Topic: off topic remarks about nintendo games that are no longer relevant.

[Stratos]

Starfox Adventures is a good game. It is worth a playthrough. Not worth a replay. I only wanted to replay one part: the 'fear' boss. Ifthere were more parts like that the game would have withstood the test of time better. I'd love to read some developer commentary on the production cycle of this game. It could have been great even with starfox forced in.

I think they needed more time and that was true problem. Nintendo dumped Rare because they were not efficient in their development cycles. Remember both Banjo-Kazooie and Conker were delayed multiple times for reasons like quality control. That was how Nintendo Power cited it. Nintendo constantly had to clean up their work.

Other than the loss of the IPs, Nintendo made a good decision in dumping Rare.

[BranDonk Kong]

I would imagine most reviewers only played it for a couple of hours before posting their thoughts. It was pretty good, but it was also pretty bad.

[Ian Sane]

I'm a major Rare supporter.  I think it was incredibly stupid for Nintendo to sell Rare off.  Rare may have turned to crap with MS but the Rare/Nintendo team was really something special and the threw that away for nothing.  The worst Rare game during the Nintendo years was SFA, which was probably hurt by the circumstances surrounding its development.

But SFA really isn't very good.  It's not just the Star Fox elements being tacked on.  The emphasis on collecting doodads is through the roof.  The fighting is pretty much straight up button mashing.  Ricky is super annoying.  The real-time menu is very good at getting your ass killed as you try to switch items in the middle of a fight.  There are also all sorts of little annoying specific parts.  The test of strength where you had to button mash like crazy was terrible (I had to get my brother to do it for me) and I gave up on an annoying part where I had to move exploding barrels through some sort of air ducts.  After having it fail for the 100th time I gave up on the game for good.  I wanted to like it but it was just an exercise in tedium.

But I think it COULD have been a good game under different circumstances.  Unlike Rare's other Nintendo games it feels like it lacks enthusiasm.  The game was moved from the N64 to the Gamecube and had Star Fox shoehorned in by decree of almighty Nintendo and surely the guys working on it knew that Nintendo and Rare were getting divorced (a quick look at Wikipedia reveals that the sale took place literally the day after SFA was released).  If I had come up with Dinosaur Planet and then had all these outside circumstances butting in I would lose emotional connection to project and would phone it in.  It wouldn't feel like "my" game anymore.  And I figure that's exactly what Rare did.  I figure if it stayed as Dinosaur Planet and Rare and Nintendo stuck together the game would have turned out as well as Rare's other Nintendo games.

And what reason did Nintendo have to sell Rare since their only truly poor game under Nintendo was the last one and Nintendo certainly would have started negotiations with MS well before they knew how the game was turning out (DK64 wasn't so hot but I see that game as hubris as opposed to poor work)?  So they took a while to make their games?  Uh, yeah, and how many times has Nintendo themselves done the same thing?  It was just typical short-sighted Nintendo penny-pinching.  Did they even for a second consider the value of the variety to their lineup that Rare provided?  How would the N64 have done without Goldeneye, a game Nintendo themselves would NEVER have made?  How good of an idea was it to go from being the top console for FPS games on the N64 to being by far the WORST for the genre on the Gamecube just as FPS was to become the most common and popular genre in videogames?  Rare was the MVP of the N64 - the one concession Playstation fans were willing to give Nintendo.  But let's just piss that all away and scratch our heads while the Gamecube flounders.

[Luigi Dude]

The thing is Nintendo didn't really sell Rare since they never owned them.  Nintendo had 49% of the studio while the Stamper Bros owned the majority 51%.  The Stampers wanted to sell their majority but Nintendo didn't feel Rare was worth the price the Stampers were asking for and so the Stampers offered it to other companies and Microsoft ended up being the one to buy it.

So it's not like Nintendo suddenly said they didn't like Rare anymore and sold their ass to Microsoft as punishment.  Had the Stampers not gotten greedy then Nintendo and Rare would still be working to this day.

[toddra]

Ian's remarks are exactly why I drew that conclusion. The game was no different than any real Zelda game, **** people talk about a certain dungeon that is damn near impossible as the highlight of the series but when a game that doesn't star everyone's favorite elven hero suddenly it's a bad game? I beat it in less than a week and it took me twenty years to finally finish Zelda NES. My sister who was 17 at the time beat it no problem same with this eight year old girl she used to baby sit. The final boss was  a piece of cake it was so easy it should have been a crime.


Let's not evaluate it based on the controversy lets just look at the game, Donkey Kong Country, etc are notorious collect-a-thons but those are heralded as great games. Zelda games are revered due to their difficulty and if one is too easy it gets a bad rep. There were no other games at the time it was released that came anywhere near the level of graphical detail, depth, scope, and cinematics that game had. It was easily on par with Metroid Prime but because of the controversy people refuse to give it a fair shake. I call BS on it because not just the really great reviews but because those who do hate on it tend to admit to not finishing the game. Is it Zelda good, no by no means, personally I felt it was on par with if not better than Wind Waker but that is a bannable offense in the minds of some Nintendo fans.

Contra is almost unbeatable without cheating and that is regarded as one of the greatest games of all time, the difficulty of Star Fox Adventures is not in the controls which were a piece of cake once you mastered them, no different than Metroid Prime by the way which was just as complicated at times. I stand by my belief that it was the controversy and the Star Fox debacle being the root of this games hate nothing more. People tend to let their emotions get in the way of having a good time. Thankfully I skipped most of Rares games on the N64 and I wasn't a huge fan of Star Fox to begin with so I went in with an open mind and guess what, I enjoyed it tremendously. Those who admit to hating it also freely admit to either never beating it or bringing up the rare incident only providing further support to my claims. Even so it's all in the past and a newcomer who has no emotional ties to Rare or Star Fox should be advised to give it a play through and judge for themselves. But keeping in mind it is incredibly dated by todays standards, being it is over a decade old.

[Ian Sane]

The thing is Nintendo didn't really sell Rare since they never owned them.  Nintendo had 49% of the studio while the Stamper Bros owned the majority 51%.  The Stampers wanted to sell their majority but Nintendo didn't feel Rare was worth the price the Stampers were asking for and so the Stampers offered it to other companies and Microsoft ended up being the one to buy it.

So it's not like Nintendo suddenly said they didn't like Rare anymore and sold their ass to Microsoft as punishment.  Had the Stampers not gotten greedy then Nintendo and Rare would still be working to this day.

I would figure Rare's IP like Banjo, Perfect Dark or Killer Instinct would have been worth the price alone since the general public associated them as Nintendo IP.  Imagine some hypothetical situation where R&D1 was somehow their own entity and were going to leave and take Kid Icarus and Metroid with them.  What price would be too high to let those Nintendo franchises leave?  Realistically Nintendo lost some of their franchises by letting Rare leave.

Though now I wonder if that's why Nintendo seems so much more sequel-focused then before, how almost every partnership seems to involve pre-existing Nintendo IP.  They don't want the partner to have their own IP that's associated with Nintendo but would be taken away if the partnership disolved.  If Good Feel make's Kirby's Epic Yarn instead of the new IP they originally had planned for it the game's rights must remain with Nintendo forever because of Kirby.  Hell, maybe that's why they changed Dinosaur Planet to Star Fox - so that whoever bought Rare couldn't port a Gamecube exclusive to a different system.

[pokepal148]

can we take this whole rareware discussion elsewhere...

[toddra]

I am confused isn't that like the point of the thread?

[Wah]

I dig at me that's what!

[pokepal148]

I am confused isn't that like the point of the thread?

yes but the discussion is moving more towards revisionist history...

[LucarioGirl69]

Stop picking on my brother please, ONLY I AM ALLOWED TO DO THAT!

[Dasmos]

I am confused isn't that like the point of the thread?

yes but the discussion is moving more towards revisionist history...

You don't own the thread, mate. Quit member moderating.

[Fatty The Hutt]

Started playing Kirby Dream Course on the Wii U VC two nights ago. Great game. Never played it before. I would love a 3DS version (not a port but a new game) because the game has a nice "chill" pace and would be fun to noodle around with on my commute.


My son and I were playing for awhile and started to get into purposely trolling with the game, trying to make outrageous shots. Made us laugh pretty hard. Would be neat to see an incentive system worked into a sequel game to award "trick" shots and earn spendable points or something.

[Phil]

I would like a new Mole Mania.

[toddra]

If Nintendo is going to dig up old franchises to resurrect can I suggest they find out how to acquire the rights to Turrican and bring that into the new millennium?

[Toruresu]

NES Punch Out. It's been oh so long and I STILL can't defeat Bald Bull.

[lolmonade]

If Nintendo is going to dig up old franchises to resurrect can I suggest they find out how to acquire the rights to Turrican and bring that into the new millennium?

I LOVED that game as a kid, but I played it on an Amiga computer...what consoles did that franchise release on?
 
I need to revisit that and see if it holds up.

[toddra]

The first Turrican was also on Turbo Grafx 16 and Genesis, both were superior to the Amiga in different ways. Then there were the Genesis games Mega Turrican which was Turrican 3 on Amiga and Universal Soldier on Genesis which was Turrican 2 on Amiga. The SNES had two original games Super Turrican and Super Turrican 2. There was supposed to be a 3D sequel for the N64 but it somehow fell a part.

[lolmonade]

NES Punch Out. It's been oh so long and I STILL can't defeat Bald Bull.

Bald Bull gives me fits when fighting him, but it's the 2nd fight with Don Flamenco that stops me in my tracks.  I've never been able to get past him, I just can't time his special move right.

[BranDonk Kong]

I think I just realized that the intro to DragonForce's "Through the Fire and Flames" is the same as the "guitar part" of Bowser's Castle(s) in Super Mario Bros...or at least very close.

[Wah]

Good work!

[pokepal148]

am i the only one who thinks luigi's whole kitune thing for the raccoon/tanooki suit is stupid.

I also think the statue ability should have been a switch palace type deal.

and i am very dissapointed there wasn't a level based on this

[pokepal148]

Been playing NSMB2 because I picked it up recently and while I agree that the level design isn't as good as Mario U there are definitely alot of points in the game where you go "ok that's pretty clever."