Messages

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TalkBack / Re: SPECIALS: Super Smash Bros. Brawl Online: How is it?

« on: May 18, 2008, 01:15:29 AM »

The way that Brawl's online has worked out is actually the reason I don't mind the lack of leaderboards. The value of online match results are questionable at best because of lag, so regardless of what position a person reached, there would (unfortunately) be nothing to say that the person earned that spot.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Your Online Experience with Brawl

« on: April 06, 2008, 11:26:43 PM »

I can generally get pretty decent battles with most of the people on my list (which is full; the 64 person limit really, really annoys me). Not lagless, though I've had maybe eight of those out of my two hundred matches or so, but the lag isn't horrible. Still, there's inconsistency. By this I mean that it's entirely possible that one day I could feel no lag while the person on the other end feels heavy lag, and the other day the situation would be reversed. Because of that, it's been difficult to get a handle on which people I play against are legitimately the best and worst. Whether I win or lose, or by how much, I'll never know how strongly a match result was influenced by the lag, and that makes me sad. I've started to lean pretty heavily toward free-for-alls and three-way matches for just that reason; if I can't get any conclusive results, might as well just play for a good time and random laughs. (I still turn off the items, though, even more often now than before since there are so many exceptionally powerful ones.)

But I will say that despite having it generally "fairly good," I've also had my share of uber lag, ranging from the stuttery pause-every-six-seconds battles to the "65% speed" brawls to the 1.5-second button input delay matches to one particularly noteworthy Rumble Falls friends match where the screen literally froze up for--without exaggeration--a good minute before all four of us resumed normal playing. Bizarre stuff.

[Spak-Spang]

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Nintendo Gaming / RE:Super Smash Bros. Brawl

« on: May 11, 2006, 02:46:26 PM »

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Originally posted by: Spak-Spang
We need more heavy characters though...and we really haven't found any great characters that could be slow and powerful.  I guess Wario works for being another heavy weight.

Jill from Drill Dozer. We need a mech character, more female characters, more heavyweights, and a female heavyweight power fighter. Jill fulfills all of those conditions.

[RickPowers]

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TalkBack / RE:Revolution Name Announced!

« on: April 27, 2006, 01:05:41 PM »

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Originally posted by: RickPowers
Official prediction: Gamers everywhere will go back to saying "I'm playing Nintendo." In that light, maybe this is a good move. But only in that light. In every other light, this is bowling-shoe ugly.

I agree, but the thing is that even then, they could have just called it "the Nintendo" and been better off for it.

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TalkBack / RE: Revolution Name Announced!

« on: April 27, 2006, 11:26:44 AM »

My thoughts were something like:

Awful name, it's like they thought that the DS was doing too well for comfort and decided they needed to assure that in the home console realm they'd stay firmly behind Sony.






Edit: Of course I'll still buy it, but only because I can't say no to SSB, Pokemon, and the virtual console. If those three things were taken out of the picture, I would have considered not buying any of the three next-gen home consoles and going portable-only.

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TalkBack / RE:Revolution Name Announced!

« on: April 27, 2006, 07:52:39 AM »

This is possibly the stupidest Nintendo decision in their history. It's almost like they decided that the DS was having too much success for comfort and they wanted to stay carefully behind Sony in marketshare.

Ugh. Revolution was infinitely better. I'll just hope that massive fan outrage in English-speaking countries convinces them to change their minds before they start producing the system.

[kirby_killer_dedede]

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TalkBack / RE:NOA Announces Brain Age for DS

« on: January 30, 2006, 03:48:37 PM »

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Originally posted by: kirby_killer_dedede
I know Artimus was being sarcastic, but if the focus remains on non-games, this coming gen may very well be Nintendo's last generation as a console maker.

What focus? Nintendogs, Electroplankton, and two Brain Training titles don't equal a focus on non-gaming. That's all of four titles compared to over three times more standard Nintendo games on the system: Advance Wars, Animal Crossing, Yoshi, Wario Ware, Princess Peach, Mario Kart, Metroid, Pokemon Trozei, Pokemon Mysterious Dungeon, Tetris, Metroid Pinball, Mario 64, Kirby, Mario and Luigi, and probably others I'm forgetting or that were less noteworthy.

Quote
Originally posted by: Ian Sane
True but what if Nintendo fails to create this new market in North America? Then they risk being stuck with a bunch of games that the existing market has no interest in.

Four titles are hardly "a bunch," especially when one's sold exclusively over the Internet and another one performed extremely well.

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TalkBack / RE: Square Enix Handheld Blowout

« on: October 05, 2005, 04:26:57 PM »

Finally, one of my top ten games, FFVI, is coming to where it rightfully belongs on GBA... I just hope they can manage to do the soundtrack justice. Only RPG other than Chrono Trigger that I've played through a dozen times.

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TalkBack / RE: New DS Colors to Come Bundled with Nintendogs

« on: September 21, 2005, 04:49:09 PM »

The pink one is going to sell like hotcakes among the female demographic, especially since it's coming out reasonably close to the holidays.

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TalkBack / RE:<b>Zelda Delayed to 2006</b>

« on: August 16, 2005, 08:52:58 AM »

Argh. First they try too hard to make the release date with Wind Waker, then after fan backlash they give themselves too much time with Twilight Princess. Blast, they got the wrong idea... Twilight Princess was really, really needed at this point in time with the incoming X-Box 360, in the same way that Donkey Kong Country help offset the PS1 in the earlygoings.
Still... Gamecube, I suppose, isn't really in the position to counter the X-Box 360 anyway in the US, so maybe it's a moot point. (As far as Japan goes, the X-Box is outsold on a daily basis by the original no-backlighting GBA over there, so I don't believe the 360 could sell with anything less than a new Dragon Quest.) Still, sad that Nintendo's going to miss the holiday season... and possibly infringe on their own sales of whichever Pokemon game(s) they've made available by that point in Japan.

One more thing...

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"While this may come as a disappointment to many eager fans, it will absolutely enrich the game and make it a multi-million seller."

...Zelda would have been a multi-million seller no matter what. I just want to know exactly what it is they're adding, since it's not like there haven't been worthwhile reasons for delays in the past, e.g. multiplayer in Goldeneye. "New levels" and "more depth" is pretty generalized, and so I can't respond to this article from a gaming standpoint--only a business one.

If the extra depth is making enemies an actual challenge--something that was painfully lacking from OoT and WW--then great.
If the depth is 20 more NPCs to the town, then no, I don't care.
If it's adding some kind of Majora's Mask-style quest involving helping multiple NPCs in town, I'd consider caring.
If it's ten more ways to use the sword, I'd consider it again. The thing is, WW had flaws, but it already had a truly awesome fighting system, so I don't really see a need for improvement there.
If it's adding extra items, items that are actually cool as opposed to the generic-fests that were OoT and WW (as opposed to MM, which owned), hopefully items with the sheer variety and fun factor seen in A Link to the Past (Cane of Somaria, Cane of Byrna, Pegasus Boots), Oracle of Seasons (Magnetic Gloves, Roc's Cape, Hyper Slingshot), Oracle of Ages (Switch Hook), and The Minish Cap (Mole Mitts, Cane of Pacci), then I'd put up with a delay of 15 months, never mind 6.

There are just too many unknown variables for me to react too strongly one way or the other.

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TalkBack / RE:Nintendo Drops DS Price $20

« on: August 16, 2005, 08:12:14 AM »

Go Advance Wars and Nintendogs. Sales should be interesting; I seem to recall the first two AW games sold about 785,000 combined--that being when nobody outside Japan had even heard of them before--and of course I'll be waiting to see the Western reaction to the puppies...

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TalkBack / RE:EDITORIAL: The Moment

« on: June 30, 2005, 10:36:27 PM »

I have to say, the funny thing is that it's not necessarily my very favorite games that make me feel "the moment." SSBM is my favorite standalone (e.g. non-Pokemon) game, but I never FEEL the characters or am able to suspend my disbelief; reaction and instinct are intuitive, but knowing there's a percentage counter and a life counter at the bottom of the screen wrecks it for me. And the overall Pokemon franchise is hovering somewhere around SSBM--I'm not sure whether above or below--but absolutely never gives me some kind of emotional connection. The FR/LG end credits, which also pan over all the areas you've visited, just don't come close to the tugging-my-heart feel of the similar end credits in Wind Waker or Earthbound or Majora's Mask or Mario 64 or even Mario KART 64.

Meanwhile, Tales of Symphonia is only my third favorite, yet was also the first game to ever make me cry. I KNEW Colette when she told Lloyd that she'd be waiting for her birthday present from him and "even if I become an angel, I'll always be waiting." Here was this pair of teenagers who had been best friends throughout their life and overcome every challenge waiting before them--and I'd seen them do it, from the first boss slaughtering me about as much as a first boss SHOULD slaughter a group of completely inexperienced warriors to other seal guardians tearing me up even after I knew what I was doing--and for once they were faced with something insurmountable. At the ages of about 16, they should have believed they were invincible, as people that young tend to do; at the ages of about 16, they resigned themselves to the fact that they weren't. The best they could muster up was a vague denial that getting through it was possible.

And then there's (the IMO highly underrated) F-Zero GX, where the machines are simply moving so fast that you're caught up in the fury and the intensity and the passion until eternity collapses into seconds and an experience becomes immortalized, and the entire race is a perfection never seen before and never seen again. It's difficult to describe--but easy to feel.

How many other games could I mention? The frantic fervor of Goldeneye multiplayer. Using the Suplex power in the Dyna Blade "bonus levels" in Kirby Super Star. The entire ending of Chrono Trigger in the version where you destroy the time machine by flying it into Lavos (because in other versions of the main ending, there's a flubbed line of dialogue), especially when Marle and Crono fly away on balloons while the really fantastic theme "To Far Away Times" is playing. The mad rush for survival in certain missions of Advance Wars 2.

These are the things that make a game great. The number of things I can do is irrelevant; the quality of the things I ACTUALLY do is all that matters. If Wind Waker involved nothing but its very well-realized fighting system, I'd easily take it over a game like GTA, which has a plethora of things to do, but implements almost none of them in a truly top-notch fashion. In that regard, I think I fully see what Nintendo meant so long ago when they were promoting "quality, not quantity"...

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TalkBack / RE: Revolution Downloads and Wireless Connection Detai

« on: June 07, 2005, 09:26:21 PM »

I'm expecting some kind of point system. Something along the lines of this:


Costs:
NES game: 20 points
SNES game: 40 points
N64 game: 60 points


Rewards for registering various things on Nintendo's website:
Gamecube: 50 points
Game Boy Advance (any type): 50 points
DS: 75 points
Revolution: 100 points
Gamecube game: 20 points
GBA game: 20 points
DS game: 30 points
Revolution game: 30 points
Revolution accessory (e.g. controller, memory card): 10 points


Something like that. Probably different values from what I'm thinking, but yeah, I'm still expecting something vaguely like it.

[Ian Sane]

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TalkBack / RE:Nintendo's Download Plan STILL Tentative

« on: June 06, 2005, 03:57:27 PM »

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Originally posted by: Ian Sane
Is anyone here going to download games they already have?  This isn't like the GBA where there's justification to buy a game a second time to play it on the go.  You're going to be playing these downloaded games on a TV with a controller so realistically there won't be any difference between playing it on the original console or on the Rev (the NES would be an exception though since NES hardware is pretty unreliable).

Kirby Super Star + Super Mario World + Super Mario World 2 + A Link to the Past + Ocarina of Time + Majora's Mask + Super Smash Bros. + Mario Kart 64 + Mario Kart + Star Fox 64 + Super Metroid + Pokemon Snap + Mario 64 + Mario Paint + Earthbound take up a fair amount of physical space, whereas flash memory (and/or an SD Card) doesn't. That's pretty much all the justification I need.

[Sugaruss]

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Nintendo Gaming / RE:press conference letdown

« on: May 18, 2005, 12:58:55 PM »

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Originally posted by: Sugaruss
And game downloads that most of us own already, or have downloaded onto our computers/xboxs.

Recognize that not everybody is the type of hardcore gamer you most likely are--you know, the type who actually spends spare time on the Internet talking about games, and who spends time tracking down emulators.
There's nothing wrong with being like that, since obviously I'm here too, but you're making it sound like Internet piracy is as popular now as music downloads at the height of the Napster craze, which isn't true.

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dedicating even 1 second to a game such as nintendogs in the press conference, a game that isn't even new and has no real appeal in america

Way to try and speak for everybody in the country. A lot of people find it appealing.