James McGeachie

Sounds like they're barely doing anything. It sounds like a yearly EA sports game style sequel, refinements to a formula but essentially the exact same game since they know people will buy it again regardless. No mention of online, I'm willing to bet it's not even an option to them.

So you honestly think the lighting in Mario Galaxy is far more technically advanced than that of games like Doom 3 and Chaos theory? Also, wouldn't you say Resident Evil 4 had pretty impressive lighting, especially in areas where lightning was striking? I know perhaps it's not the same type of lighting but I'd rather not go into the technical details, just that looks wise I don't really see the lighting in Mario Galaxy being more graphically impressive than in these other titles and these other games were rendering areas with a large amount of geometric detail, not empty space with small objects littered between.

By that I mean some casual gamers might've bought it actually expecting a Halo style shooter experience and didn't want a "First person adventure" at all. The original Prime was a number 1 in the charts which is why it's so confusing why Prime 2 done so badly. I think a whole lot of reasons contributed. Anyway finally having a date is awesome, a lot earlier than I expected now. Hopefully we'll get it within 2 months of the US release.

And check out this Doom 3 screen I'm posting, wooh! Not that this means anything but hey if you're going down the post a single screenshot path I may as well too. I don't see any reason however that Mario Galaxy couldn't be done on the Xbox (even if they had to retool some sections of the game to fit the different hardware of course). In fact, I don't see a whole lot that suggests it couldn't be done on the Gamecube if it pushed the system to a Resident Evil 4 extent. I mean look at the final boss fight in Sunshine to see what can be done if you're only rendering a small amount at a time as opposed to huge land based levels. Mario Galaxy is a good looking game and my most anticipated title but I'm not going to be unrealistic about it.

Prime 2 sold badly because most casual gamers don't care about the franchise and may have been turned off by the original. Also, by that point even a vast amount of Nintendo fans had already given up on the system. The PAL 60Hz only thing probably didn't help matters either.

from the fact around here IGN constantly gets treated as some fucking DARK EVIL FORCE and Matt Cassamassina as SATAN HIMSELF even though it's just a damn game site and Cassamassina is just a journalist doing his fucking job, to a point where some guy (Peer Schneider, founder of IGN) makes some vague comment in a podcast about specs and people are jumping on it like HOLY FUCK "THOSE CLUELESS MORONS SPOUTING THEIR SHIT GOD IGN ARE *****."

Look shut the fuck up. You do this every time but where's the evidence that Wii can actually do these things better than the Xbox? Why aren't we seeing brilliantly bump mapped games with awesome lighting like Chaos Theory? Give me a solid reason other than " developers are lazy" and don't spout any tech bullshit about what you THINK the Wii can do either. Peer's comments don't have anything to do with the shit you mentioned, he doesn't mean it literally in a NUMBERS AND DIGITS way, he means that regardless of what the systems can APPARENTLY do tech wise, you're much more likely to see high resolution bump mapped textures and really good lighting with stencil shadows in your average Xbox game than your average Wii game, even if it's 2 versions of the same game.

What I meant by that is that I thought someone found another game by another developer that those shots were from, which instantly makes them fakes if they're from another game completely.

I'm pretty sure the first shots were confirmed to be of some other game? Apparently this same magazine posted fake Metroid shots as real in the past.

yeah it's not like when you reload a real gun you keep it perfectly aimed in a straight line

FFVII wasn't remotely ugly. Pre-rendered backgrounds looked good although obviously didn't use high quality images by today's standards. The character models were a deliberate style to retain some of the qualities of the sprites in 3d I think but they obviously changed their minds with 8 onwards. For the time it was pretty obviously a good looking game. The battles were pretty impressive for the era really.

I'm thinking more since it was announced this year and it looked very early in development, considering that they've been able to change the battle system entirely(something you just couldn't change so simply if you were heavily into development). A main numbered Dragon Quest game, the most popular franchise in Japan, isn't going to have less than a year of development time, is it?

End of the year is also kind of wishful thinking. I expect it to get pushed into 2008 for Japan.

Hey you never know, other developers love it so they might port some PSP titles over to the Wii.

Klonoa could be an interesting series on Wii too as it had a cool cel shaded style that could look pretty nice on the system, similar to Treasure Island Z. It was only called that in Europe.

With the last few gens the other systems didn't really offer enough over the PS1 and PS2 to justify the fact that both Playstations had the disc space for the epic full motion videos and voice acting that Square wanted. The Xbox was a non-factor because Japanese sales were non-existent and there was no RPG market on the system overseas really either, except for Western style ones.

The fact is Square Enix, since the beginning of the 3d console era, have almost always been about high end graphics that push the boundaries of a generation. The Wii is not the place for them to make the next big massive epics, they want these games to be visually breathtaking. Whether we like it or not, nothing can really take your breath away and make you think "That's unbelievable" on Wii if you've seen the other 2 systems, at best it's "Wow, this is good for a Wii game."

Katamari Damacy, SoulCalibur, Tekken, the "Tales of" series, Ridge Racer, Time Crisis, Point Blank, Ace Combat and tons of others?

^A lightgun game is kind of drastically different from a fps. I assume this is on rails. Well actually that's a point, is this another rails shooter? If so then I assume online multiplayer is simply online co-op. Sounds pretty interesting anyway, at least now if Umbrella Chronicles lacks multiplayer then thankfully one "light gun" shooter at least has it.

You know to add to all that technobabble earlier on here's some developer quotes about the system. There's a link to the full article on the page too. http://gonintendo.com/?p=17568 Unless you want to claim "he's lying" then he states flat out that a Nintendo source told him it's a Gamecube 1.5, simple as that.

http://gonintendo.com/?p=17541#comments Online multiplayer dropped.

fucking hell, can't believe this got so shit across all systems, it was looking and sounding great... some people are amazing at lying.

Honestly I bet it's selling at a pretty mediocre rate. It's the norm with the DS and Wii really that although the quirky non-gamer type games sell by the truckload, the games that'd normally do well on other systems in Japan like rpg's and anime based titles don't seem to perform all that amazingly. I can only assume it's because as far as core gamers are concerned it's the same people who've always bought Nintendo systems that are buying them in Japan just now, it's not dragging away Sony fanboys. All the new success is pretty much entirely attributed to new non-gamers buying into both the DS and Wii.

The problem he brought up is only really much of a problem in first person shooters (going from PS2 experience) and it's not like you're playing much of them that have dual analogue control on VC anyway...say...none whatsoever? If there's a big complaint about the classic it's obviously the fucking wire coming out the bottom. It's annoying as hell. Yeah you're completely wrong. There's plenty of games that play flat out fucking terribly with the Gamecube controller because of its x and y button positions. Any old school figher which requires button combinations is worthless with the Gamecube controller, your thumb just can't glide smoothly over the buttons or press multiple ones at once with ease. Even if a game doesn't use buttons in that way the Gamecube controller in general is just shitty for classic games. Absolutely no VC games on the service were designed with such an awkward button layout in mind and it especially shows. Try fucking DKC for a start. As controls were ported directly run is like X and jump is like B or something. It makes for a completely game ruining experience.

It's not even a remake...I hate how people confuse remakes with ports. A remake is when a game is totally redone from the ground up, like the original Resident Evil on Gamecube. A port is when it's the same game just put over to another system with a few new features.