James McGeachie

Those comparison shots are good, the shadows have improved a lot, the widescreen really makes a difference too when you see them side by side. Hope they tone down how much of the screen the buttons are taking up in the Wii one though.

I wouldn't say 360 good, if the textures were a bit better and not so low res it might be though. At the moment I still think RE4 looks better than this.

People who stop playing RE4 for a while on their first go are crazy, I could never have done that. I've got to get back to Paper Mario 2 for the last boss, F-zero to unlock more of the racers and do the harder classes and Ikaruga for basically most of the game.

I guess it should be mentioned that 480p is at least a step up for Europe, because from what I recall progressive scan was never supported in European Gamecubes at all. Also, only very few GC games were widescreen, so if it's the standard next gen that's kind of an increase too.

Looks better than ever, especially the lava.

To be honest I dont think they even had any idea what the system was really going to be like when they said that, it was like early 2004.

The main reason I was getting botherered and mentioning the stuff I've said was because people were being really ignorant about Prime 3 thinking it has tons of room for improvement, when the thing is that instead of trying to make the game look drastically different they're going the more sensible route with the Wii hardware and making tons of subtle changes instead. Anyway when I was mentioning the Matt stuff, the point wasn't that it's going to be worse visually than Gamecube, not at all, it's just not going to be able to do effects that are really much more advanced than those on Gamecube. I didn't mean shaders were vanishing, it's just obvious whatever shader features Wii has they're probably exactly the same as those on Gamecube, no upgrades at all. I doubt the developers would be complaining if they were the perfect tools they needed and wanted.

No, like me he's a realistic Nintendo fan, one who doesn't convince themselves that the hard facts are wrong so they can live in false hope. Regardless of what anyone in this thread is saying, they do not have the Wii development hardware in front of them and dont know what it can really do. Despite how much people want to argue the power of the system too, the fact is we haven't had any footage so far of a game that's really what we could consider a BIG diference from a Gamecube game. In fact, most of the third part games we've seen so far are really a good deal below what I expect from Gamecube games.

Some bad news, from the most recent Wii podcast at IGN which can be found here Apparently the Wii doesn't support "shader effects" such as "normal mapping", effects that are actually available on Xbox. This isn't a case of power really here, in this case apparently it's because of the fact that since the Wii hardware is an extention of the Gamecube's, it basically can do the same kind of stuff, but due to the extra power it can do more of it, with some more polygons and higher resolution textures and what not. Before anyone goes off calling this fake or any rubbish again by the way, Matt and Mark make sure to clarify many times, very clearly that they would not be saying anything like this if they weren't near 99.9% sure it was absolutely true. He also talks about how the documentation of the system specs developers have been working with has not changed at all in a very long time and does not appear that it's going to change. What this also means by the way is that you can't expect Metroid Prime 3 to change much. It's not going to, because quite simply the effects to make it look much more impressive like you're looking for simply aren't there. The game is going to have improved lighting over the Prime games, much larger areas, more enemies, some fancier visual effects like the charge beam, voice acting, maybe slightly higher polycounts and higher res textures and possibly other improvements that extra disc space allows, but it is not going to look like a different game completely compared to the Prime's and it is not going to change very much from now until release. On another random note, Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam was definitely running on advanced Wii hardware apparently, make of that what you will.

Of Nintendo of America that is! Unfortunately he's not taking Iwata's place as president of the whole company yet, but I still think this is cool. Since he's came to Nintendo he's changed a lot of things with their marketing and he just has a way of making everything sound like a million times more awesome than it actually is. Let's hope this doesn't mean he'll be doing less interviews and stuff now though. http://gonintendo.com/ (scroll down)

I'm gonna have to say people aren't really getting what they're doing with Metroid Prime 3. It seems instead of making the visuals drastically different, instead they're focusing on making the areas themselves bigger and full of more objects and enemies. Both of those things take a lot more power so naturally if they're doing that too they can only make small refinements to the actual visuals, hence why most changes are just stuff like better lighting and fancier beam effects. The reality is though, a Prime game with much bigger areas, much more enemies and running in a higher resolution (16:9 is a bit higher) couldn't be done on GC, so this could be very representative of the game's Wii visuals.

Those horse comparisons are very cool, it looks like they really want to get this game perfect. I would've been happy with the horse how it first looked in 2004, but it seems they're really going the extra mile. I wish more actual pics were released from the game to go along with the gameplay footage at E3, it'd be easier to see just how much the game has improved that way. The small clip of the horse in the trailer looks fantastic, the hyrule field (if we can call it that) looks a ton more detailed too, not just barren plains now.

People don't speedrun their first time through the game, they just do it afterwards to get more fun and lifespan out of it, more money's worth.

I liked Echoes mainly for the challenge, it was definitely a lot more difficult than Prime and I welcomed that aspect. I also liked the dark moody atmosphere too. As a whole the game was pretty good and still one of the better ones on cube but I can admit easily it did have a lot of weaknesses too, the big one being a real lack of diversity in the areas, with extremely dull themes (Wow, bogs and wastes!). It was missing quite a few Metroid elements that Prime had too, such as traditional weapons and traditional enemies (Metroids were barely in the game), though the screw attack did almost make up for that completely.

That wasn't 2D at all, a flat art style has nothing to do with 2D.

Haze was probably originally intended for Wii too I'm guessing, before they realised they couldn't do it.

Do you think we have fucking miracle alien technology from space or something? The sensor bar is how it is because it has to be that way clearly. I'm sure if there was a reasonable alternative to doing it this way they likely would've but with current technology it's probably all they can do.

If there any confirmation that's Hyper mode Samus and not Dark Samus? It makes more sense for it to be Dark Samus to me, what with

For people who don't know, when the PS2 came out in the US it was $299. When it came out here, it was £299. In other words, there was no conversion at all. This time it's more likely there'll be one, but I do NOT expect under £450 for the $599 model.

I'm extrmely disappointed not a single person has said Super Mario Galaxy, the true sequel to Mario 64 people have been waiting 10 years for. It looks and sounds amazing from everything I've seen and read, definitely top of my most anticipated. 1. Super Mario Galaxy shown 2. Smash Brothers Brawl trailer 3. Super Paper Mario announced

Apparently an ATI guy at E3 was asked about the system and mentioned it'll have visuals "On par or slightly better than Gamecube" so it doesn't sound like even the final devkits will make much of a difference. Stuff like Prime 3 has more improvements than most people would think, considering it's running in widescreen, has much larger areas, more enemies and fancier effects. All those things take up a bit more processing power and since the Wii doesn't have THAT much more power you can't expect them to be able to drastically up the polycount and textures as well as have those things. The only games that'll improve MUCH I think are the third party titles. Red Steel and Sonic Wii were basically the only ones that didn't look like PS2 games from third parties and it sounds like Red Steel is quite a bit less impressive in real life. Basically I expect a lot of improvements in all third party games before launch though, but I definitely don't expect any to look as good as Mario Galaxy (which I dont see improving much either, it looks incredible so I cant imagine how much more it can be improved on Wii). Anyway about the batteries, it HAS been said by Nintendo (I dont have the link but it was certainly official, just a big deal wasn't made out of it) that the controller will be using AA batteries and there are currently "no plans" for there to be rechargable ones with the system. This is almost a suicide decision to me if the battery life is low so I seriously hope they reconsider.

I actually meant the whole beam combination thing was something fans wanted back but I guess the wave beam travelling through walls was another thing. If they're really trying to get as many elements from SM in as possible now I really hope they have Kraid this time. It does seem silly for him to be on another planet because of his size but they could say they had a massive teleporter built for his transport to guard areas or something.

people wondering about the beam weapons, what happened in Super Metroid is that everytime you got a new beam it either combined with or replaced one of your old beams, but in the start menu you could change which beams you had equipped and make different combinations of beams, although from what I recall you could only have 3 on at once out of the 4 or so main ones: spazer, ice, wave and plasma (the most powerful) with charge was always available after you obtained it I think. The Spazer is an interesting one because it enabled you to shoot 3 beams at once, but it'd be much harder to replicate in 3D. Wave in Super was literally a waving beam shot that went up and down and could pass through most walls. This is something that's never been featured again but 2d fans have always wanted it back, so if it's in this that'll be really super.

I'd MURDER for the HD Insider footage!

The towns are obviously 3d so expect to see rotating camera angles and what not. In other words, the game will obviously look a lot better in motion, like any DS game ever people have said looks "cack" in screenshots then changed their mind about later.