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1151

TalkBack / Re: Sonic Boom Is the Worst-Performing Sonic Launch Ever

« on: February 13, 2015, 11:20:31 PM »

In theory giving Sonic to Mario would work but Sonic in his prime was the alternative to Mario.  The fast-paced platforming of the Genesis games was a different take on the Mario formula and Nintendo might not understand its appeal.  Sonic was effectively rebelling against Mario.  Nintendo would probably make a good game but maybe not a good Sonic game if you get my meaning.

There were a lot of Sonic rip-offs in the 16 bit years and most were not very good but Rocket Knight Adventures was decent.  That was Konami.  Don't know what the people involved would be working on but maybe they could try.  Treasure might be able to do Sonic well.  Whatever team at Namco did Klonoa might be capable.  If we want to try to get Nintendo involved maybe GameFreak is the one to do it since they did Pulseman.

Good Feel showed they could pull it off.

The speed sections in Wario Land Shake are better then anything Sega's made with Sonic in the last 20 years.

1152

TalkBack / Re: Sonic Boom Is the Worst-Performing Sonic Launch Ever

« on: February 12, 2015, 11:44:13 PM »

Time to give Sonic the full New Super Mario Bros treatment.

They already tried that with Sonic 4 Episode 1/2 and they manged to **** that up as well.  Sega's handling of Sonic for over a decade now is pretty much the myth that if you put a bunch of monkeys in a room with typewriters they'll eventually type the greatest story ever.  Now that almost came true with Sonic Colors and Generations which were actually good and set the groundwork for real greatness, only for Sega to completely throw it all away with Lost World and Boom.

Pretty much proves the point the people handling Sonic really are just a bunch of monkeys typing away with something good occasionally being made by chance that even they don't know how they made it, while most of the time they're just throwing ****.

1153

TalkBack / Re: Metroid Prime Trilogy Review Mini (Wii U)

« on: February 12, 2015, 07:48:13 PM »

In Echoes if you conserve your ammo for the right moment it isn't that hard.  Most of the dark world enemies die really easily if you hit them with fully charged light shots with light world enemies doing the same with dark shows, and as Ian said, you can always abuse the energy refills spots in the dark world as well.  Even the Boast Ball Guardian which was a real bastard on the Gamecube version, dies pretty easily in that version as well if you fight him with enough light ammo saved up.

I can definitely see people who don't have enough light/dark ammo finding the game pretty difficult since some of the later enemies and bosses are pretty tough if you fight them with normal charged shots and missiles.  But it's kind of like Mega Man where if you use the light/dark shots against the enemies they're weak against and you have enough ammo, it makes things much less difficult.

1154

TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Tried Buying the Rights to Harry Potter

« on: February 12, 2015, 06:47:05 PM »

A Nintendo with the Harry Potter rights would still have ended up the same as the Nintendo without them.  This was back in 1998, at the end of the year Pokemon got released in the West and became a wordwide phenomenon that would be bigger then Harry Potter was for the next few years.  So it's not like Nintendo needed something at the time to really boast their financials since Pokemon exploded around the world at the end of the year.

The only advantage it would have done is given the Gamecube exclusive Harry Potter games that might have helped sell a few million more systems, but even then considering how unstoppable the PS2 was at the time, it would have hardly been a game changer.

Yeah Nintendo would be worth more money with the Harry Potter rights, but as we saw with the Wii and DS that wouldn't have done much since they just throw it all in the money bin without bothering to really grow the company.  The only thing that's caused Nintendo to finally start expanding was the 3DS shaky start and the Wii U's disastrous hardware sales.  These things still needed to happen for Nintendo to start spending money so it's not like having all that Harry Potter money would have caused the company to start acting differently before that.

1155

TalkBack / Re: Where to Place Netflix’s Zelda Series on the Timeline

« on: February 12, 2015, 03:05:34 PM »

I never really saw Hyrule as looking particularly different than real life.  It has green trees, brown dirt, blue sky, clear water and grey rocks like real life.  What elements of the setting are there that don't look like a forest in our world?

The more interesting settings we get in the games like the temple are going to be hard to translate onto a TV show unless it has a good budget.  A Zelda TV show just set in a normal looking forest is going to be pretty boring.  If they want to do a Zelda show justice, it'll need to include a lot of the more unique locations the Zelda games are known for.

1156

TalkBack / Re: Where to Place Netflix’s Zelda Series on the Timeline

« on: February 11, 2015, 11:46:29 PM »

The TV show will probably be like Hyrule Warriors where it'll borrow characters and settings from different Zelda games but is non canon in the end.  This is the best way to handle a Zelda TV series since it'll give the shows writers a lot more to work with and they can be way more creative without having to worry about being locked into a timeline which Link Between Worlds proved last year even Nintendo doesn't give a **** about it trying to make sense anymore.

1157

Nintendo Gaming / Re: The Wii U as a stepping stone.

« on: February 11, 2015, 01:06:06 AM »

Even if Nintendo's next home console is a failure, they'll still keep trying since having a successful home and handheld console is still a better outcome to them then one hybrid.  People have to remember Nintendo is financially still a huge company.  The Wii and DS made them more money then ever before, and they still had billions in the bank before that.  They can afford to keep making home consoles since if one becomes a success, it'll easily offset any losses they end up taking from the failures. 

Plus after the 3DS and Wii U, I can guarantee the next home and handheld will be designed in a way that they're very profitable off the hardware from the start and even something selling Wii U numbers will have minimal losses.  They will not give up home consoles since it's still better to have 2 markets and they can easily afford to still pursue it.

1158

Nintendo Gaming / Re: The Wii U as a stepping stone.

« on: February 09, 2015, 10:14:42 PM »

That hasn't really been going well for them.

Only it has since they're profiting off both systems.  This is why we're never getting a Nintendo hybrid console because it would result in Nintendo making less profit.  It's not like there's a different audience for Nintendo handhelds and home consoles, most of the people who own a Wii U also own a 3DS. 

Even with the Wii U's poor hardware sales, they're still selling millions of extra software they couldn't if the just had one console.  Just look at Smash Bros, currently over 6 million on the 3DS and 3 million on the Wii U.  Majority of the people who own the Wii U version bought the 3DS version months earlier.  If they had one system they would have lost millions in sales since they couldn't have released one game designed on shorter handheld experience with another designed around the bigger console experience.


That has been the whole point of Nintendo home consoles since the beginning.  Many of their franchises get a smaller handheld game that's shorter and more casual friendly while the home console is the bigger more hardcore experience.  This way Nintendo can sell 2 similar games to the same audience on 2 different consoles because each system and it's games fulfill a different need to that audience.  A hybrid destroys the ability to do that which results in less sales, which is why it wont happen.

1159

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Kirby and the Rainbow Curse gets a release date in North America.

« on: February 04, 2015, 09:47:26 AM »

I haven't been following too closely but is this only playable with the stylus or can you play traditional Kirby too? I guess I am not sure what is the point in putting Kirby in a game if he can't fly and eat enemies.

About half the Kirby games ever made involve him being unable to eat and fly.  And quite a few people would even say those are some of the better ones like the original Canvas Curse and Mass Attack, which were 100% designed around the stylus like this game is and great games because of it.

1160

TalkBack / Re: SEGA Downsizing to Focus on Digital and PC

« on: January 31, 2015, 10:28:43 PM »

At this point it's a miracle Sega is even still around considering the company has been run by incompetent morons for almost 30 years now.  The only time something good happened was during the early 90's in the West, which the people in Japan running the show intentionally stopped because they were literally jealous.  That's right, this was a company where the management was angry they were making money, just because that money wasn't being made in Japan.

You'd think 20 years later Sega would have learned by now but nope.  It's like their goal is to go down in history as one of the worst run companies of all time, which they already managed to do just fine over a decade ago.  I guess they want to set the bar of failure so high, it'll be impossible for anyone else to surpass by the time they finally go under.

1161

TalkBack / Re: New Information on Xenoblade Chronicles X Revealed

« on: January 31, 2015, 09:47:40 PM »

It might have local.  Adding online does make it more complicated.

Pretty much.  It's one thing to allow someone to pick up a controller and play one of the CPU characters while someone else is playing on the same TV, but another to allow a complete stranger online.  It's kind of hard to just allow random people to suddenly join someone else game online since everyone playing can be at completely different points in the story.

Yeah they could try and do some kind of online mode where the entire game map is opened up and people can run around like an MMO but that would require extra resources to do and the game just wasn't designed to be that.  At the end of the day, Monolith Soft is still making a single player JRPG and doing their best to make sure it excels at being just that.

1162

TalkBack / Re: Hyrule Warriors Worldwide Shipments Surpass One Million

« on: January 29, 2015, 09:33:42 AM »

After 5 years of Wii SD blue ocean games, (Galaxy excluded) N goes nuts and makes arguably the best versions of their games in HD aimed at hardcore gamers (NSMB, 3D World, Pikmin, Smash, Bayo etc) and the Wii U is still floundering. I'm in heaven, but apparently most of the rest of the world doesn't give a crap, I don't want to live anymore  .
If N goes under, that's it, I'm done, i'll just play Super, Prime, Zero, 1000 Year Door, ALL TEH ZELDA and Yoshi's Island and Galaxy 1 and 2 on a 4 year repeating loop. DONE.

Even with the lower Wii U hardware sales they're still profiting off the system.  Combined with the fact they still have billions with no debts, they're not even close to being in any kind of real danger.

1163

TalkBack / Re: Iwata on Wii U: Not Over Yet

« on: January 29, 2015, 01:42:59 AM »

Can you think of a better way to describe a console that has no 3rd party support for the foreseeable future and is limping along with 1 Nintendo 1st party title every 2 months, while its competitors are at worst matching its sales in half the time and at best doubling them? I don't regret my Wii U purchase, but the system is an industry-wide joke and has been for quite some time. Calling it "diseased and dying" is me being charitable, because it implies the Wii U ever had life at all.

And yet, the Wii U is actually making a profit.  When was the last time Sony made a profit again?  Those 18 millions PS4 won't mean **** when Sony's force to declare bankruptcy and sell the Playstation brand.  Oh and I'm sure the shareholder at Microsoft who already feel the company spends too much are going to be very pleased at the amount they keep wasting on the One, only to have it eventually sell half of what the 360 did which is very likely to happen.


You love to declare doom on Nintendo, and yet the Wii U is the system most likely to get a successor despite much lower sales.

1164

TalkBack / Re: Wii U Sales Up, 3DS Sales Down In Third Quarter

« on: January 28, 2015, 09:39:24 AM »

I hate to say this but in general the 3DS really can't put out the graphic quality you are seeing on Mobile Phones.  We all knew early on this was going to be a problem when it didn't look much different than the PSP.

That means nothing for handheld gaming since the people playing on handhelds generally care less about graphical quality.  The DS already proved that loud and clear and the 3DS complete domination of the Vita makes that even clearer.

1165

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Official Sales Thread

« on: January 28, 2015, 09:35:40 AM »

Handhelds have historically had lower attachment rates then home consoles since handhelds generally appeal to kids and casuals more who traditionally buy less games.  Even with the Wii U selling much worse then the 3DS, the userbase for the Wii U is made up of hardcore Nintendo fans who're buying more games.  Same reason the Gamecube had a higher attachment rate then the GBA as well, despite there being a huge gap in sales for hardware as well.

1166

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Official Sales Thread

« on: January 27, 2015, 11:20:33 PM »

Much like what was said prior, Warriors titles tend to lack a great deal of variety in terms of new mechanics and a different feel. I dedicated a whole podcast to discussing the flaws and the better parts of the series, and that's the general consensus- play a warriors game every three or four years and you'll have a great time.

Yeah, I stopped playing Hyrule Warriors for this very reason.  I mean the main game was fun and I was enjoying Adventure mode but it eventually reached a point where the amount of grinding I had to do to try and fully level my characters ability as well as constantly having to redo different levels on Adventure mode to get the right items so I could unlock **** on other ones got ridicules.

1167

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Official Sales Thread

« on: January 27, 2015, 09:30:39 AM »

Part of it's the fact that there were like 7 Wii U games all of last year. N64 syndrome: you can play this or play nothing.

Even if the Wii U had more games Hyrule Warriors still would have reached a million anyway.  Zelda is still a major franchise in the West with a very dedicated audience.  If a million hardcore Zelda fans were willing to buy a prettier version of Wind Waker last year, then giving them a game that celebrates Zelda history and allows them to finally play as characters like Zelda and Gannondorf was always a guaranteed million seller.

1168

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Official Sales Thread

« on: January 24, 2015, 09:31:28 AM »

Having one unified console is stupid no matter who is in charge.  Competition is needed in order to prevent companies from getting away with stupid bullshit which you know they'll do.  Sony tried to get away with a $600 console back in 2006 and that was when they had competition.  How much do you think Sony would have charged for the PS3 if it was the only videogame console on the market?  Same with the crap Microsoft tried to pull with the One back in 2013 which they only backtracked on once it was revealed the PS4 didn't have the same stupid features.  If Microsoft was the only company releasing a console, do you think they would have backtracked on the no used games, always online and mandatory Kinect bullshit?

Even Nintendo is very guilty as well.  Just look at the GBA when Nintendo didn't have any competition in the handheld market.  They were pulling crap like the Mario Advance series and charing $20 for individual NES ports for fucks sake.  Notice how as soon as Sony releases a handheld, then Nintendo finally decided to release a new 2D Mario again, where as before they couldn't be bothered since there was no point since people were buying Nintendo handhelds since that was the only handheld on the market.

End point, competition is needed because without it, any company will become lazy and greedy.  A one console future is the worst thing that can possibly happen to the industry no matter who is in charge.

1169

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Official Sales Thread

« on: January 19, 2015, 12:45:13 AM »

The way I see it, Nintendo will announce an Animal Crossing title for 2016, and then phase out the console. The Wii U is just not selling and Nintendo doesn't know what to do to make this happen.

You do realize the sales were higher this year then last year right?  Not only that, but Nintendo is actually profiting off the systems sold this year unlike last year were they were selling at a loss.

Seriously, the Wii U will end up with the traditional 5 year Nintendo lifespan in the end.  The whole goal for all Nintendo systems is to be profitable and right now the Wii U is actually achieving that.  Yes they would like Wii U sales to be higher, but they're not going to kill it off premature only to then rush a new system to launch because that's much riskier and can loss a lot more money in the end which Sega already proved long ago.  The Gamecube, despite selling worse then the N64 still lasted as long for the exact same reason.  Nintendo isn't Sega, and knows that achieving profit off a system is the number one goal even if that means supporting a system with a smaller userbase for a few years longer.

1170

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Official Sales Thread

« on: January 16, 2015, 10:43:03 PM »

That's US + Japan. Looks like based on that, Tropical Freeze is at least over 500k worldwide, which should earn Retro the right to finish the fight.

The 440k for Tropical Freeze is just physical sales in America, so with digital, it could be close to 500k in North America alone.  It sold a little over 100K in Japan, and it was on top of the charts in France and Germany when it was originally released.  So realistically Tropical Freeze should be over 700k and maybe even closer to 800k.  So yeah, it'll surpass the 1 million mark sometime this year.

1171

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Official Sales Thread

« on: January 16, 2015, 12:59:37 AM »

The Wii U version of Smash Bros was the 4th best selling individual SKU of December, with the 3DS version at 6th.  So a Smash Bros would still be in 4th place even if NPD didn't combine the sales. :


Getting back to some actual sales discussion, Captain Toad did 250k physically for the month which is really good for the type of game it is.  Combine Japan and Europe sales it's probably close to 500k worldwide by now.

1172

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Super Smash Bros. for WiiU (& 3DS)

« on: January 15, 2015, 04:53:27 PM »

On the one hand it's a free CD so I can't complain much, but still, where's the Mega Man music?  Did Sakurai allow Capcom to choose the track list for these CD's or what?  The Mega Man songs had some of the best remixes in the game and yet not a single one is on the CD and yet Pac-Man get 3 songs.  Same thing with not a single Mother song either even though it had 3 amazing remixes yet F-Zero which just had 1 song which was just another remix of Mute City gets that song thrown in.

Oh well, I already downloaded the games soundtrack so I'll just make a third CD with all my favorite tracks not on these 2 disc.  Actually considering all the stuff that's missing I can easily make a 4th as well.

1173

TalkBack / Re: Metroid Prime Trilogy, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Punch-Out!!, Plus More Heading to Wii U eShop

« on: January 15, 2015, 12:24:57 AM »

Pandora's Tower isn't that good anyway. And since these are straight ports the game breaking bug will still be there.

Nintendo and third parties have gone and altered things in Virtual Console games before.  Fixing a bug that was non-existent in the Japanese and European version of the game isn't that out there to do and most likely will happen.

1174

TalkBack / Re: Metroid Prime Trilogy, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Punch-Out!!, Plus More Heading to Wii U eShop

« on: January 14, 2015, 09:27:05 PM »

NOA just drags their feet so Sin & Punishment and Pandora's Tower will eventually be released here, we'll just have to wait several months or even a year before it happens.  Pandora's Tower could take even longer since it has a nasty game breaking glitch near the end in the North American version.  That'll need to be fixed and I doubt NOA at the moment is all that concerned about debugging a niche title like it.

1175

TalkBack / Re: Bomber's Notebook Getting Revamped for Majora's Mask 3D

« on: January 13, 2015, 09:10:18 PM »

Obviously you shouldn't NEED Gamefaqs.  But it's hard to design a whole game's worth of puzzles that every player is going to figure out on their own.  All sorts of great games have at least one puzzle where even after looking it up online my response is "how the hell would anyone come to THAT conclusion?"  You might get stuck.  But in the 21st century we have the ability to go online and look up a solution when we're totally stumped.  It's a huge improvement over the old days where if you were stuck your only option was a strategy guide or hotline or you just stayed stuck.

But despite this, devs are afraid of the player getting stuck for even a second.  Skyward Sword has Fi point out everything of interest in a room before the game even gives me control to go look around myself.  The assumption is that the player is so fucking helpless that I'm not even given the option to figure things out myself, when figuring things out is the whole damn point of having a puzzle in a game.  If I'm not supposed to explore then why not just make sequential levels?  If I'm not supposed to solve the puzzle myself then why it is even impeding my path?

Once again it's an optional way for some to have a better idea what to do for each quest.  If somebody doesn't want to use it, they can ignore it.  This isn't like Fi who would outright interrupt the players to spoil things.  The Bombers Notebook is something you have to pause the game and then physically select to use.  Then you'll probably have to highlight the particular quest you want to know about and click  again in order to get the more detailed descriptions this new one might have anyway.  Meaning if someone wants to spoil themselves in this game, they'll have to go out of their way to do so.

It's no different then difficulty settings in games.  If someone wants the game to be easier, they can use it but those that don't want it can just ignore it.