Topic: Considering Nintendo's emphasis on making their console small and quiet...

[odilon]

I never thought I would see the day when Egon Schiele would be used in a discussion over videogames.

[Smash_Brother]

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Originally posted by: Bill Aurion
But those were used...poorly...(Haha, Sega CD... =\)

The side port was, but not every port. I assume this guy means the ports on the cube which weren't used. I have one unused port, but a broadband adapter and the GB player filled the other two ports.

Sorry, I wasn't clear on what I meant.

[thejeek]

Has any console ever had a really successful expansion port? Particularly one that had a successful plug-in gadget for it that *wasn't* available at launch?

[Smash_Brother]

I'd say the GB Player was pretty damn decent and brought back a lot of memories from the 16-bit era, so yeah.

There were a few games I loved on the Sega CD (Sonic CD is still the best Sonic game ever created and I'll argue that notion to the death) but the idea was basically a flop.

[thejeek]

Oh yeah - I hadn't thought of the Gameboy Player - it was quite successful. I was working on a theory about how if the secret thing is some sort of optional expansion it'll turn out badly but the GB Player is a good counter-example.

[couchmonkey]

I think the Game Boy Player worked out because the system already had hundreds of games available for it, and lots of gamers already had collections of those games.  When you create a new peripheral that requires people to spend a few hundred dollars just to add maybe 20-50 games to the library available for your system then of course it's not that attractive.

I don't know what the new secret is, but I doubt it's an add-on like the Gameboy Player.  Probably wireless DS connectivity is in there, but hopefully there's something more exciting than that to announce.

[thejeek]

Have they not already announced wireless DS connectivity? If not, then I'd agree this is pretty much a given and not a good secret.

It's really starting to eat me this secret business - I'd love it to be great but I don't have good feeling about it...

[Smash_Brother]

Yeah, DS connectivity is a guarantee.

"The Nintendo Revolution will eject its disc at 200MPH into the forehead of anyone who says the words "Xbox" or "Playstation", and that means voice-recognition!"

[thejeek]

I'm looking forward to Revolution/DS connectivity. I think the better interface on the DS will make it much better than the GBA connectivity where you sacrificed at lot of buttons + analog control.

[JonLeung]

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Originally posted by: thejeek
I'm looking forward to Revolution/DS connectivity. I think the better interface on the DS will make it much better than the GBA connectivity where you sacrificed at lot of buttons + analog control.

As am I.

I recall Nintendo making a big deal about connectivity, even before the GameCube came out.  I remember an article where they asked these kids what they thought of the three current consoles when they were new.  One kid thought he was smart for mentioning the GBA-GCN connectivity, but what he actually said was "you can use the GBA as a GameCube controller, but it has less buttons so you don't get full functionality."  The article didn't even correct him.  Talk about stupid.  I hope the misinformation wasn't widespread...it probably wouldn't have affected much, and anyone who was truly interested in GBA-GCN connectivity would know what games it does work on, which is only a few, but I think unnecessary negative misinformation is something that Nintendo doesn't need, especially now and lately.

That said, the wirelessness of the DS, and, as you said, a couple more buttons, will probably make DS-Revolution connectivity better if Nintendo wants to keep with that route.  Maybe a future Option Pak for the DS will include a motion sensor like the "Revmote"?

[thejeek]

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Maybe a future Option Pak for the DS will include a motion sensor like the "Revmote"?

I'm picturing myself frantically waving my DS about, whilst scribbling wildly with the stylus and trying to watch *3* screens at once - I think that could cause sensory overload!

[Ian Sane]

Regarding DS connectivity I think a DS Player would be very doable.  Both the stylus and the remote largely function like a mouse.  The remote could act like a replacement for the stylus when playing a DS game on a TV.  The only difference is you would probably need a cursor to show where the remote is pointing and then pressing A would like pressing the stylus on the screen.

Issues come up however in games where you need to use the stylus and the individual buttons on the DS.  In some situations you might need to use two controllers with a shell acting as the buttons and the other remote acting as the stylus.  Or you have move the whole shell with the remote inside it.

Or they could just make it so that using the Rev you can output the video of your DS to the TV.  In some games you have to be able to look at the touchscreen anyway but for something like Mario Kart it would work fine.

But then there's the microphone.  Eh, this is getting more complicated then I thought.

[thejeek]

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Or they could just make it so that using the Rev you can output the video of your DS to the TV. In some games you have to be able to look at the touchscreen anyway but for something like Mario Kart it would work fine.

That would be very cool but I wonder - does the DS wireless connection have enough bandwidth to do this? Even with the relatively small screen sizes of the DS, 60 frames a second uncompressed would be megabytes a second.

[vudu]

I'm sorry, but what does the thread title have to do with Nemo's post?  Anything?

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Originally posted by: DrZoidberg
Didn't I ban you, I thought I banned you. Do you ever make sense.

Haha.  Classic.  I kind of miss Zoidberg.

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Nintendo refuses to show pics or vids of graphics of Revolution games because, they claim, the last secret will affect how the importance of the graphics is judged by the industry.

The Revolution will use vector graphics.  Here's the first ever released screenshot.



Now quit talking about it until more information is revealed.

[Smash_Brother]

OMGWTFBBQ!!! It's the unreleased StarFox 2, back for the Revolution!!!!!11