Burny

More screens. This time with slightly overblown resolution and AA. Looks still incredible.

That explains everything. I'm not generally against time limits, but it effectively killed Pikmin 1 for me. Had the game borrowed from a friend and got stuck in some nighttime level just after getting the blue Pikmins. I realized that I wouldn't be able to finish the level and retrieve a part of the spaceship in the given time. Getting enough Pikmins for the task would have taken the whole "day", with running back and forth in order to get the right coins taking most of the time. As far as I remember the options were to go back and try to start the level with a larger army or to spend the whole day building up the necessary force of Pikmins. The latter option might have bitten me later for all I know. So there was a sense of being "stuck". I never came back to it. I'll try Pikmin 2 (New Play Control) soon and see if that's better. Generally, a time limit can make an otherwise easy level more fun if it adds the right amount of difficulty. But if there is the possibility to mess up the later progress of the game in other levels if you take too long at some point or didn't decide to start over at some earlier point or even the feeling that this might happen, it's a punishing design I can't be bothered with. There are other ways to incorporate time limits, e.g. design each level with a separate time limit for a goal that has to and can be achieved in that time.

Remove that, add pointer controls and you have a better game. I was honestly a bit shocked that LKS didn't use the pointer controls. It's not that that having an "attack line" that snaps to things (hopefully the right ones) doesn't work, but compared to the comfort of the pointer, it was like playing FPSs on the PC with a 360 pad. :p

I just assumed that Adobe Reader would be the standard go-to-program for anyone unfamiliar with pdfs. And as limited as it is, even that supports highlighting and copying text.

Out of interest, why didn't the Select tool of the Adobe Reader suffice / what more can Google Docs do?

The width and height are exactly twice what the 3DS actually shows in 2D-mode. I'm assuming devs can easily do these with the dev-kits and prefer to show those instead of tiny 400x240 images, which aren't particularly impressive on a PC-monitor. Combined with the high AA in the images, it's a form of "sugarcoating" the screenshots.

Might sound very cool on paper, but when you give it a second look, some barriers should become obvious. Network bandwidth for streaming is unlikely to be a problem, if this uses a standard wireless network interface - after all it's only 800x240 + something for the 3DS' two screens. But then there are the lacking buttons. If it works at all, someone has to design a mapping of a game's standard controls to the 3DS more limited interface. I cannot see anybody even bothering with this. Even when this is done, a game's interface has to be completely reconfigured for the two tiny 3DS screens. Is the ingame text optimized for a 720p signal? Lots of fun adapting it to the 3DS. And of course, the text has to be placed somewhere in relation to the game objects, which have depth. Does the game require the player to identify things relatively far away? Downright impossible with the 3DS' low resolution. After all these issues have been addressed, it ends as a small bullet point on the back of a box, that only means something to some unknown percentage of "Café"-owners, who would(n't) have bought the game anyway. :p Should be enough to put anyone off the idea, I believe.

Gimmicky goodies, eh? Using 3DS as controller? The first very much includes the latter if you ask me, no matter if it's sold as "compatibility" or "connectivity". That's not saying that there is no way to design a nice game around this - whatever good it would do when trying to sell the game. And that goes for most all the ideas you mentioned so far: I don't see a way to sell them. The remastered PSP-games for the PS3 are a particular bad example, because Sony+Devs will sell them. For all intends and purposes, they're just another way to sell ports of existing games over PSN.

What's your term for using a handheld as controller, that wasn't designed for the purpose, if not "connectivity"? Going by actual rumors, the 3DS wouldn't even be able to, due to the lack of one analogue input, possibly triggers etc.

01net revealed the codename. Later two images from Nintendo's developer support website basically confirmed it. As for the idea of this particular integration between the "Café" and the 3DS: No. For starters, I've yet to hear of any rumor that points in the direction of meaningful connectivity. The only hint at any kind of connectivity between the two came from the Capcom SF4 guy, who said there would be connectivity with some Nintendo console and didn't want to say which iirc - that can mean anything. Unlocking a new pair of pants by connecting your SF43D to some Capcom game on the "Café"? Yay, just what the world needed! :p Going by a worst case scenario - 400$/€ for the Café - that'd mean spending 650$/€ before any of this stuff could be used to it's full effect. Nintendo has learned in the past, that making handheld hardware a requirement for console games isn't a good idea. By console standards, handhelds aren't even particularly ergonomic, so using a 3DS as controller would be completely off-putting. By financial standards, Nintendo wants to sell 3DSs, so allowing to play 3DS games on the "Café" via a dedicated port would be a shot in their own leg. So, connectivity can't be a requirement and it wouldn't add much. What's the point of it then?

New trailer - so far only in Italian: Shows precious few ingame scenes, but is infinitely more epic than the other one by virtues of the music alone. Now they have only to do an extended version with more actual ingame scenes. With E3 around the corner, I'm sure they will provide at least one proper "hype-traler".

I rest my hopes on Nintendo pulling their heads out and offering some OS-level communication (while running a game) by means of a a future update. They must've intended the friendslist to be good for something. Admittedly, there isn't much to hope going by their record. E3 in 3DS terms will actually be quiet disappointing, if they don't offer details, as to what they intend to do about it in the future.

Nah, 360 did it before. Nintendo doesn't want to copy that.

So they can get this guy on stage for a demonstration of a drum solo on the new tablet controller... ...who proceeds to destroy the controller spectacularly: It would be a unique conference, but not in a good way. :p

I hope they make you regret it.

Just realized I've got to add something to my 3DS wishlist: 3DS Zelda 25th anniversary special edition announcement. Preferably not significantly more expensive than the current bundle, just a subtle Zelda themed-design of the console itself, OoT bundled with it and maybe Links Awakening pre-installed. This fan mockup would be perfect: Might even sway me to reconsider my wait-another-year-stance.

Yes, and it's very likely they will. The "Café" is way out and the 3DS needs to start building momentum now. Additionally, they'll probably have precious few actual software to show for the Café. My (partly devoid of reality) wish-list, ordered by system: Wii They don't waste time on demonstrating WiiMotion+-Play stuff, but directly go to... ...The Last Story making it to the West - Europe included. Awesome Skyward Sword trailer - not exclusively focused on items and mechanics. Somehow they'll have to start the hype. DS They forget, that it exists and throw their muscle behind the 3DS. That system has more need of it. 3DS Removing forced mutual registration from 3DS friend system - only one person should need to input the 12 digit friendcode. 3DS gets actual communication features with friendlist people in an update later this year - both text-chat (think online pictochat) and voice-/video-chat on OS level. Voice- and text-chat ideally while playing games. GBA VC for 3DS will be announced Some western 3rd party starts to take Nintendo handhelds seriously and shows off a high-profile project for it (unlikely, they'll rather port everything they can to the PSP2). Mario Kart 3DS will be out by the end of the year and has an online sytem that works as welll as in the Wii iteration, but has actually useful features to race with friends. And a battle mode that doesn't suck. Lots of 3D trailer streaming in the 3DS' eShop, 3D screenshots and not just for the E3 period Remember the "a new surprise everyday" comment from Iwata about pushing content to the 3DS? They better get going, wether it's trailers, Spot pass features or notifications about new Demos for the 3DS store. eStore: Is a bit more Amazon in terms of usability and a bit less stone-age. Will be more inviting for serious Indi-devs instead of giving them the middle finger with file size restrictions from hell. Café They've actually come up with a (controller-) feature, that makes this more than just the Nintendo-HD (which would sell poorly) and has considerably more draw than glasses-less 3D. The controller is not as unwieldy as rumors make it sound, but rather slick. Complete game-streaming would be nice, but there has to be more to it. Café is close to IGN's rumored specs (Nintendo is likely to stay tight lipped about specs anyway) For once, Nintendo hasn't gimped one of the hardware's feature so it'll give 3rd parties no excuses to not port. No tight memory limits (some form of extensible memory, if 8GB flash rumor is true), no less than 1GB RAM, possibly more. Café's online system will be built by someone with a good track record and a lot of expertise in the area, rather than Nintendo. Valve will be on the "Café", games-wise and maybe in respect to the point above. Clear signals from the big publishers: Unconditional 3rd party support. They can actually show a game of their own. Pikmin 3 would be fine. Somehow, they have hacked the backwards-compatibility to Wii games, so that they are rendered in higher resolutions (similar to dolphin, but a bit more efficient :p). While I'm at it: Activision has bullied Blizzard into making a console port of Diablo III. The Café isn't left out. Café manages to stay in the 300$/€ price range. But I'm 99.9% sure, we won't hear a word about price until next year. And 400€/$ wouldn't surprise me.

If it's possible to cut down development time for high profile Mario games to under two years and if Nintendo should postpone releases of hardware in order to get similar high profile games done for launch. And a bit about if there's indeed a chance to see this game by the end of this year.

@Cpt Falcon: Let's just agree on not quoting whole posts. There isn't much discussion in between anyway. :p

I thought Angry birds was only free (supported by ads) on Android? Correct me if I'm wrong here. If the cheap flash-like games, cheap ports of older full-priced handheld games, spin-offs like Dead Space and cheap versions of existing game concept (with accordingly lesser scope, e.g. "Real" Racing) manage to create the kind of customer expectation, where anything beyond 30 bucks for a game is considered a rip-off, they might as well change the industry profoundly. And not for the better... On the other hand, selling incompetent ports for full price (looking at you, Ubisoft!) isn't going to do the industry much good either. With OoT, I'm a bit torn between calling it too expensive and justified. With Master Quest as an addition and the complete overhaul of the textures and some models, I tend to say that something around 30€ is actually justified. With Starfox, that's another thing. Only borrowed it from a friend at the time and blasted through the single player once. I can remember cheating my way through Wing Commander 3 (was too young to play it properly) possibly a bit earlier. Going from a full blown space opera on the PC to Starfox, you're bound to be rather underwhelmed.

Like mechs transforming into Starhawks? Building walls, turrets and the likes?

Is it even worth to touch the keyboard, if all you want to write is "cool" or "stupid"?

After not having the features of the update ready for launch, another week or two of delay isn't going to do any more damage. Maybe they just want to have another bullet point on their E3 presentation, maybe they're doing something nice with the eShop that coincides with the E3. Who knows... I know what you were trying to say. If there is a promising project that's stumbling on the last mile, it might make sense for Nintendo to intervene and oversee or publish it. But all we have seen from this particular project was a logo. If THQ and their devs cannot get the game into a presentable state before canceling it, it's a bit harsh to accuse Nintendo of not having cared enough. They aren't THQ's babysitter. And as their crowd has bought more than 20 Mio. copies of NSMB and continually buys millions of Pokemon games, they're not that desperate to appeal to a "hardcore" (in as: "guns & tits") crowd in the first place. If this thing failed because Nintendo's technical support was underwhelming, or the hardware so insanely difficult to work with, that'd be something else. But then, it wouldn't have been canceled for the PS360.