Nintendo

Gaming Meccas of Japan Pt. 1 — Den Den Town, Osaka, Japan

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Being a geek and living in Japan is kind of like mixing Ecstasy with LSD – it’s one hell of a trip. There are four places in Japan that should be on the must-see list for anyone who calls himself a nerd. The big one is Akihabara in Tokyo and I will be covering that in September along with The Tokyo Game Show. The third spot goes to Nintendo’s world headquarters in Kyoto but there isn’t much to see there because no one is allowed into the facility and tours are never provided. The fourth spot and topic of today’s installment is Den Den Town in Osaka.

Den Den Town can best be described as the poor man’s Akihabara. It is smaller in size, about four or five square blocks instead of an entire section of Tokyo. The businesses in Den Den are also a bit lower scale. In Akihabara, you can find anything that takes a power cord or batteries, both new and used. →  Let’s get read-y.

Nintendo’s E3 conference also sucks

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Nintendo’s E3 presentation was as bad as Microsoft. Had they not announced release dates of games I want, I’d probably say worse. Highlights:

– Bragging
– Charts
– Release dates
– Montages
– Charts
– Wii Zapper, which will come with a game (how about a game that comes with the zapper instead of a zapper that comes with a shitty after thought of a pack in?)
– Mario Kart coming early next year with online races and a stupid plastic steering wheel. Also with the new feature of “skill not mattering” that levels the playing field for all new gamers
– Charts
– Bad puns
– Montages
– High School Musical, the amazing game based off of the movie of the same name
– Wii Fit, complete with Wii Pad to Wii stand on

I thought Reggie was supposed to not suck. Someone lied to me. Perhaps at least one of his jokes would have not induced cringing in the audience had he delivered them like a comedian or orator and not like a marketing drone. →  Max Post 2: The Fall of Max Post

Second helpings of the DS list article

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Yesterday we covered 65 DS games as something of a jesting response to a PSP Fanboy article. Some readers decided to ignore the point of our piece, which was that games are, at least by our standards, the real reason to buy or not buy a system. For those people, we now present a second reason (in their view) to buy a DS — backwards compatibility.

The entire GameBoy Advance lineup is available to a proud DS owner. While a majority of games on that handheld were licensed kiddy garbage, it was still home to some excellent titles you should make sure to play.

After some GBA games, we will then take a look at 10 upcoming DS games that look promising. Like the GBA games, it didn’t seem appropriate to include these yet to be released games on yesterday’s list. But how can we ignore some of the powerhouses coming soon? So here we go, once again in no particular order at all…

Mario & Luigi Super Star Saga
If this game weren’t hugely entertaining, it’d still be a mandatory buy simply for Fawful’s dialog. →  [send private information]

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65 reasons to own a DS

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Recently, PSP Fanboy began a series of articles called “60 Reasons to own a PSP.” They may only be up to reason 45 despite the series beginning a month ago, but today we are showing you everything we’ve got. Yes, 65 reasons to own a DS, but here’s the catch — they’re all games.

PSP fans (we have some at this site) and savvy readers may be quick to point out that PSP Fanboy could have taken the same approach. Forget that it’s debatable the PSP has 65 good games because that’s not the point. The PSP crowd may like games, but we believe the PSP Fanboy article shows what is important to that fanbase.

Features, a lot of features. Nubs, wireless, movies, browsers, messengers, waffle irons. Games are number one on their list, but they still get one sixtieth of the list, like free VoIP (in Britain only) and adjustable screen brightness. No more or less priority than features 2% of PSP owners use. →  Welcome to the Fantasy Zone.

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matt’s E3 Predictions

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I’m sure you’re probably bored to death of reading the blogosphere’s predictions for the cleverly-named “Min-E3” event that’s going to take place next week, but I haven’t stated mine yet, so you’re gonna sit there and listen, whether you like it or not. I’ll try to make it short, so you only have to use 3% of your brain power. Fucking babies.

Microsoft

-Gears of War for PC. Why? Because it’s already true.
-No portable (Jesus people, forget about it).
-$50 price drop for each 360 SKU (Core, Premium, Elite).
-No MGS4. It will happen eventually, but it’s not going to be for awhile.
-Zune will be integrated more with the Fall Update. Songs and video bought off Marketplace, then transfered to your Zune.
-Some crazy XBLA game shown off, with a million crappy ones.

Sony

-$100 price drop for PS3 in North America. Also, true.
-PSP Lite shown in actual form, presented with the new PSP Store. (I personally cannot wait for this)
-MGS4 playable, but Killzone in video form only. →  Illiterates hate her! Click to read this one weird trick.

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 6.29.07

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Capcom not merging with another company
Sega and Sammy did it, Square and Enix did it, so why not Capcom? Imagine the awesomeness of Capnomi — crossovers like Phoenix Wright Solid, Gradius May Cry, and Silent Resident Evil Hill would delight fans worldwide.

Unfortunately (or fortunately if you live in the real world), Capcom won’t be merging with another company any time soon. They did announce they would go the Sega route of buying a bunch of crappy Western developers, at least. We can only hope Capcom nonchalantly hands over enormous franchises for their new developers to systematically destroy.

Dragon’s Lair DS
This game gets a bad rap just because it’s basically not interactive in any way. It’s true that if Dragon’s Lair came out today on the PS3 and looked amazing but offered little to no gameplay, my throat would be sore from all the screaming about how shitty it is. But back in 1983 this was a damn cool experience. →  Tony Hawk’s Pro Reader 3

Nintendo confirms WiiWare: Indie Gaming on Wii

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This week Nintendo sent the word out that they are indeed working on a Wii channel where users can download original games, titled WiiWare. This is basically Nintendo’s version of Xbox Live Arcade.

Nintendo is working on getting indie devs to take advantage of the WiiWare channel, but it’s still unknown how developers can actually make a game on the system without open source API’s for the Wii’s architecture. It seems that indie devs may need to pony up the cash for a real dev kit. Thankfully, Wii dev kits are pretty damn cheap right now, estimated at a paltry $2000.

Now I’m sure most of you are thinking, “Yeah, Nintendo said this when they first announced the Wii and it’s online services.” You’d be right, but you must remember Nintendo rarely comes through with some of their really inventive ideas. Did you know the GameCube was originally going to have an SD card reader?

The reader/writer was poised to act like an HDD, with ideas like trees actually growing (think Fable) a reality in video games. →  I got served!

Playing catch up: Chrono Trigger

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I finally finished Chrono Trigger, and only 12 years late. Not too bad. Much like Super Mario World, this is another classic that deserves the accolades it has received. I only hope Link to the Past and Final Fantasy 4 are Chrono Trigger good. Though because of the game’s quality characterization, I am now slightly depressed.

It has been pretty uncommon in my life, but now and then a game comes along that affects me like a great movie or novel does. Now that there is no more to see, what happens to the characters? Crono, whose name is a typo because of the apparent five character limit in the game, was the standard silent protagonist and I don’t give a damn about him. But Frog, Magus, Lucca and Robo I do care about. The game’s ending was almost like these new friends’ deaths. Maybe it’s better this way since I’m still coping with the guilt of not saving Lucca’s mothers legs and trying to justify recruiting Magus even though it damned Frog to live and die in his current form. →  The happiest post on Earth.

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 6.18.07

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Sony announces 9,648,319 games by March 08
Unfortunately, they counted each individual household a game would end up in as a unique game. If you don’t count your copy of God of War 3 as a different game from my copy, then 145 or more PS3 titles are coming.

Sonic RPG on DS being developed by Bioware
Funny, whimsical RPGs can be cool. Mario’s Super Star Saga and the whole Paper Mario series attest to this. Cute, colorful cartoon characters in RPGs can hold their own, too. Kefka may look silly this day in age, but he is still insanely evil. So what is so horrendous about a Sonic RPG? I’m glad you asked.

Sonic is uninteresting in every possible way. Running fast makes for a subpar to decent action game (or awesome 2D platformer) but is not solid foundation to build a character on. He is blue, has an attitude, a bunch of irritating friends and a fat arch nemesis who might as well be Dr. →  Holy crap, show me more!

Behind the names of our favorite companies and consoles

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Gamers speak the names of companies and systems on a daily basis, but many of us don’t know what these words actually mean nor their origin. And so here is a list of many of the biggest companies and consoles and what information is openly known about their names. I speak absolutely no Japanese and have no new information to add to this planet, but I have not seen all this info neatly compiled in one spot before. Thanks to Japanmanship and others who had already done much research on the topic.

Companies


Microsoft – Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems created the microcomputer Altair 8800 and Bill Gates offered to implement BASIC on their system. Micro is either from the Micro in the MITS company name or the micro in microcomputer, or both. Either way, it’s not terribly exciting.


SONY – Despite ads that say otherwise, SONY does not stand for So New York. The name actually derives from the proud language of South America – Latin. →  Now you’re reading with power.