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Modern entertainment is surprisingly nostalgic, and occasionally cynical. I keep getting pelted from every angle with movie sequels that are 20 years late, TV show reboots after decades on hiatus, and surprising video game revivals like Nintendo's upcoming Star Fox 64 remake and rumored Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake. Reaching into the well is almost always guaranteed to make a company some money, former Nintendo marketing leads Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang agree in a new video, and Nintendo, in particular, won't stop until the well is dry.
"They certainly have the most nostalgia available to them of pretty much everybody in gaming," Ellis says in the YouTube video breaking down why "Nintendo Needs More Than Just Nostalgia Right Now." But, although legacy developer Nintendo can easily keep punching out Mario movies and '90s remakes forever, it's an awful way to recruit new fans.
It seems that everyone has forgotten what Nintendo used to be like – including the Nintendo adults who were once inundated with edgy N64 commercials encouraging them to "play it loud" and listen to grunge music, and Nintendo itself, which was once publishing freaky GameCube games like Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. Before modern game development became disgustingly expensive and therefore more risky, "especially in the [former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata] era," Yang recalls, "'innovative' was a word that came up all the time in terms of how they would describe themselves."
Both Ellis and Yang oversaw marketing at Nintendo for nearly two decades, from the Wii years to 2022. Ellis says, "When we worked there, there were so many examples of them not just telling us, but showing us, it's like, 'We do not want to be a nostalgic company.' The minute you start to coast on your nostalgia, it's kind of over for you, in terms of a forward-looking thing."
The Star Fox remake and rumored The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake, which largely bank on audiences' fondness for the late '90s, seem to do the opposite. They'll attach Nintendo to the past. But they're also safe ventures for a company with plenty of fans who miss their childhood.
Ellis says, "This is the new avenue for [Nintendo] to update some of their legacy content where it's like, 'All right, the game design work is done, and we know the game is good. We can update the graphics.'" Their audience is built-in, and old enough to own multiple credit cards. For now, Nintendo's nostalgia play can't fail.
But for "a truly creative company like Nintendo," says Yang, "that would be so sad if they kind of buried that part of themselves away because they were too scared to take the risk."
The current Switch and Switch 2 lineup isn't completely devoid of personality – Nintendo experimented with wheelchair basketball game Drag x Drive in 2025 and, while it is part of a pre-existing franchise, the new Tomodachi Life at least lets you be as bizarre as you want.
For Nintendo, the issue is that these games are also a coin toss: Drag x Drive underwhelmed audiences (leading to our underwhelmed Drag x Drive review), while Tomodachi Life is so popular, it's inspired people to use carrots as a touchscreen stylus.
As Yang and Ellis note, if Ocarina of Time rumors are to be believed and the Star Fox 64 remake stays on track for its June 25 launch, two of the biggest 2026 releases will actually have come out nearly 30 years ago.
But all that matters to Nintendo's finances is the fact that these games will continue to be two of the biggest releases. So the company isn't completely shutting out opportunities to collect new audiences with younger people who don't know what Slippy Toad is. But it isn't going out of its way to try a little harder to reach them, either.
