Messages

1226

General Gaming / Rare's ownership

« on: June 30, 2003, 01:54:54 AM »

Here's how I understand it, based on numerous searches of the US Patent Office website, and Nintendo's various press releases.

Rareware was a small company owned 100% by the Stamper Brothers.

Then they sold a chunk of their company to Nintendo (and more and more, until it eventually grew to 49%) and started making games for Nintendo, using Nintendo's money. Rare would seem to make whatever they wanted, but Nintendo would always "contract" them to do it.

Then Nintendo decided to give Rare even more leeway. They set up "Rare Inc." Basically a big pile of money, owned 100% by Nintendo. When Rare was exceptionally confident in a game, they could have the "Rare Inc." account publish the game, and keep the profits, leaving them with access to an even bigger pile of money.

Every licence Rareware worked on since Donkey Kong Country (except James Bond and Mickey Mouse) was "owned" (according to the US Patent Office) by either Nintendo or Rare Inc (which was owned 100% by Nintendo).

The Stampers were at a high point on the stock-market roller-coaster, and wanted to cash out completely, but Nintendo didn't want to invest even more money in Rare, so they agreed to get off too, and help sell the company to Microsoft.

Nintendo sold their 49% back to the Stamper Brothers on (a quarter-billion dollars worth of) credit. The Stampers sold the whole thing to Microsoft.

Rare Inc. was dissolved and absorbed back into Nintendo.

There were supposedly some statements from Nintendo when the news finally broke out, about Nintendo still owning games like Banjo and PD.

After the sale, Rareware somehow ended up with the rights to all the GameCube games it was working on at the time (like Kameo and the DKR "Mascot Racer"). And all the licences that people would expect Rare to be interested in (Conker, PD, Banjo). Nintendo appears to own all of the licences that Rare had previously said would only be "one shot" games (Blast Corps, Jet Force Gemini).

Whether a licence was owned by Rare Inc or Nintendo themselves does NOT appear to have been a factor. Games were taken and left behind from both Rare Inc and Nintendo.

It's assumable that Nintendo did own everything, but they had no use for most of it, and were apparently on extremely good personal terms with the Stamper Brothers, and wanted Rareware to succeed, so they sold (or maybe even gave) the Stamper Brothers their choice of licences.

One of the Stampers said that Nintendo was beyond good about the whole thing. And they're Microsoft employees now, so it wasn't any lame publicity BS.

1227

Nintendo Gaming / RE: Official Game Boy Player Discussion

« on: June 30, 2003, 01:09:49 AM »

I was thinking of getting one of those Nyko "PlayCube" adaptors (they let you plug in a PS2 controller instead of a GameCube controller) for my GameBoy Player, since PS2 controllers are backwards compatible, and the old non-analog PSX controllers are virtually the same thing as the Hori Pad, while being cheaper, more versatile, and more easily available, but I spotted on the GameFAQs boards that apparently Nyko's PlayCube adaptor doesn't work with the GameBoy Player.

Can anyone confirm this?

Did Nintendo specifically design the GameBoy Player to take a stab at an unauthorized third party accessory that they didn't like?

1228

Nintendo Gaming / what is/was megaton?

« on: June 07, 2003, 12:37:54 AM »

I should probably also mention that the game V-Jump was talking about was apparently "Naruto".

It debuted at #4 on the Dengeki charts in Japan last April, and has been holding at a solid 17th place for a while now.

The comic book it was based on is coming out now in the English version of Shonen Jump.

[aoi tsuki]

1229

General Gaming / Sony announces... the PSX!?

« on: May 29, 2003, 01:26:19 AM »

Quote
Originally posted by: aoi tsuki
And that bit of hidden info proves what exactly? What i was saying was that the name PSX isn't something the casual gaming audience or print/tv/radio broadcasts generally use. You just proved my point.

Okay. I thought you were saying that "PSX" was just something unofficial that people on the internet came up with. But there's a reason we call it that. It's because Sony used to call it that. The PSOne is the PS-X. The sequel to the ill-fated "original PlayStation".

Sony deliberately naming the "PSOne" what they did was an attempt to cloud their own history (probably to try and make it look perfect). Calling this new device the "PSX" is an attempt to bury their history.

Quote

Quote
And is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that the "Playstation Portable" doesn't seem to be listing the ability to play PSX games as one of it's features, despite being disc-based and "slightly more powerful than a PSX"?

It's not because it doesn't. It plays PSP games.

I thought I heard something earlier about "Now you can play all your favorite 32-bit PlayStation games, on the go!" or something like that in one of the stories. I gathered that the PSP would be PSOne compatible (which would be a mistake, making it way too big, IMO) to combat the backwards compatibility of the GameBoy series, but that it's own proprietary games would be the mini-DVDs, so it could cut loose the bulky PSOne games by the next generation.

Quote

Quote
Sony's just blatantly milking the name for all it's worth now.

And why not use the Playstation name to promote their line of gaming-related electronics? It's called branding. "Playstation Portable" instantly brings to mind "Playstation". And everyone knows Sony makes the Playstation. Same thing with the Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo, and Nintendo 64. [Nintendo] Gamecube should technically be on that list, but it's the first system that's not bound to the Nintendo name. "Gamecube" stands on it's own, despite attempts otherwise.

If Nintendo had called the GameBoy in Japan the "Handheld Famicom", there would have been certain expectations about it. If Nintendo had started making "Famicom Board Games", people could (and probably did) accuse them of "selling out". It's just Sony's turn right now.

I'd have no problem at all with Nintendo Board Games. Or "Sony Portables". I'm just waiting for the PlayStation Underoos.

[aoi tsuki]

1230

General Gaming / Sony announces... the PSX!?

« on: May 28, 2003, 09:39:33 PM »

Quote
Originally posted by: aoi tsuki
The PSX name thing PS confusing, but only to the more hardcore gamers. The PSX abbreviation is mostly a web thing; in print and other forms of media it's referred to as "Playstation" or "PS".

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe
"Called SuperDisc this proprietary format would also form the basis of Nintendo's own CD-ROM drive - PlayStation was born!"
"At the end of 1992 Sony, Nintendo and Philips signed a deal whereby PlayStation would be able to run SNES CD-ROMs but left Nintendo with the sole rights to all its games. The version of PlayStation being developed at that time never made it into production."
"But, having come so far Sony were not about to abandon the idea completely and the engineers and designers went back to their drawing boards and started again. When the PS-X surfaced in 1993 it took the industry pundits by storm."

Quote
Originally posted by: Ian Sane
Yeah maybe they should wait a little longer so that they can put a PS3 in there instead. Of course maybe that's the whole idea. People drop like a grand on this only to have to buy the PS3 version (which will be called the PS1 so as to continue with this "confuse the hell out of everyone" naming scheme) a year later.

Actually, it's probably more likely that they'd call the PS3 version the "PSX2", which would still cause confusion anyways.

And is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that the "Playstation Portable" doesn't seem to be listing the ability to play PSX games as one of it's features, despite being disc-based and "slightly more powerful than a PSX"?

Sony's just blatantly milking the name for all it's worth now.

1231

Nintendo Gaming / Denis Dyack Interview

« on: May 24, 2003, 06:09:41 PM »

Personally, I don't know if the GBA could pull off voices. I mean, I thought the N64's sound chip was supposed to be inferior to the SNES's sound chip too, but it could still do a lot. You just needed the cartrige space to store it all.

I'd sure like to the it work though.

Plug in the GBA. Set it to "GBA Codec Mode" on the options menu.

Then when your GBA beeps you press one of the buttons on it to answer, and you keep running around and trying to hide and kill guards and not get caught while the 2D face of whoever you're supposed to be talking to appears on the GBA screen, and starts yacking your ears off through the GBA's tinny speakers about how much they miss you and wish you would come home soon, while you start prattling on through the TV speakers about how it feels now that you've killed human beings. Oh wait, that's Raiden, not Snake. Wrong game. Sorry.

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Nintendo Gaming / DivX?

« on: May 22, 2003, 05:32:34 PM »

Quote
By the way, guys. Stop hitting on the VIP.

It's his fault for using a name that suggests that he's a female.

I've gotten hit on by men a number of times since I picked up the "Ruby" part of my name, but you just get used to it.

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General Gaming / RE: I need Proff XBOX loses money on systems!!!

« on: May 22, 2003, 12:39:30 PM »

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-1001220.html

1234

General Gaming / emulator

« on: May 21, 2003, 05:12:47 PM »

Quote
There is no legal way of playing NES, SNES, N64, or GameBoy games on your computer though, unless you own some way of backing up your own cart.

Actually, I think that's what Rick was just talking about. Most people know that distributing ROMs is illegal. But even making a "backup" in the first place is what companies like Nintendo have been trying to fight (and I'll take Rick's word on it that it's illegal).


Anyways, considering that KnowsNothing apparently knows nothing about emulators, and would like to know everything about them, I'll try my hand at a basic, yet in-depth explanation.


ROMs:
Cartrige-based videogames are programs built onto ROM (read-only memory) microchips. You plug them into the dedicated machine that they're built for, and they add their program to the videogame machine, making it do stuff. A long time ago, people figured out how to stick another kind of machine (usually called a Game Copier) between the cart and the system to read exactly what it is that the cart's doing to the system. Then it can copy a "ROM image" onto something like a floppy disk. You can take the cartrige out of the copier, and use the "ROM image" from the floppy disk instead, and the copier should be able to fool the system into thinking it's really the game cartrige. Since this "ROM image" is now on a floppy disk, you can easily give it anyone else with a game copier, or copy it to your PC, where you can then give it to almost anyone on the internet.

This practice is ILLEGAL. It doesn't mean that it doesn't happen, it doesn't mean you're not allowed to know it happens (although PGC has the right to make their own rules about that kind of thing while we're here), it just means you can go to jail if you try doing it yourself.


Translation Patches:
One of the cooler things about ROMs, and a major temptation to break the law and use them, is the fact that people can make "patches" for ROMs. Devoted fans of a foreign game, frustrated by seeing it get passed up for localization, can look inside the contents of a ROM image and (after a lot of effort) find where all the foreign text is hidden. They can then go about translating it themselves, and creating a patch for the ROM image. If you put the patch onto a ROM image, it will replace certain sections of the image with their translated replacement text. Just using an "Import Walkthough" to play a 100% legit version of the game is way more legal, but there's no denying that it pales in comparison to the smoothness of a well-made translation patch.

The patches themselves are supposed to be legal (although there is no legal use for them), even though you just know that somebody has to have broken the law at least a few time for one of them to have been made.


Emulators:
An emulator is (like Rick said) a computer that's pretending to be another computer. Most are legal. Some aren't. Like I know that most emulators for the MSX (the Japanese personal computer where games like Metal Gear first appeared) require a copy of the MSX's BIOS (Binary Operating System) in order to run properly. That's illegal. But when people take the time to write their own operating systems for their emulators, and spend years working out all the bugs and flaws, then that's fine.

There are emulators for the PC out there that emulate the NES and SNES, and while it seems that they have no possible legal use (since you can't really stuff an NES cart into your PC), there are some "homemade" games being developed for them. Those are legal (unless they start copying massive sections of other people's game programs to build their games). And there aren't really any laws that say the things you make have to be useful (as far as I know). So the emulators themselves are legal, but they just keep getting used for illegal purposes.

And then there are emulators out there that emulate systems like the Sega CD and the TurboGrafx CD and the Playstation. These are really cool, and actually useful, because you can put the game's CD into your CD drive and play the real games on your computer. That doesn't stop people from being able to make "Disc Images" and trading them over the internet, or playing bootleg games in the emulators, but illegal bootlegging was already a problem with these systems, so it's not really the fault of the emulators.


Official Emulators:
There are games like Final Fantasy 4 to 6 and Chrono Trigger on the PSX that actually use SNES emulators on the Playstation. The version of Metroid included as a connectivity bonus in Metroid Prime runs on the GameCube in an NES emulator. Because even though the GameCube was made by Nintendo, and is way more powerful than an NES, it just isn't an NES. I don't think that most of us know all that much about this kind of emulation. It's designed to be the kind of "magic trick" that you don't even see. When it does it's job right, you shouldn't even know it's there.

1235

Nintendo Gaming / NEW: Two new Star Fox games, new Mario RPG, two helpings of GC Pokemon, and more!

« on: May 12, 2003, 04:58:48 PM »

"Pokemon Channel" could be an MMORPG for all we know.

[ruby_onix]

1236

Nintendo Gaming / Camelot and Factor 5

« on: May 09, 2003, 12:45:50 PM »

Quote
Originally posted by: ruby_onix
Personally, I believe the term "second party" is fiction, a media buzzword that only exists in our heads.

Quote
Originally posted by: mouse_clicker
How is it a media buzzword, ruby?

The term "second party" doesn't seem to exist anywhere except videogames. And it only came around in the late SNES days, when Nintendo hooked up with Rare.

Here's how I see it. Nintendo is the first party. They make the hardware. They make the games that play on the hardware. They make the controllers, and stuff like that. Now then, if you get tired of having a system that's "100% Nintendo", you can go to a "third party" and get some "enhancements" to mix it up and make it more interesting.

Nintendo is the first party, you're the second party (of course, the term "user" is more common), and whoever else you involve is the third party.

Rare wasn't Nintendo. So Rare was a third party. Sure, Nintendo appeared to be in charge of them and could boss them around, but at it's heart, Rare was the Stamper Brothers, not Nintendo.

The current Rare is Microsoft. They were bought up 100%, and are just a "team name" within Microsoft now, so they're part of a first party.

Silicon Knights and Retro aren't Nintendo. They've got cozy arrangements, but they're still their own bosses. So they're third parties.

Square's a third party (or should I say Square/Enix). They got up and left for Sony while Nintendo owned a chunk of them, and now they're going multi-platform while Sony owns a chunk of them.

I have no clue about the status of Hal, especially since it's founder is now the president of Nintendo. I'm kind of thinking that Hal actually "pulled a Kirby" and swallowed/absorbed Nintendo.  (>")>  (>")>  (>")>


Unlike other markets, videogame software needs third party assistance. The first parties can't cover everything. So third parties are more and more important.

When the industry started finding third parties willing to provide the first parties with serious ammunition, a reliable source of top-notch games that were console-exclusive, the first parties knew that they needed a new name for these "valued third parties", since almost every first party in the world likes to point out and make people understand that "third parties" are inferior to "first parties".

So when Nintendo hooked up with Rare and the Stampers, they coined the term (or someone else smaller used it, I can't really tell) "second party". Something halfway between a first and second party, mathamatically speaking.


Since the SNES days, people have been trying to pin down the exact meaning of "second party". The most common one I've heard is that it's a company with some degree of ownership by the first party, and an exclusivity contract. But the ownership factor is irrelevant, since we've seen a few times that anything less that 50% doesn't really count toward anything serious. And contracts are everywhere. The modern industry is built on them. We most likely don't even know about half of them, and most of us outside of Rick haven't ever seen the details of any of them.

On PS2 message boards lately I've seen another definition pop up (probably since Sony is looser with their pens and tighter with their paper shredders than any companies we've seen before, and almost all of their games are made by someone else). "Any game that's published by the first party is a game made by a second party, even if they only held that position for a short while." Is that really a bad definition? It eliminates some of the confusion. All you have to do is look for a logo on the box.

And it has the side effect of us being able to say that Square is a second party of Nintendo again, while they stopped being a Sony second party when they hooked up with EA five years ago. ^_^


Since the SNES days, we've constantly been surprised by the actions of "second parties", and asked "How can they do that? Weren't they a second party?" They do what they do because they're third parties. They're not Nintendo (or Sony, or Microsoft), they're someone else. Every second party is really a third party, and you have to look at them one-by-one to understand them and not be surprised by their actions.

People can easily say that the likes of Factor 5 and Camelot and Treasure are closer to Nintendo than some "second parties", and more deserving of the term. And since nobody can provide a dictionary definition of "second party" (aside from the occasional IGN Mailbag where someone like Fran says "I thought it was common knowlege, oh well, here's what it means") since it's exclusively used by the videogame software industry, I can't stop anyone from changing their "personal definition" of the term to include those companies.

[Jonathan]

1237

TalkBack / Namco Reveals E3 Lineup

« on: May 09, 2003, 11:25:40 AM »

Quote
Originally posted by Jonathan on the main page:
"I really wasn't expecting Tales of Symphonia...I guess this means it's coming to the U.S."

Quote
Written on the Game Info page for Tales of Symphonia:
"...and will hook up to the previously announced Tales of Phantasia remake for Game Boy Advance."

So I guess we can take it to mean that the remake of Phantasia is probably coming to the US too? That kind of effect alone pretty much makes the whole "connectivity" thing a great idea in my books, even when there's not much to it.

[Level 5]

1238

Nintendo Gaming / Camelot and Factor 5

« on: May 08, 2003, 11:31:21 AM »

Quote
And Camelot is offficially a 3rd party, but they can kind of be considered a 2nd party...

Personally, I believe the term "second party" is fiction, a media buzzword that only exists in our heads. So I agree with you in that Camelot "can kind of be considered" to be a second party.

Quote
i remember reading something about factor 5 programming the next dragonquest game.

That's Level 5, the makers of the cel-shaded RPGs "Dark Cloud 2" for the PS2 and "True Fantasy Online" for the XBox. Not Factor 5, the Dolby-lovin Nintendo-friendly Star Wars junkies.  

1239

NWR Feedback / Free Avatar Picture Host

« on: May 02, 2003, 09:18:59 PM »

I put my own Avatar picture up on the webspace that came with my brother's ISP, but for all of you who don't have your own webspace and have been asking if anyone can host these pics for free, I did a little bit of search-engine legwork for you.

www.sigup.com

Apparently you can upload one single picture to them, as long as it's smaller than 300k (which is good because PGC doesn't want anyone using anything bigger than 20k anyways) and use it as a message board avatar, for free.

I make no promises about how good they are. I don't even use them. I only just heard about them two minutes ago. But, I guess this is a good place to start looking. If anyone knows of anything better, feel free to mention it.

[demoncrono]

1240

TalkBack / SD Adapter gets a Date!

« on: May 01, 2003, 11:23:08 PM »

Quote
Originally posted by: demoncrono
you're going to luagh...but....what's an SDcard?....is it the same card I use for my digital camera? and if so,would I be able to use that instead of buying a nintendo one? and how would it even hook up to a pc? through the digital camera?

http://www.panasonic.com/consumer_electronics/sd/default.asp

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Nintendo Gaming / OFFICIAL Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes Discussion

« on: May 01, 2003, 12:25:13 PM »

People saying they wish Silicon Knights was working on Too Human instead of a Metal Gear remake reminds me of something I heard about Robert Zemeckis (the guy who made Back to the Future) once.

Zemeckis wrote his first movie. He thought it was great. His friends thought it was great. He brought it to Steven Speilberg. Speilberg thought it was great. Speilberg helped him make his movie a reality. Even though it apparently won a lot of critical acclaim when it came out, it bombed at the box office. Speilberg lost money on it.

So, Zemeckis wrote his second movie. He thought it was even better than the first one. Speilberg thought it was even better than the first one. Speilburg backed him on it again. It bombed like the first one.

Then Zemeckis started writing his third movie (Romancing the Stone). Speilburg loved it, but Zemeckis refused Speilburg's help with it. Speilburg didn't care that the first two movies didn't make much money, he just liked these movies Zemeckis was making, and was willing to back them 100% just to see them get made. But Zemeckis thought that it would hurt Speilburg's image to keep backing someone who couldn't deliver results. Speilburg could afford to make these movies with his pocket change, and they were good movies, so they weren't "failures", but if people thought Speilburg was making failures, that perception would cost him to a point where he really would feel it.

So Zemeckis made Romancing the Stone on his own, and it actually was a box office success.

With one success under his belt, he felt it was safe to accept Speilburg's help again, and let him help with Back to the Future, which turned out to be one of the biggest movies of all time.


Now, I know this story would relate better if SK decided to self-publish Too Human, instead of delay it (if it even exists anymore) to work on a Metal Gear remake, but I think the basics are still there.  

1242

TalkBack / Metal Gear Solid Confirmed for GameCube!

« on: May 01, 2003, 11:45:36 AM »

From PGC's preview:

Quote
Fast forward to the year 2003, and things have suddenly changed. A few months ago Mr. Miyamoto let it slip that there was indeed a Metal Gear Solid game in development for GameCube. Since then everyone has been wondering if this title is an entirely new game, a port of MGS2: SoL, or a remake of the original Metal Gear Solid.

I was hoping it'd be a remake of the original Metal Gear, not the original Metal Gear Solid.

Quote
It's understandable how much Nintendo will be pushing this title, as it marks the first time since the NES that the Metal Gear series has graced a Nintendo console.

You forgot about "Metal Gear Solid: Ghost Babel" for the GameBoy Color.

1243

TalkBack / SD Adapter gets a Date!

« on: April 30, 2003, 08:20:29 PM »

Here's some "frame of reference" stuff.

The PSX Memory Card was supposed to hold 1/8 of a megabyte (or one megabit, if you prefer). It had 15 "blocks".

Nintendo's MC-59 is supposed to be 1/2 of a megabyte (four times the size of a PSX card).

Nintendo's MC-251 is supposed to be 2 megabytes (four times the size of an MC-59).

A standard PS2 memory card is 8 megabytes (last I checked). I don't know if it has any sort of "block" system.

PSX blocks are about the same size as the GameCube's blocks. In case you noticed that the math looks wrong on that (15 isn't 1/4 of 59, and 59 isn't 1/4 of 251), it's supposed to be because of some index or formatting data hogging up space on the card. The PSX card most likely has 1 block of info on it (which would make it essentially a 16-block card). The GameCube cards seem to have 5 blocks of something on them (making them actually 64 and 256 blocks, respectively).

The GameCube is supposed to have a limit that says you can only fit 127 different game save files (it has to have an option for "zero" games saved, otherwise it'd be 128), regardless of their size, on any given memory card.

I would guess that a 16 megabyte SD card (like the one shown by Nintendo in the picture) should be about the equvalent of a "MC-2,043". That's assuming 128 blocks-per-megabyte, times 16 megabytes, minus five blocks like the other cards.

A 32MB SD card should be like having an "MC-4,091".

The 64MB card should be like an "MC-8,187".

The 128MB ones would be like "MC-16,384".

You could potentially hit the size barrier on the 128MB SD card before you hit the "number of saves" limit if your average game save was about 128 blocks.

1244

Nintendo Gaming / RE's exclusitivity status

« on: April 18, 2003, 01:56:54 PM »

Here's some more reading on Capcom and sales expectations, courtesy of IGN.

http://ps2.ign.com/articles/394/394131p1.html

Titles listed as filling short of their expectations:

Breath of Fire 5 (PS2)
Clock Tower 3 (PS2)
Biohazard 0 (GCN)
Chaos Legion (PS2)
P.N.03 (GCN)

Two GameBoy titles did better than they expected, but it wasn't enough, so they're trying to do a better job of predicting how titles will perform, and cutting 18 titles from the 100 or so that they previously had in development.

[Big Games of 2003]

1245

Nintendo Gaming / RE's exclusitivity status

« on: April 18, 2003, 01:44:47 PM »

IMO, most RE5 rumors going around right now are because of IGN-PS2.

You see, they had this "Big Games of 2003" feature, but they Insider-locked it, so most people couldn't read what it actually said. But one of the biggest things it said on the little graphic they drew up for it, was "Resident Evil 5".

Insert every "Capcom is getting around those stupid Nintendo contracts by making RE5 come out as soon as, or before, RE4!" theory you can come up with onto a bunch of message boards.

Once the story was unlocked, you could see what they actually had to say on the subject. Apparently Capcom decided to secure the website name for RE5. Ummm, which apparently automatically means that it's a multiplatform game, or at least a PS2 game, because there are no contracts saying it can't be. Oh yeah, and they admit that it's most likely not a 2003 title.

But that hasn't stopped anyone from listing RE5 as a "rumored" PS2 blockbuster.

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Nintendo Gaming / the next gameboy

« on: April 17, 2003, 05:47:35 PM »

"Another concern is that I feel Nintendo has to find a way to radically increase media capacity. How they can do this while still maintaining backward compatabilty I do not know."

They could make it a fully GameCube-compatible handheld, and then you could just attach the GameBoy Player to it.

That's how it worked with the Nomad and the Sega Power Base converter.

1247

Nintendo Gaming / RE's exclusitivity status

« on: April 17, 2003, 05:36:15 PM »

I've found one link about Capcom's expectations for RE Zero (compared to Devil May Cry 2).

http://ps2.ign.com/articles/359/359525p1.html?fromint=1

DMC2 expectations:
650,000 in Japan
700,000 in North America
430,000 in Europe

An expectation of 1,780,000 worldwide by the end of the fiscal year (which ended on March 31, IIRC).

RE Zero expectations:
1,170,000 worldwide by the end of the fiscal year.

DMC1 apparently shipped 2 million units between August 2001 (it's Japanese launch) and May 2002 (the time of this story).

[Ninja X]

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Nintendo Gaming / RE's exclusitivity status

« on: April 16, 2003, 08:19:16 PM »

Quote
Originally posted by: Ninja X

Quote
Originally posted by: Michael8983
I think the copies sold hit Capcom's projections and stayed around there.  Can you give me a site that tells me how many copies Capcom projected would sell for both RE games?

I don't have any links handy, but here's what I remember from reading assorted stories and sales charts.

Nintendo supposedly told Capcom that RE Remake would sell at least a million copies worldwide. I've never seen anyone say that outright though.

Capcom expected RE Remake to sell 400,000 in Japan.

RE Remake trailed off just past 200,000 in Japan, which was when Shinji Mikami took the opportunity to vent about how Sony was deliberately making their products to break easily so they'd get the numbers to inflate their "hardware base" image, causing them to actually get a bigger hardware base, and cause blatantly overpriced games like Kingdom Hearts (all Square games are abnormally expensive in Japan, because Square can get away with it) to sell like hot cakes while he wasn't getting any respect (presumably from his bosses).

Then RE Remake sold 400,000 in the States and 400,000 in Europe, which spawned reports that Capcom was extremely impressed, and that their expectations were for half that amount in each region. Supposedly they chalked it up to Japanese gamers being "unable to accept a remake" and not giving it a chance.

200,000 in Japan plus 400,000 in the States plus 400,000 in Europe is one million.


Then RE Zero supposedly sold 300,000 in Japan. With no special reports or anything about Capcom's attitude.

Then RE Zero supposedly sold 300,000 in the US. I don't know how it did in Europe (if it's even out yet).

Now we're hearing some reports that Capcom's not happy about it. I'm assuming they noticed that RE Zero saw a 50% increase over RE Remake's  Japanese numbers, so they expected RE Zero to do 600,000 in the States, and it only did half of that.

However, if they chalked up RE Remake's "low sales" in Japan to the Japanese not accepting a remake, then they shouldn't have expected more than 400,000 in the area that wasn't affected like that (North America). Plus you can factor in how closely RE Remake and RE Zero came out compared to each other (when by all visual appearances they're offering exactly the same gameplay experience). And then you can factor in that they put RE Zero up against an American-oriented blockbuster like Metroid Prime.

IMO, having RE Remake and Metroid Prime and RE Zero coming out in a short time was a great thing for hardcore people like me, but it's a lousy strategy if you're shooting for the "casual" gamer.

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TalkBack / Mother 1 + 2 Announced!

« on: April 15, 2003, 05:09:54 PM »

Yeah, "Earthbound Zero" wasn't a fan translated game. The game was translated by Nintendo of America. But the name "Earthbound Zero" came from the fan-translators, because they're the ones who made the ROM available to the net, and that's what they were going to call the fan-translation they were working on.

Should you ever happen to come across one of the prototypes, it'd just be called "Earthbound" (even though that's the name that they used for the SNES game).


NOA using the name "Earthbound Zero" if they bring Mother 1 & 2 over would make sense, but they have no particular attachment to the name.

1250

TalkBack / Mother 1 + 2 Announced!

« on: April 14, 2003, 10:03:21 PM »

"I wonder what they would call the NES Earthbound in North America."

"The infamous prototype dubbed it "Earthbound Zero". That makes the most sense anyway."

To be precise, the prototype didn't call it "Earthbound Zero", the fan-translators did.


The story, for anyone who hasn't heard it, goes like this. Nintendo translated Mother 1 for the NES, but never published it (for whatever reason). Somebody managed to get a prototype of "Earthbound for the NES" out of Nintendo HQ somehow at some point (I still can't believe how many people on the net seem to believe that it's a legit release, and that Nintendo only sold the one copy, but they still refer to it as a prototype), and sold it on eBay. At the time, a group was trying to hack the Japanese game in order to fan-translate it. They tracked down the guy who bought it, and gave him the money they had previously raised for hiring a translator, so he'd let them just copy the translated game. The ROM was unplayable as-is, so they had to hack it to get it to work. While they were at it, they changed the opening screen to "Earthbound Zero", which was what they were going to call their fan-translated version.

I've seen "Earthbound Zero prototypes" go up on eBay a few times since then, but they always show "Earthbound Zero" in their screenshots, which is the biggest giveaway that it's fake. It's either a complete ripoff, or it's someone who figured out how to copy a ROM onto a homemade cartrige.

I've also seen a couple of "prototypes" on eBay for Final Fantasy 2 and 3 for the NES. Always funny stuff.