Author Topic: Nintendo Touts Star Fox: Assault (Read 8886 times)

LassePalle · « **on:** February 07, 2005, 04:11:24 AM »

Watch out for typical Nintendo humor in this press release.

NINTENDO UNVEILS PLAN TO ARM WOODLAND ANIMALS

Foxes, Toads and Falcons to Receive All Means of Assault Artillery

REDMOND, Wash.--Feb. 7, 2005--For too long, foxes and other small woodland creatures have been the targets of hunters. Now the hunted will become the hunters. In coordination with the Society for the Arming of Endangered Animals, Nintendo will provide a defense system to a limited number of these animals in the form of high-tech assault weaponry.

"Too often the smallest creatures are the most defenseless, subject to the ravages of nature and human encroachment on their habitats," says Reynard Vulpine, Nintendo of America's senior vice president of animal-human reconciliation. "By arming woodland creatures with sophisticated assault technologies, Nintendo aims to level the playing field."

Nintendo will begin the program on a trial basis, through the launch of Star Fox(R): Assault for the Nintendo GameCube(TM), by arming a test group comprised of two foxes, a hare, a toad and a falcon with a variety of weapons, including automatic blasters, sniper rifles and rocket launchers. The team of woodland creatures also will have access to Landmaster tanks to roll over hostile terrain, and an Arwing fighter plane.

Nintendo already has conducted a field test of the program. To see the results, pick up a copy of Star Fox: Assault, made exclusively for Nintendo GameCube, available Feb. 14.

Up to four players can compete in head-to-head combat as animal characters like Fox McCloud, Slippy Toad, Peppy Hare and Falco Lombardi. In single-player mode, Fox uses the help of his colleagues to thwart an infestation of mechanized insects and biomechanical beings. The results of the pilot program can be screened at www.starfox.com, and a short documentary can be viewed at www.nintendo.com. Star Fox: Assault is Rated T for Teen.

JonLeung · « **Reply #1 on:** February 07, 2005, 04:52:23 AM »

"Reynard Vulpine". Cute name, made from French and Latin words for "fox" (renard/vulpes).

What I wonder is, who actually reads these press releases?

Avinash_Tyagi · « **Reply #2 on:** February 07, 2005, 05:06:16 AM »

us...

KDR_11k · « **Reply #3 on:** February 07, 2005, 06:27:02 AM »

They're trying to get the furries with that one. Expect an increase of Krystal porn over the next few weeks.

anubis6789 · « **Reply #4 on:** February 07, 2005, 07:56:02 PM »

THE EYES, THEY BURN!!! Thanks KDR, for that lovely thought.

Seriously though, on the subject Press releases, they are mainly for stock holders and retailers and I guess people like us.

InfinitysEnd · « **Reply #5 on:** February 08, 2005, 07:50:17 AM »

Yes, I can see all the furries out there obsessing over Krystal and her massive furry fox-boobs. Anyway, Star Fox Assault was incredibly disappointing, with only the Multi-player being the reason for a purchase. Really really sad since it took them what, 3 years to make it!?

nemo_83 · « **Reply #6 on:** February 08, 2005, 08:34:17 AM »

I saw the commecial yesterday, it was funny. This game is more interesting to me than RE4. I don't care if Star Fox is getting average scores, it sounds really fun compared to saving the president's daughter.

odifiend · « **Reply #7 on:** February 08, 2005, 09:27:58 AM »

Have you played RE4? Because it sounded like you had and then it sounded like you hadn't. And with anything don't knock it until you try it.

NinGurl69 *huggles · « **Reply #8 on:** February 08, 2005, 12:33:59 PM »

Since when was RE4 about "saving" the president's daughter?

To me (still playing, chapter 3-2) it's about "B1TCH, DON'T GET IN MY WAY YOU JUST FOLLOW ME AND SHUTUP WHILE I MAKE BRAIN STEW OUTTA THESE CRAZIES"

and

"I need to get out of this bloody place and away from this chick so i can find a new job and sell my life story to NBC."

It's really about kicking ass and rubbing herbs on your masculine body. Saving Ashley just seems to be an expected consequence for completing objectives.

SgtShiversBen · « **Reply #9 on:** February 08, 2005, 01:06:34 PM »

I still ahven't played Star Fox: Assault yet, or Adventures for that matter, but I guess it was a good thing I didn't buy it $:-\$ Well I guess I have more games to look forward to. And when this and Pikmin 2 go down to 20$ ALL HELL WILL BREAK LOOSE!!

And Prof. I think it's more of like...

"Once I get back to America, people will all respect the mighty LEON!! All hail LEON and my herb rubbing self"

Then Reggie will come out of nowhere and push Leon out of the way and sit on the mighty throne of skulls that come from Yamamuchi's kitchen

ruby_onix · « **Reply #10 on:** February 08, 2005, 05:03:52 PM »

Krystal!

Hostile Creation · « **Reply #11 on:** February 08, 2005, 06:46:58 PM »

Oh god.

Anyway, cute press release. It's similar to the TV commercial, which I thought was awesome.

Bloodworth · « **Reply #12 on:** February 08, 2005, 08:37:19 PM »

I actually thought both were kind of lame... again continuing Nintendo's trend of commercials that are more inside jokes for fans than trying to get new people interested.

Hostile Creation · « **Reply #13 on:** February 08, 2005, 09:31:44 PM »

Unless referring to girls or puppies, cute is condescending. I liked the commercial, though. It may be partly because of my friend conditioning me to like foxes and therefore hate fox hunters and partly because of splosions. Splosions are good for attracting attention.

nemo_83 · « **Reply #14 on:** February 09, 2005, 04:04:05 AM »

it isn't really that hard to understand, StarFox is about a Fox and the commercial has Fox chasing fox hunters

i've played RE4 and i like REremake better because i like Resident Evil and RE4 is not like Resident Evil, though RE4 is emaculate i just like RE better, and the story premise in RE4 is just god awful, save the president's daughter Leon, in Europe. the game is overrated, it shouldn't have been a Resident Evil game, it should have been an original game for the GameCube, something we never get. even though StarFox is obviously not of the same level of completion as RE4 everything about the game just seems more fun, at least the commercial for StarFox doesn't blow if nothing else. i guess what im saying is i knew StarFox would get average scores but I was expecting more out of RE4. im not disappointed by RE4's reception in the media, but im disappointed by how forced the game feels. it was like they sat down for the third or fourth time and were like, "we have to fix Resident Evil," but instead of fixing what is wrong with Resident Evil they just made a different game.

Ian Sane · « **Reply #15 on:** February 09, 2005, 06:41:42 AM »

"continuing Nintendo's trend of commercials that are more inside jokes for fans than trying to get new people interested."

Yes! That's exactly how to describe Nintendo's commercials. I've been trying to explain it in words for years.

Hostile Creation · « **Reply #16 on:** February 09, 2005, 07:43:01 AM »

I guess that's why I've always liked them so much.

In some cases I wouldn't say it's a bad thing, though. Everyone knows about Mario. Unfortunately, I generally find Mario commercials to be the least interesting. If they had commercials of this quality with Mario, that philosophy wouldn't be so bad.
With lesser known franchises like Starfox and Metroid, they should be opening it up to new people, as much as I may like the commercials they have now.

Ian Sane · « **Reply #17 on:** February 09, 2005, 07:54:47 AM »

I think right now they can make their inside joke ads because it's too late to attract that many new people to the Cube. Zelda should get some ads that reach out to more people but Star Fox is really just going to appeal only to existing Cube owners. However the first Revolution ads can't be inside jokes. When the console is new is when you attract the new people so that's when ads for the everyman have to be shown.

Bill Aurion · « **Reply #18 on:** February 09, 2005, 11:18:45 AM »

How in the world is the commercial based on an inside joke? You clearly hear the word "Fox" in there several times...If anything it would be confusing to people that don't understand the background of fox hunting...

ruby_onix · « **Reply #19 on:** February 09, 2005, 02:17:40 PM »

I just saw the commercial, and it seemed... okay-to-good.

My biggest peeve with it is the tagline "the hunters become the hunted". WTF? That's not one of the game's major themes, is it? You can't just slap a tagline onto a game based on some random thing you decided to do in the commercial.

Something like "this is one fox you don't want to hunt" would've worked so much better.

And Nintendo needs to get rid of this whole stupid "Who Are You" theme they're still trying to get going. It's not cool. It's not deep. It's not funny. It's not working. It just gets in the way of the real content they should be putting in the commercials. They damn well better get rid of it before the next Zelda hits. They should just take the E3 trailer (either the one with the Conan music, or the regular one will do), update the end of it from "coming soon" to the launch date, and air that. As-is. Forget the 30-second spots, and just get whole minutes. If it's a rare-yet-awesome commercial, that should generate more than enough word-of-mouth to compensate for some lack of market saturation.

But, who am I kidding? Nintendo won't do that. They're going to ruin the Zelda commercial. I expect it'll be worse than the Minish Cap one. This StarFox commercial will look like gold in comparison.

Oh and, I think the "inside joke" stuff applies more to the press releases than the commercials. They really need to work on those. And Nintendo Power too. Man, Nintendo is soooooo uncool these days. It's mind-boggling.

Bill Aurion · « **Reply #20 on:** February 09, 2005, 03:26:25 PM »

I liked the Minish Cap commercial, thank you very much...

Hostile Creation · « **Reply #21 on:** February 09, 2005, 07:22:05 PM »

Quote
You can't just slap a tagline onto a game based on some random thing you decided to do in the commercial.

Um, yes. Ads do this more often than not, actually.

The "Who Are You" ad campaign is cool, and it's not like they're letting it restrict them. All they do is tack it on at the end of every commercial, it's not based around the "Who Are You" theme. Only two or three commercials did that. They could change their commercials for the better and still keep that, if they wanted, without affecting much at all.
I think they could make a better trailer than the one from E3 2004, though. It was grand for introducing it, but it could be a lot better.

Ian Sane · « **Reply #22 on:** February 09, 2005, 08:13:51 PM »

Yeah the Zelda trailer from E3 would probably make a pretty effective commercial on it's own. The new Zelda is a beautiful game. So thus it's beauty should be shown in the ad and there's no better way to show that then to focus on game footage, like the trailer does. Nintendo always puts in some dumb little skit or something followed by a few "blink and you'll miss it" gameplay shots. It's like they're stilling thinking it's the NES, where all the games looked like crap and thus needed to be hidden by actors. This is the era of good looking 3D graphics and there's a whole generation of graphics whores who have been raised in the Playstation era. So thus showing off amazing graphics is the absolute best way to get people interested.

I know they're instead going to do something cute and funny for the Zelda ad that only fans will understand which is too bad. You figure with the utter failure of the Gamecube to catch on with the general public and the fact that the Cube has had the exact same format of ads its entire life that maybe Nintendo would clue in that the current ad format doesn't work. If it did work then the Cube wouldn't be a huge failure now would it.

Interestingly enough GTA is by far the biggest success story of this generation and all three game's ads are nothing more than game footage with a song from the soundtrack played over top. And these aren't even pretty games. Sometimes it just pays to show people what the game is like.

Hostile Creation · « **Reply #23 on:** February 09, 2005, 09:18:55 PM »

Ian, we all know GTA gets attention through word of mouth, not ads. Not saying it's not a good method, just saying in general.

You're talking about the ads being bad for mainstream audiences, but the only reason the E3 2004 trailer is so great is because we like Zelda so much. Because we're Zelda fans. Most people would be "Oh", so that's a bit of a double standard.
Gameplay footage is a swell idea, but they need a much, much cooler trailer to attract attention. Less scenery and horse riding and more explosions and things getting chopped up. And awesome music. Conan's pretty good.

ruby_onix · « **Reply #24 on:** February 10, 2005, 02:42:34 AM »

Quote
I liked the Minish Cap commercial, thank you very much...

Well, I'm not saying it was bad, it just... didn't have any punch to it. I saw it, and thought "Hey look! A chibi Link and Zelda are running around behind that guy with the 80's hair! So cute! I love Zelda."

When you think about the amount of hype and interest level that Nintendo fans (yeah, those are the only people Nintendo needs to be marketing the game towards, although trying to attract some Lord of the Rings fans can't hurt) have in the new Zelda, that kind of commercial clearly won't be adequate. And I doubt that the new Zelda's commercial will even be that good.

They're probably gonna take up 50% of the commercial showing us some random slice of "ordinary reality", and then have some guys in orc costumes jump out from around a corner or something like that, spend five seconds showing us a couple of lightning-fast clips from the actual game, tell us the game's full title and show us the logo, and then tell us that it's "only for the GameCube".

Quote
The "Who Are You" ad campaign is cool, and it's not like they're letting it restrict them. All they do is tack it on at the end of every commercial, it's not based around the "Who Are You" theme. Only two or three commercials did that. They could change their commercials for the better and still keep that, if they wanted, without affecting much at all.

When they build their commercials entirely around the "Who Are You" theme (meaning that the focal point is just that theme, not any particular games)... they suck. When they don't... why do they even keep plugging that theme? It's pointless!

Even the commercials that aren't built around the theme incorporate the theme in some way. The fact that the E3 trailer wasn't, means that it will be scrapped, not even considered, and they will make something else.

Quote
I think they could make a better trailer than the one from E3 2004, though. It was grand for introducing it, but it could be a lot better.

True. There is room for improvement. They could. But they won't. That's why I say they should just take what they have and run with it. But they simply aren't gonna do that. They're going to try to make something "better", and they will fail.

Perhaps I'm just being a pessimist. I'd be happy to eat my words. Thinking about it, I remember the Wind Waker's commercial being pretty good. It's just that after all these years I don't seem to have any confidence that NOA is anywhere near capable of putting out "great" commercials. Their new ad guys (and the "Who Are You" theme) seem to have quite effectively stopped Nintendo from putting out downright lame commercials, but I just haven't realistically seen any potential for greatness in them yet. Especially not something that's a match for what they're gonna try and sell with Zelda.

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Author Topic: Nintendo Touts Star Fox: Assault (Read 8886 times)