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Episode 373: Death of a Soft Salesman

by Billy Berghammer, James Jones, Jon Lindemann, Jonathan Metts, and Guillaume Veillette - March 9, 2014, 6:57 pm EDT
Total comments: 9

Jon is back, and he brought along Billy for this big episode in which we give Nintendo WiFi Connection an honest (if slightly premature) eulogy.

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Jon's back, Billy is our special guest, and we take an extensive look at online gaming in this week's episode. Lindy catches up with Steel Diver: Sub Wars and uses his FPS expert skills to slice it up for us. James tries the newest and maybe final Professor Layton; he also polls the group on our Bravely Default progress. Gui checks out an upcoming PC/Wii U game called A.N.N.E. that sounds like a twist on Blaster Master(!). Jonny approaches the end of DKC: Tropical Freeze and tries the new South Park game. Billy's up last with NES Remix, Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare, and even a couple of minutes on Titanfall.

That's the perfect segue to the feature segment, in which we take a look back on a decade of Nintendo WiFi Connection. It's been a rough path to retirement for Nintendo's first major online network, but we have plenty of happy (or at least amusing) memories. In fact, we thought it would be kind of cool to go back and play one of these games, so look out for details on a WFC-themed RetroActive to come out this week through our SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE. And please shoot an email on any gaming topic for next week's deep dive into the bag!

This podcast was edited by Guillaume Veillette and Jonathan Metts.

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

I look forward to destroying my Pokemon Battle Revolution disk the day Nintendo WFC gets shut down, because without wifi, that game is useless. I guess -maybe- you can use it to get a free adamant Electavire with cross chop bred onto it??? I mean, it's not even worth using it to grind rare berries because the Wifi on the Gen 4 and 5 games is gonna go down too, so... bleh. Maybe if you wanna get some Local Gen 4 battling on, i -guess-.

I'm kinda glad I picked up PBR for $5.

Leo13March 10, 2014

TO your Nintendo online discussion. The best online Nintendo experience I've had was playing Advance Wars Days of Ruin. The online worked fine (obviously lag is a non-issue on a turn based strategy game), but more importantly, voice chat worked as long as you had each other's friend code. I had a lot of fun playing with a buddy of mine.
One interesting tid bit was it worked like a 2-way radio (you had to hold down the X button to talk)

InvaderRENMarch 10, 2014

Brawl.


The failure of Brawl's online was an order of magnitude worse than ALL the other WFC issues put together.


I still cry myself to sleep thinking about what that game could have been. (and yes, I know Melee was a better game, but the PACE of Brawl would have perfectly suited online play and given it a one hell of an online community).


If Brawl U is more like Melee (but perhaps still not QUITE as fast) and the online works... God help me, just stick the saline and catheter in now.

K-S-OMarch 10, 2014

Going to use the Wi-Fi to figure out which DLC puzzles are worth keeping in Picross DS and 3D.  Wish Nintendo would release new versions of those games that can do QR sharing. (The Picross e series is nice but no it has no custom sharing.)


I will also miss the leaderboards for Sin & Punishment and Geometry Wars, even though I was not that great at either.

Pixelated PixiesMarch 10, 2014

I'm in total agreement with what others have said about Brawl's online being completely broken. I don't think I've ever as disappointing an online experience as I did with Brawl. It was god-awful.

EnnerMarch 11, 2014

A lament for The Last Story for it will have it's cooperative and competitive multiplayer shutdown. Yep, that game had online multiplayer.

I'm not sad or angry that the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection is shutting down. It helps that I never cared much for playing Mario Kart Wii online (though it was nice the few races I tried). Servers and online services shutting down is a natural course of things in video games so I wasn't surprised by the news. Given some comments of frustration towards the shutdown, I wonder if there is such a thing as an acceptable time for NWFC to turn.

Leo13March 11, 2014

Whoa, really the last story had multi player. Was it online only or local too? I learned about the last sorry and Xenoblade at the same time and choose Xenoblade instead to I still haven't played the last story.

MASBMarch 11, 2014

PGC-Agent Cooper posted the topic on March 09, 2014, 06:57:47 PM

PGC-Agent Cooper last active on May 20, 2013, 09:43:37 PM

It's a mystery only Louie could solve!

The online aspect of Brawl was one of the biggest disappointments of the Wii. So much potential unrealized.

I like it when Billy and Jon snipe at each other occasionally. I picture a future stretch goal for a RFN telethon being a wrestling match between the two. Jon being like that character from Street Fighter IV that pours oil on himself before and during the match. ;)

No mystery! Our site uses alphabetical order when multiple authors are listed, and the Talkback thread is auto-created from the account of whoever's listed first. So for the next episode, you'll see a thread started by "Yoshidious".    ;-)

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