Satoru Iwata once spoke about his distaste for a very mobile-centric term, just as Nintendo got into the market. “I do not like to use the term ‘Free-to-play,'” he told Time. “I have come to realize that there is a degree of insincerity to consumers with this terminology, since so-called ‘Free-to-play’ should be referred to more accurately as ‘Free-to-start.'” It was an admirable stance, an attempt to be more transparent than most about what players were getting into.

Perhaps in deference to its late president, Nintendo still uses to ’free-to-start’ to describe its mobile games and, as we’ve mentioned elsewhere, those games haven’t really worked out . As those games have rolled out, each to less fanfare than the last, it’s become increasingly easy to connote anything Nintendo brands free-to-start as a lesser experience than the company’s usual creations. It’s also easy to attribute that to the business model. But I’m not sure that’s the root of the problem.

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For one thing, free-to-start is barely a formally instituted business model to begin with. After the very literal interpretation of Iwata’s vision with Super Mario Run - it was, quite literally, free to start before stopping you and making you pay for the rest - we’ve seen multiple interpretations of what that term means to Nintendo when it comes to monetisation: gacha, sped-up progression, loot boxes, time-gating.

In what can only be described as a case of absolutely piss-poor timing, Nintendo revealed last week that its latest free-to-start mechanic was a subscription for Mario Kart Tour, offering a few rewards and benefits non-subscribers will miss out on. With Apple Arcade - which offers dozens of games for the same price - and Xbox Game Pass making multi-game subscription services look like the future, trying to add one that unlocks a small piece of a single game makes Nintendo look every bit like the 130-year-old company it is; some doddering grandpa that just gave you an abacus for Christmas because he heard it’s the next big thing.

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But there’s a deeper problem than just how that subscription makes Nintendo look. It’s that I don’t feel any dark, needless draw to pay for it anyway. If Mario Kart Tour was an incredible game, if it offered something I truly couldn’t get elsewhere, I would probably consider paying for that subscription regardless.

I know this because, hedonistic moron that I am, I already pay for things I don’t need. I’ve bought Overwatch lootboxes, or MtG: Arena booster packs, or paid to turn off ads in Alto’s Odyssey. I don’t need these things, and I can bypass the need to pay for them with simple patience. But I don’t. They’re as much tips to the developers as they are a means to get what I want. I love these games, and I don’t mind paying a little for a little as a result.

I have never felt this about a Nintendo mobile game.

Contrary to what it might look like (or feel nice to believe), Nintendo’s various approaches to monetisation on mobile aren’t an abandonment of Iwata’s original vision for mobile gaming. In the same interview as that first quote, he told Time that “in the world of smart device apps, the business model continues to change. Accordingly, for each title, we will discuss with [mobile development partner] DeNA and decide the most appropriate payment method.” The idea was always that Nintendo would try to find the right payment method for the right game, but the problem is that Nintendo isn’t making the right games in the first place.

There’s a fairly simple litmus test here. If the many and varied payment systems were stripped out of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, Fire Emblem Heroes, or Mario Kart Tour, would you choose to play those games above New Leaf, Three Houses or Mario Kart 8, all of which are on their own portable devices? I wouldn’t. If you didn’t have those other portable devices, would you choose to play them above the mobile games you already play every day? I still wouldn’t. But if a game of the quality and innovation of Nintendo’s console output came along on mobile as a free-to-start game, would you play it and consider occasionally paying for the privilege? I very probably would.

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I don’t think Iwata would have wanted games that charge you money in a different way. I believe he would have wanted more interesting games.In that Time interview, Iwata spoke of wanting to develop bespoke software for mobile, still searching for “Nintendo-like invention” while doing so. Perhaps most tellingly, he explained what he saw as Nintendo’s philosophy as a whole: “being ‘unique’ or ‘unprecedented’ is appreciated far more than being ‘better’ than the others.”Nintendo’s mobile output simply hasn’t been unique. In fact, on the whole, it’s outstripped in invention by others. Capybara’s Grindstone, for instance, is a far more interesting take on a matching game than Dr. Mario World - and it would be even if Dr. Mario World weren’t free-to-start. There’s a blandness to Nintendo’s mobile games that it can’t or won’t seem to get over. Behind those microtransactions, Mario Kart Tour is just a humdrum mobile racing game, and Fire Emblem Heroes is just a typical mobile tactics game.Iwata’s biggest fear about moving to phone development seems to have been that mobile games could harm Nintendo’s biggest ongoing series. He repeatedly talked about how he didn’t want smartphone versions of established series to hurt the company’s image by looking greedy or inferior, and that they should almost be adverts for their console siblings . Even the long wait for Nintendo to enter the mobile market was caused specifically because it couldn’t work out how to do so without creating harm.

Again, to Time: “The thing that concerns me most is that, in the digital age, if we fail to make efforts to maintain the value of our content, there is the high possibility for the value to be greatly reduced as the history of the music industry has shown. On the other hand, I have no intention to deny the free-to-start model. In fact, depending on how we approach this model, we may be able to overcome these problems.”

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Right now, Nintendo’s mobile games do feel lacking in value, both monetarily and artistically. It hasn’t overcome the problems of free-to-start games; it’s become part of them - and it’s a lack of imagination that sits at the heart of that issue.The next test of imagination, for me, is how Nintendo handles a mobile Zelda game. The Zelda series, by its very nature, is one of constant reinvention. New art styles, new structures, new perspectives, and new mechanics crop up with almost every new entry - it’s the ultimate expression of Nintendo's philosophy of uniqueness. If it is indeed true that a Zelda mobile game is coming , it needs to follow that same formula. A Zelda-branded Zelda-like with monetisation tacked on won’t fire the imagination like anything else in the series, but a brand new take on it - no matter how it’s charged for - would feel in keeping with its history. If, of all things, Zelda is another drab failure, it would be a true low point – an indictment of the current strategy.This might seem unfair, like I’m holding Nintendo to a higher standard than anyone else. After all, every major Nintendo competitor has similar projects out there, almost all with similar problems of quality and monetisation. Why should Nintendo be different if it can profit just the same?

I like to think Iwata’s answer would be that it’s something like company genetics. To return to that 2015 interview once more: “The late Mr. Yamauchi, former president of Nintendo, often told us that in the world of entertainment we have to do things differently than others. That philosophy has been passed down to us.” Somehow, in the mobile space, that philosophy hasn’t seemed to have been passed down beyond Iwata. If Nintendo wants, finally, to succeed there, it needs to learn those lessons, just as he did.

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Joe Skrebels is IGN's UK Deputy Editor, and he still doesn't have Bowser in Mario Kart Tour, so it's basically rigged against him. Follow him on Twitter