Who is responsible for making sure I have heard of a game?

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Next week Capcom will release Zack and Wiki for the Wii.

This is significant not because I want to play the game (although I do, and you should also) but because I had never heard of it up until a few days ago. There have been plenty of articles and columns recently that lament the fact that third party titles have failed to sell on Nintendo’s newest console. This fact, the fact that Nintendo has suffered a similar fate with past consoles, and the perception that they are either competing too fiercely with these third parties or have too difficult and onerous a quality assurance process have led some in the industry to believe that the big N is doomed. The Wii will be unable to dominate this generation without significant third part support, they argue.

While I could propose an alternative explanation (i.e. the games have mostly been crap) for why third party titles have not been selling, this is not what I mean to discuss today. →  Who is that standing behind you?

Lame discussion – What makes Metroid Metroid? Part 2

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Continued from last weeks Part 1, Matt, Christian and Don discuss what makes Metroid Metroid.

Christian: That’s a major problem the game has. It doesn’t do a good job of convincing people “it’s not a shooter, it’s Metroid.”

Don: I have to agree – that is where MP3 FAILS.

Christian: The opening planet screams “HEY GUYS YOU LIKE HALO RIGHT?” “WE”VE GOT HALO! AND STAR WARS! AND DRAGONS!”

Matt: I think this was more of the fact that it’s the end of a trilogy, and they need to flesh the universe out more.

Don: I, a fairly devout Metroid fan, found the Prime series to be a wedge. A way to get ‘the hardcore’ into a dying (yes, I said it) franchise.

Matt: Wow, can’t say I agree.

Christian: To me, at the very least Nintendo doesn’t know what to do with Metroid.

Don: But Matt, from what I’ve read – had the same level designers made Biochock’s levels, and had the main character from Bioshock had the gun attached, it would’ve been the same. →  Virtua Poster 4: Evolution

Yaris: Bad Advertising and Leveraging Synergies

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Remember the Burger King games on the Xbox? Everyone made fun of them for being completely goofy, poor, and representative of the consumer society we live in today.

But dammit, I think the King is hilarious, and by mimicking three of the safest genres out there (racing, minigames, and stealth), they managed to be competent enough for a couple of dollars worth of entertainment. The games sold a hell of a lot, and you knew it was only a matter of time before someone else gave it a shot.

I don’t have to tell any of you how bad this could turn out. The reason BK has done so well with their marketing over the last few years is that they put some effort into how they latch onto trends. Their games were competent enough, and stuff like Subservient Chicken was at least well made Web 2.0 attempts. These days, however, this is the exception. Marketers, I’m afraid, are retarded. Some are shrewd, manipulative, and good at their jobs, which is why advertising can and will continue to work. →  Start your journey now, my Lord.

Review – Magical Starsign

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Gummy frogs! Gummy worms! Pirate Otters! Saving Miss Madeline, our beloved teacher! The Book of the Darned!

The only thing missing from this game is puppy dogs and rainbows, and since I haven’t beaten it yet, I’m assuming there is a puppy dog and rainbow planet. Welcome to Magical Starsign, an RPG for the Nintendo DS made by developer Brownie Brown. Reading Tyson’s recent Heroes of Mana review, he mentioned Brownie Brown is a renegade group that broke off from Square. My guess is that Square rounded up all the people who they thought should be teaching preschool instead of making video games and fired them, but I digress.

The setting for Magical Starsign is the Will o’ Wisp Academy, where a group of students overhear their headmaster talking to their favorite teacher. Apparently one of the Academy’s students, a former dorky kid, has turned into quite the evil badass and is up to no good. I suppose that is the problem with magical academies, instead of getting high paying programming jobs and hiring hookers, the kids who got stuffed in lockers instead turn to gratuitous evil. →  I only ask one thing. Don’t read in my way.

Metal Gear Ac!d 2 knows you won’t read the manual

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I’m pretty bored this Sunday evening, so here’s a blog post that no one will actually read.

I picked up Metal Gear Acid 2 on PSP with the extra little scratch I got from trading some games in (more on that in a future article). First thing I noticed was the manual was a five or so page black and white pamphlet. I’m used to pieces of crap like this from EA, which seems to be pushing just how close they can get to three page manuals including the first page of warnings. But Konami doing this with one of their (as they call it) signature series? It didn’t make any sense, especially since the art inside the case is wonderful.

My answer came up on the first page of the manual – the real instructions were a pdf found on Konami’s website. This isn’t the first online manual I’ve had to download for a game, but it is another trend that I really don’t like. →  You fool. Don’t you understand? No one wishes to read on…

Lame discussion – What makes Metroid Metroid? Part 1

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After finishing Metroid Prime 3, resident Metroid fanatics Don, Matt and Christian were eager to discuss not only Corruption, but the Metroid series as a whole. Presented here is the first part of an in depth look at what, if anything, makes a Metroid game a Metroid game.

Don: I think the most relevant issues are what makes this a Metroid game, what makes it NOT a Metroid game and how it can compete in what is, frankly, a pretty badass set of this-gen titles.

Matt: Which Metroid titles have you played, Don?

Don: All but the original Gameboy ones. I’d like to get the move to 3d out of the way.

Matt: Ok, so you’re good with Metroid lore then.

Don: Yeah — totally. 3d: it works, it has since mp3 and we’d all be bitching if it was 2d

Christian: I wouldn’t bitch.

Don: Let’s establish that it is bang-on, or as good as it will get for Metroid, and move on. →  Your right post comes off?

The most racist-filled place on Earth: Xbox Live

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Is it just me, or is America filled with racist pigs? I’ve been playing Halo 3 online since it came out, and there has not been one night where I didn’t hear a racial slur slung at me. And half the time it’s for no reason! I’m just sitting there, tea-bagging some guy after sticking a plasma grenade in his mouth, and I get called the “N-word”! That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?

I am not a black man, but I still get very offended when people say this. It’s not right, and it’s saddening that people are still subjected to this kind of juvenile behavior. What if I was a black man? How do you think I would feel? All I’m doing is playing a video game, trying to relieve a little stress from a hard day’s work. But instead of enjoying a little online gaming with my favorite non-Mario mascot, I’m greeted with a string of racial slurs that degrade me and my self-esteem. →  Did I do that?

Review – Heroes of Mana

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What do you get when you cross Final Fantasy Tactics with Warcraft? The answer, Heroes of Mana, is about the closest I have come to a perfect game in a long time.

I love my DS; it goes everywhere with me and I play it almost every day. Usually there are very few games on any platform that can get and keep my attention for more than a few hours. I think this is partly because when I play my DS I do so for only half an hour at a time and therefore, it is hard for me to establish a connection to a game that lasts longer than that. It’s like being forced to take a bunch of five minute breaks throughout a two hour movie; you just can’t get into the film. I like games like Warioware, Scrabble, Arcade Hits, etc, because I can play them in small doses and get the full effect out of them. Usually this means I don’t play a lot of long games or RPGs. →  You think about everything.

Is Nintendo Power biased? A semi-serious statistical survey

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Nintendo Power is going to be outsourced to Imagine Media, meaning the long-standing and proud magazine will no longer be run by Nintendo themselves. This inspired Jay and Christian to resurrect this old project. Most people claim that Nintendo Power review scores cannot be trusted, or are at least suspect, considering they come “in house” rather than from an independent source. Now that this will no longer be the case, let us look back at the old Nintendo Power and see how they stacked up to the rest of the gaming world when reviewing Nintendo DS games.

A few nuggets of info before we start. The numbers used are the weighted averages from Metacritic, Nintendo Power’s scores, and the minimum and maximum non-Nintendo Power scores. All numbers are for the top 30 and bottom 30 DS games.

There are so many problems with the numbers used here that we cannot use the results for any serious statistical results. For one, we start off with weighted averages before we even calculate any means, and we have no idea how Metacritic calculates their averages. →  Who is that standing behind you?

Does Nintendo care?

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With games like WiiFit and Face Training becoming the staple of Nintendo’s wares in this “new generation”, most hardcore gamers are left asking, “Hey, what about me? Where are my kind of games at, son?” I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Nintendo doesn’t care about you anymore. They have moved on to greener pastures. Which is to say they want your mom’s money now, not yours.

The number one indicator for this theory was their show at the 2007 E3 conference. We had nearly 20 minutes of WiiFit, but only 20 seconds of Mario Kart Wii.

They didn’t want to show more because Nintendo was in front of all the world’s media, and they wanted to send out the word that they’re all about the non-gamers now. That’s why they focused so much on WiiFit. It was a signal to everyone that hardcore gamers are not Nintendo’s main market anymore. Iwata was on stage for nearly 10 minutes trying to defend what their company was doing now:

“Basically, non-games make us mad cash money, and we want more.” →  I am become game, destroyer of words.