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Messages - Caillan

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1
TalkBack / RE:Revolution in
« on: October 17, 2005, 11:19:07 PM »
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See, now, I think the only reason you say that is because you aren't satisfied with the DS personally.


I think he's saying that because even though Sony screwed up, they now have a portion of the handheld market which they didn't before. A portion which Nintendo has lost. The DS is currently strong but it spent a long period with nothing and Sony could have been hitting hard then instead of screwing around with UMD. Nintendo will not be launching the Revolution early, as they have with the DS. We know they're on the back foot because they previously said that they'd be the first to launch, but that's gone out the window now. Of course this means they cannot have a 6-month period without any really good releases. Even if the PS3 ends up launching later, the 360 will still be almost a year ahead.

He didn't say that because he isn't satisfied with the DS personally, he said it because the DS did not have a good launch. And because the Revolution needs one.  

2
Nintendo Gaming / RE: Launch Titles: What must we have.
« on: October 14, 2005, 11:10:45 PM »
Ah, I see. I wasn't thinking properly and I thought you meant that gamers didn't exist before Nintendo made Donkey Kong. My bad.

3
Nintendo Gaming / RE:Launch Titles: What must we have.
« on: October 14, 2005, 10:39:38 PM »
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Mario and CERTAINLY Donkey Kong was. There basically WAS no gaming market to cater to then, they CREATED gamers.


No they didn't. The market had just dormant for a while. It had collapsed because of bad games and bad press, so there was certainly still people who liked good games out there.  In America at the time, getting capital for a publisher would have been very difficult, and so it makes sense that the revival came from elsewhere. Anyway, games using that level of technology could hardly be anything but user-friendly, to the point where anyone could pick up and play them.

4
Nintendo Gaming / RE: :)
« on: October 10, 2005, 11:19:33 PM »
It's funny how they all seem to be based on levels from Mario Party 1. Maybe it's that remake I always wanted.  

5
Nintendo Gaming / RE:The Legend of Tingle: Remarkably Peculiar Game
« on: October 06, 2005, 01:29:40 PM »
For some reason I'm really looking foward to this. It's a pretty ridiculous development to embark on and I love Nintnedo for doing so. For a while I worried that Nintendo would perhaps try too hard to please the crowd with TP and end up making it a little too dark and serious. It was an ungrounded suspicion and I can see now that they have no intention of ripping Zelda away from what it is. After Aonuma acknowledged that "some Armerican's don't like Tingle" I thought that we would't see Tingle again for a while. And so the sheer cheek of developing this game makes me smile. Of all the spin-offs possible within the Zelda universe, this is probably the one I like the sound of the most (though a Hyrulian RPG made by SE ala Super Mario RPG would be nice too, of course).

Did anyone else think that the title of the thread had been announced as the official name for the game when they first saw it? Because that would be awesome.  

6
Nintendo Gaming / RE: New Miyamoto Interview
« on: September 03, 2005, 07:51:20 PM »
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There will be a new character at his side


In the translation I saw, there was a note explaining that it was a difficult section to translate. It also said not to take it too literally.

I was surprised when he mentioned SMS as an example of simplicity. I wasn't so hot on the radical simplification of the controller they seemed to have impied, but if that's what they mean, then it's fine by me.  

7
I was about to suggest Iwata month in the avatar thread when I saw this and made a poor imitation of KN's avatar! AMAZING.

8
TalkBack / RE:Peter Molyneux Comments on Revolution
« on: August 23, 2005, 01:11:15 AM »
It's worth noting that the last two posts on his blog have just disappeared. They were the two exclusives he had, of Yuji Naka and Molyneux respectively, praising the Revolution's controller.  I know I've already backed him up here, but this is indeed very strange.

EDIT: He said that he worked for a TV station and so I guess it's possible that his employer asked him to take the quotes down until they've been played on air. That's still a pretty farfetched excuse though.

9
TalkBack / RE:Peter Molyneux Comments on Revolution
« on: August 21, 2005, 07:44:06 PM »
As Jonny said, this guy has been a reliable reporter for quite some time. He knows that by faking this, he'll lose a lot of page views in the long run. There really is no good reason for him to be making this up.

10
Nintendo Gaming / RE:Must See DS Ad.
« on: August 02, 2005, 02:01:56 AM »
This advertisement is an effective one. The fact that the meaning of the banana isn't immediately obvious (or even obvious at all, for most), is irrevelvant. Over here in New Zealand, Sony ran a series of very popular advertisements which had nothing at all to do with PS2 except for a few seconds of the logo at the end. Spending 90% of the advert capturing the attention of your audience is fine, as long as they're still watching for last 10% when you reveal what it's all about. Also, making the link between content and product unobvious or ambiguous can be an effective technique, because if you pull it off people will spend a while thinking about it afterwards.

11
TalkBack / RE:Iwata to Speak at Tokyo Game Show
« on: July 27, 2005, 07:03:31 PM »
"When do you guys think Nintendo should reveal the Rev? Do you honestly think they can delay it for much longer?"

In a recent interview with Gamasutra, Dyack said that they don't have the final kits for the 360 yet, and of course Sony is still screwing around showing pre-rendered footage and whatnot. So I think it's justified that Nintendo hasn't shown off the Revolution yet. They've never prematurely given us stupid specs before, and I don't think they'll do it now. Remember that we know the controller has been shown to some developers as well. Having said that, a few cryptic screenshots and the announcement of RE5 for te Revolution right now wouldn't go astray.

"Mindshare is absolutely worthless."

I think it comes down to how people will see your products. After the PS2's mega-hyped launch, everybody knew what the PS2 was and would've recognized one imediately. Now that has a lot to do with 'mindshare', if I understand the word correctly. Every company wants consumers to know and recognize its products, why else do you think Nintendo shoves Mario in every game it can?

Besides, how else could you explain the PS2's popularity? I'm not sure how things went in the States, but over here it launched for $1000NZ with no good games for a year. And it took off. For a price-comparison, the Cube currently retails for $250NZ with RE4 packed in. Considering that Dreamcast games were looking better than the first-gen PS2 ones, you couldn't put it own to rabid technophiles either.

"I think this forum was a lot more interesting before everybody started pseudopsychoanalyzing Ian..."

Agreed.  

12
TalkBack / RE:EDITORIAL: The Moment
« on: July 01, 2005, 06:07:06 AM »
I stopped reading soon after I started. I haven't played RE4 yet but I dearly want to. Any spoiled surprises could ruin  the experience. Could anyone tell me if it's spoiler-free or if reading it will prepare me for something? Anyway, even though I can't know precisely what you're talking about, I think I get the gist of it. Here's the most memorable gaming moment of mine this generation:

Playing F-Zero GX one night, I stayed up late with a few of my mates trying to finish a cup. I can't remember exactly what it was -- I think it was on hard mode and the fourth cup along from the left -- but I know it was the last one we knew about at the time, and that it was tense. On one run I almost started over because I lost too many of my craft early on, but I decided to keep going just for practice on the later tracks. I got to the last track (which was big blue) and to finally win the cup I had to avoid losing a life and come 11th place or better. It's a track with lots of right-angle corners and a very narrow strip just before the end, but I knew then that I could handle it all. I hovered in the middle of the pack -- around 15th, for those who don't know F-Zero -- throughout the whole race until the last lap when I was boosting like a maniac to keep up. I was sure those guys got faster as I lost my boost power. Anyway, maybe six or seven seconds before the finish I was still too far behind, so I used up the last of my energy on a final boost and got to 10th place. I was very excited and nervous but another car just grazed my vehicle as it passed me. Because I had no energy left, I died. I was pretty bummed out, but ready to try again despite the time of night because of all the excitement that had been generated. Then, just as I awaited for the damaged hull of my ship to be hauled off and the 'game over' screen to appear, another vehicle crashed right into me from behind and flung my blackened ship over the finish line, to 11th place. To my surprise, everything else happened as usual, and a voice announced in a strangely down-trodden voice that I only came eleventh place. If I do recall correctly I was exactly one-hundredth of a second ahead of whoever came 12th place. That's my gaming moment of this generation. Sure, it arose form me and not the game specifically, but in the end I'm not too fussed about that.

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Ahh the Zone. Outside world vanishes. Your mind goes into a natural bullet time.


I play a sort of hand drum, called the djembe, and I find that that happens sometimes. If I'm playing a phrase I learned while I was begginninig but haven't played since my skill increased dramatically, then often everything will slow down in my mind and I"ll feel exactly how much faster I can go. I get the natural urge to improvise.

Edit: Thanks.

13
Nintendo Gaming / RE:Revolution to launch in March?
« on: June 25, 2005, 03:49:18 AM »
I don't think it really matters when they launch as long as it's before the holidays. It's more important that they've been working on titles for a sufficiently long enough period before hand. Launching before the PS3 isn't going to matter if all they've is Luigi's Mansion for their first month.

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Exactly, supposedly we don't know if they do or not do have dev kits, possibly some NDA is in effect.


Well Reggie has confirmed that some developers have already seen the 'revolutionary' aspect of the Revolution. And so if the API reamains largley the same, it would be possible to start working on the planning phases of a game with a rough idea of what the limitations of the console would be.

Nintendo may have a stricter NDA than it's competitors, but I doubt it restricts anyone from answering in an anonymous poll. More likely the kits are in their later stages but haven't been finalized yet. Sony and MS's wil be the same, just they'd have sent out prototypes already.  

14
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Huwhat? Political commentary er what?


What was political about that statement?

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Then Nintendo runs the risk of having Genesis games sell better than SNES games on the download service.


Nintendo has embarrassed themselves so regularly over the last two generations with stupid decisions and worse advertising that they won't care. Nobody else would anyway. I think that the main object of the downlodable games is to provide more of a reason to buy a Revolution and keep the fans satisfied, not to make lots of money from them then bragging about it. Having Sega on boaard won't be detrimental to their goal at all.  

15
General Gaming / RE:Microsoft , not so bad after all?
« on: June 18, 2005, 05:15:25 PM »
But Nintendo has changed: now they're beggers, not choosers and Yamauchi isn't in charge any more. The fact is that all evidence suggests that Microsoft would be willing to use tactics not illegal but perhaps immoral to control the industry if they were in a position to do so, while Nintendo couldn't because if they tried they'd face an all-out revolt after what happened last time. I didn't support Nintendo way back then and I don't support Microsoft now. Sony seems fine, anyway.

16
TalkBack / RE:Voice Actors Reach Agreement with Publishers
« on: June 12, 2005, 02:38:43 AM »
I agree, KDR. Though as long as they're at a high enough standard, 'amateur' orchestras such as Nintendo's own would make a fine replacement. Professional orchestras have a tendency to leave the preformance lacking because they don't have long to get used to the pieces (usually they are sight-reading them for the recording or have only practiced for a few hours beforehand). Often they play mechanically because the musicians don't have to play it with passion; they're just doing their job. If you love the music for itself you'll play it better. That's why some of the best orchestra's in the world are amateur.

17
What a strange decision. Unless it would going to add more than about $5 onto the price of the Revolution I think it would be worth including it. I see their points about the disadvantages of the output, but not allowing any developer to use it as a result is folly. At least this is no worse than Microsoft's decision to force it upon developers. (That was a bad decision that Nintendo should have capitalized on, however, not matched.)

I have a hunch that Nintendo has done this to push their various philosophies regarding the future of the industry. But there's a difference between not bragging about all the cool-but-not-necessarily-always-useful stuff your console can do and just not including it. And it's neat to have a small console, but if it means it's more likely to overheat or there are ports missing as a result, then Nintendo shouldn't hesitate to make it bigger.

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I love how you mention how it pisses the developers off, since the Rev is going to be the most dev-friendly and cost-efficient system to make games on.


The fact is that this particular decision will annoy developers and publishers because it's another option which has been taken away from them. They said that the Cube would be the most developer-friendly console too, but even the most basic steps towards that goal have been neglected. Making promises won't curry them any favour because they've lied in the past. If they want to impress developers they should immediately cut licensing costs and send out a survey asking for feedback on how they could improve their kits.

Edited out embarrassing typo.

18
General Chat / RE: Aussie Gaming Bargains Thread
« on: June 07, 2005, 08:12:22 PM »
I was in EB today. More than half the product was cleared off the shelf and there were dozens of empty cardboard boxes everywhere. I aksed the guy what was going on and he said there was a big sale starting tomorrow (the ninth). All the stuff they need to clear out will be really cheap, apparently. I'm not sure if this is different sale to the one Dasmos mentioned or not. Does EB synchronize its sales?  

19
Nintendo Gaming / RE:Miyamoto soundbites on IGN
« on: June 06, 2005, 08:42:33 PM »
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With either analogy though it's more or less Nintendo selling out their real fans to attract a new market.


Are you serious? You just need look at forums everywhere to see that the Wario Ware games are overwhelmingly popular among Nintendo fans. In this case you seem to be more of the odd one out.

To me, the Wario Ware games are like diamonds: gaming itself crystalised into a pure and tiny form. They have great gameplay and a crazy sort of 'atmosphere' or 'theme' which only makes them more enjoyable. That was extremely cheesey but you get what I mean.

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Nintendo promised a realisticly styled Zelda years ago and is just now releasing it.


They quite clearly said that it was only a tech demo.

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I am not just looking for the next Mario or Zelda sequel from Nintendo; I am looking for the next Zelda or Mario from Nintendo. And I have been looking for it for four years.


That is a strange statement considering you started your post by saying that the new Super Mario Sequel is "too little too late". You know Nintendo cannot continuously make sequels to its franchises whilst developing new ones. Anyway, I think I see your point. Unless Metroid Prime 3 really is a big shake-up I think I'll be giving it a miss. I'd love to see more new stuff from Nintendo, but to be fair we've already got both Pikmin and Wario Ware this generation. As well as games like Jungle Beat which are very original. And soon we'll have Nintendogs. Plus the Revolution will have yet another one close to launch. In fact, you could probably say that they've had a bit of a turnaround and aren't doing so badly.  

20
TalkBack / RE: Nintendo DS Headed to China
« on: June 04, 2005, 05:43:37 AM »
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Most of that so called sentiment is goverment saber rattling.


I don't know. AFAIK the hatred is sort of embedded in the education system and it changes from generation to generation. I'm sure all references to Nanking were dropped from text-books at one point, only to return as the country fell under another ruler (I think it was Zemin). That's what I can gather from the few people I know who were largely educated in China anyway.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that if the anti-Japanese feeling is deeper than just in the government, then the product could meet more resistance than Nintendo expects, especially since this new wave really started a only few months ago.

21
TalkBack / RE: Nintendo DS Headed to China
« on: June 03, 2005, 08:30:35 PM »
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Probably trying to distance themselves from the growing anti-Japanese sentiment in China. Nintendo is a very Japanese sounding name. iQue makes it sound more like an American company.


There's been pretty heavy anti-Japanese sentiment in China for the last few decades at least. It's particularly hot now, but the name iQue was chosen before this round was spurred up.

I would have thought that Nintendo would stay well away from releasing the DS in China because it uses flash cards for storage. Then again, I'm surpised that the GBA was released there too.  

22
General Chat / RE:A Gamers' Manifesto
« on: June 02, 2005, 08:28:51 PM »
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This would a console feature that works on every game like the save state in an emulator.


Save states and quick saves aren't a good edition to most games. They encouage you to augment the gaming experiece so you don't lose, so that you don't feel much of a threat and won't play the game as seriously as you would otherwise. They will ruin a game unless you train yourself to use them sparesly or not at all. (For me, quick saves were the worst part about Baldur's Gate 2.) A game called Oriental Express, which I've never played but would love to, has a feature where you can actually wind back time if you want to try something different. That's the sort of creative and solid alternative to quick saves I'd like to see.

EDIT: Sorry about that, I read your new posts containing the phrases 'quick save' and 'save state' and homed in to a rant.

23
General Chat / RE:A Gamers' Manifesto
« on: June 01, 2005, 02:42:07 AM »
Overall I think this article is pretty stupid. He's just another gamer who's become bored with what's currently available and is bigoted enough to think he knows what can fix it.

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This guy is clearly a fan of American game design because to him immersion is everything. I think fun is what matters. I don't really care if I feel like I'm in a real world.


I completely agree. Buzzwords are the mosquitos of the industry. They won't bugger off. And right now the dominant buzzword is Immersion.

I've read a few (American) books about game design and I was not particuarly impressed. In the 'meat' of the books, regarding actual design, they usually state the obvious (rock-paper-scissor patterns for 'balance' etc) or are overly dogmatic in approach. A fair portion of the books is spent talking about realistic goals, good working environments, and how to deal with publishers. But games are still new and we should be more romantic in approach. Treasure could come only out of Japan.

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Personally I was only impressed twice this generation with AI. Once when I first played Halo. . .


What? Perhaps I missed something because I've only ever played it once and not for long, but doesn't the AI in Halo completely suck? Like, enemies that run into walls or don't react when you shoot the guy beside them? To be honest I don't care much about AI either. It's cool when a hand throws something back at you or an enemy runs for cover, but it doesn't change the game. I remember some idiot in a game store trying to sell me a Playstation on Medal of Honor and trying to sell me Medal of Honor on the fact that gurads would kick back grenades thrown at them. With exactly the same animation each time. What's the point?

24
Nintendo Gaming / RE: Rev in Nov. Wha?
« on: May 30, 2005, 11:55:38 AM »
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Anyone know what happened to Nintendo's crusade to "launch before the PS3"?


I seem to recall Iwata, in a recent interview, emphasising that it's important not to launch too late. Rather than emphasise that it's important to launch before the PS3. I personally don't think it matters too much as long Nintendo launches about two months or so of the PS3.

25
Why only DS games? We need console 2D love as well. As I understand it, there was a sort of exodus from Sega as the DC failed and it was eventually bought by Sammy. Though Yuji Naka's still aound (and to be honest he's the only one I know), I'm sure the 'minor' developers who left had significant impact as well, especially if they had to be replaced by less experienced devs. I think Sega (and Sonic Team) pretty much died with the Dreamcast, though I'd be happy if were to prove me wrong.  

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