Messages

1176

General Gaming / Re: *sadface* Whatever happened to good ole Splitscreen MP.

« on: October 16, 2015, 03:29:46 PM »

I bought Dragon's Crown for the PS3 expecting it to be a fun game to play co-op with my brother.  We've played it once.  I bought the latest BlazBlu with the idea again that I could play with my brother.  We've played it once.  It isn't that we dislike these games it's just that we don't live together anymore so the time to play together, like we did during the Gamecube days when we both still lived with our parents, isn't there.  I don't want to play with strangers so multiplayer is pretty much worthless to me now.  If no one pointed out that splitscreen isn't a thing anymore I probably wouldn't have noticed.  Any outrage I have over the concept disappearing is entirely in principle as I'm not personally impacted by it.  However in the future if I have kids and want to play with them the lack of a feature would be annoying.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: NX Rumors and Speculation Thread (Only the best industry-leading [potato] chips!)

« on: October 16, 2015, 01:29:43 PM »

I find it hard to believe most of this information, as it is very un characteristic of Nintendo.

If the NX is to not share the same fate as the Wii U then it needs to be uncharacteristic of Nintendo.

I like what the article is stating.  It has important stuff like comparable hardware with the competition.  If they failed on that again the NX would be DOA.

While I never had any faith in the Wii U, I felt it was doomed once Sony revealed that they weren't going to be anti-consumer with the PS4 and then MS backpedaled and followed suit with the Xbox One.  There was this hope at the time that Sony and MS were going to have anti-consumer features that would force always-online authentication and lock out used games and stuff like that and that the Wii U would benefit from being consumer-friendly.  Once that was not the case, the Wii U was finished.  All Nintendo had was an outdated console with a weird controller, no third party support, and a price that was not THAT much cheaper than the other guys.  The one hope it had was that the market would reject the new generation Sony and MS were offering and that didn't happen.

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TalkBack / Re: NX Development Kits Being Distributed

« on: October 16, 2015, 12:30:25 PM »

A normal console lifespan has been five years and the Wii U will last four which as Tophatant said is the same as the Xbox.  It also beats out the Saturn and Dreamcast and infamous flops like the 3DO and Jaguar.  The Dreamcast didn't even last two years in North America before it was discontinued so the Wii U isn't anywhere near the shortest lifespan.

So Nintendo is still going to stubbornly stick to that outrageous Wii U price, right?  Is it going to stay $300 until the NX console comes out?  I can actually see that happening.  This isn't even like some rumour on a fan site.  The Wall Street fuckin' Journal is reporting it.  For all intents and purposes it has officially been revealed that the Wii U is getting replaced so how do they expect people to buy the thing this Christmas at full price?  The jig is up!  Cut the damn price!

Oh and this is more or less a confirmation about the two platforms, one OS thing, isn't it?

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General Gaming / Re: *sadface* Whatever happened to good ole Splitscreen MP.

« on: October 15, 2015, 01:03:15 PM »

Here is the unfortunate nature of the situation:

Those that grew up with split-screen multiplayer are now older and lead different lives than they did back then.  They have spouses and kids and jobs and having their friends all play together in the living room doesn't make sense like it did in high school or college.  Playing online has the flexibility that if you're okay playing with strangers there is always someone to play with which better fits a 35 year old's schedule.

Meanwhile the kids whose lives are currently in the same situation that was so favourable for split-screen multi when we were the same age have no nostalgic fondness for it.  It doesn't show up that much anymore and we may not like that but the kids today don't know better.  Split-screen was to some extent a fudge to work around a lack of online play.  That's not an issue today so most games stopped bothering.  The kids today never really knew it and have lived their whole lives in the internet age so they're not demanding it or are even familiar enough with it to know if they would want it.

1180

Movies & TV / Re: Wait...Why is she "Princess" Leia?

« on: October 14, 2015, 03:26:09 PM »

She's a Princess because there was nothing that contradicted that back in 1977.  George Lucas just happens to be the right kind of stupid to contradict his own fictional works over 20 years later despite the fact that with fiction you just decide what happens and thus can make anything fit.

In Return of the Jedi Luke asks Leia if she remembers her real mother and she DOES despite her real mother dying ten seconds after her birth in Episode III and her "knowing" her real mother just as long as Luke does.  That sure as hell doesn't make any fucking sense but, again, "Lucas is a dumbass" is as good an explanation as any.  Leia's title makes tons of sense in comparison to something like that.

So I'm guessing the "prequels were a mistake, it's nothing but trash".

This was explained to me: Leia has a different type of Force Sensory than Luke, that's why she could sense his danger on Bespin in Empire Strikes Back. She only becomes "aware" of it after she learns her father and brother were both Jedi (i.e.: knowing Luke was safe in Return of the Jedi). It was told that she can detect the feelings of a person better than most cause of her powers but didn't hone them till much later...something I spect we see in The Force Awakens!

I have heard of that but it is very elaborate explanation for something that in 1983 was easily summed up with "Luke and Leia were separated at birth.  Leia was kept with her mother and thus got to know her before she died when Leia was young enough that her memories from then are fuzzy."  That's the simple way that anyone would have interpreted that scene when Return of the Jedi came out.  This "she has a different type of Force powers" explanation is unnecessarily complicated and is only the sort of thing someone would come up with if they messed up and contradicted their own movie and needed to "fix" their mistake with a retcon.  Until now I never even saw the Bespin thing as Leia's powers but Luke using the Force to call out to a friend for help.  Who else was he going to call out to?  Han's in carbonite, he doesn't know who Lando is at that point, presumably can't use the Force to call out to droids.  It was Leia or Chewie.

George Lucas has more or less admitted that he made this stuff up as he went and a lot of writers do that so it's not really anything to hold against him.  So Leia is a Princess because that's what he decided when he made Star Wars and it made perfect sense until he tried to fill in the blanks with the prequels.  It was his responsibility to make sure that everything fits without resorting to complicated and confusing explanations and he did not do a good job of that.  So you can go with whatever explanation he has used or pretend it's 20 years ago when you didn't know much about Leia's parents so you just assumed she was the daughter of a king of some sort.

If we want to get into geeky stuff you figure the title wouldn't come from Queen Amidala because then wouldn't it be common knowledge that she was Anakin Skywalker's kid?  Clearly Darth Vader has no idea he has a daughter.

1181

TalkBack / Re: Twilight Princess Icon Spotted In Wii U eShop

« on: October 14, 2015, 12:25:48 PM »

I got the Cube version simply because it was the only Wii launch title that interested me and I already had a Gamecube and it's not like the Wii version was clearly superior so why would I pay for a whole new console for a game on a system I already own?  It's the same reasoning that has kept me from buying a PS4 as a lot of games are still getting PS3 releases.

Of course the Wii version is the first example of "waggle" in a game.  It isn't speculation that they assigned button presses to remote shakes, we KNOW they did it because we have the Cube version as a reference.  And even for those that like motion controls I imagine TP probably feels weird and half-baked after playing Skyward Sword.

1182

TalkBack / Re: Twilight Princess Icon Spotted In Wii U eShop

« on: October 13, 2015, 06:27:32 PM »

So we could see a situation where the Wii U had remakes of both Gamecube games but no new Zelda designed specifically for it.  That just doesn't seem right. Cue the "Zelda is still coming to the Wii U" optimists.

It would be cool if Nintendo offered a version of TP that allowed for both control schemes.  They clearly didn't offer traditional controls on the Wii version because they wanted to "sell" us on the motion control concept.  There is no need to push any sort of agenda this time.

Does it seem feasible however for Nintendo to reveal something like this out for 2015 with such short notice?  There's really only a six week release window remaining that makes sense for a 2015 release.

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TalkBack / Re: Yo-Kai Watch Demo Announced For North America

« on: October 13, 2015, 06:16:42 PM »

Cool!  I definitely want to give this a try.

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Movies & TV / Re: Wait...Why is she "Princess" Leia?

« on: October 13, 2015, 05:36:02 PM »

She's a Princess because there was nothing that contradicted that back in 1977.  George Lucas just happens to be the right kind of stupid to contradict his own fictional works over 20 years later despite the fact that with fiction you just decide what happens and thus can make anything fit.

In Return of the Jedi Luke asks Leia if she remembers her real mother and she DOES despite her real mother dying ten seconds after her birth in Episode III and her "knowing" her real mother just as long as Luke does.  That sure as hell doesn't make any fucking sense but, again, "Lucas is a dumbass" is as good an explanation as any.  Leia's title makes tons of sense in comparison to something like that.

1185

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Should/will Nintendo follow PS4 price cut

« on: October 09, 2015, 07:11:23 PM »

Let's face it, Nintendo may have stepped up their game with Splatoon, but the onl way the Wii U will ever stand toe-to-toe with its competitors is if Nintendo went for the obvious current cash cows, the super hard dungeon crawler or the open-world, open-ended action adventure, which they're only getting with XCX and Zelda. And those are comin at the end of thei console's life cycle.

The only way it could stand toe-to-toe would be if Nintendo somehow released a new Wii U game that is such a must-own killer app that it completely negates all of the Wii U's shortcomings in the minds of consumers.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Should/will Nintendo follow PS4 price cut

« on: October 09, 2015, 04:30:28 PM »

The Wii U isn't going to make a comeback but they've got some great games that I think would be enticing at a lower entry price.

I'd wager this is exactly the reason why we won't get a price cut until end-of-life.  This isn't going to influence sales in a meaningful way, why cut into their own profits then?

I was thinking "comeback" more in the sense of the Wii U suddenly becoming a very successful product that competes toe-to-toe with the competition.  That is never happening.  But I think a price cut would help them maximize the sales potential the Wii U does have.  More Wii U's sold also increases the potential sales for all of the first party games.

In regards to cutting the Gamepad, as someone who works in software development, the idea of patching the existing games to work without them really sounds nutty this far in.  Nintendo has to pay someone's salary for them to update their games to work without the Gamepad.  Not just "someone" but multiple developers, likely from multiple teams since different teams worked on different games and an outsider working with the code would be more inefficient.  And they have to test this stuff as well and that's more paid salary time.  Are Wii U sales going to improve enough to make up the costs of that?  Getting your employees to spend time doing something is usually the most expensive cost for a company.

And what about third party games?  I know there aren't many but third parties would have to either have their game become incompatible with newer model Wii U's or they have to spend the development costs to patch it.  They're already pretty peeved at Nintendo over the Wii U's poor performance and Nintendo needs them for the successor.  How would they react to Nintendo plopping that in their laps?

1187

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Should/will Nintendo follow PS4 price cut

« on: October 09, 2015, 01:21:56 PM »

Getting rid of the Gamepad makes no sense so soon after releasing Super Mario Maker, which is probably the best implementation of the Gamepad to date.

Nintendo should cut the price because the Wii U is not very enticing as a primary console because it has practically no third party support at all.  All it has going for it are Nintendo's own games.  People are okay with buying a Nintendo-only machine as a second console and that was actually part of the Wii's success.  But this current price point is too high for that.  Nintendo has to suck it up and admit the Wii U is what it is.  For a discounted price it is worth it as a companion to the other consoles.  At $300 it is too expensive for that role and it has too thin of a lineup to work as the main console for anyone but a devoted Nintendo nut - and they've already bought the damn thing.  The Wii U isn't going to make a comeback but they've got some great games that I think would be enticing at a lower entry price.

1188

Nintendo Gaming / Should/will Nintendo follow PS4 price cut

« on: October 08, 2015, 04:12:10 PM »

Sony just lowered the price of the PS4 to $350.  https://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/release/151008_e.html

So that puts it only $50 more than the Wii U's $300 price tag.  This price covers bundles too.  I look at Best Buy's site and the Uncharted bundle is at $350 so both Sony and Nintendo are offering pack-in games.

So does Nintendo cut the Wii U price now?  Of course we don't know if they actually can without taking a loss.  I also figure that "will they" and "should they" are different questions.

I want them to and I haven't shut up about that over the last several months.  They cut the price and I'll buy it.  Now that Sony has cut the price, and seemingly out of nowhere as I don't feel they needed to, I don't see how Nintendo can get away with not doing so.  It just seems like misplaced arrogance to keep the price up now, unless they really are facing serious losses if they do so.

1189

TalkBack / Re: Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water (Wii U) Hands-on Preview

« on: October 07, 2015, 07:29:54 PM »

Content being in digital format affects how I value that content. Without the ability to loan, trade, or resell a game it loses value in my eyes and I choose actively refuse pay full retail price.

I don't think you're going to win NOA over with that argument since they see loaning, trading and reselling games as eating into their profits.

I prefer a physical release for longterm upkeep reasons (though NOA probably doesn't like THAT either).  If my old game systems break I can replace them and continue playing my existing games.  And I'm talking decades from now when the current products are long out of print and Nintendo isn't offering any transfer capability.  I have some digital only 3DS games and if my 3DS conks out in 2025 they're gone.  Physical releases also give you the option to replace a game.  I guess a solo digital release is not likely to get deleted somehow but right now if something happens to one of my old games I can go on eBay and buy an old used one.  So such option with a digital release.  In the future you'll have to resort to hacks and piracy to play old games that the rightsholder won't re-release.  With physical releases you can try to find a used copy without any legal issues.

Of course these days the security of a physical release is deceptive.  Splatoon has a physical release for example but it has tons of content that was released digitally after the fact.  Ten years from now when Nintendo no longer offers the patches getting a used physical copy of Splatoon will just get you only part of the experience.  Some physical releases will just not work worth a **** because they rely on patches.  We effectively are in the digital-only era anyway.  The second some crucial feature or bug fix is offered exclusively as a download that game effectively has no physical release.

1190

TalkBack / Re: On Death, Despair and Pandering Games

« on: October 05, 2015, 08:04:21 PM »

I tend to prefer Japanese games.  There is just a certain feel that games made by Japanese developers have that Western games do not.  The NES-to-PS2 time period that made up my childhood, teenage years and young adulthood (ie: the prime years one plays videogames) was also dominated by Japanese developers on consoles.  It just seems natural that a console gamer of my age would have such tastes.

The downturn in the Japanese market over the last ten years or so is why more and more Japanese games have this sort of weird pedo-pandering nonsense.  The Japanese mainstream isn't buying the games so they're focusing more on a niche market that eats this stuff up.  But there really isn't the need to pander to such an audience in the West.  There is a market of Western gamers that want to play good Japanese console/handheld games (ie: not mobile).  This sort of thing is unnecessary to attract the Western market and is also a turnoff.  Such devs could lose the larger Western customer base by pandering to a niche Japanese one.

It seems like the first Japanese devs to pick up on the fact that they could make games that have that Japanese "feel" but focus on Western gamers that grew up playing Final Fantasy, Mario, Castlevania, etc. will make a bundle.  Hell Western indies have already figured this out, busting out tons of NES-inspired games that have Japanese game design without sexy ten year olds mucking it all up.

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General Chat / Re: Official NFL Discussion: insanolord's hope for the Browns might somehow be alive

« on: September 21, 2015, 12:20:32 PM »

So the Seahawks traded their best offensive lineman in Max Unger for Jimmy Graham.  Seemed like a good move on paper to improve the offense.  Now the o-line sucks, and it was already the weakest link last year, and Jimmy Graham has been invisible.  But it doesn't even seem like Graham is being targeted in offensive plays.  So you trade a valuable player for someone that you then seemingly refuse to actually use?  WTF?!  Last year there was this whole thing where Percy Harvin, for whatever reason, wasn't fitting in with the offense.  At the time I just assumed it was on Harvin.  But now it looks like a repeat with Graham where someone that was a good receiver on another team just doesn't seem to work in our offense.  Hmmmm.  And this is the OC that called that idiotic pass in the Superbowl.  Something is up here.  No way BOTH Percy Harvin and Jimmy Graham just happen to be useless slugs that only thrived in the specific system of their prior team.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: NX Rumors and Speculation Thread (Unprecedented partnership with Square Enix?)

« on: September 18, 2015, 04:39:43 PM »

So are these scroll wheels replacements for the L&R buttons so that the button is now a clickable scroll wheel?  I can see issues with that if scrolling the wheel and pressing it do different things.  In the middle of intense play it may be difficult to accurately press the scroll wheel without also rotating it.  If both functions are used then you might accidently trigger the scrolling when you just intend to push it.

When people are really into a game they can tend to start waving the controller around and start really jamming on the buttons.  A good controller allows for accurate input within this sort of "stressful" playing.  I can't stand motion control or touchscreens because they're too ambiguous.  Did you swing the controller to do that action or are you just having difficulty keeping the controller still?  And I'll gladly also **** on the PS2 analog face buttons which had this horrible squishy feeling which made it ambiguous if you actually pushed the button or didn't.  You don't want that.  So a scroll wheel removes the "sturdiness" of a button and introduces two ways to push one button.  That suggests input ambiguity.  No good.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: NX Rumors and Speculation Thread (Unprecedented partnership with Square Enix?)

« on: September 18, 2015, 03:43:51 PM »

If Nintendo is making some game and they're thinking "how do we map this mechanic to the controller" and a scroll wheel seems like the way to do it then I'm all for this.  That's how the N64 analog stick came about.  I don't like this Wii/DS approach where they're thinking "what if we added.... THIS?!" and then they assume that some new controller doodad is going to inspire all sorts of great ideas but it doesn't and we just get it forced into games where it isn't needed.

To be fair, the only time their "innovation" with a controller didn't inspire was the Wii U.

I personally disagree but no matter what there are always really lame tech demo-ish growing pains which you don't get from a natural controller evolution.  This approach is where dumb **** like blowing into the mic comes from.

1194

Nintendo Gaming / Re: A Post-"Please Understand" Company: Nintendo After Mr. Iwata's Passing

« on: September 18, 2015, 03:25:21 PM »

Fine, if you narrow the criteria down that specifically, it was all Iwata's fault. In reality, though, the difference between being labeled "kiddy" and being labeled "casual" is mostly semantic, and the only way Nintendo was able to be the highest seller in that generation was to appeal to the casual "rubes" you're so fond of disparaging. If they'd stayed with the model you want they'd have had the commercial success of the GameCube all over again instead of just the hardware.

My approach is more "Gamecube without the easily avoidable screw-ups" which I think would have sold better than the Cube ever did.  The Cube was conventional compared to the Wii and Wii U but it had lots of dumb typical Nintendo goof-ups.  Nintendo hasn't done a console where they didn't handcuff it with their own stupidity since the SNES.  Nintendo needed someone to clean up all the bad habits and clueless stupidity that was holding Nintendo back and if anything I feel Iwata doubled-down on those bad habits.  The Wii U is the exact sort of disaster you would expect if the sort of stupid idiots in Nintendo that thought making their console look like a purple purse and not going online when everyone else did were good ideas were calling the shots.

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TalkBack / Re: Star Fox Zero Delayed to 2016

« on: September 18, 2015, 02:25:46 PM »

I supose a Xenoblade demo could work, something like Just Cause where your save file self destructs after like 30 minutes and if you want to go on you have to pay. The issue there is that it would be a very big download. Another way you could do it is release a free character creator before the game comes out like Saint's Row.

I was thinking more that NCL notices that this might be an issue and gets a proper demo made that can be a small file.  The new president used to in charge of NOA.  Let's see if he learned that Christmas shopping is a big fucking deal in North America and that games being moved out of that timeframe at the last minute is not a good thing.

1196

TalkBack / Re: Things I Think I Think About Star Fox Zero's Delay

« on: September 18, 2015, 02:19:17 PM »

the game and amiibo releases between now and December was already on the verge of breaking my bank account. This is now $60 that I can save long enough to send out of next year's tax return instead, and I'm all right with that.

I always find this logic odd.  If you don't have the money why not just wait to buy the game later when you can afford it?  You only have so much time to play games anyway and there is no point in buying multiple games at the same time if one of them is going to sit untouched for a little while.  It isn't like Star Fox Zero is going to be out-of-print three months after release.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: NX Rumors and Speculation Thread (Unprecedented partnership with Square Enix?)

« on: September 18, 2015, 01:49:07 PM »

If Nintendo is making some game and they're thinking "how do we map this mechanic to the controller" and a scroll wheel seems like the way to do it then I'm all for this.  That's how the N64 analog stick came about.  I don't like this Wii/DS approach where they're thinking "what if we added.... THIS?!" and then they assume that some new controller doodad is going to inspire all sorts of great ideas but it doesn't and we just get it forced into games where it isn't needed.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: A Post-"Please Understand" Company: Nintendo After Mr. Iwata's Passing

« on: September 18, 2015, 01:18:44 PM »

Nintendo consoles are seen as casual fluff and that more than anything is why the Wii U has sold like crap.  Iwata completely destroyed Nintendo's console reputation and no one but the most dedicated Nintendo fan was willing to give the Wii U the time of day.

Iwata was playing the hand he was dealt. If he's the one who ruined things he must have had access to a time machine, because that situation was bad well before he took over. The fact is, Yamauchi burned a lot of bridges with third parties, and the lack of their support is what has hurt Nintendo consoles the most.

Nintendo was "kiddy" before Iwata but no one was ever called "casual" until the Wii.  Yamauchi also never had a console sell better than everything else but have the WORST third party support because the hardware was so out-of-date that ports were near impossible.  In fact no videogame company in history ever has done that except Iwata-led Nintendo.

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TalkBack / Re: Star Fox Zero Delayed to 2016

« on: September 18, 2015, 12:29:10 PM »

Christmas is ruined.

It's not ruined, I just wanted to beat Ian to the punch

What are you kidding?  Xenoblade's still coming.

Nintendo isn't without a good holiday game, they're just now without the game that is easier to market and has an established brand.  Xenoblade X is going to be one of the Wii U's best titles and the first game was easily one of the best for the Wii.  The game's great, it just isn't as immediately accessible.  It will take more of an effort to push it and let the existing Wii U ownership know that this is a game worth trying. A good demo would really help though I suppose that wouldn't be something NOA could do on their own.  The Wii U isn't going to be saved and it isn't a big hit with casuals like the Wii was.  This Christmas the goal is to sell games to the existing Wii U userbase.  That userbase is going to be more willing to give a complicated game a go than the Wii Sports crowd was and it doesn't have to be the sort of game that sells systems.  It just has to be a good game that the existing userbase will like, which it is, and that userbase has to be made aware that this is a game they would like.

Now is Star Fox truly in need of more work or are they just trying to spread releases around to help fill a weak 2016?  Or is this moved to the NX?

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: A Post-"Please Understand" Company: Nintendo After Mr. Iwata's Passing

« on: September 17, 2015, 08:04:40 PM »

Nintendo consoles are seen as casual fluff and that more than anything is why the Wii U has sold like crap.  Iwata completely destroyed Nintendo's console reputation and no one but the most dedicated Nintendo fan was willing to give the Wii U the time of day.