Messages

301

TalkBack / Re: REVIEWS: Charge Station

« on: September 20, 2008, 03:22:20 PM »

This seems like a pretty big problem.  If you can't use your remote in the Wii Zapper, Wii Wheel or Guitar Hero instruments I think it's a pretty horrible design choice.

It actually fits into my Wii wheel just fine.  I don't have any other similar peripherals so I can't comment on them.  Also, the battery fits in really snugly so you can take the battery cover off if you really have to without worrying about it falling out or having any exposed electrical contacts (besides the 4 that are always there).

302

TalkBack / Re: World of Goo Goes Gold

« on: September 14, 2008, 12:57:30 PM »

Finally!  This has been #1 on my wiiware wishlist for a long time now.  I can't wait for it to come out.

303

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Sky Crawlers

« on: September 07, 2008, 12:39:22 AM »

I'm not an airplane expert or anything, I just happened to have seen that particular plane somewhere else and recognized it because it is so distinctive-looking. 

304

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Sky Crawlers

« on: September 06, 2008, 11:52:43 AM »

The last NWR screen lists it as "VERY alternative reality aircraft fill the skies".  The plane in the screenshot is actual a Kyūshū J7W1 Shinden, a Japanese WWII fighter plane. Two prototypes were built but the war ended before more planes could be built.  Although the plane looks pretty strange, I don't really "alternative reality" is a good description since it actually was built and flown.

305

TalkBack / Re: IMPRESSIONS: Kirby Super Star Ultra

« on: July 20, 2008, 11:27:03 PM »

Was there any word on whether the original would come to Virtual Console?

306

TalkBack / Re: BLAH BLAH BLAH: C-Stick Smashes in Smash Bros.: 'Cheap' or Not?

« on: March 16, 2008, 01:26:30 AM »

I think Grant has the key point.  It is okay if you don't want to use the c-stick.  It is okay for you to think the game would be better without it.  But it is not okay to criticize someone else for using the full range of options available to them in the game.  The game is designed a certain way, so anyone operating within the confines of how the game is designed is doing nothing wrong.  You may not like it, you may not want to play that way, but that is your problem not theirs.  They are doing nothing wrong by playing the game the way it was designed to be played.  You are fully justified in determining for yourself the way in which you wish to play the game.  But you are not justified in criticizing others for failing to conform to your own completely arbitrary rules for how the game should be played.  As long as they are playing within the rules set forth by the game designers they are doing nothing wrong. 

Now if they were exploiting glitches or hacking the game that would be a different matter.  If they had control options that were not available to you, characters that were not available to you, items that were not available to you, then there would be grounds for complaining.  But everything people who use the c-stick can do you can do as well but intentionally choose not to. 

To use your basketball example, imagine if each team has one 7-foot tall player with all the other players being 6 feet tall.  Now imagine one team decides to use their 7-foot tall player while the other team does not.  That is fine, the two teams are allowed to pick for themselves which players they want to use.  But now imagine the team that doesn't use their 7-foot tall player starts saying the team that does use their 7-foot tall player is being cheap by doing it, or worse yet telling them they are cheating (calling the 7-foot tall player the "cheat player" when the player is playing fully within the rules of the game).  That is not a legitimate criticism.  Both teams had the same options available to them.  One team decided to take advantage of one of those the options, the other team did not.  Each team has the right to pick which options to take advantage of.  But one team does not have the right to force that choice on the other team, and criticizing the other team for making a different choice is not a valid criticism, as long as the same options are available to both sides and the rules of the game are followed.  If both teams agree not to use the 7-foot tall players then that is a different matter, but one team cannot force the other team to not use a player the rules of the game say they can use (assuming the same basic types of players are available to both sides).

307

TalkBack / RE:Smash Bros. Dojo Updates

« on: November 04, 2007, 04:22:26 PM »

Technically the thing in Deedee's hammer is a rocket, not a jet.

308

TalkBack / RE: New Smash Bros. Story Details Revealed

« on: August 21, 2007, 02:34:22 PM »

I guess you had to expect this sort of thing eventually if you stuck two princess who have made careers out of being kidnapped in the same universe.

And I think that was a cannon that knocked Mario out of the arena.  

And where did the robs come from, anyway?  They just sort of appear out of thin air behind the bomb.

309

TalkBack / RE: WiiWare - The Official Announcement

« on: June 28, 2007, 10:50:16 AM »

I hope they have a similar framework for applications.  The Wii is obviously a gaming system first, but supporting third-party channels and other add-ons would be great.

[Arbok]

310

TalkBack / RE:Smash Bros. Dojo Updates

« on: June 24, 2007, 11:38:48 AM »

Quote
Originally posted by: Arbok

So far, I have no complaints with the levels shown, although I will be sad if there isn't a stage like the Great Fox from the previous two SSB games... as it was my favorite.

What exactly are you looking for in a Great Fox level?  If it does rotate it would seem the side-view of the Lylat Cruise level will have many of the properties of the Great Fox level.

I should also correct myself, it looks like we have seen at least 10 levels and perhaps a couple more than that.

311

TalkBack / RE: Smash Bros. Dojo Updates

« on: June 24, 2007, 06:34:08 AM »

From the video and the shape of the picture of the ship on the website it looks like the Lylat Cruise level will rotate horizontally, so that sometimes you play looking at the ship from the back and other times you play looking at the ship from the side.  This will cause considerable changes to the level layout over the course of the battle.  It seems sort of like switching back and forth between the Corneria and Venom levels from SSBM throughout the course of the battle.  From the screenshot shown above it looks like players will have to play through such changes.  Other orientations that have not bee seen are also possible, including from the front.  The ship doesn't seem particularly suited for barrel rolls, though, since there are no vertical platforms and a fairly featureless bottom.  I also doubt that the asteroids and airwings are just for show.

I also wouldn't be too upset about the levels.  We have only seen four so far, including Delfino Island which seems pretty crazy and Lylat Cruise which also seems pretty interesting.  I suspect that they are holding back the big surprises until later.  For instance we still don't know how the seasonal changes will affect things in Yoshi's Island.  They call it "the big highlight" but don't say why.  

The big breakthrough in Brawl levels seems to be that they are fully 3D.  You can still only interact with the level in a 2D manner, but the levels themselves have depth.  By looking at the 3D level from different angles the 2D battlefield can change.  This wasn't possible in SSBM and opens up a whole range of possibilities for level design.  I suppose in effect these are fully 3D levels but your controls only let you move in 2 dimensions (except in limited cases like Snake stepping into the background).

And it shouldn't be a surprise that fox's special moves are the same, the website announced a long time ago that he would be mostly getting cosmetic changes and that his moves and capabilities would be mostly unchanged.

I am a bit suprised, although probably shouldn't be, about the variety of Final Smash moves.  I figured they would mostly be generic "blow away the entire screen" moves, like Mario's is, but from the looks of things they will be considerably different in pretty much every way (besides being extremely powerful).  Practically speaking they seem more like player-specific pokemon.  They are functionally similar to the "summon boss" item I wanted that would summon a boss creature from the character's series.  

312

TalkBack / RE: 10 Million DS's Now Sold in Europe

« on: January 22, 2007, 09:32:55 AM »

According to the numbers I have the PSP has sold a little over 11 million in the US and Japan combined.  Yet the DS has sold nearly that much in Europe alone.

I have 9.12 million in the US as of December.  So with Canada 10.5 sound about right for all of NA.

313

TalkBack / RE: Wii and DS Also a Hit in Europe

« on: January 15, 2007, 05:55:27 AM »

Are these numbers sales to consumers or shipped to stores?  I can never tell with Nintendo. That doesn't matter for the Wii since it is sold out but it does for the DS.

314

TalkBack / RE: SanDisk Announces Wii-branded Memory Cards

« on: November 18, 2006, 04:12:39 AM »

Not the best prices for flash memory, but not awful and certainly not as bad of a markup as I expected.

315

TalkBack / RE: Inuyasha RPG in Development for DS

« on: November 10, 2006, 06:39:41 PM »

Neither, they ended the series I would gather about 2/3 of the way through the storyline without actually resolving anything.  The bad guys had just developed a new defense against Inu Yasha's latest sword technique and new more powerful assistant for Naraku, and then it just ended the series.  Nothing resolved, nothing finished.  That was a few years ago, it doesn't look like anything more will happen.  They just randomly and permanently stopped the series at a major cliffhanger.

316

TalkBack / RE: Inuyasha RPG in Development for DS

« on: November 09, 2006, 08:19:38 PM »

Who the heck is "Janis"?

317

TalkBack / RE: Virtual Console Details Exposed

« on: November 05, 2006, 06:54:21 AM »

The Wii and GC are based on pretty much the same fundamental architecture.  Code compiled to run on a given architecture is compatible with other systems running the same architecture, but not on systems running different architecture.  It is not emulation, it just runs.  PS2 and PS3 are based on totally different architectures, code written for one does not work on the other.  That is why the GBA had an original GB built into it, the GBA architecture was not compatible with code written for the GB.  Same with the DS having a GBA built into it, or the GC GBA player basically being a GBA without the screen.  You can think of it in terms of the new intel Macs.  Code written for PowerPC-based Macs does not work natively on an intel-based Mac (i.e. without hardware emulation).  They code has to be recompiled to work on intel/AMD-based processors because they are based on fundamentally different processor architectures.  However, programs that run on, say a Pentium 2 will also run on a Pentium 3, Pentium 4, Pentium M, Core Duo, Core Solo, (ideally) AMD chips, and any other processor based on the same architecture.  The processor may not be able to run it well, but it is fundamentally compatible.  Similarly, ATI and Nvidia chips are based on the more or less the same architecture, so games written for one (ideally) work with the other.

However, it is not just a matter of the processors, it is a matter of the other hardware as well.  GC games are written to interact with GC hardware like the GC controller ports and GC controllers.  Without some sort of hardware virtualizer that makes one controller appear to be the another to the games it would not be possible to get it to work.  The problem is that the GC games most likely take over the processors and use them for their own purposes.  It may be very difficult to get the CPU to run code for a controller emulator like that while they are running code for the GC game at the same time if the GC game has been given complete control over what the CPU does already.  

318

TalkBack / RE: Japanese Virtual Console Line-up Revealed

« on: November 01, 2006, 09:08:58 AM »

Link to the Past and several of the Mario games are still being sold on the GBA.  It doesn't surprise me that they are not releasing them right away.  The question is why they are releasing them in Japan.  I find that a bit strange.  Maybe the GBA games are still selling decently in the US but not in Japan.  That would make the decision more logical.  It does explain why Yoshi's Island is not on there, since it was the most recent remake released.  The real question in my mind is where Super Metroid is.  It was never remade or ported to any other system, yet was one of the more popular SNES titles.  My only thought is that they might be saving it as a promotion for Metroid Prime 3, maybe a free download or unlockable or something.  Same with the original Metroid (although this was released on the GBA, as were the NES Zeldas, so that could also be a reason).  Actually, they might do a similar thing with Twilight Princess, although that still wouldn't explain Japan.

319

TalkBack / RE:The NEW Mailbag Talkback Thread

« on: October 09, 2006, 06:47:55 AM »

I would suspect the "sync" button on the controller would not normally be needed.  If you look at other wireless devices, such as keyboards and mice, they all have sync buttons.  However, generally they will be recognized even without using the sync button.  The sync button is just there in case something goes wrong.  This is especially true with newer ones.  I think it would probably be the case with the Wii as well.  Normally it would detect whatever remotes are present and they would just work.  However, if for whatever reason the connection is lost and the system cannot re-establish it automatically, you would be able to force it to establish the connection using the sync buttons.  If that is the case then the hard-to-reach position of the sync buttons makes sense, and is perfectly in line with the location of the sync button on other wireless devices.

It might also be an issue if there are more than four remotes in the room, although I suspect that since Nintendo is expecting people to take their remotes with them to friends' houses the system will have a more user-friendly method of dealing with too many remotes (such as an on-screen display asking people to press buttons on the remote one after another to assign them to the 4 player slots).  

320

TalkBack / RE:Wii's

« on: June 29, 2006, 04:24:27 PM »

I am the only one here who finds it the least bit strange that the label on the Wii disc is facing towards the SD memory card slot and not away from it?  Generally in DVD and CD players the data side of the disc faces towards the thick side of a unit and the label faces towards the thin side, since the data side has to face towards where the laser is housed.  It is usually considered logical to put the laser in the thickest area so there is the most possible room for it.  In this image, however, the data side of the disc is facing towards the thin side of the unit, which looks like it is only a fraction of an inch thick.  Either they have a really small laser or the disc is being put in upside-down.  Moreover, it looks like there are feat on the left side of the unit, indicating this is the bottom.  This would mean the disc is put in label-down, which I have never heard of.  If this is a promo shot that got leaked early, which is seems to be considering it appears pretty staged (especially with the lit table), you would think they would put the disc in correctly, but perhaps not.  More speculation, I guess.

And I am playing with the image in photoshop a bit.  I can't get much but I think it is an arrow sort of thing next to the "sync" text, not an h or n or any other letter.  There are two vertical parts, but they do not seem connected.