Topic: Episode 305: Xmas Eve-Eve

[Do_What]

The gaming press is made up entirely of the most hardcore of hardcore gamers, and so for the past bunch of years they've been holding this "nintendo has betrayed us" grudge. Not to say they're malicious towards nintendo, but there's no benefit of the doubt giving. Go back and listen to big podcasts around when Super Mario Galaxy 2 came out. The discussion was always "yeah it's good, but it really doesn't need to be on wii and it's mostly just a level pack for galaxy." It was much harder for good wii games to get press time because the press was too busy making jokes about how the wii collected dust (and this was years before the will was actually dead).
Also, from jump it was the "third party games don't sell on nintendo consoles" party. So something stupid like "Mad World" would come out, and instead of people recognizing that this particular game wouldn't have sold on ANY console it became a victim of third party wii game syndrome. I'm sorry, what box retail black and white ultra violent weird Japanese games have become million sellers on Xbox? Like, no one said that stupid Suda 51 game with the dick jokes didn't sell because it was on Xbox. It didn't sell because no one was interested in playing that.
Game writing is a victim of being super insular. It's exactly like comic book writing. Everyone knows each other, everyone has worked at every site/magazine and all view games in pretty much the exact same light. So there was never going to be someone or a group of people who were going to buck the trend when covering Nintendo.

[Lithium]

I'm going to have to agree with Do_what here, even after this episode im not entirely convinced that there is no bias against (modern) nintendo

[ejamer]

Bias, I'd agree. Grudge, I'm not so sure.


But Do_What has a great point in his last paragraph. I think that does influence how Nintendo has been viewed and rated and discussed generally, and most definitely how the Wii was covered.


It's interesting to see Galaxy 2 brought up in his post though. I seem to recall hearing the same type of comments, yet Metacritic has the game sitting comfortably at a 97% rating... not sure how to reconcile that. Are scores not really tied to personal enjoyment for big-name games like this, or was I misinterpreting/misremembering because I help a Pro-Wii chip on my shoulder?

[yoshi1001]

For those looking into making games or learning game programming by example, I would suggest looking into the "Petit Computer" app on the eShop (also available as DSiWare). I haven't tried it myself, but it looks promising.

[Shaymin]

There's also a lot of tools for using existing engines with modern games that are free - it used to just be Lunar Magic (for Super Mario World) but know there's the various KazoWar tools for Poke-modding and the Reggie tool for NSMBWii.

[ejamer]

For those looking into making games or learning game programming by example, I would suggest looking into the "Petit Computer" app on the eShop (also available as DSiWare). I haven't tried it myself, but it looks promising.

Petit Computer is pretty awesome. It has some nice tools and features for working with sprites, and the language is given some convenient commands for working with DS controls (touch screen and buttons). BASIC isn't the best language for gaming in a lot of ways... but it's good enough that you can create some fun things if interested.


Some examples:

• Jason Cirillo from Gaijin Games created a Petit Computer version of Zyrx and shared the QR codes via his Twitter account. (Google for the link.)
• CPFace posted a fully documented platform engine that can be used to learn or as a framework to build on when creating your own game.
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