been very protective of their copyrights and the integrity of their games, which is respectable because they would not want their games to be stolen or pirated. However, in some recent cases, they have simply gone too far. Super Smash Bros is one of Nintendo’s most popular franchises and is loved because of the way it brings together characters from all different types of games. It incorporates all these characters into a new style of fighting game with high-intensity matches and creative movesets. Smash Bros also has probably the largest competitive scene of any Nintendo franchise, with some of the biggest tournaments, such as EVO and Genesis having over 9,000 competitors and hundreds of thousands more watching, both in person and on live streams online. 

     These tournaments can cause some controversy though, especially when it comes to the competitive scene on the older Smash Bros games, like Smash 64 and Smash Bros Melee. The reason for conflict is that since these games are older, they do not have an online functionality and do not have high-quality graphics or screen appearance, both of which are elements essential to serious, competitive gaming. The scene found ways around this, though, with the use of mods and emulators. I believe that there should not be anything wrong with the use of mods and emulators because all they do is create a better viewing and gaming experience. These allowed the older games to run as desired for competitive tournaments which seemingly solved the problem. However, this was only the beginning.

      When Nintendo found out that emulators were being used in tournaments like Riptide and The Big House, they sent cease and desist letters and shut down the tournaments, not allowing the competitors to play the older games. The Big House is one of the biggest Smash tournaments, on the level of Genesis and EVO, so when fans heard about this conflict with Nintendo it was quickly brought to the media's attention and word started to spread across social media. Even though the tournament would have brought huge amounts of publicity and profit to Nintendo, the company shut down the event just because they are stubborn about the purity of their games. Gamers across the country began rioting online about this and Nintendo faced a lot of backlash. Sadly, not much could be done about the situation since Nintendo is such a massive company. This conflict brought chaos to the Smash scene and a lot of fans lost respect for Nintendo as a company. I believe that Nintendo should not have interfered with these tournaments because all they do is provide publicity and money for the company and it takes away from professional Smash Bros players making a living.

     This is not the only occasion of Nintendo making poor decisions recently with their games. They have been doing certain things with the releasing and announcing of their games that have been upsetting fans. First of all, they have been announcing games and then providing little to no information about it until a very long time after the announcement. This brings nothing but bad publicity for the company and leaves fans longing for answers for way too long. They have also been releasing games and calling them finished when, in reality, they will have bugs and glitches and often be missing components that they should have. Instead of releasing the game with everything it should have, Nintendo will later release downloadable content (DLC) that the fans must pay for when these things could have easily been included in the base game.

     Nintendo as a company has been falling off so much recently and it is really sad to see for fans. Gamers around the world hope that the company will listen to the media and fix these issues that have been so prevalent.