Emasher

I think you mean infrared pointing. Gyroscopes detect rotation, and were added by the Wii motion plus, which Twilight Princess Wii never supported. Given the fact that we haven't seen any right-handed footage, I'd say it's pretty unlikely. I don't know if the Wii version's world was mirrored dynamically at run-time, or statically, meaning it was already mirrored on the disk. Doing it dynamically wouldn't have been that difficult in theory, but it would have increased the load times, or per-frame rendering time. If it was done dynamically in the Wii version, there could be a slim chance of it being included, but I wouldn't get my hopes up. That all said, Wii U disks can store up to 25 GB, so it's entirely possible they just have both versions included. Either way, I think Wii controls are probably unlikely, unless they do it without mirroring the world.

There was almost nothing in there that interests me. I'll probably pick up Twilight Princess HD, since I've been meaning to re-play it anyway, and probably Fire Emblem eventually (I have to catch up on some of the other games in the series first). Other than that, I was pretty bored watching it.

Annnnd just got the "I've decided I don't want to date anyone right now after all" text when trying to agree on a time for a second date. Guess it's back to Tinder once again. I've been forgotten about twice now. I always text girls about half an hour or so before a first date. I don't ask if we're still on, since that makes one seem less confident, but rather just mention something about what I'm wearing to make it easier for her to find me. The real reason of course is to make sure I don't get stood up. The two times I had been forgotten about, both girls were really apologetic, one rushed there as fast as she could, and the other one re-scheduled. For a busy person, forgetting is forgivable, especially if it's been a while since you've made the date, but the response you got makes it sound like this girl isn't taking this seriously. I'd never go on a first date with a girl who wants to bring a friend along. Adding another variable like that introduces way to much potential for things to go wrong, and it suggests again that she isn't taking this seriously.

I'd recommend just putting a surpressor on a pipe pistol for the time being. I believe you can craft one without any perks. Pipe pistols in general are actually pretty decent early game weapons if you upgrade them as much as you can early on, since their ammo is really common and they still do a decent amount of damage against early game enemies. I'd also recommend grabbing the perk that lets you get screws from scrapping guns if you haven't already, since they seem to be the main bottleneck for building weapon mods early on.

I played for about an hour and a half last night and got to the end of the

So you just don't want to play the game? In all fairness though, reviews are making it sound like it's not as buggy as previous Bethesda RPGs.

You can expect a certain amount of bugs in any game with this level of complexity at launch. Bethesda RPGs have been known to be particularly bad for it though. Generally what happens is that Bethesda releases patches to fix stuff within a certain window, but at a certain point they just stop patching things. Why spend the development time supporting the game for years when you've already made most of your money on it? Skyrim was supported for about a year and a half. That said, for every recent Bethesda RPG, the modding community has released unofficial patches, which have fixed a great deal of issues that Bethesda has ignored. You may think that isn't relevant to you (since I'm guessing you'd be getting the PS4 version), but this time around, mods are going to be supported on consoles (aside from ones that require script extenders, but historically, unofficial patches haven't required this). If you've got a fairly limited time to play games, and don't want to waste it on something that's a buggy mess, I'd wait and see what others have to say (especially other PS4 users, because many bugs end up being platform dependent).

Just had a really promising first date with a girl I met on Tinder. And none of this ignoring my texts nonsense this time either. She texted me as soon as she got home.

Metacritic has lists here: http://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/release-date/available They include 3rd party games though, and might not be very accurate for older consoles (such lists are available but I didn't see links to them on the page, so you'll have to search for them). In any case, they should be easy to search based on the Wikipedia list.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_products_published_by_Nintendo

For me it's the GameCube, but it was the first home console I owned, so that's definitely skewed my opinion a bit. Still, the console had some of my all time favourite games including Metroid Prime, Tales of Symphonia, and Wind Waker, and those are only the top few.

Considering what Nintendo were releasing for the Wii at the same point in it's life-cycle as we're at now with the Wii U, I don't think things are all that bad right now in comparison. Most of what Nintendo published for the Wii in 2009 were GameCube games being sold with updated controls in the form of "New Play Control" and Metroid Prime Trilogy. All we really got that year was New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and Punch-Out. There were also Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit Plus--if you're into that sort of thing, and Excitebots, which was only released in North America that year. 2009 was such a bad year for Nintendo games that I actually went and bought a PS3, the first non-Nintendo console I ever owned. There were a few decent 3rd Party games released for the Wii that year though. This year on the Wii U, we've seen three significant 2D platformers from Nintendo (Kirby and the Rainbow Curse, Yoshi's Woolly World, and Super Mario Maker), and then there's also been Splatoon, and a couple Mario spin-off titles. Neither console really got anything I would consider a flagship title that year (although some may disagree, and that's fair enough). The Wii in it's last few years did get a few fairly decent games in the form of Mario Galaxy 2 and Skyward Sword. Nintendo only has so many teams which have the capability of putting out really high quality games (like major Mario and Zelda games), and we have already seen a decent number for the console. Since Nintendo games do take a few years to make, it's not surprising that we've seen a bit of a quiet period. Unlike the Wii however, with the not-so-great sales of the Wii U, I wouldn't be surprised at all if instead of seeing things pick up next year, some of the major games get delayed and released as NX launch titles.

I'm sure it had some impact, but both Super Mario Sunshine and Animal Crossing (which both had better sales), and Mario Party 4 (which had similar sales to Metroid Prime) came out the same year, so I'm a bit curious about what you're basing that on.

The fact that they're not doing Metroid anymore probably does have a lot more to do with the fact that the Metroid series tends to not sell that well to be fair. Donkey Kong Country Returns sold 6.39 Million units globally, whereas most Metroid games don't usually sell more than 2 Million (Metroid Prime and Metroid being the only exceptions). Tropical Freeze didn't sell that well either (1.16 Million), but that might have more to do with the Wii U's sales than anything, and I'm not entirely sure how accurate VG Chartz is with eShop purchases (or in general). Donkey Kong Country games are almost certainly cheaper to make than Metroid Prime games though, so even with the lower sales numbers of Tropical Freeze, it's quite possible Nintendo profited more from it than they did Prime 3, which sold a few hundred thousand units more than Tropical Freeze. On the other hand though, Nintendo could have had them develop a Zelda game. Given the Prime games were some of the greatest 3D games in the metroidvania genre of all time, you would think Nintendo would might let them work with their other major (and much better selling) metroidvania-focused IP, but instead, they had them completely change genres to 2D platformers, which are much simpler games both in terms of design, and from a technical perspective. Miyamoto has actually stated before that he would like to work with Retro to develop a Zelda game, so it wouldn't really surprise me if the Donkey Kong games were a temporary thing to put the studio to work while it recovered. Aside from the three key staff members who left to form Armature, another one of their key programmers (Mark Haigh-Hutchinson) died, and a few other designers left to join other studios. It's also worth noting Retro has hired staff from Virgil Games, which was responsible for the Darksiders series, which are metroidvania games. The recent commends made by the EA CEO don't surprise me at all. EA's interest is in profit, not holding grudges. They'll develop games for the NX if it's profitable for them to do so. Their lack of support for the Wii U probably has a lot more to do with the fact that it's not selling very well as opposed to Nintendo refusing to use Origin as a distribution platform.

Unfortunately, the Retro that developed the Metroid Prime games doesn't really exist anymore. After Prime 3, three of the studio's key people (director, art director, and principle technology engineer) left to form their own studio, which is probably the main reason they've been relegated to Donkey Kong games since then (not that there's anything wrong with Donkey Kong, but I don't think it's nearly as impressive as the Prime Trilogy). They're currently developing a new Wii U game though, so fingers crossed that it's something interesting. Sadly, the new studio that the former retro employees founded (Armature) has pretty much just been porting games to different platforms since their founding. Although, interestingly, one of their current projects involves porting Unreal Engine 4 to the Wii U, which they say they will make available to other Wii U developers once complete. They also have a new original IP in development to be released in 2016, but not much is known about it aside from being a space themed multi-directional shooter for the PC and PS4.

This is pretty much all I care about here. I'd rather buy games through the eShop, but I'll be buying physical copies of full price games until I know I can access the games on replacement hardware if need be. A unified virtual console across all devices would be nice as well.

This is an interesting observation. Since the Wii, Nintendo has seemed to be in a position of having difficulty catching up to their competition from a technological perspective. Releasing a new console in the middle of the lifespans of two others doesn't seem to be a great move in that the other guys will simply be able to surpass them when they do update their consoles, and Nintendo will be in a position of their console having a limited library of games until then (which happens for most consoles early in their lifespan). But perhaps it doesn't have to be that way. The rumor right now is that Nintendo will be releasing a console and handhelds, both running the same operating system, and having the same library of games. Presumably, they'll be running the same games, with the graphics, and other resource hungry features being scaled appropriately to match the power of the platform they're being run on. This isn't anything new. With the vast diversity of power found in gaming PCs, PC games almost always give users the ability to change the graphical settings, allowing higher end PCs to run with more graphical effects, or even things like greater draw (and simulation) distances, and the ability to scale the density of things being simulated like NPCs. I don't expect Nintendo to give users a proper graphics options menu (although this would be nice for users who might say, want to choose between having less effects, but a higher frame rate, and other trade offs), but rather, the technology already exists to create game engines that can be scaled to run on different hardware. If Nintendo ends up doing this with the two versions of NX (assuming those rumors are true), what's to stop them from releasing a new console when the PS5 and next Xbox come out (which will be competitive hardware wise), and continue to release games that can be played on the old console, but look better when played on the new console?

Compression certainly plays a factor, but it's not the full story. Suppose your game is going to take up 10 GB without compression, but would fit on a 8.5 GB dual layer DVD for the 360 version if you compress it. Of course you're going to compress it, especially if it's the sort of game that's tricky to split up onto multiple disks (although, that's always another option if compression doesn't quite do the job). Fast forward to the 8th generation when Xbox One and PS4 games can take up 50 GBs on dual layer blu-rays, if your game, uncompressed is already less than that, why bother?

I think a peripheral is more likely in that situation. Nintendo loves their peripherals, but they don't seem to do tiered SKUs too often. Regarding downloading games in gaming stores, I really can't see it. Even with a really good connection, a 50 GB game still takes ages to download. Definitely far longer that one would want to spend in one of those stores. It would also require owning the handheld if you just want it on the console. What might work better is having terminals in gaming stores that have the games cached on them that allow you to copy the game files either onto the handheld directly, or to a USB device for the home console. You'd still need internet access at home to resolve some DRM stuff most likely, but mose people at least have some sort of internet connection these days, even if it's not fast enough to download larger games.

The NX not using an optical drive of any sort wouldn't surprise me at all. It having a blu-ray or equivalent drive wouldn't surprise me either. It will almost certainly come down to the number of people that are buying Wii U games on disks versus downloading them. Given that Nintendo hasn't cared about movie playback before (aside from streaming services), I don't know why they would start now, especially when streaming services are becoming so popular, while I would imagine physical media is starting to decline, or at least probably will be over the next few years. But who knows, I could be completely wrong, and Nintendo could decide to go in a more Sony-like direction when it comes to media playback. It just doesn't seem likely to me. There is a good case for the NX retaining some form of support for optical media in that games these days are absolutely massive. Grand Theft Auto V is 50 GB on the PS4 and Xbox One, and 62 GB on the PC (which is definitely at the higher end of the spectrum). Even with a fairly decent connection, that takes a long time to download, and storing it takes up a lot of space relative to the common sizes of hard drives these days. People in more rural areas, or those who just don't want to pay for higher internet speeds do exist and do still buy games on optical media. I don't think the issue of children buying games is as significant though. Retail stores can still sell access codes and gift cards (as is done now in some cases), and they don't seem to have much of a problem buying mobile games (mind you, those are usually much cheaper if you don't go nuts with microtransactions). In order to keep costs down, I could see some sort of external optical drive being made available for those who still want physical copies and one not being built into the console.

I haven't gotten far enough in yet to comment on the game it self much, but the PC port is awful. It's locked at 30 FPS. No way to fix this either as the simulation is tied to the frame rate The audio sounds like it's coming through a walkie-talkie unless you configure Windows to output audio at 48 KHz The game crashes at certain points when certain audio devices are connected (it works fine with my HT OMEGA Fenix, but crashed when I had my Logitech G430 plugged in) V-sync doesn't always work when enabled The only in-game anti aliasing option is FXAA (I haven't tried to force MSAA or MFAA yet) Otherwise, the environments seem pretty bland and empty compared to previous games. I'll say more when I've gotten further in.

This would certainly explain why the series hasn't been represented alongside Nintendo's other flagships when it comes to Wii games on the Wii U Virtual Console. As far as file size goes, it will probably be increased more than Wind Waker's was. I'm pretty sure Twilight Princess has a lot more textures than Wind Waker, and the game will need higher resolution textures to look half decent at 1080p. Considering Twilight Princess's textures are also a lot more complex visually, they probably won't be able to compress them as much. For me, Zelda games have always been about the exploration. The original Zelda--right on it's box--had the phrase "Experience the challenge of endless adventure." Now, obviously, the game is finite; it doesn't generate any new content dynamically. The game is so big however, that without some sort of guide, it would be nearly impossible to determine if you had found everything. There were areas you had to burn down a bush to access, yet the game had hundreds of bushes. Without knowing exactly which ones contained hidden staircases, there could always be another with something really cool under it that you just hadn't found yet. As the games got more complicated, this only makes it seem more likely that there's something hidden just outside of what you've already discovered. It's not as if Nintendo hasn't put really elaborate hidden secrets into their games either. I remember playing the 3rd generation Pokemon games with my friends when I was a kid (probably about 12), and trying to figure out the secrets involved in getting to the Regis. Figuring that one thing out however, led us to search for all sorts of other secrets in Pokemon games, including impossible things like trying to get to the tall grass on either side of Pallet Town, and so on (It perhaps didn't help that one of my 'friends' back then was a massive narcissist who liked to make stuff up about games to get attention). Zelda games have always been particularly good at this sort of exploration. The metroidvania style--permanent upgrades unlocking new paths--gives a huge incentive to re-visit previous areas. You're always hoping to find that one branch of a cave that you didn't notice last time you went through because you didn't have the right item to open it yet. Twilight princess's large world should have done this particularly well. The large world should have given lots of opportunities to go looking for things that weren't really there, and a great deal of hidden goodies to encourage the former. The problem it had wasn't so much that the secrets were too spread out, but that they just weren't hidden well enough in most cases. You could see places to latch the claw shot to, or spinner rails from a mile away. There was little reason to explore, because you could tell, without much time spent searching, if there was something to find in the first place. Twilight Princess also had that issue of money being the reward for nearly every feat of exploration, and the game not having that much use for money in the first place. Even pieces of heart weren't all that valuable compared to previous games, since you needed 5 of them for a new heart container. Twilight Princess had far fewer optional items as well compared to many of the previous games, and the ones you did get weren't really the result of exploring, most of them were simply purchased. The fact that the world was so large probably did help a lot in that even if a lot of 'secrets' were pretty obvious, you did at least have to traverse a lot of terrain in order to find them. It just would have been nice if they were a little better hidden in the first place.

That's kind of always been their thing.