James McGeachie

Just saw the supposed August release stuff on the first page and man...I really don't expect that to be true. I've always thought of this game as being this year's big Christmas hit. It just seems like Nintendo's style to do that. There isn't going to anything better for hardcore gamers at Christmas. They can't market Metroid: Other M as a big Christmas game as Metroid has only ever appealed to a pretty small number of people sadly. Zelda is definitely going to be a 2011 game so it can't be a Christmas title either. EDIT: Oh shit this is the Galaxy 1 thread. Damnit.

Like has been said, no 3D Mario games have sold anywhere near as well as the sidescrollers in Japan. The sidescrollers are far, far more popular. Note that absolutely every main sidescrolling entry (non-port) has sold better than absolutely every 3D Mario title. Even the Gameboy games.

Avatar. Absolutely astounding. James Cameron delivered a movie well worth the wait for him to return to the big screen. Both CGI and 3D effects were on a completely different scale from anything I'd experienced before. The planet design was incredible, as were the colour schemes at work and the astounding attention to detail. Was the plot completely fresh and original? No. Do I honestly care? Absolutely not. I want to be entertained by cinema. I don't care about drawing inspiration heavily from other material as long as the concept as a whole works convincingly, the dialogue is good and the characters are played well with enthusiasm. I was not disappointed with this film's story. It done the job more than well enough for me to care about what was happening and become engrossed...and at the same time, be completely blown away visually. Easily one of the best films I've ever seen. James Cameron knows how to create memorable entertainment, that's for sure. 10/10.

^Well it inter-links with the fact they don't have a strong devotion to online. Achievements would be far less effective if you couldn't quickly check your friend's scores, what they've got on games compared to you, etc. It encourages competition. If Nintendo had built a strong online foundation then they might have put more consideration into the idea. Anyway I think Nintendo deliberately avoids ideas like that though so that new gamers don't feel "left out" compared to hardcore gamers with massive scores. They want everyone to feel on level standing, I mean they go out of their way to try and make sure new gamers can experience games as well as experts (Mario Kart rubber banding, NSMB Wii super guide, etc). Achievements on the other hand are there for hardcore gamers to stroke their egos.

He didn't leave, he's editor at large, he just can do features for any system but he's still a Nintendo specialist. Anyone who had a problem with him though is beyond ignorant. He's one of the few editors on any big games site who seriously cared about Nintendo and always kept a good relationship with developers to get exclusive information on games and the like. There are plenty of Wii and DS games that had their debut on IGN. They may not have always been triple A, but that's not IGN's fault. Yes he would often "tease" announcements and get people over-hyped (for things that eventually ended up disappointing people as they weren't the MEGATONS they wanted) but people would complain about there being no exciting news at all if he wasn't doing anything like that. There was a self referential humour about it too since he knew people complained about it. Anyway the fact Matt's not in charge of podcasts at all now obviously shows. Matt was a Nintendo fan, he made comments which annoyed fans but I doubt he'd ever have had the idea to make a podcast entirely related to talking about the Wii's flaws. If he did, it wouldn't have been with this exact group of people. I'm listening to the podcast just now and christ, Greg Miller and Damon are just a really infuriating combination. The Jack guy doesn't help either. Craig is the only person on this podcast who doesn't have a voice and mannerisms that annoy me. For the record Matt and Bozon aren't on this podcast at all. It is also as bad as the summary makes it sound for once (since the summaries are usually full of falsehoods and misrepresentation). I had to close it off as it was just annoying. It does make sense though to have the discussion as a lot of what they're saying is true (I definitely feel less motivated to play the Wii when I think "if I was playing the 360 I'd be gaining achievements. It's a stupid reason but it exists and is undeniable). The problem is that it's obviously not good content for a channel that's always attracted hardcore Nintendo fans.

^I bet they haven't wrote an ounce of storyline though. That's the way Nintendo does things though and it works. Story revolves around the gameplay elements, not gameplay around the story. Anyway it's good to know it actually has solid work done on it and it's not just pre-production or anything.

^Yeah I think most people will have but it's something that sticks firmly in my head as it completely put me off the game. Having the same city twice kind of worked in the GTA PSP games as GTA is a more story oriented franchise...but a big part of Crackdown was exploring the city and finding all the hidden orbs and shit. The last thing I want to do is all of that again in the same city and there are blatantly (completely identical!) agility orbs in the screenshots! They said the city has "changed" but it's still the same city and you get that feeling prominently from screens. Maybe it's a bit different now but the trailer felt exactly like the first game to me, just with some extra features. Putting the sequel in the same city defeats the point of what was said at the end of the first game. "Pacific city is only the beginning".

This game seems utterly pointless. It feels like I may as well be watching videos of an expansion pack or DLC to the first game. I can't believe they decided to put a sequel in the same city, even if it has changed slightly. The trailer seriously does look like the same game with a few new moves, only the way it's been cut together kind of hides that fact by giving you different angles on things.

Ooooh boy does this look bad. Blatantly a movie tie-in I'd say. It looks even more uninspired than Warrior Within. Not often nowadays you see a completely CG trailer either...and could the voice over be talking any more generic gibberish nonsense?

Can't believe I hadn't noticed this until now. Looks like a great concept and it's being directed by the guy behind Phoenix Wright? Now that's definitely a factor that makes it interesting for me. It'll undoubtedly sell like shit though sadly. Even in Japan. They don't care how good an idea is now.

There's only one suitable response to that. (laughs)

I will agree that it was a great game. I remember one prominent feeling I had during playing the game is that it definitely had the "Nintendo magic". I can't say that for every title they release now but I felt it strongly during that game.

I left Thousand Year Door at the last boss battle and am too lazy to go back and finish it. Recurring trend for me in rpg's, I can't find myself caring enough about the stories of modern games to even bother if I don't see the ending. That's basically the reason I don't care if Nintendo make another Paper Mario game too, lack of interest in rpg's. They have the M&L series on DS at least for well written humour and Mario RPG mechanics anyway. Since they're never going to go full out with production values for console rpg's like other developers do I'd say handheld rpg's are more fitting for Nintendo anyway.

Wouldn't usually post about any of this stuff here, but anyone read the latest FMA manga chapter? Really good stuff, as always though. I've been following FMA in manga form for about 5 years now and it consistently offers me the best read I get in a month. Things are working up to a very epic conclusion now. When the new Brotherhood anime covers all the recent events I'm sure there will be a lot of astounded viewers. EDIT: For some reason it says I'm viewing page "460 of 468" on this thread. What the hell is up with that?

Is there any guarantee that Nintendo are going to show anything at all at this VGA whatever thing? Is it even remotely big enough event wise for there to be a chance they'll show anything new? The idea of a Metroid: Other M video appearing is very exciting to me. Obviously that's just completely baseless speculation on what could possibly be but if there's any chance at all I'd love it.

Just because you hate waiting doesn't mean you're not going to have to. Just be realistic, it's not going to be shown until then and that's that. It should be a great E3 though. Zelda WILL be shown. Metroid: Other M should finally have gameplay footage and the like. Galaxy 2's hype train will be building up probably, etc.

Well Aonuma has said in interviews there probably wont be any more info until E3. More importantly though, it's such an obvious E3 thing. It's just the type of thing Nintendo will want to make a big deal of in their E3 conference, plain and simple.

The Iwata asks interviews for this are great. I especially love seeing more comments from Takashi Tezuka. He's perhaps one of the most underrated developers that exist, seeing as he worked on the original SMB and Zelda, but more importantly directed SMB3, SMW, Yoshi's island and Link to the Past... and yet not many people even know who he is.

It does actually piss me off a bit that NSMBWii has almost sold as much as Galaxy did total in Japan in a single week. It's like anything new that isn't casual is just totally uninteresting to Japanese people nowadays. They flock to generic sequels of long running franchises of course. Actually I see that even the highest selling 3D Mario game in Japan (Mario 64) only sold 1.6 million copies, nothing compared to stuff like the 5.5 million of NSMB DS. All the top selling games are sidescrollers. I guess 3D Mario just isn't anywhere near as popular as sidescrolling Mario in Japan? I guess that means this game was a genius move on Nintendo's part to get another Japanese huge seller on Wii. Especially when the system is weak over there just now.

Well Dan Dare what you said is basically how it is in the game now. Maybe exploration is just a bullet point for you but for me at least it was a big part of the game. I'm in space, I have a space ship, there are shitloads of planets. My natural instinct is to want to explore them. It just made it feel like a real universe to me. I mean space is full of empty rocky planets with next to nothing of interest on them, that's just the way it is.

^Well I'm confused about that because the more recent interview you linked had the quote I'd been basing my thoughts on. It's not lack of vehicles I care about remotely, just the lack of exploring expansive planetary regions. I don't care about them being empty because that's what space is like. I just liked it giving a sense of scale and freedom to the game.

I assume though that despite disliking the Mako, you LIKE the idea of planet exploration? Like I assume you still enjoy the concept of exploring planets? It's not just the "Mako" that's gone, it's the whole free roaming planet exploring system that went with it, that's the problem. There was no reason that they couldn't just have replaced the Mako with a much better vehicle and refined the process of exploring planets. Imagine a vehicle with faster speed and flight capabilities zooming around planets. For example, you're driving along the ground towards a mountain with a base on top of it, you switch into flight mode and quickly ascend up above the mountain, then reconvert into ground mode and land yourself on the plateau. Shit like that would've been great. Taking the whole system out and replacing it with a minigame isnt an improvement, it's sidestepping the problem and replacing it with a lazier substitute. I actually complained about the fact they've removed this on a few places and it seems like everywhere people just see the word "MAKO" and go "oh good fuck that shit glad it's gone" and don't stop to think it could've been replaced or improved instead.

Some recent news from interviews and the like has put me off this a bit. They mentioned in the past they'd removed the Mako and replaced it with a more improved system. I took this to mean they'd just strealined planet exploration with a better vehicle and less in the way of doing inane tasks like surveying elements. Instead though you don't explore random planet surfaces at all. You play some kind of aerial view of the planet minigame where you find things of interest from above. Some planets have mission icons and the like and if you find one of those you go straight to the mission. Something like that anyway. I understand this streamlines things but it removes one of the key things that made the first game special for me. The epic sense of scale you got from freedom of exploration. Yes, driving the Mako around mountains could be a serious pain in the ass...but it was the fact that you had the option to drive around massive areas on tons of different planets that made the game feel so huge. Even if there was tons of empty areas and the controls were a pest, the amount of exploration just added to the massive scale of the game and its atmosphere. The exploration was both the best and worst element of the game. I really don't think I like the sound of the new system in comparison. I guess I'll get used to it but I think it'll be a bit like when Final Fantasy X came out and removed the world map system from that franchise. It made things more streamlined, yes...but it did make the game world feel more "limited".

I don't think Michael Jackson was probably ever actively involved in the compositions himself, probably mainly just his sound team. I'm pretty sure it was a feature that was going to be promoted though, before all the shit went down with him at the time. Anyway recently Yuji Naka was questioned about it again and laughed and said "maybe some day I'll be able to answer that question" or something, suggesting that it was still a matter staff were sworn to silence on. It did suggest there was definite truth to it though. I'm probably one of the few weirdos who probably prefers the soundtrack of the first 2 games anyway though. They were composed by Masato Nakamura of Japanese band "Dreams Come True", who hasn't been involved in the franchise ever since.

A bit annoying they've messed with the story that much but I guess there's only so close they can keep things with the co-op system.