Nick

Hmm, he must be a huge fan of Kirby's Air Ride. Shows just how money kills any decency in the average man. And in his case, very average.

There is still the Nintendo/EA combined thingie happening. Might be interesting to see what that has to offer...

Voted. Good luck.

These are the kinds of people we need more of. I'm sure there are plenty of them, but they are too few and far apart. Our local EB is full of ill informed zombies. Can't even pin up a poster correctly.

That may be all very well and true, but the majority of games are sold through high street retailers, not video game stores, even with the mass influx of video game only stores. It's obvious that even they have troubles with games alone, and so there is this diversity of selling walkthroughs, magazines, hardware, DVDs and accessories. Also, I must admit, I must have missed something here... There is actually going to be something to look forward to AT LAUNCH for PS3? I suppose the Wii hype has been too overpowering.

That is by far the lamest excuse ever. Nintendo will not become a Sega, for many very good reasons, as well as some stupid ones. It’s been stated it will never happen. It won’t happen. There are two distinct differences between the Sega scenario and the Nintendo one. Sega had a vast number of consoles to attempt to support and far worse 3rd party relations with both the Saturn and Dreamcast than the GameCube or Nintendo 64 ever had. As a result, Sega dried up all liquid assets and amassed a large amount of debt. Which leads to the second, money. Sega went to all the effort of developing the ridiculous Sega CD 32X add on crap that they almost immediately pulled support for. 3rd parties were at a loss. Why should third parties support a console the parent company won’t? Then came the issue with the Saturn and Sony’s entrance. Sega may not have been running on dry yet, but funding was draining fast, and there just wasn’t any income Sony had stolen the bulk, and Nintendo the leftovers. Then there was the Dreamcast abomination. Don’t confuse this by suggesting the Dreamcast was a good console. I don’t disagree, but it was the worst piece of hardware in terms of the business strategy behind it (Until the Xbox, that is). Sega drove a dagger into this thing before it was even at the R&D stages. They deliberately set up two teams to develop the hardware in order to invite ‘friendly’ competition and have the two teams vying for supremacy by providing the most cost effective and powerful machine. As a result, they wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars, or perhaps even millions, because of this deliberate faction. Retailers were already having issues with the Saturn, which had met a premature death, and now had to strongly consider the ramifications of supporting Sega once again. Retailers couldn’t shift consoles. People were waiting in anticipation of the PS2 and Nintendo GameCube (and the later announced Xbox). As units weren’t moving, neither were games, then began the mass canning, halting and porting of projects. Sega was in the pits. Furthermore, they could no longer maintain debt, and so had to fold all hardware operations and scale back. Nintendo doesn’t have any of these issues, or, in the case of 3rd parties, not as severe. There is one R&D team on the Wii, they have one console to support. They work TOGETHER. Furthermore, despite the shift of third parties from GCN, it maintained a relatively stable array of games, despite long periods between releases. Second, Nintendo has more than $6 billion, or rather, correctly termed, $6,000 million dollars in reserves. No debt. And a promising, budding new console. Nintendo will not do a Sega.

Groan. Nothing new. Just the same old useless 'information', and reaffirming the stupid online mode Nintendo wishes to adopt. Nintendo's perception of 'not directly competing' with the other two is a joke. They obviously don't see the lack of shelf space at stores for their products. They obviously don't see their products being sold in the same stores as the competition. I know there is a substantial difference in the Wii and the other two consoles, but the retailer doesn't care. To him, it's a DVD in a case that looks the same as any other $100 piece of software. He thinks that one DVD is in competition with another, and so, they are marketed by the retailer in the exact same way.

That beloved little wonder has vanished. No doubt a casualty due to the latest forum upgrade. Yes, that's right, that delightful little guy that was there, showing us the way. It was the light of our lives. It was our rope through a blizzard... It was the little arrow that told us the exact location of our last post in the thread, and which threads exactly we had posted in. AND IT'S All GONE! I must say I am dissappointed. I really like the feature of that little arrow.

A black cube that plays games. It's almost as good as a games sphere :P. Years ago, I had dreams of a Zelda title that was dark and mysterious, something atmospherically comparable to Eternal Darkness. Something that humanised Link, made him alive. Instead, I got a delightful, colourful and highly Tellie Tubbies coloured variant that was still good, but wasn't what I wanted. Nintendo almost destroyed that Zelda-esque feel, but managed to keep the game a 'Zelda' game. Then it came, the one light of hope for the GCN, that will never end up being that light of hope for the GCN :P. I am looking forward to one thing in life. One thing. Twilight Princess. One thing.

Hmm, I believe some things, but others have to be grossly inaccurate. Another thing that I strongly disagree with him about was spoken about in this week's podcast. No matter what he or anyone else says, Metroid Prime is a first person shooter. The definition of a first person shooter is just that, in the first person, shooting stuff, as the primary gameplay. Yeah, it does have adventure elements, exploration, etc, but it is primarily shooting in the first person. Zelda has RPG elements, but it's not an RPG.

My Visa is $220 worse off. But that is my favourite Link ever. There was no stopping me! Now for the justification of it... For the combined price of that statue and my Wii, I'd still have $500 left over by comparison to a person buying a PS3.

If it's anymore than $329, they can say goodbye to my purchase. I'll import. Not going to be paying with arms and legs this time around. If Nintendo wants my custom, they can respect my wallet. US$250 translates to around AU$325. And if, IF their games are in line with PS3/Xbox 360 game prices over here (would not be surprised), NAL can fold for all I care.

Nintendo published the title, they own, or did own, the rights together. That would have been negotiated when the two split, and one would have got everything. If Silicon Knights did, it will go the way of the 360.

Oh my goodness! How could I leave out the soundtrack! The workings of Takeshi Arai are brilliant. His compositions in Golden Sun were wonderful, even for the GBA! And his work in the Mario Sports titles are strongly influenced by his RPG compositions. Even the overworld of The Lost Age after finding Isaac and his party is very similar to the opening of Tales.

Why is it on in the day? I would have thought a soap as popular as that in the UK would be on at prime time or something... Here it's on at 6:30pm weeknights.

Haha, just up to the Russian mail order bride part? You guys are a few weeks behind, hey?

I have just completed this game tonight. Oh my God! I cannot believe the tremendously gorgeous story, cast, and events that go together to present this title. Close to the end, I was greatly saddened by what was happening, and then for what did happen was absolutely fantastic. Not since The Lost Age or Another Code have I felt so attached to the people of the game, and, for a title to do this, to me, is wonderful. Till this point, I was only looking forward to Twilight Princess (and Smash Bros Brawl a little...). Now, I want a sequel, I want to play games again. I can't believe I have had the game for some 20 months, started, played for about 11 hours, then didn't touch it till late last month. I'm so glad I did go back to it, Tales more than deserved it. Who cares if it's a generic RPG? What game isn't generic these days? It's the unique story of each that gives them their own qualities, whether they be good or bad, and Tales' is certainly the former rather than the latter... Anyone who hasn't played it, this is one of the GCN's great RPGs, of what there is, please, buy it, play it, and prey to the Goddess Martel that the Namco RPG in development for Wii is a sequel.

Looks like Stocka was correct. Tales of Phantasia Full Voice Edition PSP - 7th September Tales of Destiny PS2 - Winter Tales of The World Radiant Mythology PSP - Winter Tales of Destiny 2 PSP - 2007 However, there may be a surprise or two tomorrow.

Absolutely, Yamauchi was a dictator, and he was using 30 year old tactics in an industry of modern aesthetics. His pathetic claims that Mario would never be on a compact disc of any kind were so immature and poor. Simple fact; solid state can't compete with optical media in terms of capacity and cost.

You are in fact correct, whether you realise it or not, Yamauchi never did play a video game in his life, and he was proud of it. I would agree with nearly everything seamus_aran stated, except for the part about the Game Boy. The Game Boy was never dwindling. In fact, one of the top new gadgets at the time (1999/2000) in Time was the next generation Game Boy, I think, although I can't find a link.

The GameCube was anything but a failure. Why must a console all of a sudden sell over 50 million units to be successful? If any console was a failure this generation, it was the Dreamcast. The GameCube did so many things for Nintendo. While I will admit it appeared as a generation step I think, all they needed was a source of income in preparation for this upcoming generation. However, they managed extremely well, and delivered. The GameCube provided a gate for Retro to truly be recognised. More Japanese companies supported the console than they did the Nintendo 64 and it only sold 10 million less than the Nintendo 64. Capcom released a plethora of titles. They never released so many titles of such high standard on the Nintendo 64. After the abomination Nintendo made of themselves with third party relations on the Nintendo 64, and their attempt to make elitist pigs of themselves by having a ‘dream team’, they have repaired much of what was lost. Nintendo has, it appears, been finally forgiven for backstabbing Sony (a Japanese company) and running off into the sunset with Philips (a non Japanese company), something unforgivable in Japanese business. Nintendo has built strong relationships with Japanese third parties (Konami, Namco, Capcom, Camelot, Bandai), something it distanced itself from in the Nintendo 64 realm. As a result, we got a taste of Tales of Symphonia, an excellent RPG, along with Baten Kaitos, Viewtiful Joe, Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil 0, the complete series ported. We also got Link in Soulcalibur, and despite whether you call it whoring or whatever, it really gave that nostalgic Nintendo feel. Donkey Konga, too, was a great thing for Nintendo and Namco to produce. Despite what people have said, the Bongos were not the secret peripheral… One of the strongest relationships, and in my opinion, a very important one, that Nintendo has developed, is that with Sega. Not only are Nintendo’s consoles the home of Sonic, we got a brilliant edition of F-Zero. This from what was Nintendo’s arch rival, is something spectacular. Then there is Square-Enix. Whether you like their games or not, I don’t think people appreciate enough the importance and value of this rebirth of this relationship. Nintendo and Square-Enix, or Squaresoft, as it was in those days, were literally at arms with each other. The war of words was frightening. Square was disgusted that Nintendo was being so stubborn and when with a solid media rather than an optical one. Yamauchi couldn’t believe Square’s arrogance (how hypocritical) and publicly declared Nintendo didn’t need Final Fantasy to survive (maybe so, but it certainly wouldn’t have hurt). Now, after they kissed up and made buddies for the development of Crystal Chronicles (funded by Nintendo, developed by Square (The Game Designer’s Studio is just a company on paper…)), the game has done remarkably well for it’s hardware requirement. Now, Square-Enix can’t stop with the Nintendo love. Remakes for the GBA are all over the place, and finally, finally, the Western market is getting III, the proper III. What’s more is that it is in 3D, completely remade. As well as the various unknown DS projects, the won’t just be two Square-Enix titles very early on in the Wii’s timeline, one, and possibly two, will be launch titles. That is a monumental event. Nintendo also got the opportunity to get rid of some dead weight. They knew long before us that Rare had lost their charm. Grabbed by the Ghoulies was nothing spectacular, Perfect Dark Zero was shredded to pieces, while Kameo lacked the finishing polish. I must admit, I found Donkey Kong 64 tedious and ridiculously weighed down with pathetic side quests. Although Silicon Knights was an excellent second party, if developers aren’t going to like who they’re working for, then why bother? The games will be crap. They did the right think, and Retro has been a good substitute. All this, and they still managed to produce a profit taking console, and release games like Super Mario Sunshine, The Wind Waker, Super Smash Bros., Four Swords, Pikmin, Paper Mario, Super Paper Mario and Twilight Princess (it’s still a GCN title too). That’s two AAA titles from Nintendo, themselves, for each year they have had the console released, all the while having R&D develop not only a new home console, but Mario Galaxy (been in development since before GCN released), a variety of unspecified projects, a new handheld and the next Game Boy. The GameCube was not a failure. It still manages to be on shop shelves here, in Australia, Nintendo’s worst market in the world. People just don’t appreciate Nintendo for what they do, have been doing, and continue to do into the future. They’re not perfect, they’ve made a great many amount of mistakes, but they are doing pretty well, and the GameCube was one of those things.

Once I have had a problem with an error message with Smash Bros. And then once more with Crystal Chronicles, we had just collected the third drop, gone through all the crap, new miasma streams were shown, then, click, click, click, click... "Please restart the Nintendo GameCube and ensure the disc is correctly inserted".

Actually, it wasn't removed because of that, Rare was having difficulties in raising the frame rate of the game when it was applying such pictures. The whole reason why they went for the expansion pack in the first place was so the game could use the extra 4 megs of RAM in order to get the game up to speed. After no success, they dropped the GB Camera idea and opted to continue using the expansion pack anyway. In terms of the Wii, it'll have a camera, somehow, but I think that this isn't the way Nintendo will do it.

Different situation. There was no demand for an Ice Climber game. There is plenty of, and has been for a long time, demand for a new Kid Icarus title. Ice Climbers and Kid Icarus don't compare.

Wow, and Mark Bozon is a video game analyst, and here I was thinking he was the editor of IGN Wii/GCN