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Episode 374: Men of Leisure

by James Jones, Greg Leahy, Jon Lindemann, and Jonathan Metts - March 16, 2014, 7:42 pm EDT
Total comments: 13

Greg steps in to sort out Yoshi, Donkey Kong, and your Listener Mail.

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Guillaume needed a break this week, and to our surprise, his predecessor was available and eager to sub in for this week! Greg is well prepared for New Business, as he had a chance to play Yoshi's New Island just before recording started. Jon isn't so lucky, as his 3DS died mysteriously, and we soon learn of a troubling pattern. Jonny finishes Strider and checks out Broken Age, but his Nintendo content is an update on DKC: Tropical Freeze, which also gives us a chance to hear Greg's thoughts on the game. James cleans up with much more confident thoughts on the new Professor Layton.

It's a good week for Listener Mail, and we blast through five letters with help from our special guest. Find out why Contra and other games aren't released for Virtual Console in some regions! Consider the impact of Namco helping to develop the new Smash Bros titles. Discover why people may not give Nintendo enough credit for developing original games on eShop. Learn the truth about Dragon Quest X's future on Wii and Wii U! And finally, suffer a long string of puns in one listener's tribute to Steel Diver: Sub Wars.

Got a question or idea for our panel? Send it in, partner! Also, it's time to place your vote in our latest RetroActive poll! Help choose which Nintendo WiFi Connection game will get one last chance to make our online multiplayer dreams come true. Whatever wins, we hope you'll be playing with us! And be sure to catch Greg's other big podcast appearance this week over on Radio Trivia!

This podcast was edited by Jonathan Metts and James Jones.

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 (CD) (MP3), 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.

Talkback

azekeMarch 17, 2014

Last Action Hero was awesome.

Arnold Hamlet >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Mel Gibson Hamlet

eggface123March 17, 2014

NO items in Smash Brothers!? WTF is the point then? Dat Meesta JOOONNNNES tho!!!!

JimsMarch 17, 2014

Good episode.  I really liked the discussion on the economics of releasing stuff on Virtual Console.  When they read the question, my knee-jerk reaction was the usual, "Because Nintendo doesn't care about North America," but the crew went through good reasons why we lag so far behind Japan.


Regarding the Smash Bros. at EVO thing, I think it's more of a question regarding what the intent of an event like EVO is.  Is it more akin to a chess tournament, where the games are almost entirely skill, or is it more akin to the World Series of Poker, where luck plays a factor in the short-term results?  This isn't a knock on poker or games with luck elements, mind you... Obviously, the better players will end up winning more often in the long term, and luck management is a very important aspect of these games.


I don't personally care for the whole "NO ITEMS/FOX ONLY/FINAL DESTINATION" thing, but I can get the appeal of it.  It's more like real-life boxing or soccer or whatever.  It doesn't make a lot of sense for an event like EVO to have a Street Fighter IV tournament, where the winner is crowned based almost entirely on skill, but then have a Smash Bros. tourney next door that is a wacky item-fest.  These big championships and stuff seem to be a celebration of skill more than anything, and a "pure" wacky Smash Bros. game would feel kind of out of place.


Makes you wonder if the attendance for some of these things would be even higher if they had some of these higher-variance games.  Thousands of people play in the World Series of Poker with the dreams of knocking off people like Phil Ivey.  Maybe more people would try the same against the amazing Smash Bros. players?

AVMarch 17, 2014

oh man this episode was probably one of the best. I laughed hard with that last question that jonny said was podcast terrorism, but the discussion on virtual console and overall nintendo IP was top notch. Seriously awesome .

K-S-OMarch 17, 2014

This is why one should not take his electronics into the bathroom.

I do wonder if anyone notices chapter titles. Hint: if I edit they're probably weird.


They were all Virgil quotes at one point but that seemed a bit excessive.

Oooh man, this episode is certainly a treat!

Yoshi's Island is incredibly dear to me. It's a big reason I got into drawing as much as I did and what not because I -LOVE- the art design in that SNES game. And the Music. and the elegant level design. and the super responsive controls. and... I could go on and on.

I haven't had the courage to take the dive on Yoshi's New Island still. I think I commented on one of the Connectivity episodes how much I felt Yoshi's Island DS was an insult and derivative nature aside, it was objectively worse than the original on so, SO many levels. I had bought many bad games before, but I think Yoshi's Island DS was the first time I immediately took a game back to gamestop and cut my losses because of the stink it left on me. I didn't even want to see the case sitting on my shelf because I'd hear the stupid Casio keyboard Xylophone music ring in my head and I see the stork switch points and I start getting flashbacks to Donkey Kong 64, because Yoshi's Island DS was a 2D version of that game, but with also a really spotty camera adjustment thing with the top and bottom screen... Seriously, it's one of the few 2D platformers I can think of where they had to finagle a bad form of camera control into because they were to herped in the derp to put missable enemies with collectibles on the screen.

Yoshi's New Island sounds like it's less egregious, but played so safe and so uninspired that rather than being objectively bad, it's just mired in blandness.


Funny, what happened to Jon happened to me in December. I was very much lamenting it, but thankfully I had a very charitable friend who lives in Redmond who helped me out. It was particularly maddening because I took a pass on a link between worlds and haven't had the cash to try and get a copy recently. I indeed had an update that installed incorrectly that busted mine. Actually, I did -NOT- have to send in my SD card, and my saves were saved. Thusly, I still have my Pokemon X version that had 19 boxes of Zorua that I was trying to Masuda Method. Still, eerie how that happened and that the other week I decided to shave bald. Soon the mountain of games in their shrinkwrap will pile up in my room, and then Jon will become a brony.


This episode has been a heck of a treat. the chemestry is great no matter what you guys talk about, and all of these subjects are great.

Also, I've had a hankering for my old copy of Mega Man ZX that got stolen from me.  the Mega Man mod on Starbound kinda reminded me of how nead a concept the biometals was.

azekeMarch 18, 2014

On doing press events.

They're actually do that in conjunction with Directs. Remember when they revealed Zelda LBW last year in a Direct and then did a press event and coincided embargo lifting on this event with the next Direct.

ResettisCousinMarch 18, 2014

The letter about unfairly criticizing Nintendo for failing to develop new properties is correct. I don't share Mr. Mett's answer. In my opinion, the reason there is a sentiment that Nintendo returns to a select and limited range of franchises is because people are expecting another new and dominating character like Link, Samus, Mario or Pikachu to emerge once or twice every generation. (Never mind that Animal crossing isn't _that_ old or that Wii Sports was an international sensation) The reason people expect this from Nintendo is because these "people" or their online tastemakers are of an age such that during their own youth, Nintendo was the undisputed king of console games, defined by quality and marketshare. I also think there's something similar to how The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Elton John, or Tom Petty are still touring and making new music with limited commercial buzz, and heaven help them if they include any of "that new stuff" in the encore.

Chad SexingtonMarch 18, 2014

I posted this in the EVO announcement thread, but I'll post it again.

Even if you're a Nintendo fan and care nothing about eSports/competitive gaming, you really should watch "The Smash Brothers" documentary.  If you're a fan of documentaries in general, you should also watch it.

It's broken up into multiple parts.  Here's a link (just start on part 1): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tgWH-qXpv8&list=PLoUHkRwnRH-KTCH3tJ9WvsWWPEgUu-y6d

It's broken into 9 parts and each part is 20-35 minutes long.  So the entire thing is 4+ hours.

I've watched a ton of Starcraft 2, but I never followed SSBM.  After watching this documentary, I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of the scene (in general) and can appreciate EVO and MLG a lot more when SSBM comes back.  (Starcraft 2 is also coming back to the next MLG, btw.)

Anyway, I highly recommend watching it.  I know it's a lot, so just watch it one part at a time.  You won't regret it.

pokepal148Spencer Johnson, Contributing WriterMarch 18, 2014

I think this will likely end up being a classic episode just like 103.

A very enjoyable episode all around.

To me the issue isn't so much whether Nintendo is or is not making new IPs--it's that more or less the same teams within Nintendo proper are dedicated to their specific series' for big profile releases. Yes, third party developers and some smaller teams are creating a bunch of new, experimental stuff, and that's great. I don't want to belittle the value of that. But aside from Wii Sports (which I consider big budget due to all the R&D for the Wii controller and concept development), I'd argue that the big-budget Nintendo efforts tend to be a tad too iterative. If EAD Tokyo alternated between Mario games and new or even just different Nintendo IPs, that would definitely help from the perception standpoint. Of course, seriously shaking things up within a series can be a valid approach too, a la Zelda II.

geckog7March 27, 2014

Great episode guys!
It was good to hear from Greg again!

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