Messages

76

Nintendo Gaming / RE:Unofficial Polarium Thread

« on: April 27, 2005, 09:16:38 PM »

Hrm, I'm looking at puzzle 49 right now, if I remember it correctly, and I probably don't, you cannot get all of the white tiles to turn black (assuming that white is the color of the godzilla)  You have to have some rows where you change everything but the godzilla.  Try starting at the bottom and working your way up, stay coloring in the godzilla as long as you can until you reach its "head" then think about going outside the godzilla in order to finish.  This was a decent puzzle, but the ones that I am on now are much, much harder.

One thing that I found that really helps is that sometimes it looks to be a white puzzle on a black background and other times a black puzzle on a white background.  Changing the way you look at it by clicking menu and reselecting the same puzzle can sometimes let you see the solution easier.

I think I found that the puzzle mode can help you warm up for the challenge mode.  The puzzle mode really helps you mentally.  If you go into challenge mode dead set on changing all black tiles to white, you will die quickly.  You have to be able to quickly look at the blocks and find the most economical line to draw.

Also, when the pink layer of blocks hits the bottom (signifying a new difficulty) it clears the screen.  So keep those block a hair away from hitting bottom and play on above them to build up your score.  When you're about to die, trigger that last block to allow the pink ones to hit the bottom and thus clearing your screen.

Good luck to you all,
if anyone needs help on a puzzle I'll do my best.  FAQ's are available for it on gamefaqs.com already but if you want a hint rather than a solution, feel free to ask.


Also, hints are available in game, either small box next to the word "Hint" in the puzzle menu enables in game hints.  If you sit there long enough, it will show you start and stop points if you selected the right hint box, or what route you took last time you tried to solve the puzzle if you selected the left box.  These hints are only shown on the top screen.

Good luck,
Blueflame

77

Nintendo Gaming / RE:Unofficial Polarium Thread

« on: April 27, 2005, 09:06:33 AM »

I bought Polarium the day that it showed up at my local EB, so far I'm up to puzzles 71-80, and I have 5 of those done (72-76).  My high score on challenge is 99385 with 232 lines cleared, it earned me a grade of D-  

Challenge is seriously tough.

The stock puzzles are weird for me though, either I get them in just a few seconds or it takes me like an hour.  I dont quite know why that is.  I really like the game though.  I bought it and promised that I'd save most of it for my plane flight to LA in May (To E3!!) but alas, that hasn't worked out so well.

I'd probably give this game's single player mode a 7.5 out of 10, I'm still waiting for one of my other friends to go buy it, its just a matter of time before I get to experience the multiplayer aspect.

Tetris, you suck next to polarium.

-Blueflame

78

Nintendo Gaming / RE: DS: Online on April 11th?

« on: April 10, 2005, 08:02:04 PM »

Wow, that really sucks.   Oh well.  We'll just have to wait a few more months for Metroid or Mario Kart or Animal Crossing or whatever the first title to feature internet play is.  Darn.  Oh, if anyone is going to E3...see ya there.   :-)

79

Nintendo Gaming / RE:Metroid: Hunters Online?

« on: April 04, 2005, 03:53:25 PM »

Well, a few hours ago Cube-Europe copied the SPOnG story, quite literally.  Apparently they believe it enough, or want to believe it enough, to mirror it on their site.  Whether that gives it any more credibility or not, I couldn't say.

Link: http://www.cube-europe.com/news.php?nid=7586

-Blueflame

80

Nintendo Gaming / Metroid: Hunters Online?

« on: April 04, 2005, 07:40:21 AM »

SPOnG reported today that they "confirmed" that Metroid: Hunters will be fully online and will have a similar setup or similar functions to that of Halo 2.  However, I have yet to see any other site report on this.  It would be great news if indeed true.  Opinions/Facts?

-Blueflame

81

General Gaming / RE:Halo 2, Thoughts?

« on: November 12, 2004, 07:51:35 AM »

hey, I also found Halo 2 to be lackluster.  I thought that single player/co-op was boring, lacked good sniping levels, and focused way too much on close combat.  

I did like the destroyable vehicles as well as the ability to use melee attacks against the vehicles.

I do not like how difficult it is to actually board the tanks after you kill its previous occupant through said melee attacks.

The sword is fun for a little while, but in corridors it is almost unstopable unless you have a rocket launcher.  When you target your enemy with it you almost literally fly to your enemy and deal a 1 hit kill.  WAY overpowered.

Generally, I dont like the look or feel of multiplayer (i've played with anywhere from 2 people to 12 on a high speed LAN) no bots, annoying sign in/sign out system which changes who the dominant "first player" is, as well as limiting the game to 16 players, which is quite attainable in a fraternity or on Xbox Live.

As far as level designs go, most of them have too much "junk".  This goes double for Blood Gulch which should not have been edited AT ALL except for adding the hangars for the banshees.  Stupid rock formations and smaller level.

I'd suggest that Xbox owners go and actually RENT before buying, as single player can EASILY be beaten in 10 hours by a decent Halo player.

-blueflame

82

Nintendo Gaming / RE:Is the DS is being rushed?

« on: October 05, 2004, 06:49:22 AM »

This is what Nintendo loves to do.  They wait until its a little more than a month before release and go all out.  They build up anticipation during that month, which IMO is a lot better than M$ and hyping Halo 2 for...years.  Within the next week or so we should get a lot more info, hopefully launch lists and game prices, the two most important things.

Im guessing $35-$40 dollar games and about 15 launch titles.  But those are completely random guesses.  Hell, I know I'd pay 40 bucks if i could have some 16 player Goldeneye going on!

-Blue

83

Nintendo Gaming / RE: DS vs PSP....devs and journalists debate

« on: October 01, 2004, 09:12:34 AM »

I just  read a lot of *RUMORS* about developers already complaining about the PSP, supposedly there are very strict regulations on how to use the processor and how much disc-spin there can be due to the overwhelming load of crap that is the battery.  It goes so far as to say that processor performance may even decrease due to this.  How can you play an in-depth RPG, how can you watch a decent-length movie if the battery dies after 2 hours?  Let alone trying to watch any of the Lord of the Rings movies, or even worse, their extended editions! (ROTK:EE has a running time of over 4 hours!)

2-4 hour battery life is the current prediction
349.99 is the current price predition

My money is going to the DS, and im not just a Nintendo fan boy anymore, I own all 3 current generation systems.

-Blue

84

Nintendo Gaming / RE:DS Launch Titles

« on: October 01, 2004, 09:04:38 AM »

Any chance we can take your "Games not expected at launch" list and switch it with the "Games expected at launch" list?  Please!?

These lists really need a good RPG added to them.  Please tell me Camelot (Golden Sun, Golden Sun 2, Mario Golf) is secretly working on something amazing for DS.  Please!?

ooo...screw Squenix, i want  Camelot to make the next REAL Super Mario RPG (not paper mario, a real sequal)

Nintendo really needs about 15+ good quality launch titles in order to prove that this system has a good backing and that it isn't another Virtual Boy.

but those are just my thoughts.
-Blue

85

Nintendo Gaming / RE:Your pet peeves *in* games?

« on: August 12, 2004, 05:04:53 AM »

I'm really starting to hate block/crate/box puzzles.  Yeah! I get to push a block onto a switch again!  Its not like I haven't done it 100000000000 times before, but this time its soo original because there's 10 boxes and 10 switches!  That must mean its approximately 100 times the fun!  *&#%*(&$#% boxes....

I also dislike, as someone else stated, having to watch a cutscene or go through dialogue a second (or third, fourth or 5th) time after dying.  You should ALWAYS be able to skip past a dialogue/cutscene/FMV if you want to.

Oh, I just remembered: Cheap-ass computer opponents!  They cheat! I swear!  Just go play Mario Kart on Gamecube at 150cc or mirror mode in Grand Prix.  You can have as big a lead in first as you'd like, but then you're gonna get hit by 5 spiny blue shells, 4 red shells, a giant koopa shell, and then when ALL the computer opponents pass you they'll all drop banana peels and fake item boxes.  When I'm in last place I get bananna peels and green shells.  What the hell?  There are 100's of other examples of cheap computers, how I hate thee!

-Blue

86

TalkBack / RE:Conker Loves Playing Game Boy...

« on: August 10, 2004, 05:30:39 AM »

Eh, I have KI: Gold for N64 and it was indeed a decent game, but it was too easy.  I was able to beat the hardest difficulty, master?, using every character.  I just can't get excited about it and dont really care if its on gba or DS or not at all.  I do, however, want to see Rare continuing to develop for Nintendo handhelds, and MS will probably let them until sometime down the road they release their own handheld.

Oh, I dont really like how conker looks in that screen shot either.  The graphics are good, but Conker himself seems...wrong somehow.  He looks too much like a stuffed animal and not the chain smoking, liquor chugging womanizer we all know and love him as.

-Blue

87

Nintendo Gaming / RE: Final Fantasy?? EVER??

« on: August 06, 2004, 08:57:09 AM »

I'd rather have Tales of Symphonia 2 and a new Skies of Arcadia game than 100 Final Fantasy's.  When will it ever be the FINAL final fantasy?  In like 30 years from now they'll have Final Fantasy 40 X17 or something ridiculous like that and it will still be crap filled with FMV's every 3 seconds.

I think FMV's should be shown only a little bit in a videogame, like after boss fights, as an intro and as an ending.  See Starcraft or Diablo for beautiful examples.  

Oh, and I'd take 1 Blizzard FMV over 100 FF FMV's any day of the week and twice on tuesdays.

In effect: I dont care about FF.  

-Blue

88

Nintendo Gaming / RE:Why is storage such a freaking problem!?

« on: August 06, 2004, 08:50:10 AM »

Blackknight, what you're talking about is, in a way, similar to what i was talking about.  Both 3D memory blocks and nano-tech are alternative ways to get massive amounts of electronics - transistors or otherwise into a small amount of space.  Which will come first, however, I do not know.  Both stand to have HUGE amounts of storage memory, potentially even bigger than the PS3's blu-ray discs (23 gigabytes) and without moving parts like a hard drive.  However, I bet its going to be another generation or two or three before we see anything like that.  My bet is that Gameboy Advance 2 will be something like SD or compactflash...but proprietary of course.  Nintendo has never embraced a standard like cd's or dvd's because they are just too easy to pirate.

Just as sort of a sci-fi note, potentially the best harddrive will be crystal with each atom representing a bit of data, and that would be a HUGE storage capacity. (terrabytes+)

Of course, all of this is just pure speculation.
-Blue

p.s. in a related topic, windows users can partition their hard drives into exabytes(sp?)... 1 exabyte is more than sufficient to download the entire internet onto.  If any of you can actually do this *cough**only bill gates could...maybe**cough* let me know.

89

Nintendo Gaming / RE: Why is storage such a freaking problem!?

« on: August 05, 2004, 03:58:16 AM »

I dont think that its really if they get too small they burn out.  I think that the future of almost all electronics is nano-tech and that is a LOT smaller than any transistor.  Its more of how many transistors or whatever they can fit on a chip.

90

TalkBack / RE:Bill Gates Wants Nintendo

« on: August 05, 2004, 03:54:33 AM »

I dont even know if MS has enough money to buy Nintendo.  Sure Bill COULD sell all his stock in MS (which is where almost all his money is) but then he would trade being largest shareholder in MS to largest shareholder in Nintendo.  Frankly, I'd rather own MS than Nintendo simply because MS is a monopoly and Nintendo is fighting for its chunk of the market.   Anyway, any price Yamauchi would offer MS would be HUGE, and I think that MS stockholders would Kill Bill hehe.  A buyout of SEGA was more plausible until they got bought by Sammy, now thats rather unlikely as well.

Meh, all of this is moot, Yamauchi will NEVER sell (or die, he is invincible you know) and so therefore M$/Bill can't buy.

-Blue

91

Nintendo Gaming / RE:Why is storage such a freaking problem!?

« on: August 03, 2004, 12:21:56 PM »

Well, I thought that I'd just be the devils advocate here for a sec, please dont hate me. (oh, I use the term "cart" here to represent not only cartridge based media, but also disc based as all of the points apply to both)

Multiple carts:
Cost more money for the cart itself
Takes twice as much time to produce the same amount of games as single carts
Require a non-standard cart holder
Require coding in the game so that it will know when to ask to switch to cart 2
You have to get off of your butt and switch carts

Its not so simple as "lets just make multiple carts for a game because its so easy". There is a lot more that goes into it and for game makers it is probably a big pain in the butt.  Therefore, say, a competing cart that can hold 10x the memory of cart A would be looked upon favorably.

This argument doesn't stand up when a cart has more than enough room for ANYTHING the game maker may choose to put into a game.  However, this has NEVER happened so far.  Maybe if blue-ray discs become the standard in the future (as PS3 is said to use) the 30gb or whatever insane size the disc holds will finally be enough even for Square-Enix and their 20 hours of uncompressed FMV sequences.

92

Nintendo Gaming / Re-calibrating the touch screen

« on: August 01, 2004, 07:57:01 PM »

The one thing that I'm a bit worried about is that no one has commented on calibrating the touch screen.  For those of you who have never had a palm pilot or any other similar device, the touch screen tends to lose calibration.  In simple terms, after a while, when you touch some place with the stylus, it thinks you are actually touching the screen an inch lower, or to the right or basically somewhere where you are NOT touching.  In palm's there is some software that comes with them that allows the user to touch different areas of the screen when prompted to do so and it re-calibrates the touch screen.  HOWEVER, in some cases, the calibration gets so bad that you cannot even get to the menu to tell it to run the re-calibration program and you have to hard-restart the palm (which is BAD).  I hope Nintendo addresses both re-calibrating AND hard-restarting (which would not be so bad on the DS because there's no built in software to lose...or is there?)

Comments? Questions?
-Blue

93

Nintendo Gaming / RE:Connectivity to Revolution?

« on: August 01, 2004, 02:51:40 PM »

Heh, that "linksys" stuff.  LinkSys is a company, albeit a very good company IMO.  Its what they make, wireless routers, is what you are thinking about.  Wireless routers take the cable or dsl line from the wall and take the signal coming from those lines and broadcast it, generally in an area big enough for a medium sized house. That signal then is picked up by wireless adapters, wireless cards and electronics with those devices built into them, i.e. some new laptops, palm pilots, and the DS.  Basically, what this means is no more LAN wires.

Blue tooth is similar I suppose, but it doesn't connect to the internet really.  It creates a "home network" or intranet. (not INTERnet).  Basically, all bluetooth devices take in and send signals to other bluetooth compatible devices in a given area automatically.

Its kind of hard to explain in a non-tech way, but I tried.
-Blue

94

Nintendo Gaming / RE:Connectivity to Revolution?

« on: August 01, 2004, 09:58:46 AM »

Didn't I hear something a while back about Bluetooth on the DS?  I dont remember if it was actually implemented or if it was just a rumor.  If it was implemented, then the DS could talk to the Revolution, the GBA2  and whatever other Nintendo products that are released that use Bluetooth, like that camera thing people are speculating about or a keyboard.  Thats what makes sense to me.  I do not think that we're going to be seeing a whole lot of wires in the future.  

And my bet is that Revolution has 4 wireless controllers that use ion-lithium batteries like cell phones do and they hook up to the revolution or some other piece of hardware to charge when you're not using them.  But thats just speculation on my part.   But it would make it easier to use the DS or GBA2 as a controller for the Revolution right out of the box w/o the need for an adapter wire for whatever reason.  Sports games on revoltion where you could program your moves in with the DS touch screen maybe?  Again, more speculation. And if there is Bluetooth, it would be all so easy....

-Blue

95

Nintendo Gaming / RE: What does this button do...?

« on: July 28, 2004, 06:04:25 PM »

True Striker,  I actually forgot about that little bit o info. So it will probably either stay active or go into standby when its closed (my money on standby).  Well, other than complaining about how much the location of the power button sucks...or just that its a bit unusual this thread seems about dead, feel free to add comments though.
-Blue

96

Nintendo Gaming / RE: What does this button do...?

« on: July 28, 2004, 03:44:49 PM »

Just a question, where did you all read about any sleep or standby modes?  Oh, and I was just at the gcadvanced forum and they're complaining about the power button placement as well.  Same issues there as here.
-Blue

97

Nintendo Gaming / RE:Possible DS SP?

« on: July 28, 2004, 12:05:30 PM »

Very unlikely as displaying 2 3D screens would require massive amounts of processing power, HOWEVER, developers in the past have gone above and beyond even Nintendo's expectations for some things so there MAY be a way to have some 3D on both screens on the current DS.  However, I doubt that they'd make a DS-SP with that feature because it would be almost like releasing a new system, which would compete with the current DS.  I'm betting you'll see different color schemes and various accessories, camera, maybe a headset for earphones/microphone, and whatever other crap MadCatz can come up with.

Just my opinions though,
-Blue

98

Nintendo Gaming / RE: What does this button do...?

« on: July 28, 2004, 09:23:43 AM »

Its possible that maybe when you close it, after a few seconds it could go into a power saving mode like a laptop does? (or should, I disabled that feature on mine, hehe) I figure they'll try to save battery life anyway that they can.  But closing the DS would then have to have it so that the top screen doesn't hit the power button because that would turn it all the way off.

In short:
It PROBABLY wont turn off when you close it.
It MIGHT go into some powersave mode when you close it.
It NEEDS to have some failsafe so you can ONLY turn it OFF on purpose!

Comments? Anyone know anything for sure about this?
-Blue

99

Nintendo Gaming / RE: What does this button do...?

« on: July 28, 2004, 07:26:46 AM »

That is a frickin weird place for a power button.  Not to mention an odd looking power button.  What gives?  I dont want to be playing some action game (read: Metroid) and have my thumb slip and turn of my DS that would really really suck.  Also, when you close the DS does it turn off?  I hope that the power button isn't the same as the start/select buttons.  That would blow.
-Blue

100

Nintendo Gaming / What does this button do...?

« on: July 28, 2004, 04:53:33 AM »

Hey all, I was just checkin out the new DS pics, looks sweet IMO, but then I noticed something a bit odd.  On the right you have standard ABXY Start/Select buttons, but on the left above the D-Pad there's another button.  Whats that button do?  It may have been covered earlier/elsewhere but I couldn't find it.

Can someone let me know?
-Blue