The Official "Console War" and Video Game Thread

[VaderLives]

The problem with Nintendo, is that they're still messing people around with release dates. People want to release as soon as possible so that they can catch the next financial quarter to get paid, but Nintendo, after originaly agreeing with them a date are saying "a snowballs chance hell. You release when we say", and that might not be for another five months after the original AGREED date!

As much as it's no secret I'm a Nintendo person, I totally agree with you on this point. This sucks, for everyone involved. Mostly for developers because you're not getting paid, which is never a good thing. But it sucks for us gamers too, because dammit we want these games to be released already!

I mean, we in the US have been absolutely screwed with the Virtual Console lately. Japan and Europe still get 2-3 games a week, while we've only been getting 1. And most of them are really obscure things to boot. I mean come on, how many Super Turrican/Mega Turrican/Ultra Turrican/Extreme Turrican/Wild Turrican/Furious Turrican/Turrican's Revenge/etc etc games do we really need in a row, especially when they're not releasing anything else?

Where's Dracula X? Where's Smash Brothers? Where's Mario Kart? Have they even released any of the MegaMan games yet? What about Castlevania 3? Or Bloodlines? How about Batman for the NES? Or the Turtles games? Or the Super Star Wars games? I'd love to play those again. Those and the Indiana Jones Trilogy game they made for SNES. That would have been perfect to release this week with the new movie coming out. Hell, what about Space Invaders, or Tetris, or Frogger, or Pac Man, or Galaga? All of those classic games had NES releases. I could go on. And on.

And that's not even considering Wii Ware.

Why the hell are they just sitting on all of these games?? Don't they realize that if they release more games - and ones that people actually want, for that matter - people will buy more and they'll make more money? It just doesn't make sense. It's not like there isn't a large enough library to keep the releases going.

It's so frustrating. The VC and Wii Ware are such FANTASTIC services, but it just feels like they're being wasted.

[markatisu]

Where's Dracula X? Where's Smash Brothers? Where's Mario Kart? Have they even released any of the MegaMan games yet? What about Castlevania 3? Or Bloodlines? How about Batman for the NES? Or the Turtles games? Or the Super Star Wars games? I'd love to play those again. Those and the Indiana Jones Trilogy game they made for SNES. That would have been perfect to release this week with the new movie coming out. Hell, what about Space Invaders, or Tetris, or Frogger, or Pac Man, or Galaga? All of those classic games had NES releases. I could go on. And on.

And that's not even considering Wii Ware.

PREACH ON! We are in total agreement!! Even on the Wii Ware side we got Super Soldier R but not Pokemon Ranch (which I found out adds things to the DS Pokemon Pearl and Diamond in the way of an exclusive Mew), and Dr Mario!!

Its only the US service though, the UK got the same games we got but more (including Dr Mario) and the VC there has already received Mega Man's, Japan of course has received a number of Neo Geo games I want as well as Dracula X....the US though its like they cancelled the VC service and are scaling the Wii Ware service

Oh and to those on the fence about Lost Winds, I played it some more after Star Solider R and earned the ability to slipstream....that in itself makes the game worth $10/1000 points.

Being able to use wind, water, and fire and draw where you want them to go or draw the path you want to float on the wind just adds to the already great art style.

Its amazing they fit this game on 43mb but Wii retail releases that get 4.3-9gb have a hard time looking better than 1st gen PS2 games

[VaderLives]

If nothing else they absolutely NEED to release Dracula X over here. I REALLY don't want to have to buy a PSP.

And I haven't been able to find any wii point cards anywhere lately either. I would buy some points through the console because I really want Lost Winds, TV Show King, and Super Soldier R, but I don't get paid again until after the next set of MOTU dvds come out, and needless to say I want those a hell of a lot more.

And as far as the lack of graphical quality goes...I think a big part of it is the mentality devleopers have had towards Nintendo during the N64 days that's just carried over since then. Nobody wants to take the effort to fully utilize the system's capabilities.

Everyone always used to say that the N64 could never support full motion video (even though the game boy color could ) because the games were cartridges not discs, but yet Capcom had no problem doing it with Resident Evil 2. Then with the Gamecube the excuse was that they were mini discs instead of full size so they couldn't fit as much data, but then you look at games like Metroid Prime or Twilight Princess and you realize the system could have done so much more than what we were given. The only third party Gamecube game I've ever played that even comes close to the graphical quality of Metroid or Zelda was Star Wars Rogue Leader, and that was a freaking launch title!

No, wait, I take that back. The Resident Evil games (well, REmake, 4, and 0 anyway) were absolutely beautiful. But yet again, why was Capcom the only third party developer to actually push the capabilities of the console?

The reason this lack of effort on the developers' parts is so painfully apparent now, much moreso than the last two generations, is because with the Wii they're finally using the industry standard media so there's absolutely NO excuse anymore.

And yet AGAIN it seems that Capcom is the only developer that's actually trying to utilize the console's potential.

[markatisu]

And yet AGAIN it seems that Capcom is the only developer that's actually trying to utilize the console's potential.

Exactly, and people wonder why they have great sales and 2 million sellers on Wii (RE4,REUC) and games that exceed their expectations (Okami is selling in line with their projections according to their games manager and Zack and Wiki has sold better in the EU/UK and continues to sell in the US well above expectations for such a niche title)

Factor 5 is doing a Wii game and since they created a thing of beauty at the Gamecube launch (and on the N64 as well) I can only imagine how nice a Wii game will look.

[Skullface]

Where's Dracula X? Where's Smash Brothers? Where's Mario Kart? Have they even released any of the MegaMan games yet? What about Castlevania 3? Or Bloodlines? How about Batman for the NES? Or the Turtles games? Or the Super Star Wars games? I'd love to play those again. Those and the Indiana Jones Trilogy game they made for SNES. That would have been perfect to release this week with the new movie coming out. Hell, what about Space Invaders, or Tetris, or Frogger, or Pac Man, or Galaga? All of those classic games had NES releases. I could go on. And on.

The biggest problem with a bunch of what you listed is that they are licensed properties. The license holders now are not necessarily the same license holders that made/published those games back in the day. I'd love to see the NES/SNES Capcom Disney games, along with all that you mentioned. Although we did get the 1st TMNT NES game that was made by Ultra/Konami. Ubisoft currently has the TMNT license, and we got charged an extra dollar to pay everyone involved, so it IS possible, I assume, provided all parties involved can be pleased. But when you're talking about bringing in that many more groups who all want a cut, the $$$ may get higher than Nintendo wants, in both consumer price and 3rd party payout, or it might not be high enough to please everyone who claims a stake into it. And you have the problem of publishers who aren't even around anymore. I believe the SNES Lucasarts stuff was published by JVC - To my knowledge, they aren't even in the game business anymore. Batman for the NES was published by Sunsoft. Where are they at now? When you have companies lone gone, you need to figure out what company/people, if any, has rights to all their product and get them involved to avoid a potential lawsuit before releasing to the public.

I have no idea what the hold up is on the stuff like Mega Man & Castlevania, as Capcom & Konami have always OWNED those franchises. It's gotta be Nintendo just sitting on stuff for whatever reason. Only things I can think of are either waiting around until Nintendo has literally nothing to publish, or the 3rd parties aren't happy with the $$$ situation. I know the developers of the new Bionic Commando game and Bionic Commando: Rearmed claim that Nintendo has currently shot down the potential release of the NES version on the VC. Why? Who knows. Maybe it's Nintendo, maybe it's Capcom. Or maybe Nintendo knows that the US is the biggest gaming market in the world, and feels content enough to trickle things out when they feel like it, believing we'll spend our $$$ on whatever. Maybe things are held up with the ESRB? I have no clue, just spouting off some possibilities. I have yet to buy anything off WiiWare, and am only potentially interested in Lost Winds.

[markatisu]

I have no idea what the hold up is on the stuff like Mega Man & Castlevania, as Capcom & Konami have always OWNED those franchises. It's gotta be Nintendo just sitting on stuff for whatever reason. Only things I can think of are either waiting around until Nintendo has literally nothing to publish, or the 3rd parties aren't happy with the $$$ situation. I know the developers of the new Bionic Commando game and Bionic Commando: Rearmed claim that Nintendo has currently shot down the potential release of the NES version on the VC. Why? Who knows. Maybe it's Nintendo, maybe it's Capcom. Or maybe Nintendo knows that the US is the biggest gaming market in the world, and feels content enough to trickle things out when they feel like it, believing we'll spend our $$$ on whatever. Maybe things are held up with the ESRB? I have no clue, just spouting off some possibilities. I have yet to buy anything off WiiWare, and am only potentially interested in Lost Winds.

Its all Nintendo and I think for many of the reasons you said, Capcom said 2 weeks ago in another interview they sent the approval to Nintendo a bunch of games months ago and its just been sitting in a queue for Nintendo to decide when to post it (similar to what IronAvatar was mentioning earlier)

Lost Winds is a great game, if you have 1000pts to spare I suggest it. It is very much a old school 2-D platformer in a 3-Dish world. Its a bit slow to start and learn how to use the wind to jump, but once the puzzles and slip streaming come into play its hard to put down. If it had been 800pts I think I would be gifting it to people here

Has anyone else bought FFCC My Life as a King, that game is addictive as heck. I have bought every piece of DLC and cant seem to put it down. It does not seem like its much when you are first getting started but as you build and talk to all your people the day goes by really fast.

It reminds me of Animal Crossing meets the Sims with a bit of Starcraft mixed in by deciding where to send your troops and what to build around your castle. So far I have a 17 houses, 2 bakeries, an armory, a weapon shop, and a party of 5 people I send on missions....I played for almost 4 hours straight!

Square-Enix deserves every bit of my money on this

[Skullface]

IGN gives Wii Fit an 8.0

http://wii.ign.com/articles/875/875214p1.html

[wolf-manj]

has anyone read the greenpeace report on the 3 consoles?
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6191284.html

[IronAvatar]

has anyone read the greenpeace report on the 3 consoles?
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6191284.html

The usual scare mongering from your local eco-communists. Please note that these chemicals are only a hazard when working with them, not in their final form in the consoles.

Personaly, I don't trust any figures or "findings" that Greenpeace publish. A good example is the report that they did on the stand-by consumption of the three consoles, with the 360 and PS3 being quoted with their active figures, not the stand-by figures.

The Wii is actually the most power hungry in stand-by, not the PS3 or 360.

So if you DO read the report, do some digging. Don't rely on their "research" alone. Don't assume that just because their interest is in protecting the environment, that they actually know what they're talking about.

And if you want a really great example of how they'll happily quote erroneous data to further their cause, take a look into their so called report on the Brent Spar. I'll happily support any action that saves our planet, but not at the cost of progress.

I believe that humans should learn change our ways so that any impact we have on our environment is minimal, and is such that the planet can recover from it in a minimal amount of time. So that recovery takes less time than damage.

But Greenpeace want it so that we have no impact what so ever. And that's just not possible or feasable. Maybe it's about time we started protesting against organisations like Greenpeace and tell them the scaremongering is the sort of thing totalletarian governments use to take controle....not free-thinking, responsible individuals.

[Skullface]

Critter Round Up available now on WiiWare:

http://wii.ign.com/articles/875/875404p1.html

And keep an eye on Amazon over the next 24 hours. Their Gold Box "deals of the day" will all be video game related starting shortly. Hopefully there'll be some decent stuff.....

[wolf-manj]

The usual scare mongering from your local eco-communists. Please note that these chemicals are only a hazard when working with them, not in their final form in the consoles.

according to the article on gamespot thats what the report said. It wasn't really a hazard to consumers.

[markatisu]

New Tales of Symphonia trailer, this is the sequel to the Gamecube Tales of Symphonia game (which is awesome btw, 2 discs of JRPG fun)



Hopefully this thing sells (the Gamecube one was the highest selling RPG on the platform) as well as its predecessor so we can get some high quality RPG's on the Wii

[Skullface]

Interesting read if you want to know some Capcom sales numbers:

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/876/876329p1.html

[markatisu]

Ducktales 1.6 million, Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers 1.4 million, Aladdin 1.75 million....

Those were the days

Disney Interactive would have a stroke if they could sell their games in those numbers in todays market, so far the best they have done is High School Musical Sing It with almost 800k across the PS2/Wii and Hannah Montana DS with almost 1 million

[Skullface]

Ducktales 1.6 million, Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers 1.4 million, Aladdin 1.75 million....

Those were the days

Disney Interactive would have a stroke if they could sell their games in those numbers in todays market, so far the best they have done is High School Musical Sing It with almost 800k across the PS2/Wii and Hannah Montana DS with almost 1 million

Yeah, now if we could get Nintendo, Disney & Capcom all happy-like, we could get these on the VC.......

[markatisu]

Yeah, now if we could get Nintendo, Disney & Capcom all happy-like, we could get these on the VC.......

There is an interesting article that came out today about that and other licensed games we may never see....I would link to it but its got some language (mostly in reference to the quality of current Disney games) that prohibits me from linking

But it puts the blame squarely on Disney, saying that since they have formed Disney Interactive they have no desire to share profits with Capcom, Sega, or Virgin in order to pay to re-release any of their NES/SNES/Genesis games again

[ehenyo]

has anyone read the greenpeace report on the 3 consoles?
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6191284.html

Meh. I bet my microwave and TV have worse materials.

[Skullface]

New Prince of Persia info!!!!

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/876/876358p1.html

[GeologyMule]

I got Wii Fit last week. I really like it. Between MK and Wii Fit, I have finally have a reason to play my Wii.

(I can't remember if I've already posted this...here it goes)

I preordered mine. A lady in front of me also preordered. While she was picking hers up she asked when they will have more in. The gamestop guy said "Christmas"

[markatisu]

Dr. Mario finally arrives on Wii Ware, debating whether to download Metal Slug or not since its $9 here and the compilation disc can be found for $20 with 1-5

WII-KLY UPDATE: TWO WIIWARE GAMES AND TWO VIRTUAL CONSOLE GAMES ADDED TO WII SHOP CHANNEL

May 26, 2008

This week's Wii-kly Update pretty much covers the full spectrum. Maybe you'll want to blast away with an arsenal of old-school weapons. But then again, three-day weekends are a good time to relax. So maybe you'll take a wild road trip or settle in for some table tennis. And if you overdo it, we have a physician standing by.

Nintendo adds new and classic games to the Wii Shop Channel at 9 a.m. Pacific time every Monday. Wii™ owners with a high-speed Internet connection can redeem Wii Points™ to download the games. Wii Points can be purchased in the Wii Shop Channel or at retail outlets. This week's new games are:

WiiWare™

Dr. Mario® Online Rx (Nintendo, 1-4 players, Rated E for Everyone, 1,000 Wii Points): The doctor is in! Mario™ takes a break from his adventuring ways and once again dons his stethoscope for a new generation of germ-battling mayhem. In addition to the classic mode of using vitamins to exterminate viruses, you'll find two battle modes and an online multiplayer mode where you can hone your skills against players from around the world. Feel like challenging a friend who doesn't have Dr. Mario Online Rx? Then the WiiWare-exclusive Friend Battle Demo is just what the doctor ordered. Or maybe you'd like some help taking on those nasty viruses? Try out Virus Buster, where four players can simultaneously move capsules simply by pointing at them with a Wii Remote™ controller. Any way you look at it, Dr. Mario Online Rx is a prescription for fun that everyone can enjoy.

Family Table Tennis (Aksys Games, 1-2 players, Rated E for Everyone, 500 Wii Points): It's time for some good old family fun, and what's more fun than table tennis? Just like a real family, choose your character from a cast of four, which includes Daddy, Mommy, Sarah and Billy. There are four table tennis-tastic stages where it doesn't matter if you're an indoors or outdoors table-tennis player. Pick your poison from a gymnasium, a forest park, a beach or even an amusement park. Choose from Single or Versus mode, or select a minigame to play. In Versus mode, you and a friend can play against each other to see who is the better table-tennis player. And if Single and Versus modes aren't enough, select between three minigames, which include Target Table Tennis, Thrilling Table Tennis and Matching Table Tennis. The appealing cell-shaded graphics and endearing music, on top of the super-fun game play, will have you and your family playing from morning till night. Get your paddles ready.

Virtual Console™

City Connection™ (NES®, 1-2 players, Rated E for Everyone - Comic Mischief, Tobacco Reference, 500 Wii Points): Based on the arcade hit, a young man born in California sets out to tour famous sites and cities around the world. As he drives the highways surrounding these locations, the road is painted white as proof of his visit. Only once all sections of the road have been painted will he move on to the next location in his world tour. Not surprisingly, the local police will chase the driver and do their best to stop him from completing his goal. In addition, cats roam the highways and spikes lie in wait for unsuspecting drivers. To combat these dangers, the driver's customized car can jump, fire cans of oil and collect balloons to warp to a new stage. It's the ultimate road trip.

Metal Slug (NEOGEO, 1-2 players, Rated T for Teen - Blood, Violence, 900 Wii Points): Released in 1996 by SNK, Metal Slug is a side-scrolling military-action game. Players control Marco and Tarma, both members of the special-ops force Team Peregrine Falcon (commonly known as Team PF), and battle their way through stage after stage of intense action. The goal is to try to overthrow General Morden and win back the stolen weapon, the Metal Slug. Players must blast through waves of enemies and machines (while also jumping over any obstacles in the way) to advance through the stages. It's not as hopeless as it might sound, though—weapons such as heavy machine guns, shotguns, rocket launchers and flamethrowers, as well as the Metal Slug itself (which appears frequently in the game), will make the battle easier. Take on General Morden with a friend to lighten your load and ramp up the excitement even more.

For more information about Wii, please visit wii.com.

[TheDeviot]

Buy the anthology Markatisu. It's all SIX Metal Slugs for $20. I bought that at launch. You can't go wrong with it

[Slothboy]

Just borrowed Assassin's Creed from a friend the other day and have been playing it like crazy. However not because its fun but because I was figuring that all the trouble i was having with it was because I sucked not the game so I just kept playing and practicing. However, my final decision is that it looks amazing but the play control is absolute garbage. I'm soooooo glad I borrowed instead of just going out and buying it. I honestly think I would let people kick me as hard as they can in the goin before ever putting this game back in my 360. It's crappy play controls really frustrated me that bad.

[Skullface]

Ninja Gaiden 2 gets an 8.7

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/876/876569p1.html

Also, some great news for Oddworld fans!

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/876/876641p1.html

[Epicasino]

Has anybody tried the homebrew channel for the Wii? You don't need a mod chip for this, just the twilight hack.

[hemanrep]

Interesting read:

http://gonintendo.com/?p=44255

“So I started working in the games industry recently on a fairly major project for the Wii. I’ve sat through a couple big reviews, where the studio’s executives sit down and play through the latest additions to the game and voice their feedback. Let me tell you that, as a newcomer to the games industry and a Nintendo fanboy, I was unprepared for what I heard.

The people that matter in this fairly large studio (and their publisher, marketing staff, etc.) think that the Wii is a kiddy console and are forcing us to tone down our game to make it more casual. While I can’t go into details, we are making a skill-based game that has a lot of potential, but the execs keep telling us to strip out core gameplay elements in order to make it more friendly for the casual player. We can’t have difficulty settings to be raised or lowered, gritty stories, or complicated puzzles, just a fun casual game that can be picked up and put down at will. THANKS GUYS, I’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO MAKE A Sh!77y CASUAL GAME.

Also, they talk in f*(%ing review numbers. “I think reviewers will give this about a 85 right now, but if you change this, we might bump it up a couple of points.” What the f^%k, guys.

TLDR: 3rd parties are ruining the Wii.”

Really interesting...