"Nintendo is Great" Turns One

Reflections and what comes next

Nintendo is Great is devoted to exploring the world of Nintendo - their games, their consoles, their merchandise - in mostly chronological order, from the NES to the Switch 2.

If you’re interested in following/playing along, or if you’d just like to catch up on previous posts, the Master Games List will help!

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Currently Playing - Master Games List

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Some posts are free, some are for paid subscribers only. Don’t forget to sign up below. Thanks for reading!

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My first post on “Nintendo is Great” was Sept. 3^rd 2024, and sweet merciful crap, I can’t believe a year has passed.

67 posts, including this one. Thousands of views (I’d love to give an exact number, but Substack does not provide that). Nearly 200 subscribers. 6 paid subscribers. By all accounts, a resounding success… right?

Like all of life, whether this Substack – or any Substack - is a success or a failure depends on your perspective.

Personally, I was hoping for more. More subscribers all around, a few more paid subscriptions. My engagement started off really strong in the beginning, but despite slowly growing in subscribers, my view counts have largely remained the same.

So yeah, I’m disappointed. I won’t deny it. I probably shouldn’t be, but I won’t lie and say I feel good about the results.

I’m not disheartened, though. The people who do read my work – hey, that’s you! – are awesome, and I’m so thankful they choose to spend a few minutes with me a week. You all keep me going. Substack is a massive place, and our time is limited. I’m so glad anyone at all cares enough to read, like, and comment.

For this post, I’m going to share what I enjoy about Substack, what I don’t enjoy about Substack, and what Year 2 has to offer.

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THE POSITIVES

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1. The community

The game writing community on Substack is, hands down, the best community of people I’ve had the privilege to engage with on the Internet, and I’ve been blogging consistently since 2010. Whether you have a Substack of your own or you just read/comment on gaming stacks consistently, everyone is very welcoming, kind, and encouraging.

I don’t sense “rivalries” between people or a desire to get to the top of the Substack heap (such as it is) at the expense of others; at least not yet, and I hope never. If you know the Internet - and we all do, unfortunately - you know how big of a deal this is. The Substack games writing community is indeed 11/10.

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2. Relatively painless, easy way to connect with a wide variety of people

In the old blogging days, people found your blog in one of four different ways. The first was sheer chance. The second was through a blogging network where several people all linked to each other’s work similar to the ‘Recommendations’ section on Substack. The third was through social media before it completely devolved into left vs. right political theater, and fourth was via Google, if your blog somehow became buddies with their SEO.

With Substack, people find your work through searching subjects they care about or through recommendations. The search function isn’t perfect, and I’m still flabbergasted that they haven’t added a Gaming category section (doesn’t even have to be just video games, Substack, include board games and whatever else in there too). Still, compared to just trying to find a fun gaming blogger on Google, it’s considerably better. Recommendations are great, as are Notes. And once readers are subscribed, they have all your posts sent directly to their email if they choose. No more Mailchimp setup, Substack does it all. Very clean, very convenient.

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Even Mario’s excited about not using Mailchimp anymore.*

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THE NEGATIVES

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1. Getting lost in the fray

There are so many Substack pages, even compared to a year ago. I used to actively look for different people that I might be interested in reading, but not anymore. I usually subscribe to new pages either through someone’s recommendations or via Notes, that’s it. This leads to point #2…

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2. Everything feels like “content” and I hate it.

Surely I’m not the only one who feels this way.

Creators spend hundreds of hours crafting posts or videos or whatever for their subscribers every single week, only for their work to get shoved into a cold, uncaring algorithm among millions of other posts, videos, songs, etc. Only the super creative, unusual, and controversial survive, while the rest - the bulk - fight for scraps.

This goes for Substack too. Posts from creators I like show up in my email. I read them, enjoy them, give a like, maybe leave a comment, then on to the next one. And the next one. It feels so shallow and hollow, even when I’m really engaged with their material.

I’m part of the problem. We all are. I don’t know what the solution is. I just know that I don’t like being in this “content machine” our tech overlords have created for us.

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3. I’m not sure Substack is the best place for the type of games writing I want to do.

Before I get into this point, I just want to say that I don’t plan on leaving Substack. At least not yet. Even though I think “Nintendo is Great” doesn’t necessarily fit the Substack model for successful content, I don’t see a better option for the time being.

That said… “Nintendo is Great” is very much centered around the journey of Nintendo as a company from the mid-80s up until now, explored in chronological order through the games released through their consoles/handhelds and other archival material, like the Nintendo Fan Club Newsletter.

The goal for me is for people to not just engage with the most recent post, but with the written archives as well. But what I’ve found is that readers do not read the archives of any Substack, even ones they like. Most readers are reading multiple Substacks a week, dozens, even hundreds, so to ask them to engage with the archives of your work is indeed a big ask, unless they’re absolutely in love with your writing.

This is where a blog has the upper hand. When you’re on a single website (as opposed to Substack, a website with millions of separate pages) and you like that creator’s work, you can explore at your leisure without feeling like there are other websites that desperately need your attention. I’ve seen this firsthand on my “Sega Does” Wordpress blog. My most consistently popular posts are usually not my most recent ones, but my archived work. The opposite is nearly always true on Substack.

Reading often yields fun rewards, like half-peeled mushroom stickers.*

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YEAR 2 - WHERE TO GO FROM HERE

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More of the same! Sort of.

Since starting “Nintendo is Great” back in September 2024, I work more and my work in general is more physically active and thus more tiring. Also, other things have popped up in my life that need tending to, things that take precedence over consistently posting on Substack.

For the last year, I’ve posted either once or twice a week on “Nintendo is Great” with the intent of growing it significantly. But with work, life stuff cropping up, and the growth not being as great as I’d hoped, “Nintendo is Great” will become more of a hobbyist blog. I’ll post when I feel like it. Once or twice a month? Who knows. I don’t want to predict, that always leads to failure.

With all that said, I’ve turned off paid subscriptions for now. I’m very thankful to the handful who have supported this endeavor financially, whether it was a month-to-month or yearly subscriptions.

Right now, I must give attention to things in life that I’ve neglected because of the time and effort this Substack takes. Also, I want to get off the social media content grind. The latter, of course, explicitly states if you don’t post regularly, people will forget about you and your work. And that’s sort of true, but I’m tired of caring.

If you’ve followed me for any length of time pre-Substack, you know I have a penchant for starting large, ambitious projects before dropping off the Internet for some unknown length of time. Guilty as charged. That said, I don’t think I’ll do that with “Nintendo is Great.” My desire to keep moving through Nintendo’s gaming history still burns within. This means if I have spare time outside of work and other important life tasks, I’ll likely spend it crafting new posts.

So for Year 2, less quantity, but hopefully more quality. Or at least the same level of quality.

Still need to play this beauty!

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IF YOU MADE IT THIS FAR…

Once again, I just want to thank everyone for taking time out of your busy schedule to read about old Nintendo games with me, it really means a lot. Whether you’ve stayed hidden in the digital shadows or you consistently leave likes and comments, I really appreciate your care and interest.

All the best,

DC

*images courtesy of NintendoSoup and Rose Red Prince