It certainly feels like I have been writing a lot of love letters to Nintendo lately, what with the announcement of the Revolution’s purported capabilities and the DS redesign. Now they are talking up how Metroid Prime Hunters will now feature voice chat and a download service. All this is adding up to the actual potential of the Revolution console and frankly I am frothing in anticipation. E3 can’t come soon enough.
Archive for the 'Video Games' Category
Nintendo, lately, has been making me swoon. The revelations about the Revolution, the games being released for the DS, and now a redesigned DS on the horizon have all left me more than breathless and flushed with passion. I look forward to getting my hands on this sexy device.
Joystick also has a tidy little write up about the DS’s new trim look.
Talking smack about the Nintendo Revolution, Mark Rein, VP of Epic Games, had this to say,
“Don’t kid yourself - you’re going to see more gimmicky, crappy, cheap, ‘I wish I hadn’t bought it’ gimmick games based around that controller than you can ever possibly imagine… I guarantee you there’s going to be lots of people who say the whole reason for this game is this controller, we made the perfect game for the controller. And all it’ll be is about the controller, and not necessarily a great game.”
Ah, yes, and true innovation resplendent in non-crappiness and notable absence of gimmickry would be those excellent FPSs your company keeps dropping like two day old turds. What’s that another Unreal? Oh wait your making a different game? A military themed shooter in the near future where you get to shoot demons?! Yawn. Wake me when you get a clue and your game designs evolve beyond scripted shooting and levels populated by oddly placed crates and barrels.
via Ars Technica
Oh, the return of my IBM 8088 childhood in handheld form! 
4 color rebellion’s latest link dump included the website for a game called Wizardry and the screen shot contained therein left me squirming in my seat. Could it be that Wizardry? Well, Advanced Media Network confirms that yes it is that Wizardry and it is for the Nintendo DS. Now, the long wait of hoping that it is translated into English.
Another couple of great games that would make the transition to the DS well would be Bard’s Tale, Might and Magic, and the SSI Dungeons and Dragons Gold Box games. Since I grew up sans console much of my childhood gaming centered around PCs and anything RPG related, don’t get me wrong I love Mario but the theme music to Bard’s Tale really gets me nostalgic. I wonder how many old-time PC gamers would pick up a DS if there was the chance to play through some of those old adventures?
So I’ve been making a little scratch–very little– on the side doing these Click IQ surveys and I’ve finally made about $50 so I figured it was time to bankroll another handheld from Nintendo using my earnings. I had done this last year for a GBA SP so I figured why not continue to fuel my ADHD rattled psyche by picking up a DS.
So here’s the titles that I’m thinking about, though I’m thinking it’ll be hard to get Management to approve them all in a short timeframe.
- Advance Wars: Dual Strike
- Age of Empires II
- Animal Crossing: Wild World
- Black & White Creatures
- Electroplankton
- Lost In Blue
- Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time
- Nintendogs: Lab & Friends
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
- Real-Time: Conflict Shogun
- Trace Memory
- Trauma Center: Under The Knife
- Zoo Tycoon
Animal Crossing, no doubt, will be purchased the day it hits the streets. The Gamecube version was pure crack so the concept of making it portable and wireless enabled will only serve to drive me deeper into a fossil digging, bug chasing, fish catching, tree shaking madness. Electroplankton also looks like it has the potential to be just as addictive even if just for the novelty of it.
Between the DS and the impending Revolution the Big N has my attention and likely most of my entertainment dollars.
Lost garden has a great article on Nintendo’s innovation strategy and a couple of points jumped out at me, in particular those about market consolidation and the ossification of game play:
- Players become addicted to a specific set of game mechanics.
- This group of players has a strong homogeneous preference for this genre of games, creating a well defined, easily serviceable market segment.
- Game developers who release games within a genre with a standardized set of play mechanics are most likely to capture the largest percentage of the pre-existing market.
- Over time, the game mechanics defining the genre becomes rigidly defined, the tastes of the genre addicts become highly sophisticated and innovation within the genre is generally punished by the market place.
Call me a heretic but I get the feeling that in their first generation Microsoft has managed to ossify their offerings to pretty much just first person shooters and looking at the line up for the 360 that will continue. Don’t get me wrong, there are some real solid titles for both their consoles but the dearth of game play options saddens me and I find it hard to get excited for the arrival of the 360. And no, enhanced Live features do not get me all a twitter, unless of course they deploy sophisticated asshat filters.
Nintendo, however, has taken a risky course with its newest home console offering, much to the chagrin of the hardcore players. The more I think about the potential of the new controller the more excited I become. Like the DS there is incredible potential and the hope is that developers and publishers utilize it and the market is receptive to it. The problem is that the last item of the above list: innovation is punished. So publishers might as well bring out another Halo, Gran Turismo, or GTA at the expense of the truly charming and innovative games like Beyond Good and Evil. Sad really.
