If you like what you hear, make sure to leave a review so that we can patent troll Nintendo, to see how they like it.
Here’s an excerpt from our conversation:
Chris: I have taken the “I will never take Nintendo’s side” vow. It’s a very, very simple vow: You will never take Nintendo’s side in any legal argument. And they make it pretty easy. Because if they had mined the game and were like “You put a Pikachu in here. There is a Pikachu in the game file. Fuck you. You hid it well and creatively,” that would have been more actionable than “We own the concept of dog fights for little monsters.”
That’s the thing that gets me: They found the evilest angle for this. They found the thing that makes me side with Palworld, which I don’t want to do. And again, we don’t know how this is gonna play out. But just based on the fact that they’re going after patent shit, it doesn’t seem fun. It doesn’t seem like that TikTok sketch where two guys are like “That’s a different monster.” Maybe they think they can win this. I don’t know. This is not legal analysis. This is just me being like “Man, Nintendo’s an evil fucking company a lot of the time.”
Luke: It makes you wonder where the line is with this game as well. There were a lot of Japanese Twitter users and social media users reposting Sujimon, which is the Pokemon-type game that was in the latest Yakuza/Like A Dragon game. You basically had a quite extensive minigame where the guys you fight in the street as you progress through the game, you could unlock them and collect them and basically play Pokemon with them. Systems-wise, it was almost identical to Pokemon. That’s a recent prominent example, but how many other games have done this over the last 30 years? Why is Nintendo going so hard over these guys? It’s because they gave Pokemon guns, and they made tens of millions of dollars.
Nathan: Yeah, I think that’s the big one. This is the first Pokemon clone that has had bordering on mainstream success – at least initially. I think it cooled off after that initial surge of sales. But it made headlines. It was the first big game of this year. It’s super visible. And any time that a company does this, of course, what they’re hoping is that it will have a chilling effect on other companies that might want to do something similar in the future.
Which is also terrible, because one of the big problems we’ve seen with Pokemon in general is that it has stagnated a lot over the years. People liked Palworld so much because it felt like something a little bit different within the bounds of that formula. It took it and put it in a big 3D open world. It added crafting and farming and all these other elements and systems. It didn’t do those things perfectly, but at least it was kind of interesting compared to where Pokemon has been going for the past decade or more.
Chris: I think [Nintendo] is just mad they got one over on them, and they were looking for a way to sue them, and they’re going with patent. And yeah, sure, I stand with Palworld until we find out there’s something evil going on there.
Nathan: #IStandWithPalworld
Chris: Well, it’s annoying to have to take that position where it’s like “Yeah, I think I like those guys who are clearly doing something like ‘I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you’ more on principle.
Nathan: Tom, as the outsider here – at least insofar as you don’t cover video game news for a living – have you kept up with Pokemon games over the years, or is this just a thing to you of, as you said earlier, it’s funny that they gave the kid a gun?
Tom: I think “adult Pokemon fan” is definitely a bullet I dodged. No disrespect to adult Pokemon fans. I have been riddled with many other bullets. That’s something I got close to but have thankfully fallen off the wagon of, because boy oh boy, that seems to be a thankless life. Pokemon fans have got it rough enough that they were excited when they released a Pokemon MOBA. That is not a fate I wish for anybody in this world, to be excited for a MOBA.
To me, an outsider – tell me if this is right – it seems like their ambition is to cut off the impetus for a big company to be able to do a Pokemon-like. Even if you are doing a thing where you’re collecting little guys and having them fight each other, they want it to clearly be a substandard version of it rather than something approaching more of a 1:1.
Luke: Nintendo’s legal stuff is always performative. There isn’t a commercial justification for 99 percent of the prominent things they pursue, because a lot of those are fan projects or tiny little projects scrounging together a few bucks on Kickstarter or Patreon. This is a rare sort of exception where there’s genuinely money involved. Normally it’s supposed to have a chilling effect. It’s supposed to make other people not want to touch Nintendo’s shit.
That’s the point of them being so militant about protecting their copyrights and their imagery and that stuff: If they’ve got a reputation as being the company that goes hard and fast on everybody who tries to replicate or even pay homage to anything they make, then it scares a lot of companies off from doing that stuff. Because they know Nintendo’s gonna come after them, whether it’s when they announce it or release it, or nine months later in Palworld’s case. Nintendo could come for you at any moment and come super hard.
