Topic: Episode 337: Eat My Maturity!

[Pandareus]

Do you have what it takes to become... the Urban Champion?

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/rfn/34153

With so much going on lately, we had planned to do a very short New Business and then blast through tons of emails. Of course, that never works. James is the first to deliver a game, and it's Darksiders 2 on Wii U. Jon catches up with Heavy Rain and even tests the PS Move support (hint -- not good). Jonny conjures memories of MotoHeroz with Joe Danger: The Movie. Gui is far more topical, feeding the addiction with Mega Man 4 and testing Art Style: Aquia for worthiness of your Club Nintendo coins.

Any planned "lightning round" is doomed when the very first email occupies our team for well over 15 minutes, but such is our plight when listeners keep sending in such great questions and topics. That one is a revisit to a very old musing on how video games can portray the significance of character death. Next, we read a bit of hate mail, but it spins us off into an impromptu dissection of a true classic NES game. Following that is a look at Nintendo's support for Unity developers, possibly at the expense of more established engines and game studios. Finally, a hotly requested discussion topic: Shadow of the Eternals and the return of its controversial creative director, Denis Dyack. We even take a crack at Wii U-exclusive insanity effects.

We're still quite backlogged on fantastic emails, but don't let that stop you from making it even worse. You can check out the non-gaming podcasts that Jonny mentioned over at Crosstawk.

[azeke]

You were joking in extra outtakes segment in the end where you went completely offtopic with movies discussion and stuff comparing themselves to Giant Bomb podcast, but honestly i enjoyed that segment more than main part.

Also yeah, it's not Nintendo's fault that Avalanche and Frostbite could give a damn about their devkits. At least not entirely.

[NWR_Lindy]

Well, it is in the sense that it's Nintendo's responsibility to make their platform attractive to third-party developers. They haven't done that, so their devkits collect dust. Heck, when Nintendo own fans are sitting there saying "I haven't touched my Wii U in months", that's nobody's fault BUT Nintendo's.

[lolmonade]

I was really, REALLY hoping that when you got the email complaining about you all talking about Donkey Kong Jungle Beat for 25 minutes, that you'd proceed to talk about Donkey Kong Jungle Beat for ANOTHER 25 Mintues...

[Pixelated Pixies]

RFN always has great editing, but I especially liked how in this episode the music of Aquaria was slowly brought in as Gui talked about it. It was really rather effective. I also enjoyed those little interludes in last week's episode in which music from Mega Man 3 was brought in to break up the discussion. That kind of production probably involves a lot of work, but I would love to see more of it in future episodes. It was reminiscent of shows like Radiolab or ALWW.

[pokepal148]

or NFR...

[Pixelated Pixies]

or NFR...

I've never watched the National Finals Rodeo. 

[pokepal148]

that makes no sense...
i was clearly refering to the National Federal Reserve

[TheYoungerPlumber]

....Is there an insanity effect during the ArtStyle discussion?!

[Ceric]

I think this is it Typ.

[azeke]

I was really, REALLY hoping that when you got the email complaining about you all talking about Donkey Kong Jungle Beat for 25 minutes, that you'd proceed to talk about Donkey Kong Jungle Beat for ANOTHER 25 Mintues...

Well they did talked about about Urban Champion for 25 minutes.

But yeah, Jungle Beat deserves all the spotlight it can get and more.

[lolmonade]

I was really, REALLY hoping that when you got the email complaining about you all talking about Donkey Kong Jungle Beat for 25 minutes, that you'd proceed to talk about Donkey Kong Jungle Beat for ANOTHER 25 Mintues...

Well they did talked about about Urban Champion for 25 minutes.

But yeah, Jungle Beat deserves all the spotlight it can get and more.

I meant simply to troll the email sender, but I found their discussion of Jungle Beat really interesting a few weeks ago...

[Enner]

Ah! My e-mail was answered. The discussion went in to a direction that I didn't expect and it was wonderful.


On Oblivion, I can see why movie critics would give the movie mediocre ratings; Oblivion is highly derivative of other sci-fi movies. However, I found it to be well done and well produced. It's been a while since I've seen a recent sci-fi movie that looks great, expensive, and tells a neat story so I'm glad Oblivion got made. I'm not sure if it's worth a run to the theater, but it is definitely worth a watch.

[ClexYoshi]

https://sites.google.com/site/rockman4mi/ Gui, you -NEED- to play this. like... you will thank me later. Seriously. it's SO much better than Mega Man 4.

SO

MUCH

BETTER

[Pandareus]

Thanks for the recommendation, Clex! I might mess around with that when I have some time.

For now, however, credits have rolled on Mega Man 5 and Arctic Man is a goner in 6. But I need to go to bed.

@TYP

Not exactly an insanity effect, I just wanted the disturbing music from the game playing while I described the disturbing game.

[Furious Francis]

These guys obviously don't know what happened between EA and Nintendo.


EA wanted Origin as the Wii U's eShop. Nintendo declined, EA got butthurt and won't put games on the Wii U. Frostbite 2 was tested a little bit, but dropped after EA had a falling out with Nintendo.

[Enner]

These guys obviously don't know what happened between EA and Nintendo.

EA wanted Origin as the Wii U's eShop. Nintendo declined, EA got butthurt and won't put games on the Wii U. Frostbite 2 was tested a little bit, but dropped after EA had a falling out with Nintendo.

That is only rumor and speculation. Sadly, we will probably never know what happened between Nintendo and Electronic Arts. It is only obvious that some sort of falling out occurred.

[KDR_11k]

Supposedly there's a piece on Polygon about how that Dyack thing is shady but even with the best intents I'm worried about legality:
1. SK is on the verge of bankruptcy (or already bankrupt?), just selling off tons of assets to a shell company (probably for a low price) won't fly with the courts. Look at how THQ was torn apart just because selling them whole would bring in a few millions less.
2. Are these assets not affected by the destruction order that resulted from the Epic countersuit?


I wanted to say something about the game you talked about in the outro but I can't even remember what it was...

[ClexYoshi]

Thanks for the recommendation, Clex! I might mess around with that when I have some time.

For now, however, credits have rolled on Mega Man 5 and Arctic Man is a goner in 6. But I need to go to bed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spvcsaTGMJA You WOULD take out the Canadian robot stereotype first. XD I love me some Mega Man 6. Mega Man 6 is my personal favorite of the classic series, and not a lot of people played it because Mega Man X was out by the time Mega Man 6 made it's way to the NES. I could go into a tie-raid about that, but that's a discussion for another day. I'm glad you've really caught the fever from retro-active. <3

[Miz1k3]

Hey guys the other week u were talkin about dk jungle beat and i couldnt believe that i forgot about that game. I never had a chance to play it on gc, but after hearin the discussion i made it my duty to find a copy. It wasnt as hard as i thought i found one with the bongos in about 5 minutes, and it only cost me $16 and s&h. The game is awesome im so glad i let u guys talk me into buyin a 10 year old game. Plus the bongos are a cool little collectible. Thanks for the recommendation. P.S. i also got donkey konga (that game is not fun)

[Fatty The Hutt]

LOVED the "impromptu" Urban Champion discussion. Sure you just all happened to have gotten it recently  ...right....
One of the subtlest and best poker-faced trolls in history. You never even acknowledged the negativity of the emailer. You just went right on into discussing Urban Champion. Well done.
Best part: the discussion was actually serious and good. An excellent segment on its own, even without the heinous email prompt.

[ClexYoshi]

LOVED the "impromptu" Urban Champion discussion. Sure you just all happened to have gotten it recently  ...right....
One of the subtlest and best poker-faced trolls in history. You never even acknowledged the negativity of the emailer. You just went right on into discussing Urban Champion. Well done.
Best part: the discussion was actually serious and good. An excellent segment on its own, even without the heinous email prompt.

THIS! XD yeah, I should have commented on that epic level trolling, but yeah. someone totally did it for me.

[MASB]

The Urban Champion segment (both the quality and why the segment was done) was classic RFN. One of the reasons people listen to this podcast.
 
As for the stinger, I think it is by far the best stinger on RFN since Gui took over. Compares very favorably to the classic stingers of old. I'll admit that I've been somewhat disappointed with the stingers overall (though they have been increasing in quality as the last episode shows). I say that realizing that the quality of stingers can be severely affected by two things: Some episodes, I imagine there simply isn't much of anything worthwhile to use as a stinger and two, if there is a rush to get an episode out, the stinger will go since that's the least important part of the show.
 
Can't wait until 339, when the Nintendo Direct can be discussed. Looking at some of the twitter feeds, some of the crew will be spitting hot apathy! 

[Pandareus]

There aren't as many good stingers as there used to be simply because these things don't usually get recorded at all. As the podcast grew in length, the guys (before my time) started recording in three parts. And it works well, so we keep doing it that way. But as a result, the stuff said in between segments is lost.

This was a special case since we were waiting for James to return to clap and end the recording.

I got a lot of positive feedback on it. Makes me glad! I do try to preserve this stuff when I can.

[rlse9]

Great episode, finally just finished listening to it.  I found the discussion of death in games quite interesting.  Personally, there's a couple games that stand out in my mind.  The first was Harvest Moon 64, when the grandmother who sat in her rocking chair outside the bakery died, it was really sad.  It was probably 15 years ago that I played the game and I still remember it.  The second is 999, especially the first time reaching the "ending," just dying all of a sudden out of nowhere was quite shocking.  The story was dark enough to that point, then having that happen took things to another level and made the second play through even more eerie, knowing you might just die and get a game over at any minute.