Nintendo

Series Retrospective: Mega Man

by

Oh, Mega Man. Do we still love you? Time was we never thought that could be a question. Even when you faltered, you still gave rise to some very quality action-platformers. But you’ve been around for a while now, and almost every console since the NES has been graced — or maybe cursed? — with your round, blue head. As result, many see you as old and stale, surpassing even Street Fighter as the primary symbol of Capcom’s tendency to rehash their most popular franchises (which often overshadows the fact that the company has created some very good new IP’s in the last few years).

But forget what the pundits say. Mega Man was one of my favorite series as a child, and I feel that its sheer longevity earns the Blue Bomber a Series Retrospective.

Mega Man 2 is the greatest by mathematical proof.
– It is the best
– QED

It started off well enough. Mega Man 1 plays like any one of its successors, with high difficulty and some fairly creative stages. →  The gamers have only interpreted the games, in various ways. The point, however, is to change them.

Numbers are fun: Year end edition

by

Heading into the holidays the question on the collective mind of the industry was which seventh generation system would emerge with the lead. For Xbox 360 this meant continuing to sell some units despite the fact that Nintendo and Sony were releasing their competitors in the market. For Nintendo and Sony, success meant shipping as many consoles to store shelves as possible and then selling all of them. So, now that the dust has settled, who has accomplished their goals, and who may be in trouble? It’s obviously too early to call the generation for one system or another, but the numbers do tell an interesting story. For our purposes, all the numbers below (unless otherwise noted) are US sales.

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 had a year head start on both of the other consoles. If we define the holiday season as the fourth quarter of the year, they came into the holiday season with just over 2.6 million systems sold. By now production has been ramped up to the point that it is relatively unconstrained, and it showed. →  Apply directly to the forehead.

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 1.12.07

by

Analyst who predicted PS3 shortages till June worries about units on shelf
I generally support any news that doesn’t support Sony but my disdain for analysts trumps even my resentment towards Sony. The analyst in this case has already predicted Sony’s triumph this generation but is now “troubled” by recent news of PS3s sitting on shelves. At least Captain Obvious makes four times as much as the average American.

This one is called “Don’t be a 2nd player hater.”

i am 8 bit exhibit = awesome
If you are a game buff and have some money to blow on crap to hang on walls, check out i am 8 bit. “I’ll have one art, please!”

Kaz Hirai talks shit
Kas says a few things that are worth contemplating. First, is the technology in the PS3 actually cutting edge like he claims? Sure it is advanced, but is a natural evolution of a tech (make it FASTER! FASTER!!!) as cutting edge as a new (to consumers) technology? →  Lame is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.

What we hope to see in 2007

by

With a new year comes new hope and a new opportunity to have our dreams crushed.

Stefan —
Saturn Games on the Virtual Console: I know, there are significant disk space problems – seeing as a single game could use up the entire internal memory of the Wii. But if a way can be found, I’m holding out hope for Shining Force III and a NiGHTS re-release with a _real_ 3D Controller.

Panzer Dragoon Saga with motion sensing controls Second coming of Christ

Sony opening the PS3 Graphics hardware to Linux users: This is another one that’s not likely to happen. And by not likely, I mean no way in hell. Allowing direct access to the graphics chipset would essentially let anyone circumvent the price of their dev kit – and would deprive them of licensing fees for game sales. But it might give me enough of a development platform that I’d buy the PS3.

AI used for Storytelling: AI has been advancing, but primarily in terms of combat tactics. →  I’d buy that for a dollar.

Wii Virtual Console: Nostalgia Driven?

by

With many obscure and unknown titles being released for Nintendo’s Virtual Console, many pundits are saying the service is merely driven by nostalgia; older gamers trying to relive their pasts by purchasing any game they grew up with, even if those games are horrible in nature. Many also think games from back then are too basic when compared to current games, and are not worth the time.

Personally, if you look at most of the NES titles, then yes, most games are a little too basic and will only be bought for nostalgia’s sake. Games like Mario Bros. (Arcade) and Ice Hockey do prove most critics’ points. But that’s only one console out of the possible five. You can’t deem something worthless when you’re accounting for only 20% of the situation.

Titles like F-Zero for SNES, Gunstar Heroes for Genesis, Bonk’s Adventure for Turbografix-16, and Super Mario 64 for N64 all have amazing staying power when compared to games of today. →  The Last Readment

2007 Predictions With Some Sugar on Top

by

2006 has come and gone, and it was one hell of a year. Nintendo raked in the dough like never before with the Wii and DS, Sony released the PS3 to somewhat lukewarm reviews, and the 360 started to come into its own with some stellar software. So what about 2007? What major stories are we going to be reporting this time?

For Nintendo, 2007 is going to be a hugely defining year. If the Wii can keep the momentum going, then it can truly be a comeback story. Wii Sports has done a great job at making the Wii an amazing experience, and it will probably keep the Wii’s popularity up for awhile.

Come this summer, however, and gamers are going to be asking for more. By then Nintendo will have probably revealed Brain Age and Big Brain Academy, as well as a few other titles to showcase the wii-mote with non-gamers in mind.

We may even see downloadable Wii-Ware games at some point. →  Garou: Mark of the Posts

Review – Trauma Center: Second Opinion

by

After their small splash in the DS world with last year’s Under the Knife, Atlus has rolled out the operating table once again with Wii’s Trauma Center: Second Opinion. Atlus showed us a great way to use the touch-screened handheld with Under the Knife, but have they done the same for the Wii and its innovative wii-mote? Even without a medical license, I can easily prescribe Second Opinion.

If you’ve ever played the board game Operation, then you have a small inkling of what to expect from Trauma Center. You play as Derek Stiles, a rookie doctor that has just finished his residency at Hope Hospital, in fictitious Angeles Bay. At the beginning of the game, Derek acts a little lazy when dealing with the other doctors. He’s still young and in need of guidance. Luckily for him, he’s got some experienced assistants in the form of Greg Kasal (your mentor) and Angie Thompson (your nursing assistant). After many trials and tribulations, Derek soon becomes a crack doctor, saving people left and right. →  Sounds amazing, I must read it now!

Houston — Wii have a success story

by

“The Wii is just a gimmick, it’ll never work.”

“Everybody will have forgot about it in two months time.”

Those two statements have been on the tip of my tongue for a long time now, and I’ve been spouting them to anyone who would listen for even longer. In retrospect I probably sounded like a crazed ex-Nintendo employee hell-bent on putting a stop to their massive success, but it seems even my misplaced educated guesses have proven to be slightly awry. And so it is I announce with a mix of self loathing and excitement that I actually do love the Wii.

But then again, what’s not to love? The first day I brought my Wii home, all happy and proud like a cat that just got a pudding of monumental proportions, my whole family had had a crack at it. The games were simple: a game of bowling here and tennis there, but it was that very mantra of simplicity that made it such fun to play. →  OutRun 2006: Post to Post

Wii Sells Like Wii-Cakes

by

In little over a month, the Nintendo Wii has sold over 3.19 million units worldwide, according to VG Charts.org. For any console, that is a fantastic number, and Nintendo is deservedly riding on clouds lined with freshly printed Benjamins right now.

But how could this have happened? I mean, Nintendo is supposed to be dead last in the home console market, right? How can a company become so popular after being the most underrated console maker in the last generation? Am I taking crazy pills or something?

I guess the Wii really is all that and a bag of potato chips. We have reports that moms and sisters have been getting into the action, and people are getting so excited that they’re shattering their TV’s to show how excited they are.

One cannot argue that the Wii isn’t a great time, but you have to be amazed at how fast the thing is selling. Stores get a shipment in, and they’re all gone within a matter of minutes.To →  God of War: Readnarok

Merry Christmas NiGHTS

by

NiGHTS into Dreams for the Saturn brings to mind the topic of games as art. Not only because the game has artistic value, though. Fans of the title have been calling for a sequel from the second the original was released. Yuji Naka, the leader of the project, contemplated giving fans what they want but then decided NiGHTS should stand alone.

So what does this have to do with art? Gamers’ have the attitude that games are made for them and developers should value the input of their fans. This works nicely as long as we assume games are merely consumer products. But what if we hold that games are art? Doesn’t that make developers artists? It’s one thing to hope your favorite band makes more music you enjoy, but to demand they output exactly what you want to hear and to feel entitled to this is bizarre.

Realistically, most artists have at least some sense of the market place their art exists in. →  Post of Tsushima