Messages

51

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Ubisoft rationalizes their current support for Wii

« on: June 03, 2008, 04:34:22 PM »

Capcom isn't trying.  If they were Resident Evil 5 and Street Fighter IV wouldn't be annouced for every console but the Wii.  True third party support means 90% of a company's games are released on your console and virtually nothing is released on everything but.

Then Nintendo shouldn't have released a console where games built for other modern systems have to be more or less redesigned from the ground up to work at all, much less well, on the Wii.

They took the cheap route when making the console--rightly so, if their sales records are any indication--but multiplatform games are paying the price for it.

52

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Why does Nintendo hate the Game Cube?

« on: June 01, 2008, 12:22:47 AM »

Ok I thought he was just complaining about the network adapter in general saying they only made 3 games that support the device.

No, they only made 5 that support the device...

53

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Now it's starting for the Wii

« on: May 31, 2008, 12:33:57 AM »

Well, I thought about that after I posted. And now that I think about it, I really have issue with what was EB Games. I guess they are interchangable in my mind.

Understandable; that said, the "merger" was more of a "GameStop buyout of EB Games". There's not much left of EB in the new company.

54

TalkBack / Re: Greenpeace Clash with Nintendo Continues Over 'Playing Dirty' Report

« on: May 30, 2008, 12:20:20 AM »

Great if you're in the countries in the EU, but what about US standards? Is the underlying assumption that EU standards are higher than the ones in the United States/Canada/Mexico?

I'm not sure about Canada/Mexico, but I'm pretty sure that the EU's standards are generally more stringent than the US's.

55

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Wii Homebrew Channel

« on: May 29, 2008, 12:14:04 PM »

Honestly I think it all boils down to money, Nintendo thinks people will buy more of their over priced SD Cards this way, because they are too afraid people will steal their games any other way they do it, so they came up with the solution that would maximize their profits while seriously reducing the pirate threat.

Which would make sense, if Nintendo actually sold SD cards; however, as far as I can tell they don't. I haven't seen any Nintendo-branded ones locally (white ones by SanDisk trying to cash in, yes, but they aren't actually by Nintendo), nor are they listed for sale on their site or GameStop.

56

TalkBack / Re: Activision Officially Reveals Guitar Hero World Tour

« on: May 28, 2008, 08:57:32 PM »

content download... content download.  i thought the rock band people said you couldn't do it... ohhh yea turns out they were just lazy.

Or that Nintendo didn't allow it or didn't have the APIs for it at the time. As the owners of the shop (metaphorically and literally), the ability to do anything like DLC is gated on their cooperation.

57

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Wii Homebrew Channel

« on: May 28, 2008, 08:51:17 PM »

In my experience, the time sink of copying channels happens when copying TO the SD card.  This system could always leave a copy of the game on the SD card so that step would be gone.

It seems to me that it's pretty much the same amount of time both ways; maybe if you have a really slow-writing SD card, it'll take noticeably longer to write than to read, but my cards don't seem to.

Nintendo probably doesn't implement it because they don't want people bitching about how long decryption load times are.

58

TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Explains European Brawl Delay

« on: May 27, 2008, 06:40:55 PM »

Non-PC games are less likely to go into the bargain bin and especially games for Nintendo systems almost never drop in price (with a few exceptions you usually see these stay at full price until they disappear).

Same thing happens with Nintendo's games here; third parties usually end up dropping prices eventually, though.

All I can say is, I don't envy European consumers; I'm willing to put up with being hated by the rest of the world if it means I get twice as much game for my money.

59

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Wii Homebrew Channel

« on: May 27, 2008, 06:39:48 PM »

I'm pretty disappointed with the applications available so far, to be honest... it seems to be pretty much just emulators.  I was hoping to see some cool applications of the Wiimote... but I guess people would rather just write PC software for that stuff, since the hardware of the Wii console isn't anything special.

I'm not entirely sure that they've got Wii-side access to the fun Wiimote bits (accelerometers, pointer) yet; they probably have to go through the Wii's OS for that, whereas there's a well-documented driver PC-side for it (GlovePIE).

60

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Fire Emblem 10

« on: May 27, 2008, 03:43:17 PM »

From a creative standpoint, it feels like the Star Wars universe has been mined for every gold nugget it can cough up.  And even a few not-so-gold nuggets.

I'm not entirely sure that I agree that it's been mined for all the gold, but certainly the current staff at LucasFilm Licensing have played out the few veins they've been mining.

61

TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Explains European Brawl Delay

« on: May 27, 2008, 03:40:35 PM »

Tax is 19% on top of the base price so 17.5 US dollars (11 Euros) out of the 110 (70), base price 92.5 USD (59 EUR). Well, at least in Germany, in the UK its 17.5% tax IIRC.

Wow. I know the extra translation/debugging costs some money, but I sure as hell doubt it's worth an 80% markup!

I assume that your DS carts are manufactured in Japan, same as North American ones. Where are your Wii games made, though? (At least with ours, it says on the back, usually right by the UPC.) If they have to ship them in from elsewhere, that could explain some of that...

I also wonder what percentage your retailers are making on games. IIRC, in the US they only have about a 10% margin on games; are European retailers making more money, closer to the 40-50% margin other industries (like bookstores) see in the US?

62

TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Explains European Brawl Delay

« on: May 26, 2008, 12:29:59 PM »

What makes no sense to me is that NOE doesn't even make games. There is the rare exception for NOA, but NOE has nothing. There shouldn't be any employees there other than corporate heads and translators. They have no excuse to not get Nintendo's own games out quicker.

They can't translate what they aren't given to translate, though. If NCL doesn't give them any assets...

63

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Fire Emblem 10

« on: May 26, 2008, 12:29:14 PM »

The Force Unleashed is the first big Star Wars game from LucasArts in a long time (maybe even since X-Wing and TIE Fighter).

I know they've doen dev work at least as recently as 2005, with Republic Commando. I wouldn't be surprised if they moved right from that to The Force Unleashed, though...

64

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Fire Emblem 10

« on: May 25, 2008, 11:16:18 PM »

Looks as though we have a case of another good game lost to the annals of time due to bad marketing, poor release timing, or being too niche for it's own good. 

Not only did we lose it, but I think it was one of the last straws for LucasArts putting out original games; since then, it's all been Star Wars. (Not even Indiana Jones; they've been outsourcing all of those.)

65

Nintendo Gaming / Re: I just bought some Wii-colored GC controllers.

« on: May 25, 2008, 09:22:07 PM »

Ideally I would have wanted wireless regularly shaped (not wavebirds) white GC controllers with rumble, with a direct connection to the Wii without a stupid dongle.  I know it's possible, but I imagine Nintendo is focused on a lot more things than appealing to my niche market needs.

Regularly shaped controllers with wireless and rumble might be possible now, if expensive (not only would they have to pay for the hardware redesign, but there'd be nowhere near as many takers as there were of the original Wavebirds); however, I'm pretty sure that ones without a dongle aren't, because the Wii in GameCube mode turns off the Bluetooth module.

66

Nintendo Gaming / Re: FFCC: My Life as a King

« on: May 25, 2008, 09:11:24 PM »

Or just don't buy the game at all. I think that's the best bet when it comes to the entire Final Fantasy series.

Except there's not just one Final Fantasy series; they've been using that moniker to boost sales of other Square series at least as far back as Final Fantasy Adventure on the original Game Boy. For that matter, My Life as a King isn't even a real Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles game, though at least it's set in the same universe unlike FFA.

67

TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Explains European Brawl Delay

« on: May 24, 2008, 12:27:27 AM »

I don't know, Martha was pretty easy to understand, but the new one, what's her nbam, damn we're already into 8 episodes with her and I still forget her name, anyways she is impossible to understand.

Donna Noble, husband to Doctor Noble.

I just started watching the original William Hartnell shows and for some reason those older episodes are a lot easier to understand, their accents aren't as heavy and their dialog sounds more, normal.

Back in the 60s and 70s, the BBC required their actors to use what's known as Received Pronunciation. In recent years, they've let up, allowing actors to use different/their own accents.

68

TalkBack / Re: ASH Rated by ESRB

« on: May 23, 2008, 01:16:52 PM »

There's no DS fire emblem?

Not yet. One was announced late last year (set in the universe of the first three games; it's been assumed to be a remake of the first or third, based on screenshots showing Marth, but I don't think it's been officially announced), but there's been little news about it, much less a release.

69

TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Explains European Brawl Delay

« on: May 23, 2008, 04:32:17 AM »

Metroid Prime 3 may not have had a ton of dialogue, but as far as I can tell every line was spoken.

Could be--I haven't picked it up yet, seeing as how I have yet to beat #1 much less #2.

70

TalkBack / Re: ASH Rated by ESRB

« on: May 23, 2008, 03:37:33 AM »

Oh goody, another SRPG, just what the DS has been lacking!

With no Fire Emblem game yet, yes, it's been lacking them.

71

TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Explains European Brawl Delay

« on: May 23, 2008, 03:33:29 AM »

Voice samples? Since when does NoE translate voices? Sure, there were one or two announcer changes in SSBM for the names of the Pokemon (which change in each country as they're pun based) but that doesn't constitute a full dubbing. The only Nintendo game with translated voice acting I've ever seen was Doshin The Giant.

To be fair, Nintendo isn't heavy on voice acting in general. About the only internally-developed game I can name off the top of my head with heavy voice acting is Starfox 64 (though I haven't played Command or Assault).

Did they really give a pass to translating those voices? How about Rare's various Nintendo-published games with voices, like Perfect Dark or (IIRC) Starfox Adventures?

72

TalkBack / Re: Dragon Quest IV Through VI Destined for America

« on: May 23, 2008, 03:26:18 AM »

Though I have one request: release the original versions, translated into English, on the VC!  Square Enix seems reluctant to release games on the VC that they figure they can re-release in some other form and charge full price.  Fair enough.  Sucks for us, but we can all see why they would do that.

The thing is though that I'd argue these are two separate, non-competing products.  In fact they compliment each other.  The original and the remake are different enough that it would be worth owning both, especially since we're talking about a shift from 2D to 3D.  If anything the original versions would make a fine companion to the remakes.

Maybe for these DS titles, like FF3; less so with the GBA ports of FF1/2/4/5/6.

Hell Square Enix could even charge a premium for these titles on the VC because they're imports.  Meanwhile the translation was already done for the remake.  You could probably get an American intern with no knowledge of Japanese to take the remake's translation and shove it into the originals.

If they still have the source code and assets. If they had to ROMhack the translation in, that's not exactly a trivial task...

(Which is a big part of why I despair of ever seeing any pre-FE6 Fire Emblem released in English on the VC. 6, at least, could probably be thrown together very quickly and cheaply given the source files and a GBA emulator for Wii--moreso than most Japan-only games, as they've already done the necessary code modifications to support localization for FE7. So of course it's the only one with a readily available, playable fan translation!)

73

TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Explains European Brawl Delay

« on: May 22, 2008, 09:01:39 AM »

If you have a TV that can't use NTSC that TV has to be at least 20 years old.

But can that be explained in an idiot-proof way? Nintendo doesn't want to deal with people sending consoles in for repairs because they didn't read the system requirements on a box that is usually devoid of them.

This is the company who thought that HDTVs didn't have enough penetration to bother supporting them; they seem to expect people to be playing with their Wii on ancient TVs...

74

TalkBack / Re: REVIEWS: LostWinds

« on: May 18, 2008, 05:19:28 PM »

Portal is a game I'm interested in (I've heard that it was only one hour long so 4 sounds linger than I thought) but unfortunately it only comes in 20 and 50 Euro packages (I'm not interested in the HL2 Eps as I haven't finished HL2 and don't care much for TF2 either).

Portal is only $20, or about 13 Euros, through Steam.

I hated Golden Sun for ending a third into the story.

Personally, I thought that Golden Sun ended at a perfectly fine place. If nothing else, it would've been awkward as hell to shift narrative viewpoint halfway one game.

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TalkBack / Re: REVIEWS: LostWinds

« on: May 17, 2008, 02:03:16 AM »

Ouch. That's one hell of a caveat.