What is "Samurai Nintendo" ?

I think Nintendo's philosophy is close to the samurai spirit, and Nintendo is one of the only Japanese companies to still have this spirit. They committed to a path and they follow it without a step aside. They make games and nothing else, they even created a subsidiary of Pokemon when it extended past the scope of gaming. They had many opportunities during their life time to try something different and attempt to conquer even a slightly different field of activity. But they chose to remain on their path and to be faithful to their philosophy.

Maybe it sounds too much of an idealistic view, but I really believe in this concept of a Samurai Nintendo, a Nintendo spirit, and I believe the man behind it is Hiroshi Yamauchi, the chairman of Nintendo from the first video games to the beginning of the GameCube era. I do respect and agree with the major part of the decisions the company took during its history like not using CD for the N64 because of loading times, not offering DVD video features on GameCube or considering Square Soft as an enemy for a few years.

What I like the best about Nintendo is probably all these so-called mistakes they made, from the point of view of some business men and journalists that's what they might be, but the truth is that they didn't obey to any rules except their own, they dared to be different, aggressive sometimes, unfair too, they put their creativity and the games before any business rules, even before the often silly expectations of the crowd. Their endeavours made them rightly loved, reknown and respected, because creativity and imagination is the most beautiful skill. The Samurai Nintendo is one who fights for the freedom of creativity, because the freedom of thinking and imagining freely, is where all the other freedoms start and what makes the man kind shines the most.

(The stark note: someone is probably going to argue that Nintendo owns the baseball team The Seattle Mariners. Yeah, right, but even here you can feel the spirit: they saved the team by buying it and made something out of it !)