The Weekend Wrap-Up – 1/7/07
With three days between updates, will there be too much info for just one? Let’s find out! Together!
- The good Reverend Toast T. Frog has delivered his sermon regarding the prophecy of the upcoming DS game Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja.
Long story short: everyone dies.
Wait, wrong story. That’s Punisher vs. the Marvel Universe. Long story short, looks like it’ll be an interesting new game with a touch of oldschool-styled difficulty, so it’ll no doubt appeal to some, and repel others. More on this one as it becomes available.
- BWTF.com has opened up a review section for TransFormers Titaniums.
So far, only 3-inch Scorponok and Smokescreen, and 6-inch War Within Optimus Prime have been reviewed, but more are sure to come.
- This is why I never go on vacation.
Actually, that’s a lie. I have no money with which to vacation with, and therein lies the culprit.
Seriously, however, as tragic as this is, I notice that the mother seems to be doing a bit to place the blame on Thailand in some shape or form. I question if England has these same warnings for travellers that she believes they should have.
Over at Joystiq, they question the journalistic integrity of some reports of the accident.
- The new GamePro Expo is rated E for
EveryoneAll, and will include the game-music concert Video Games Live.And all it’ll cost you is $100.
- Director Sam Raimi speculates on the possibilities of Spider-Man 4.
- Eulogy for an XBox, by GameDaily.
- N-Philes has bunches and bunches of new box art for you to check out.
…they’re over on the left when you click each link, btw.
- What’s this? A Nintendo contest to win a Link statue, JUST for Canadians?
Aww, nuts. I just knew there had to be a catch.
Unless I get another job soon, I think I’ll root for second-place. Maybe.
- Go Nintendo found a neat little archive of Virtual Console games available in Europe and America, with a small collection of info such as the number of points necessary to purchase and a rating.
Sure, it may not seem like a necessity now, but remember, that list is just going to keep on growing…
- Finally, an update/preview for Super Paper Mario.
Sadly, it does little but to seem to confirm that the game is now Wii-xclusive, and from there speculate where the controls will go.
- Ah, the worst game endings ever.
The criticism of Super Mario Bros. seems a tad harsh, though, given most games back then didn’t even give you that much.
- If you know someone who’s new to gaming, and perhaps this whole “Wii” thing, then this might be a good gift.
Make them feel like a big-shot or something, because they read “the book,” and they know what’s what, and what’s a skinny little punk like you gonna do about it when the game boots up?
And that’s when you stomp their ass.
- GN has a rumor about Animal Crossing on the Wii.
What I’m not sure about is this whole “connect into your Forecast channel” thing.
I just picture the scenario being, “oh, it’s raining outside, maybe I’ll just stay in and play some Animal Crossing… where it, too, is raining. Hmm.”
That, and the Forecast Channel isn’t the most on-top-of-things program I’ve seen, I’d hate to think that a brief shower IRL could last all day in the game, just because that’s what the forecast read at 7am…
- Seems even Microsoft’s faith in HD-DVD is faltering, even if only just a little.
- Are they… are they using half a sheet of notebook paper to advertise their PS3s?
- ZD’s own John Davison looks back at the Stampers’ legacy in video games.
- And to close today, 1up looks back at the rock-suck ratio of 2006.
–LBD “Nytetrayn”
January 8th, 2007 at 3:48 am
DK Bongo Blast was also moved from GameCube to Wii (SOURCE). While as a GameCube owner, it seems like the final nail in the coffin, that Nintendo has moved all support to Wii. But as a Wii owner, I see it as stengthening Wii’s lineup.
From a business standpoint, it seems to be the smartest thing to do. GameCube is dying a slow death, and releasing two more games wouldn’t help that. The best thing for Nintendo to do is add more Wii games, making it seem like a smarter buy for adopters.
January 8th, 2007 at 7:24 am
While I don’t argue about it strengthening Wii’s lineup, the fact that the number of Wii out there isn’t yet enough to satisfy demand seems to hurt things.
I think that from a business standpoint, the smartest thing to do would be to make a dual-label, similar to the XBox/360 ones for the Burger King games. I know there are some people who don’t have a Wii yet who’d probably like to play some of these, who held out for the Cube version of Twilight Princess.
After all, Wii plays Cube games. A Cube game is a Wii game.
Now, if they’ve made some sort of changes that require the larger disc space of the Wii, I could see why they might go for the change. But if this is just more Twilight Princess-styled upgrading, I don’t think that’s fair to the Cube owners.
As for Bongo Blast, will it still use bongo controls? Are they going to release some sort of wireless Wii bongo, or something that plugs into the Wii remote? Or are they going to simply release a GameCube game that won’t play on the GameCube?
That’s my question. Is the end product going to NEED to be Wii-only. Because as I said, a GameCube game is a Wii game now, in essence.
–LBD “Nytetrayn”
January 8th, 2007 at 10:04 am
13. You bring up an excellent point. It really would suck if it were rainy all day outside, and so rainy all day in the game… But I see two possibilities.
First, it may just use the forecast channel as a “hint” on the weather. Let’s say, for example, you boot up the system and the forecast channel says it’s raining, so it’s raining when you play Animal Crossing. But after an hour passes (weather in AC, if it changes, appears to change on the hour, doesn’t it?), maybe it can’t connect to Wii Connect 24 somehow (something I experienced with bad weather and a leeched connection), so the game may decide to either stop the rain or randomly decide whether it continues or not. Or it could just decide this anyway no matter what the status of the forecast channel is. Perhaps it could have a limit, like only letting it rain in your AC game a certain number of hours per day, depending on the season, other factors, or arbitrary game design choices.
Second, maybe you’ll just have the option to travel somewhere else where the weather is different. Of course there’s always another player’s town, but if they all live near you, you won’t notice a difference… But perhaps they could create a new area, kind of like the GBA island in the GameCube game. This idea may not be too likely… But then again, what about a DS island?
14. The thing I don’t like about downloadable media is that it still takes too long. So a normal DVD may be a couple GBs… Can you imagine trying to download a full high-def movie? Sure, we have faster technology out there, but how many people will be able to afford it, or even have it available in their area? If we at least had nationwide free DSL, then it might at least be feasible, if not annoyingly slow… But we don’t even have nationwide free DIAL-UP. This sucks.
But the high-def disc formats are indeed still shaky. I don’t know why people are still hanging onto the idea of there being a “winner” in this format war if some companies really are working on dual-format players. But could it be possible BOTH formats will die out? So maybe not everyone is into high-def, but there does need to be a viable format for it…
January 8th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
I’m a little amused about people turning around and complaining about the Wii getting good press and the PS3 getting bad. If the PS3 isn’t selling, it isn’t selling. And if the press has anything to do with that, I think Sony earned it after being so goddamn cocky.. I’m still curious about this “kiddy game” label, though. What determines if a game is kiddy? Rayman Raving Rabbids seems kinda.. well. Like Adult Swim. But funny.
As for the High-def disks.. I still don’t know how many people really need that kinda stuff. The technophiles at my school are all over it, of course, but I doubt they’re enough. Technophiles liked BetaMax too.
Aaannd. Being someone who is still trying to get a Wii, I don’t know how I feel about the shifts. But it kinda seems like it could be a little extra payoff. I’ve been playing a lot of games lately, and thinking about all the ways a Wii controller alone could make them better. So.
January 9th, 2007 at 5:47 am
This whole good-guy-bad-guy concensus between PS3 and Wii is cheap… you don’t spin negative on a company because you deemed it cocky… nor does low sales warrant mockery from the media. It’s just making game press look more unprofessional… they’re just earning cheap page hits from taking the popular stance of hating Sony. That story with the Long Island Gamestop was completely pointless since it was just one Gamestop (in LONG ISLAND of all places) advertising PS3′s in stock. Talk about fishing for excuses.
11) ” Delving a bit further into the past, Rare’s first N64 Perfect Dark provided the perfect (chuckle) example for why you shouldn’t stick hording alien badguys into a realistic FPS.” Perfect Dark a realistic FPS??…
How dumb do you want to be?
“We could give plenty of reasons why Shenmue 2′s conclusion left a bitter taste in our mouths – not least because it’s been five years and we’re still waiting for the next game to turn up – but what bothers us the most is that Sega spent tens of millions creating one of the most realistic and interactive game worlds ever, and then the second game ends with a magic bloody floating sword.”
What did you expect? Even the first game had you looking for ancient mirrors. You think the villain was an antique collector? Dumbasses.
And they even list MG2. So basically half of that list is complaining about games that ended too “unrealistically”. sigh
January 9th, 2007 at 6:05 am
egg> I assume the first part refers to #15?
Not sure if you’re targeting me or not there, but really, I don’t care that much… the whole thing just seemed odd to me…
…I mean, come on, were they not even worth a whole sheet?
–LBD “Nytetrayn”