Topic: Radio Free Nintendo: Episode 168

[Yoshidious]

It's a celestial alignment as guests from all three of NWR's podcasts come together to provide your RFN fix.
 http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/podcastArt.cfm?artid=20224

 Episode 168: NWR All Star! Dairanto Podcast Brothers X    

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With the RFN team at only half-strength (unconfirmed reports put James and Jon at a mass DeAngelo Hall jersey burning at the time of recording), Greg and Jonny welcome members from RFN's companion shows to make up an all-star cast. The host of Radio Trivia: Podcast Edition, Michael "TYP" Cole, is on board along with Zach Miller and Andy Goergen from the revitalised NWR Newscast team, while listening to the show for 50 hours unlocks two clones of Evan Burchfield—watch out for that "Auteur theory" Final Smash!      

Our five-man New Business is predictably wide-ranging, including discussions of Brutal Legend, Wii Sports Resort, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and a journey through the entire Zelda franchise just for good measure. There are also some more thoughts on Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story from Jonny and TYP, while Greg spent the past week whipping the undead and carefully climbing staircases in Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth for Japan's WiiWare service.    

This week's big show concludes with another substantial dose of your Listener Mail, covering such topics as the fate of New Play Control! Pikmin 2 in North America, the Super Skills of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and the ominous news that a new Cho Aniki game will soon be coming to the US. Special attention is reserved for the question of whether third party publishers resent Nintendo's success, and how this may or may not affect their strategies on Wii.    

Next week, we will begin RetroActive #10: Shining Force II, so don't forget to play along and give us your thoughts in the forum discussion thread.    

We're always looking for great Listener Mail to read and discuss on the show, so please send your questions or comments! (We really love seeing your praise and feedback regarding the show itself; however, in the interest of time, we may edit your letter to be read on the podcast.)      Credits:    

This podcast was edited by Greg Leahy.    

Music for this episode of Radio Free Nintendo is used with permission from Jason Ricci & New Blood. You can purchase their newest album, Done with the Devil, directly from the record label, Amazon.com, or iTunes, or call your local record store and ask for it!    

Additional music for this episode of Radio Free Nintendo is copyrighted to Nintendo, and is included under fair use protection.  

[broodwars]

I put in some time with one of the Folklore demos (why do some PSN games have multiple demos, instead of one demo with multiple chapters?) a while back, and what that game reminded me of most was the two GameCube Lost Kingdoms games.  Instead of using cards that call forth enemies to perform attacks on your enemies, you call forth their souls after ripping them out via arbitrary Sixaxis waggle.  I thought the demo was ok, but the gameplay wasn't terribly interesting and I got fed up with the boss (the game's only clues on how to fight bosses are these fairly obtuse pictures of them in your monster book).

[KDR_11k]

I liked Lost Kingdoms...

[broodwars]

I liked Lost Kingdoms...

As did I, but somehow Folklore just didn't seem to "get it" in the demo like Lost Kingdoms did.  For some reason it felt like grinding going around, killing enemies, and ripping out their souls. Besides, a lot of the fun of Lost Kingdoms was the deck management, which is absent here outside of deciding what monster souls you're going to equip (which you can change at any time).

[KDR_11k]

A ton of talk about the failure of DSE and how it's not what people wanted but not a single mention of its genre? It's a freaking rail shooter advertised to people who don't want rail shooters.

Also if people having Wii Sports already counts as a disadvantage for third parties they really need to reevaluate their game quality, you'd think if they want to charge 50€ for their game they'd make sure their game is better than the freebie people got with the system.

[Halbred]

I know, right? The bar is exactly THIS low, guys.

[Yoshidious]

A ton of talk about the failure of DSE and how it's not what people wanted but not a single mention of its genre? It's a freaking rail shooter advertised to people who don't want rail shooters.

I don't think rehashing the on-rails shooters on Wii debate would've made for a very riveting discussion considering how much that topic has been beaten to death here and elsewhere. TYP and Jonny alluded to that at the very beginning and that's probably sufficient--I think most people who listen to the show are fully aware of what genre it is in and the issues that come with that. 

Also, if the genre is so toxic, how is it that Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles (which of course involved a very similar genre transition for the IP) sold over a million copies worldwide and has spawned a sequel? Even HotD Overkill, while far from a huge hit, performed much much better than Extraction's pitiful opening month sales. There's definitely an argument to be made that the genre is reaching or perhaps has already reached a saturation point on Wii, but it's clear that it's not so simple as: on-rails shooter=commercial failure.     

[NWR_Neal]

House of the Dead: Overkill is still one of my favorite games of the year. I think it got by a lot on word-of-mouth and sheer ridiculousness. Even still, when I was at New York Comic-Con, Sega pimped the HELL out of that game to the market that was going to buy it.

At E3, DSE had a trailer in Nintendo's press conference...and...and...
I don't even think EA brought it up at their E3 press conference, but then again, the only Wii/DS games that existed to EA in that conference were MotionPlus sports games and James Jones' favorite game EVER Charm Girls Club.

I feel like EA Sports is the only competent marketing/PR side of EA. The only games that get a lot of love are the Tiger Woods games, the Maddens, the EA Actives...
They harp on these EA Partner titles but even those don't seem to be that well marketed.

[Halbred]

Yeah, DSE didn't even make the presentation. BioWare got in there twice, for Cthulhu's sake, but there was no room for Visceral Games. And it's a shame. However, DSE was included in the press kit...without any fracking context.

[Killer_Man_Jaro]

Nice title.

I wish I had time to start something like what you're doing with the Legend Of Zelda franchise, Andy. Good luck with finishing Oracle of Seasons and have fun with the rest of the series.

Listener Mail this week was interesting, and there were a bunch of moments where I wish I could have altered time and jumped in with a comment about a response somebody had. I'll do that now:

1. I feel Pikmin and Pikmin 2 have enough differences that ranking them against each other is somewhat fruitless. As I recall during the Super Mario World retroactive, Jonny said we should not rank Mario games in a league table of best to worst and should celebrate them for the innovations they each made. In my opinion, that logic works here too. They both have many strengths and they both do certain things more successfully than its counterpart. Let's appreciate that.

2. People state that their excitement levels for New Super Mario Bros. Wii are merely moderate, but come 15th November (or 20th for us lot in Britain), I bet everyone will be head over heels for the game. I'm already predicting it will be my personal Game of the Year, and probably that will also be the case for the site's 2009 awards.

3. See NWR Round Table 3 thread for thoughts on the third letter. There's certainly no secretive and conspired loathing for Nintendo's success. Big name publishers are simply being stupid. TV advertisements are still the biggest awareness raisers and if they don't realise they need to tell the vast majority who aren't in the know that they have Wii games coming out imminently, they're asking for a financial failure.

4. Don't really know what to say. I missed the boat on Cho Aniki. I could download it sometime in the near future, but then again, I don't know if I want to. Sounds a bit too "out there" for my liking.

That's all. Good stuff. It is one of the main events of a Sunday for me when the latest episode is uploaded.

[GoldenPhoenix]

Very good show. Though like expected I disagreed with virtually everything Zach said.

[Jonnyboy117]

I had a blast doing this show from a different seat than usual. I really didn't know if I'd be able to participate until very shortly before recording, so I went in with a very different mindset. All the guests did a great job, not to mention Greg as host!

[D_Average]

Great show guys. I lol'd. At work. 

[vudu]

I have a complaint and a suggestion.  I've been holding my tongue (fingers?) for the past month hoping it would get better, but it's not.  The commercial mid-show kind of sucks.  It seems phony/forced and really breaks up the flow of the show.  I understand its purpose, but I think it would be much more effective if instead of having the RFN crew spit out one liners over the Wii Shop Channel music you just had a 2 or 3 minute conversation about about recent articles and maybe discussed them with each other briefly.  It would make the segment much more enjoyable.

I'm happy the review of Dirt 2 says it's a great addition to the DS library, but a 5 second mention doesn't make me want to read the review.  I haven't read any of the Medaverse developer diary purely because I don't really know what they're about.  Is this entirely lazy of me?  Most definitely.  But the commercials haven't sold me on them either.  But if you took a couple minutes to have a natural conversation about them it could persuade me to check them out.

I can't be the only one who feels this way, can I?

[GoldenPhoenix]

I have a complaint and a suggestion.  I've been holding my tongue (fingers?) for the past month hoping it would get better, but it's not.  The commercial mid-show kind of sucks.  It seems phony/forced and really breaks up the flow of the show.  I understand its purpose, but I think it would be much more effective if instead of having the RFN crew spit out one liners over the Wii Shop Channel music you just had a 2 or 3 minute conversation about about recent articles and maybe discussed them with each other briefly.  It would make the segment much more enjoyable.

I'm happy the review of Dirt 2 says it's a great addition to the DS library, but a 5 second mention doesn't make me want to read the review.  I haven't read any of the Medaverse developer diary purely because I don't really know what they're about.  Is this entirely lazy of me?  Most definitely.  But the commercials haven't sold me on them either.  But if you took a couple minutes to have a natural conversation about them it could persuade me to check them out.

I can't be the only one who feels this way, can I?

Well they do only have so much time and it may be hard to condense a discussion of recent articles into a couple of minutes. Personally I don't mind the commercial to be honest.

[broodwars]

I have a complaint and a suggestion.  I've been holding my tongue (fingers?) for the past month hoping it would get better, but it's not.  The commercial mid-show kind of sucks.  It seems phony/forced and really breaks up the flow of the show.  I understand its purpose, but I think it would be much more effective if instead of having the RFN crew spit out one liners over the Wii Shop Channel music you just had a 2 or 3 minute conversation about about recent articles and maybe discussed them with each other briefly.  It would make the segment much more enjoyable.

I don't care much for the segment, either, though I suppose it's necessary.  I just wish they'd use some other music clip for that segment, as I loathe the Wii Shop Channel's song.  C'mon, something from Mario Galaxy (that's not the damn hub world song) or whatnot!

[Halbred]

The Ocean theme from Wind Waker!

[Sundoulos]

I really like the commercials, actually, but it is a little jarring to switch between people's voices when the recording quality is a bit uneven as the voices switched.   I guess it's just the nature of the beast when you can't all record in the same room with the same equipment.  Still, it might be better just to have one person per week recording the segment.  Just IMHO.

[Plugabugz]

I have noticed that whenever Lindy, Director of Nintendo World Report dotcom it is compulsory to state his full title when talking about Lindy, Director of Nintendo World Report dotcom talk he sounds slightly sped up?

Edits: Only during commercial.

[NWR_Lindy]

I'd have to defer to Greg to explain that.

As for the commercial, we're going to work on it a bit.  Our goal was to make it as short as possible, but I can see how it comes of sounding forced.  My fear is that discussion will turn into a pointless three-minute convo about stuff that most people don't care about, since they actually read the site.

[vudu]

So you think a pointless three-minute convo about Nintendo games will take away from the pointless two-hour convo about Xbox and PlayStation games? 

[D_Average]

I have a solution. Jonny should bring back ole Mavus or whatever his name was and let him do the segment.

[KDR_11k]

Discussion is for the Newscast but the commercial is annoying anyway.

[NWR_Lindy]

I have a solution. Jonny should bring back ole Mavus or whatever his name was and let him do the segment.

I believe you mean Brufus.

[D_Average]

I have a solution. Jonny should bring back ole Mavus or whatever his name was and let him do the segment.

I believe you mean Brufus.

Ahhh, thats right!  Man, that character was great.  Brufus could just talk about all the wonderful things he learned on the World Report internets.

As it is now though, the commercial works well enough.  Sometimes I forgot to check the main site for a week so its nice to be reminded as I never miss a show.