James McGeachie

Why does this still shock people? It happens constantly for the US and has happened here a few times too...and considering Sonic has NEVER been even remotely successful in Japan it makes sense.

They even specifically said they were pushing the graphics technology with this game, they HAVE put a lot of effort into it, the style is rock solid and perfectly fitting to the game and they've put the extra power into effects that fit the style, such as normal mapping on enemies (incredible accomplishment on Wii) and some nice smoke effects, etc, but you don't seem to "get" how a game developer's mind works going by all your posts so I don't know why I'm bothering to type this, you're utterly clueless about game design. Really there are 2 ways a game can originate. There are games that come from someone writing out a story that they want people to experience in game form and then there's games that originate from a gameplay concept, where the story is just a means to an end. Nintendo are ALL about the concepts, Miyamoto specifically has stated he starts any game design with just one simple concept. That's how it should be, becauce the core gameplay is the most important thing to any game as if it sucks, then you don't want to play it. Here's some points you may not have realised. Every Zelda game has started with concepts rather than story. Wind Waker would've originated solely from the sailing idea and the visual theme, they worked from there and created the story around that (they'll have got the idea of sinking Hyrule from asking the question "how do we create a world that's mostly water?".) Majora's Mask was the concept of the 3 day system and how to make clever time based puzzles. Ocarina of Time was the process of recreating the entire Zelda formula for 3d, the story was nowhere near the main focus. Link to the Past was using the extra power of the Snes to expand all the gameplay possibilities they'd set up in the previous games and figure out exciting new ones. I could go on and and on for the other 2d games but would rather not. Twilight Princess I think is one of the few games where it's a bit different because I think they started off from the idea that they wanted to make the ultimate Zelda for fans, that was their initial reason for creating the game. I think they wanted to avoid trying to go for any groundbreakingly different concepts in that respect and just decided to go with the idea of being able to transform into an animal, to see what new gameplay elements they could invent that way. Another random examples for upcoming games by the way are like Super Mario Galaxy, which would've came from 2 ideas, Mario running complete around spherical objects and Mario being in Space. The story would've came from the question "So why does Mario go into space?" Anyway the point of this whole thing was really to say that the point of visuals of a game aren't always to be as realistic and demanding on the system as possible. If the conept for a game actually IS "Mindblowing visuals with a story worthy of them" or something then yeah, it is, but those type of games are more 360/PS3 territory and yes, that IS what game's like Gears of War and Final Fantasy build upon. Nintendo's philosiphy is to build things from the ground up with a strong, creative gameplay concept as the foundation. The visuals and story are a means to an end and although graphics are of course very important to the game, they don't have to rip the system's power at simply for the sake of it, they just need to be as good looking as need be to fit the game's mood and style. Don't know why I bothered to type that anyway, you're obviously an idiot who wont read it.

Yeah really the only 2d Metroid to totally hold your hand is Fusion. Zero Mission has a little of it but you don't always know exactly how to get everywhere. 1, 2 and 3 on the other hand don't have any sort of instructions about where to go, you always have to find out yourself, which is why Super Metroid was so awesome for exploring.

A very nice, creative and fun looking game. Seems like a step up from Elebits from the tech demo side of things to a more full fledged and polished Wii title, has a lot of promise to me, regardless of how "Childish" I assume a lot of people will see it as.

I think the underwater theme still needs a lot of expansion in the 3d games. I want a DARK underwater area, like Maridia in Super Metroid. Very atmospheric, almost entirely submerged and most importantly, with next to no vision without a light source. For a 3d game comparison I want something like the sewers in Shadows of the Empire on the N64. Just as scary, but darker...and more Metroid-esque of course. I'd like to see a more Brinstar-esque plant life area in 3d as well. Tallon IV's areas were a bit too...well..."normal" looking. Like not much different from what you'd expect on earth. I'd rather have a very heavy alien feeling to the environments, with exaggerated colour schemes and bizarre plants and rock formations.

For the record the "yeahs" are clearly Sonic's Japanese actor, the 4Kids English guy is in all other videos.

That's pretty obviously a stray screenshot, considering all of those things are from the 360 game, it's the 360 title's Sonic model and the robot enemies are only in the 360 game.

Yeah it's 12 missions, definitely not 12 stages, don't be delusional. We only first saw this game like 8 months ago and it was a grand total of one level then, think about things in how they're realistically possible.

It actually wasn't that long. There was videos long after E3 of a different space station level where Samus got sucked out into space and other stuff. Coincidentally between E3 and that video Retro mentioned that we'd see a "big difference" in the visuals but they were pretty much identical to what we seen at E3, just with subtle differences. Don't fool yourselves expecting any leap, what we saw at E3 already I figured was probably maxing out the Wii's approximate 1.5 times the power of Gamecube (You're kidding yourselves again if you think it's "2-3") so there's no way there can be a massive jump.

Apparently there's only 8 levels, not 10 as thought. Game length and replayability is going to be all about how into the many, many missions per stage you are, as levels take from 2-8 minutes to "complete" apparently, if you're just flying through them.

The visuals will be virtually identical as most of the game is already made, if not all. They can't make a vast difference unless they alter the models and textures, which isn't going to be happening. Expect some slightly better lighting, nicer effects and animations and that kind of stuff but no big leap, definitely not.

The fact this is on both the PS2 and PSP kind of suggests the Wii version is going to be visually awful. Other than that though it sounds like an interesting idea and I guess it's good that the Wii is getting games even if they're a little weaker than one would want.

I didn't use a guide. Honestly there's only a few points of the game where I can imagine anyone really needing too and that's just because it's a tad confusing. The only part that really had me stuck for a little while was in near the end when you had to blow flames out, because I'd forgot completely that I could use the boomerang for that.

Visuals seem a tad better than "PS2 level" in the videos to me, they mentioned retextured tracks in the interview and that seems very apparent, the textures are very high resolution and crisp.

That's only ever been in 2d games. It's obvious this means 10 levels total, however level count has nothing to do with game quality, if the levels suck it means nothing.

1. A Link to the Past 2. Majora's Mask 3. Twilight Princess 4. Wind Waker 5. Ocarina of Time I think my list would probably look like that, though Majora and TP are perhaps on equal standing.

Virgin are the worst for stocking games as far as I've seen. They always have nothing but shit here and the other day they had that horrible Super Fruit Fall game at their number 1 spot in the Wii charts, with Monster 4x4 at second.

I think it's more likely to get a decent looking, smooth running version of Half Life 2 running on Wii than it was for Far Cry so it wouldn't really shock me and I'd like to see it.

For the record you know he probably meant the NES game and Gameboy game right? I think there's been a mixup here because the first guy probably meant "play the first 2 Metroid Primes", not literally metroids. The NES game really has aged incredibly badly.

Honestly I don't think this problem is due to TV's or settings or any of that, it's simply that everyone here has a different perception of "beautiful" and a different amount of tolerance for aliasing and pixelation. The fact of the matter is, whether you're happy with the visuals or not, the only thing component cables do is improve image clarity, not bump up the resolution, so if the "jaggies" are your problem, component will only make them worse. The Wii is never going to run any form of HD resolution, so if you have a problem with how it looks on a huge screen and you're sitting pretty close, you're always going to have this problem throughout the system's entire lifespan. Nintendo were aiming to please the standard def, composite using market. That's why component cables were so difficult to find and that's why Nintendo went on and on about how they didn't feel enough people owned HDTV's to justify making it a primary feature of the system. Personally I still can only afford to play systems on a 4:3 19" screen I've had for years but from what I've seen of Zelda on it, I wouldn't want to stretch the image any bigger.

Game music wont be anything like the Adventure games or older music. So far the trailer music they've played is a lot like Sonic Riders' soundtrack, which to be blunt was utterly crap and mainly wierd generic techno. Best I could hope for is that it's just trailer junk and perhaps Hideki Naganuma is doing the actual game but that's got like a 0.01% chance of happening.

The fan favourite 3d Sonic is "Sonic Adventure", which was on Dreamcast and had ports to Gamecube and PC. The reality however is that the game was full of flaws that have still to be completely fixed in 3d Sonic until this day. Secret Rings isn't so much a 3d Sonic title however as it is a 3d on rails game, there's a drastic difference in gameplay and this title may be possibly be higher quality overall than the other attempts at 3d Sonic, but it isn't going to be a "platformer" so to speak.

This seems interesting but I'm really not going to trust a fighting game on Wii unless there's strong evidence the development team has a good idea how to make it work with the controller.

Don't think it's possible. As far as I'm aware they've yet to successfully emulate the game anytime they've tried, Saturn emulation is just that difficult.

Well this could've been discussed before for all I know but I think they were trying to avoid the whole forcing you to go on sidequests thing (since it was so complained about in Wind Waker) and decided with this game they'd just let you do your own thing between dungeons if you wanted a break. For example, between 4 and 5 I actually ended up doing the canoe ride down the river, hunted for secret areas I could find with water bombs and also done a ton of fishing and rollgoal. I didn't have any reason to do any but I just felt like a break inbetween dungeons....and I enjoyed it all and felt like I was making progress still, without being forced to go all over the world pointlessly collecting items or anything. I certainly prefer things this way to Wind Waker's method, though I will say Majora's Mask easily has the best inbetween time, but that game was built entirely around the town concept so that was a given.