Topic: Official Virtual Console Mondays Thread

[UncleBob]

Dang, people are complaining about having to swap SD cards every 40 games or so?

Why, back in my day, we had to swap the game cartridge every time we wanted to play a different game.  You youngins are so damn spoiled now-a-days.

[KDR_11k]

I can't say much about BG&E, I dislike the stealth genre and as such feel that I can't make a good assessment of the game's quality. I've seen it compared to Zelda in gameplay but I think that would only apply if every dungeon was like the swordless Forsaken Fortress.

[Pale]

I guess for me one of the selling points of the VC is the extreme convenience when I want to just fool around in a game.  That is why I rebought games I already own for GBA, like ice climber and LttP.

And it isn't just swapping sd cards... here are the two possible scenarios.

1. Go into the channel management.
2. Find the game you are taking off your 40.
3. Erase it.
4. Back out to the Wii menu.
5. Go to the shop channel.
6. Wait for the shop channel to load.
7. Navigate to the game I want to play.
8. Wait for it to download.
9. Go back to the main Wii menu.
10. Play the game.


or...


1. Go to the channel management.
2. Find the game you don't want to play anymore.
3. Tell it to copy that game to the SD card.
4. Erase that game from your channel memory.
5. Go to your SD card.
7. Copy the game you want to play from your SD card
8. Go back to the main menu and play.


Both of those are enough of a bother that the pick up and play benefit of the VC is gone.  Add to that the fact that each VC game also has seperate save game data, if memory is your issue and not channel space, that's another set of separate steps to go through.

Add to all of that the fact that removing any VC game from your channel list immediately wrecks the coolest feature of the VC itself, the fact that going back to the Wii menu acts in the same way as pausing the game.

Can you at least see why I want them to fix it yet?  

[UncleBob]

Back in my day, when you wanted to play a game, you had to:

1. Flip the little switch on the the cable from "TV" to "Computer".
2. Dig through all the games to find the one you wanted to play.
3. Put the game in the system and turn it on.
4. Turn the system off and back on again.
5. Turn the system back off, take the cart out, blow on it, put it back in, and turn the system back on.
6. Turn the system back off, smack the sides of the system and turn it back on.
7. Turn the system off again, take the game out, get out the Q-Tips and whatever cleaning solution you can find, clean the game, put it back in and turn the system back on.
8. Turn the system back off, give up and go outside and play.

Ya damn kids are spoiled now-a-days I say... just plain spoiled.

[UltimatePartyBear]

I'm in no danger of filling up my channel space anytime soon, but I think Pale's absolutely right.  I am most likely to play games that are immediately at my fingertips.  It isn't about showing off.  It's about convenience.  The reason it's frustrating is that Nintendo has placed a 100% arbitrary limit on the system.  There's no apparent reason for the number of channels to be capped at 48.  There's nothing significant about that number at all.  There's no good reason not to allow us to play directly from an SD card.  It is simply baffling, and while I appreciate that there is a workaround, it's a workaround for an artificial obstacle.  It's like building a bridge over a stream, and then pulling up the planks from the middle of the bridge to build a raft so you can get across the stream when the bridge is out, which it is, because you just destroyed it to build the raft.  You can still get to the other side, but it takes longer, and when someone points out that you had plenty enough lumber to build both the bridge and the raft, someone else calls them a whiner because it's still possible to cross the stream, and in the old days you would have had to just swim.

[Kairon]

It's so awesome not to fiddle with stuff and other hardware to get kid icarus working. Just turn it on and it's right there!

... now if I could only get past the first level ... I think I'll go play Donkey Kong Jr. instead...

~Carmine "Cai" M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Ian Sane]

"To put it another way: Should new local, state, or federal laws be passed to enforce the ESRB ratings when parents already have a perfectly viable option to keep their kids safe? That being reading the rating assigned to the game and then monitoring their children's playing of said game. Of course not! So why then is it such a problem? The parents want to be just as lazy as you want to be with not copying VC games back and forth."

I don't think it compares at all.  The ESRB is a pretty damn good system that SHOULD work well but doesn't because a lot of parents are being idiots.  The USER is f*cking up.  But this is Nintendo's arbitrary dumbass way of doing something.  There is a design flaw and while there is a work around it's still a poorly designed setup and it would be best for everyone if it was fixed.

On the Cube F-Zero GX's save cannot be moved from one memory card to another.  After buying it I bought a bigger memory card and moved all of my saves to it so that I just had to deal with one card.  But whenever I play F-Zero GX I have to swap cards or restart my save from scratch.  That's stupid.  Yet there is a workaround so I guess I have no right to complain.  There is nothing lazy about asking for a logical well-designed setup particular when no reason is given for the initial dumb design.

[Smash_Brother]

There's no reason why you cannot have an infinite number of channels in the channel menu.

Hell, Nintendo could even just have you push up/down on the D-pad to cycle through "pages" of channels, each one containing 48 unique channels for storage.

Why they haven't done this yet is beyond me, especially since it's readily possible to fill all the channels now, right?

[The Omen]

Quote
Originally posted by: Kairon
It's so awesome not to fiddle with stuff and other hardware to get kid icarus working. Just turn it on and it's right there!

... now if I could only get past the first level ... I think I'll go play Donkey Kong Jr. instead...

~Carmine "Cai" M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

Yeah, it's a bitch.  But I just beat the first temple, and the 2nd world is cool as hell.

[Pittbboi]

Quote
It's like building a bridge over a stream, and then pulling up the planks from the middle of the bridge to build a raft so you can get across the stream when the bridge is out, which it is, because you just destroyed it to build the raft. You can still get to the other side, but it takes longer, and when someone points out that you had plenty enough lumber to build both the bridge and the raft, someone else calls them a whiner because it's still possible to cross the stream, and in the old days you would have had to just swim.

Oooh, that was entertaining. And I agree. I'm in no danger of filling up my slots at all, but I could see that happening at some point in the future. And do we really need to wait for that to happen? I think the Wii's interface is pretty enough, but I can only imagine it looking like a cluttered mess if it ever gets to the point where all the channels are filled. I don't want to have to shuffle through pages of scattered channels looking for a particular one and constantly glazing over it because I'm impatient. It looks cute when there's only a page of channels, more than that and it looks like something someone needs to clean up. They really do need to add a organization feature, if only for aesthetic's sake.

Nintendo would make a killing if they published a book detailing the true reasons behind some of their most baffling moves.

Though, I have a suspicion that Nintendo is saving all of these logical updates for some time in the future when they really have nothing in the pipeline. They'll release an update that includes a channel organization feature, allows you to access VC games from an SD card, and let's you connect external hard drives through the USB ports. Nintendo fanboys will be so overjoyed that they'll forget that these are features that should have been available a long time ago and that Mario Galaxy STILL hasn't been released yet, and flame anyone who points that out for being "too pessimistic to recognize Nintendo's genius."

...it could happen

[Ian Sane]

"Nintendo would make a killing if they published a book detailing the true reasons behind some of their most baffling moves."

My theory is Nintendo has a coin like Two-Face.  Everytime they're about to do something they flip the coin.  If they get the good head they do things as planned.  If they get the bad head they do the same thing but f*ck it up somehow.

[31 Flavas]

Quote
Originally posted by: Ian Sane
I don't think it compares at all.  The ESRB is a pretty damn good system that SHOULD work well but doesn't because a lot of parents are being idiots.  The USER is f*cking up.  But this is Nintendo's arbitrary dumbass way of doing something.  There is a design flaw and while there is a work around it's still a poorly designed setup and it would be best for everyone if it was fixed.

Well, lets take it even further. The ESRB is by no means perfect and has obvious flaws, as opponents have pointed out. You can just not disclose certain material in your game. As well as and more relevantly, inadequate or incorrect scoring/grading. vis a vis only 48 channels on Wii. If you feel strongly in either case that the problems are significant, you have easy solutions. i.e. monitor what your kids play or move games your not playing to SD storage.

These are perfectly fine and acceptable solutions to the majority, but not to you because you have to do stuff you don't want to. Parents have to sacrifice time to watch what their kids play and you have to sacrifice vanity and convenience. Oh the humanity, you have to choose 40 VC games to display and put the rest on SD. You poor thing. Let me get my violin out and play you a sad song.

Nintendo has bigger fish to fry then your petty problems.

[Pittbboi]

Quote
These are perfectly fine and acceptable solutions to the majority

Says who?

Nintendo imposed a limit that does NOT have to be there. There's no justification for it. There IS justification for the ESRB. It's something that SHOULD be there.

Just because there's a window to work around the limit doesn't make the limit itself ok. If the limit itself were ok the window would be obsolete.

[JonLeung]

Quote
Originally posted by: Ian Sane
"Nintendo would make a killing if they published a book detailing the true reasons behind some of their most baffling moves."

My theory is Nintendo has a coin like Two-Face.  Everytime they're about to do something they flip the coin.  If they get the good head they do things as planned.  If they get the bad head they do the same thing but f*ck it up somehow.

Aaron Eckhart (The Core, Thank You For Smoking) has been confirmed a day or two ago to be Harvey Dent in the next Batman film.  If you were interested.

If Nintendo is Two-Face, does that mean that Sony is Catwoman?  o_0  Derive from that what you will...

Maybe Microsoft is Mr. Freeze...  

[Bloodworth]

Next week Japan gets:

Super Ghouls and Ghosts (SNES) Capcom
Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV (SNES) Koei
Yokai Dochuki aka Shadowland (TG16) Namco Bandai

[JonLeung]

Should I get anal that it's "Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts", not "and"?

*runs out of topic covering head as projectiles are thrown*

[31 Flavas]

Quote
Originally posted by: Pittbboi

Nintendo imposed a limit that does NOT have to be there.

So what if they did. How is this problem harming you other then in vanity or convenience? Again, my heart goes out to you. But this just isn't something that we need to spend post after post on. The solution is easy and the problem minor at best. And Nintendo has more important things to worry about, like working on SMG, MP3:C, SSBB, etc...

[Bloodworth]

Dude, it took me a while to figure out what the game even was.  The text was all kanji and the auto translation was "Super-field village".

[The Omen]

Quote
Originally posted by: JonLeung
Should I get anal that it's "Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts", not "and"?

*runs out of topic covering head as projectiles are thrown*

Jeez are you grating.

[Blue Plant]

TG Daily has a nice not-really-biased read comparing the Wii's shop to that of the 360 and PS3.  

Next-gen digital downloads: Wii sets the standard

Quote
The digital stores are going to continue to evolve, and none of the consoles is even close to offering a flawless platform at this point, but it is the Wii that has the framework best suited for a casual, seamless experience that gives users all the information they need right there in the digital store, and that is the kinds of framework that the other consoles need to offer to incite consumer interest and ultimately more purchases.

[UncleBob]

Question: I keep reading that Nintendo put the 48 channel limit on there for, supposedly, no reason at all besides for the fun of it...

Can anyone actually prove that there isn't some particular reason that Nintendo put a 48 channel limit on the Wii?  I mean, is it at all possible that there is some kind of technical reason why it is limited?

[UltimatePartyBear]

Typically, limits in computing applications are based on powers of two.  The number 255 is a typical maximum value in lots of old games because that is 2^8 - 1, the maximum value of one byte (11111111 in binary).  Obviously, 48 is much less than 255.  I'm sure the Wii can deal with at least 32 bit integers, too, which have a maximum value of 4,294,967,295.  It is highly unlikely that the limit is related to the hardware.  That just leaves software.  If there was any logic to the decision, it may have been that they didn't want us to fill up our internal flash memory with VC downloads and then complain that we were out of room for Wii game saves, but that just takes us back to how strange it is to not let the Wii work directly from SD cards.

[Kairon]

I got to stage 1-2 in Kid Icarus! I.AM.AWESOME!

~Carmine "Cai" M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Artimus]

My biggest problem with Kid Icarus is that I don't understand what is supposed to be happening most of the time.

[ShyGuy]

48 channels is 23 x 2 +2. IT ALL COMES DOWN TO THE NUMBER 23!!1