Messages

651

TalkBack / Re: 3DS Price Drop and Release Dates for 3DS Mario Titles Revealed

« on: July 28, 2011, 05:06:54 AM »

Honestly, it would be nice if they stick to that. It would be a treat for those actually loyal enough to pick up a 3DS early one rather than wait for a price drop.

As someone who bought a 3DS at launch and 3 games, believe me when I say, my sentiments exactly.

Well, at least they'll have a lot to talk about on RFN and the Newscast this week.  And I mean a lot. 

According to my Itunes, the longest RFN in 2011 was Ep 247, clocking in at 2:34.  I'll bet you this week's is longer.

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TalkBack / Re: 3DS Price Drop and Release Dates for 3DS Mario Titles Revealed

« on: July 28, 2011, 04:53:53 AM »

Nintendocurrently hasno plans to make these 10 games available to the general public on the Nintendo 3DS in the future.

Nintendo and their "No plans!"  Aargh.  I'm sure everyone has seen this language recently, right?

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TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Introduces Ambassador Program for 3DS

« on: July 28, 2011, 04:46:49 AM »

Traveller, the wording is ambiguous. It makes it sound like they could be 3D Classics versions.

I wish, but probably not.  I think Miyamoto said in an interview a month back that Nintendo would stop making 3D classics, they're too difficult to make (i.e. expensive) for what they expect to make back.   Apparently, they have to practically re-make the game, not from scratch but pretty close.

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TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Introduces Ambassador Program for 3DS

« on: July 28, 2011, 04:43:55 AM »

Uh..it's 1:30 AM right now, I'm actually working my ass off getting some work done for very impatient but well paying clients, and I pull up RSS and I'm all "WTF!" 

At first, I'm thinking that I got gipped $80, because I bought at launch.

Then, these thoughts run through my head:

"Wait a minute, barely ever touch my Wii these days because I'm working so much.  When would I ever play some more NES VC games?"

"Oh, snap.  Do they mean NES on my 3DS?"

"Oh, double snap.  GBA is coming to the 3DS?"
 
"Oh, wait, $80?"

Right now, I can't decide if I'm furious about buying pre-price drop or joyful because I get to play GBA on the 3DS.  Probably both.

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TalkBack / Re: Level-5 Opens New Website for US Branch

« on: July 28, 2011, 02:12:47 AM »

2 words:


Soccer. RPG.

Oh wait...does RPG count as 3?

656

TalkBack / Re: Majora's Mask 3D Remake a Possibility

« on: July 26, 2011, 01:58:25 AM »

Technically, the DS was a N64 port machine....Just saying.

Okay, we could harp on this sort of "What has Nintendo done, it's out of original ideas so now it just does stupid ports" whining, but let's get historical here.  Nintendo has ALWAYS done ports.  Since the days of yesteryear.  Though to call Oot 3D and Starfox 64 3D ports is a bit misleading--- they're remakes.  They look way, way much better than their originals.  Ports are more like Super Mario 64 DS, which is the same freakin' game.  No touch ups.

And look out Nintendo's track record here, even before the 3DS and DS.

GBA - All those Super Mario Advance Games.  Link to the Past.   And the 3rd parties, they went nuts with the straight 16 bit ports.
GB Color - Link's Awakening DX. 
GB - Tetris.  It came packed in with the friggin system!

And on the the home consoles.

Gamecube - Oot/Master Quest
SNES - Super Mario All Stars.  I guess technically a remake though.
NES - Super Mario Bros.  Donkey Kong.  Hogan's Alley.  All straight, nearly exact arcade ports with no improvements.

In fact, the only system I can think of where Nintendo didn't do any 1st party ports of existing games was the N64.   And lots of people hated that system because it didn't have enough games. 

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TalkBack / Re: Pokédex 3D FAIL

« on: July 25, 2011, 05:45:01 AM »

I guess I'm lucky that I live in WA and will be going to PAX later in August.  I'm sure there'll be enough 3DS owning nerds there that I'll be able to complete mine.

Despite where  you live, urban or otherwise, I think one thing we have to keep in mind is that the 3DS is still very young- For North Am, we're just barely finishing 4 months in the 3DS life cycle, if you can believe that.  There's barely 5 million 3DS's out there right now?  Imagine 2  years from now, with quite a few more 3DS's out there, the social stuff will really take off.

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TalkBack / Re: Majora's Mask 3D Remake a Possibility

« on: July 25, 2011, 04:17:54 AM »

no more remakes for a while! just put more time into making new zeldas!

We say that now, but really, it seems like every time a new Zelda is released post Ocarina, everyone craps on it.  Happened with Spirit Tracks (too much like Phantom Hourglass), Phantom Hourglass (stylus controls), Twilight Princess (Too much like Ocarina), Windwaker (Too kid-like), and of course, Majora (not Ocarina).  It's like clockwork.

And btw, all those games I just listed?  I love them.  I just finished replaying Ocarina 3D, first time I've played it since the Wii era, and what really amazes me is just how iterative Twilight Princess is on this game and, with that in mind, how Twilight improves on every single aspect of Ocarina.  Twilight is just a better game.  The combat is deeper and more refined, the set pieces are more intricate, the puzzles are better, and temples are better, and though there are less items, they're better used within the temples.  Even the dual world mechanics (ocarina with past and present, twilight with twilight and real world) are better in twilight, with none of this back to the temple of time bs.

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TalkBack / Re: The Legend of Zelda Symphony Concert Kicks Off in Los Angeles

« on: July 23, 2011, 02:18:51 AM »

Why?  Does she hate Zelda or You?

I mean if you only live a mile away and its only $35, which is a good price beyond being able to go with a school to this type of event, then why not let you go?  If its because of the young'ns if applicable take them with.  Not the worst venue to expose them to the arts.

Heh...actually, it's a somewhat complicated story, which comes down to that concert being 1 week before our wedding anniversary, and we already decided that we wouldn't go out to celebrate our anniversary this year because we have a new baby that's barely 4 months old.  If not for the baby, it would have been a great event for a date night.

I think this is more of a conscious choice that me and my wife made to make our kids the biggest priority in our lives, which tends to play havoc with things like concerts, date nights, and in my case, gaming.  If not for my DS and 3DS, I think it would be very hard to fit any gaming at all into my life.

Yeah, all y'all single people, think about that!

Oh, and to the lucky who will be going to the first concert in LA:  The Pantages is a beautiful theater, you will love it.  You'll have to pay through the nose at the parking lot across the street, but really there's no choice.  Besides some really gross pizza by the slice, there is no good food around the theater for blocks and blocks, get dinner somewhere else.  And if anyone is going to cosplay the concert, it would be hilarious (and maybe profitable) if you walked 3 blocks east and pose for pictures with the tourists.  They'll love it, and you may get good tips.  :-)

660

TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Video Goes Live in North America

« on: July 22, 2011, 08:13:22 PM »

It seems more like a Sony idea though with their film library it would make more sense for them to be the ones doing it.

Heh, I think that was their impetus behind UMD's.  "Yeah, people want to watch 2 hour movies on their portable, so we'll make them pay $20 bucks for a tiny disc, which they can't watch on their TV!"

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TalkBack / Re: This Week in Nintendo Downloads July 21, 2011

« on: July 22, 2011, 12:29:09 AM »

College Humor is great just for sponsoring Very Mary Kate.  Which is awesome.

Oh man, I just remembered that one.  Are they still running that series?   Haven't seen it on the main page for a while.  I love that girl, she is hilarious.   I've seen her on a lot of their other videos, and I think she was in a Bleep Bloop where they made fun of really crappy girly Wii games.  Like from Ubisoft and stuff.

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TalkBack / Re: The Legend of Zelda Symphony Concert Kicks Off in Los Angeles

« on: July 22, 2011, 12:25:25 AM »

Um..yup, my wife will never let me go to this.

I live like a mile away from this theater, too.   I probably would've gotten so many streetpasses.

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TalkBack / Re: This Week in Nintendo Downloads July 21, 2011

« on: July 22, 2011, 12:10:06 AM »

The fact it has college humor in the graphic makes me hopeful it will be interesting

Yeah, I'm not too keen on that one.  College humor has, unfortunately, become seriously unfunny for me in the past year.  It used to be absolutely hilarious, especially Elephant Larry videos like the Sexually Confused Ninja and the Retarded Test.  But now they don't do Bleep Bloop anymore, which was sometimes funny, Jake and Amir  used to be funny and stupid, now it's just stupid, and Hardly Working is hardly funny.   As that site has gotten bigger and bigger, it's gotten worse and worse.

The only good thing are the Dorkly short videos, but really, would Nintendo ever give us "Zelda with a Portal Gun?"

664

TalkBack / Re: Playing with Power: Harnessing the Nintendo Community

« on: July 18, 2011, 01:27:18 AM »

Social networks are for people too stupid to set up basic blogs.

That gives me an idea.  How awesome if Miyamoto had a blog or even a twitter feed that was updated regularly and at least somewhat uncensored?  Not in Nintendo best interests, maybe, but still....I'd read it everyday, especially if it went something like this:

If Miyamoto tweeted....

"Met with Zelda team today.  Upended tea table.  Made someone cry.  LOL."

"Organized CD collection today.  Been cleaning alot lately.  If this was a game.."

"Mario 3DS done.  Don't like color of hat.  Time to upend tea table!"

665

TalkBack / Re: Ocarina of Time Hits the Number Two Spot in the US

« on: July 17, 2011, 12:55:09 AM »

I think what's crazy is that Ocarina even sold that many.  Okay, I bought one, but I'm a hardcore fan.  But what are there, like 2 or 3 million 3DS's in the U.S. right now?    At nearly 300,000 in 2 weeks, that means 1 in 10 3DS owners bought that freakin game. 

And as icing on the cake, I've gotten 2 natural streetpasses post E3 (natural, as in, not at a game convention or game store or streetpass gathering or any other artificially created situation where streetpasses become more common than they would be) and 1 of them was playing Ocarina.  The other was, shamefully, messing with their system settings.

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TalkBack / Re: This Week in Nintendo Downloads, July 14, 2011

« on: July 15, 2011, 08:01:37 PM »

While I was able to have fun with Tennis despite its limitations,

Yeah, I regret downloading tennis a little bit, but to be honest, it may be the best downloadable tennis game, dsiware or whatever, available on the 3DS.  The mechanics are rock solid.  The controls are super tight, if not a tiny bit unforgiving and, at times, a little too realistic.  At first, it was really hard, I kept getting my butt handed to me on Level 1.  And the way they work height into the game is crazy.  Height of the ball in relation to the ground does matter somewhat and can affect how well you hit the ball, and you may sometimes miss, or even hit into the net.  This is insane, of course, considering that this is a top down early Gameboy game, and completely in flat 2D.  They represent height in the game by making the ball appear larger and smaller (larger means higher).   But it's subtle, so it's very easy to misjudge the height of the ball.   

Rallies can be very long and quite exhilerating, even at Level 1 difficulty, until you finally figure out the weakness in the AI.  Now, don't get me wrong.  The AI is pretty good.  It's smart enough to do things like lob the ball high over your head if you get too brazen and stay close up to the net.  The problem is that the AI is stupid, and consistently so, on the 2nd return when you serve, and on the 3rd return when it serves.  Basically, in these situations, it seems like the AI fails to shift position towards center court if it's returned a hard drive toward a corner.  Because it fails to shift, you can run up to the net after the AI has returned it and nail it into an opposite corner.  I suspect this is an exploit.   It is infinitely repeatable.  Once you figure it out, Level 1 becomes a joke.

Then the game just gets worse, because Levels 2 through 4 don't seem to improve the AI or even vary the AI's play style.  It's exactly the same.  Only the frickin ball moves faster when both you and the AI hit it.  That is the only change in difficulty.

So basically, it was fun for the hour it took me to really figure out the way the game works, how the controls work, how to judge the ball, and finally how to kill the AI.  After that, I have no desire to play it.  I doubt many people would.

So yeah, that was my very long (and slightly upset) way of saying "Yup, buddy, I completely agree with your sentiments."

667

TalkBack / Re: This Week in Nintendo Downloads, July 14, 2011

« on: July 15, 2011, 08:48:17 AM »

Isn't Super Earth Defense Force a new game for the week as well? (VC, 800 pts).

Oh yeah, that's right.  The Wii.  The red-headed stepchild that everyone forgets about.  The Kevin Arnold of game consoles.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: How to make the 3DS a Better System

« on: July 15, 2011, 08:00:45 AM »

Hmm.. Well I do own a 3DS, and have put well over 200 hours into it since launch.  All of your ideas seem solid, except....

Headphone jack on the right side of the system.

Yeah, this would be not so great.   It would get in the way of your grip on the system.  Maybe you could position it so the cord runs between your fingers, but you couldn't guarantee that it wouldn't get in the way of everyone's hands since everyone's hands are different.  Maybe you could put it near the top of the bottom shell, but then you would have to move either the volume slider on the left or the wireless switch on the right.  You couldn't have it any lower on the side, because you would lose access to it while playing (because it would be underneath your knuckles as you're gripping the system).  You can't put them on the bottom, because you would have to release your grip on the system in order to mess with any of those buttons, which is why there are no inputs on the bottom edge of the bottom shell.  Also, putting the headphone jack at the sides would increase the length between the jack and your ears, giving you less room to maneuver your 3DS when you have to move it for gyroscopic game features (AKA aiming the bow in Ocarina 3D, which is awesomeness)

Stop, Select and Home buttons that glow in the dark.

"Glow in the Dark" compounds need to receive light during the day in order to excite photons that will glow at night.  That would not happen if the 3DS was closed and/or in your pocket most of the day.

Better speakers and organic LCD screens.

OLED?  I like my 3DS under $300, thank you.  Nintendo will not take a loss per unit for this.

Volume slide equivalent to the one on the first DSi system.

The clicky software buttons?  Besides the obvious, I hated those because you couldn't adjust volume when it was closed.  Like I want to bust out my 3DS for a second when my wife isn't looking, and suddenly I hear "Heya, itsa me, Mario!" just because I didn't reach those stupid software clicky buttons in time.

Stereoscopic 3D slider replaced with plus and minus symbols on the bottom rightside of the top screen.

It actually is on the bottom right-sided of the screen already.   Unless you mean on the actual hinge.

Better Online.

You know, it seems like when a lot of people say this, they mean stuff like Xbox live, with cross game chat and stuff like that.  Maybe on a home console, that may be desirable, but on a handheld, when I'm trying to fill 5 minutes waiting in line for something with some Alpha Bounce, the last thing I want is to get a message from someone I know taking up my play time.  "Dude, you're playing Alpha Bounce?  That thing is crazy."  Yeah, you just took up 33% of the time I had to actually enjoy this game.  If I wanted a text message, I would use my phone.

And on that note, I don't think online on a portable is the best thing in the world.  Chances are, when you're out and about you're not going to be in Wifi range anyway, and even if you had a 3G Vita, it's not fast enough for realtime online play, and you wouldn't want to pay for the data plan anyway.

669

TalkBack / Re: This Week in Nintendo Downloads, July 14, 2011

« on: July 15, 2011, 07:37:45 AM »

I don't have a netflix account, but I'm seriously considering it so I can watch movies in bed with the 3DS in the doc

Oh man, instant streaming is very awesome.

What I really like is that besides the superior interface and speakers, Netflix on the 3DS is better than on an Iphone because you can lay it down and tilt the top screen to your viewing angle.  I cooked dinner and did the dishes tonight while absentmindedly watching a movie.  And everyone at my gym likes to watch either Netflix or Hulu while they work out, and the tilt screen will make things much easier.   

And on a side note, since the 3DS uses a stylus + capacitive screen, it'll make it much easier to re-enter my gym's wifi password.  Those paranoid jerks reset the Wifi password everyday so that only members can use it.  The password is mixed case, alphanumeric, random, 12 characters.  Jeez.  Every try changing from capital to lower case letters to numerals on every other character on an IOS touch screen?

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TalkBack / Re: This Week in Nintendo Downloads, July 14, 2011

« on: July 15, 2011, 07:27:43 AM »

Definitely not downloading Baseball, that's for sure.  I got Tennis a few weeks ago, huge mistake.  All 4 levels are the same, it's just the ball goes faster!

In fact, it seems like when they offer 2 VC's in 1 week, it's usually because they're relatively weak offerings.

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TalkBack / Re: Netflix Impressions

« on: July 15, 2011, 12:07:48 AM »

Certainly it's watchable, and will do just fine for the needs of the many, but the few who require pristine high quality video may need to stick to the Retina Display of the iPhone 4

Ah, the catch 22 there is that on the Iphone the interface is nearly unusable.  I was worried about this and I'm really glad that on the 3DS Netflix is using the side-scrolling, multi-row interface that they've been using on the Wii and, more recently, on the website.  My touch does have that retina display, to be sure, but scrolling down one by one to find my movie, like scrolling down blog posts?  Horrrible.  Basically, you have to get on your desktop computer, choose some movies you want to watch, and then drop them into your instant queue, then bust out your IOS device again so that you can pick out what you want to watch from your instant queue.  Jeez.

I just wish they took more advantage of the bottom screen during video playback.  But then again, battery-life-obsessives may be more thankful that they turned the bottom screen off.

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TalkBack / Re: Netflix Coming to 3DS Tomorrow

« on: July 13, 2011, 11:26:25 PM »

for me it really doesn't do any soothing for the price hike, apparently I don't need DVD's from Netflix anymore. the low price was one of the reasons that I stuck with it to begin with and now that it's coming to 3DS I definitely wanna stick with it.. but I guess now I have to wonder for how long..

on a happier note: I can't believe this is finally coming out!! I read things wrong to begin with and thought that we would have it by E3 but when that didn't happen I was afraid we would have to wait until at least the end of the year.. this is pretty awesome :-D

My daughter just asked me right now "Daddy, why did you raise both your arms up as if you won something right now?"

I too was waiting for this, I am thrilled.  I was pretty upset about the price hike yesterday, especially since I've been subscribing to Netflix since 2001.  Seriously.

And why is this better, you may ask?  Netflix on the 3DS is perfect for watching while exercising, simply because you can tilt the darn screen to match your height.  You don't know how sick and tired I was of building a little ramp with a combination of my keys, phone, and membership card in order to tilt my iphone so I could get a good viewing angle on the elliptical. 

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Should Nintendo lower 3DS prices because of the Vita?

« on: July 13, 2011, 02:01:01 AM »

You know I think a lot of this would be mitigated if the Game costs where universally dropped by $10.

I think much more than the cost of hardware, the cost of games, from the perspective of the non-gaming public, is a big dealbreaker in the age of IOS and 99cent games.

Case in point:  today I took my kids to the pediatrician, and in the waiting room on a chair I found a DS cart that some kid left.  Now, don't get excited-- it was Cars the game based on the Pixar movie.  I turned it in to the receptionist.  The nurse saw me do this and she said "wow, I hope that kid gets that back.  Those things are expensive.  Really expensive."

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TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Video Coming to European eShop on Wednesday

« on: July 11, 2011, 07:31:35 PM »

NoA has gone on record stating they are putting a good amount of time and money on the 3DS show offerings.

I think you're referring to Netflix coming this summer?   Summer's half over...still waiting.

675

TalkBack / Re: This Week in Nintendo Downloads, July 7, 2011

« on: July 08, 2011, 02:45:14 AM »

I'm kind of afraid of what may happen to me long-term with this service.

Isn't it strange, the psychological effect Nintendo's download schedule is having on us?  First thing I'm thinking when I wake up on Thursday morning is "I wonder what's going to be the VC today?"  The way the 3DS does downloadables (as opposed to the Wii/DS way) also does its part, with the whole saving and running from the main-freakin-menu system.