Quality products vs Quality marketing

The Masterpiece

Today's entry deals a little bit with business strategy, entrepreneurship, my teenage years and video games. I will go back to the past 25 years ago to visit one of the best products I have ever laid my hands on, as well as a monumental achievement of what us humans and corporations can do, when we set ourselves to produce a unique masterpiece: Super Castlevania IV.

25 years ago Konami was established as one of the few producers of great video games in the late 1980s. It had already developed major titles for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), such as Contra, Super C, Gradius, Life Force, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and of course a vampire-hunting side scroller known as Castlevania.

It's oldest brother, and
the one that started it all 

Castlevania I (or simply Castlevania) was Konami's first video game for the NES and it was released in 1986. As my fellow gamers may recall, it featured Simon Belmont in the XVII Century, who battled his way through vampires, hunchbacks, medusa-heads, bats, skeletons and other monsters -including the Grim Reaper aka Death himself-, to defeat Dracula. It was a great game, highly regarded back then and highly regarded today as a classic in the NES library. It was followed by Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, which featured a few changes in the storyline, shifting towards a more RPG orientation which recieved equal amount of praise than the original (discounting the Angry Nintendo Nerd of course), despite some minor flaws in the gameplay and the legendary difficulty of its puzzle solving. A third installment closed the trilogy for the NES, Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, which some consider arguably as the best of the NES series, featuring multiple playable characters -a novelty for the NES- and multiple routes towards Dracula's castle.

As I stated, all three NES Castlevania's are hailed as classics. They did have minor flaws in their gameplay though. The control movement controlling the main character was a bit choppy at times, meaning it wasn't perfectly smooth. But then again, the vast majority of NES games were like that and only minor exceptions come up in my head, such as Mario, Contra and Super C, and Blaster Master. In other words, back then players didn't really care the controls were a bit choppy because we used to take it as challenge of the game itself: you just had to deal with it, especially if all three games had the same issue.

One of the first preview images I saw from SC4.
I remember thinking to myself:
"How am I supposed to control him hanging
by his whip, which I know is stiff and choppy"
Little I knew... little I knew... 

When 1991 arrived, Nintendo released their 16-bit console, the Super NES, which very quickly demonstrated it was well worthy of the "Super" adjective. The leap the Super NES achieved with jumping from Mario Bros to Super Mario World, from Metroid to Super Metroid, from Ghosts and Goblins to Super Ghols 'n' Ghosts -to name a few- was monumental. In late 1991, magazines began publishing articles announcing Castlevania was going to make its transition from NES to the Super NES, in a new title called Super Castlevania IV. Every single magazine I came across hailed SC4 as "The Perfect Game", already earning reputation as a candidate for "Best Video Game of All time". While I had little doubts Konami could be able to produce such a game, I was bit skeptic on calling it a "Perfect game", much less labeling it as "Best Game of all time", because well, trailers and previews always hype products better than what they really are.

I wasn't fortunate enough to get SC4 on its release in December 1991, as I got my SNES in june 1992, and was able to get SC4 in october 1992. As soon as I popped this game on my SNES I just couldn't believe my eyes and ears. The qualifications of Perfect and Best video game of all time, were spot on.

Taking a leap and jumping forward while whipping diagonally southwards?
Come on, you got to be kidding me. Well, they weren't joking at all.

Super Castlevania IV took the Castlevania franchise to a whole new level of glory. The first thing that blew my mind was the graphics, followed by the game's music. The orchestral sound was haunting, sublime, chilling, sensational, magestic... I was at a loss of words. Graphically speaking the attention to detail was exquisite. Water, air, fire, wind, earth, everything was accounted for; the graphics give an outstanding demonstration of the capabilities of the Super Nintendo and what it could do with its color palette and the three-dimensional Mode 7. But more importantly than anything, Super Castlevania IV improved every single flaw the previous NES Castlevania trilogy had.

In Stage 4-3, SC4 featured Simon Belmont travelling through a spinning room that gave you
a 3D sensation never felt before in any video game or console. Simon -as seen in this pic- could whip
in diagonal direction, which was a huge novelty at the time.

The choppyness and stiffness of the main character, being unable to jump obeying the will of the player in the NES games, was gone. Now the main character could jump at my will. Moreover, the character was able to attack in any direction as pleased, compared to just one direction (forward) in the NES trilogies. The levels... well, let's just put it this way: there were no two levels alike. I don't know how they achieved it, but I felt that evey new level, I was playing a different game. It is hard to explain the feelings I experienced when I played Super Castlevania IV back in 1992, but I think I can resume it the following way: I thought and held, that SC4 was the best SNES video game I had ever played, until I played A link to the past, and to this day I still hold my position. Had A link to the past not be released, SC4 would be the best SNES game ever. I consider SC4 as Konami's epitome and zenith in all their games ever developed.

So why do I bring this up and what does it have to do with Quality Products vs Quality Marketing?

A marketing teacher once taught me the following: if you are a company in the verge of releasing a new product which you label as great, that means the expectations of the consumer will be greater than what you think, which means, the closer you are able to meet the expectations of your consumer, the better perceived your product will be. However, only if your product exceeds your customer's expectations, then you have developed a product that you can rightly label as great. If you have a so-so product, with a strong marketing plan behind it, you may still be able to get away with some success.

Super Castlevania IV was a product that surpassed expectations of all gamers. It seems that it is a product where the Konami team sat down and said: "ok, we are now going to develop a legenday video game, and we will not release it until every single issue is fixed, and we feel we have reached the legendary status. In other words, this game has to be perfect"

The leap into the new generation

A few years later, PlayStation was dominating the video game industry and Castlevania once again made the leap into a new console -this time developed by Sony's system- in the form of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

SOTN brought a new approach to the Castlevania series. First, you played as Alucard (Dracula's son) instead of the Belmont's -or any non Dracula blood-related character-. Next, unlike all previous installments, this time the whole game took inside Dracula's castle, so one could say that theoretically there were no levels -no different levels, for that matter-. Next, there was no whip as main weapon, but instead a sword and dozens of power ups and special attacks. One could say Castlevania had evolved. The way I see it, it did evolve, but it also changed its essence.

Most critics and reviewers rate SOTN as the best Castlevania, placing it above SC4 which normally ranks second. Only a handful of lists place SC4 as #1 on top of SOTN. My position is the following: SOTN is a better game than SC4. However, SC4 is the better Castlevania game.

The masterpiece, Symphony of the Night

My reasoning comes from SOTN being different in the essence Castlevania has. I enjoyed playing through forrests, cemeteries, waterfalls, ancient greek temples, and so on. SOTN took that feeling away. Therefore, removed from the Castlevania series context, SOTN is a way, way better game than SC4. However in my opinion, within the Castlevania series context, SOTN took a bit too many liberties. Not too much, but quite a bit to send the series to a whole new context.

Sorry, but I still can't get over the Sith fighting
a Janitor and a teen female hero who learned
about the force eight hours ago

Star Wars The Force Awakens suffers from the same fate of SOTN. Yes, I know... I'm bringing up Star Wars The Force Awakens issue once again. I just can't get over the fact how is this movie hailed as great Star Wars film when clearly, it is NOT. Three months after its release, it still holds unexplainable high ratings in most websites and reviewers, despite having thousands -if not millions- of fans expressing dissapointment on several issues, goofs and plot holes the movie had. I am starting to believe, that including the monumental marketing effort done by Disney prior to its release, there has been another monumental effort following its release, getting reviewers and critics to praise the film in order to increase sales, battling the large number of negative reviews from fans.

I can proove this and you can back me up on this.

Go to IMDb's Star Wars TFA page here.

If you scroll down to almost the bottom, you'll find the Users reviews section. I promise you, I browsed through all 3,500 user reviews and I can assure you I couldn't find more than 40% of reviews rating it with a score of 6 out of 10, or higher -and that's throwing 40% as a safe number-. I'm sure that if I survey and quantify all reviews, at the end I will get something like 65 or 70% negative reviews for the movie. Yet, it holds an 8.4 out of 10. I invite you to do so and browse through all 50 pages of reviews. Complaints, dissapointments and griefs are all over the place. How is this possible?

One of many negative -and realistic- reviews of TFA on IMDb's website

In my opinion, because TFA is not a quality product. It's a decent product, with quality marketing.

The differente between SOTN's case to being superior than SC4, against TFA with the SW series, is that while to some SOTN may not be a "true" Castlevania, it actually is great game. More importantly, some may consider that SC4 is a remake -or a reboot- of Castlevania I. While that point is valid, one also must acknowledge that SC4 is a masterpiece in its own right.

That doesn't happen with TFA. TFA is a bad copy/rebook/remake of ANH (Star Wars Ep IV: A new hope).

Earlier in the week I watched ESPN's First Take -which ironically is also a property of Disney-, and in this week's episode, Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless discussed Maria Sharapova's suspension after having tested positive in a drug test, as I posted in a previous entry as well.

If you watch the 12-minute clip, you'll see Stephen A. making a very good and interesting point: he brings up that Maria Sharapova is the highest female paid athelte in the world, which he considers outrageous especially when you consider Serena Williams has beaten her eighteen consecutive times -in fact Sharapova hasn't been able to beat Serena since 2004-, plus, Serena Williams has been #1 player in the world for more time than Sharapova, and Serena has won 21 Grand Slam tournaments against Maria's 5. Moreover, Stephen A. raises the question that in a hypothetical scenario, Serena Williams' treatment and scrutiny, had she been the one who tested positive in the drug test, would have been way more drastic than what the press, officials and fellow sportsmen have been giving to Maria.

Need to say more about who's the better player?

I do acknowledge Stephen A. at times brings up some issues with black ahtletes against white athletes, sometimes a bit strategically referring to race and sometimes leaving the viewer wondering if he brought it because of race or because of the nature of the athlete, regardless of his/her race, creed or inclination. I hope that in this case Stephen A. brought it up because it is the latter and not the former, however Skip Bayless took it as it was the former and not the latter.

Regardless of why Stephen A. brought the subject up, like SOTN is rated higher than SC4 thanks to quality marketing, and like TFA has been receiving overwhelming positive critical reviews thanks to quality marketing, Maria Sharapova has been a way, way, way, WAY more marketable athelete than Serena Williams, despite the fact that like her or not, and like it or not, Serena is arguably the best female tennis player of all time and Maria is not.

Seriously, Who wouldn't buy this?

The conclussion I would like to bring therefore, is the simple fact that you may have a masterpiece elite product, and achieve success due to the product and what it delivers, brings to the plate and how it meets or exceeds customer's expectations. You may also have a good product -which is not legendary, masterpiece, or elite- with a powerful perfect marketing plan execution, and achieve even more success.

Think about it.


H