Burny

Talking about form factor it's the "gen before last" actually, if we're taking the WiiU as next gen. And by kind of pointless random dig, do you mean just like calling unspecified people retards from across the other half of the board, instead of getting over there and telling them?

Not half as impressive as a prerendered trailer, I give you that. On the other hand, some of these games are actually supposed to be released for it (Darksiders 2, Arkham Asylum, Metro and Aliens, I believe). Being PS360 games, they'll even roughly look like what was shown. :p

You mean after major details were leaked and rampant speculation ensued? It was the most sensible thing to do, if it was the right time or not. Funny thing you should say that, because that's exactly what Nintendo did announce: Tentative specs. This is from their E3 2011 info page: I know of course what you mean, but Nintendo hasn't "officially" announced detailed hardware specs like clocks, RAM etc. for the 3DS either. It's unlikely we'll get any more detailed specs from them than this. They know that they'll not have hardware that's "at the edge", so they'll not put all that much highlight on it.

Fair enough Personally I just couldn't be bothered to scrutinize the games for connections, although they certainly are there both clear and vague. You could say that's because I've forgotten half of the plot details a mere two weeks after finishing the games of course. What with all the medallions, pieces of artifacts that somehow do something in the story. It's usually only the characters that I can remember. I just have the feeling that whenever the time line discussion arises, the handful of people participating in it in any given Nintendo forum put more thought into it over the span of a couple of pages, than Nintendo's devs have done during the last decade.

Or to put it another way: The stories are means to an end, simply concocted around whatever new mechanic Nintendo wants to implement. Time travel? Let's make up something about a powerful instrument/song/whatever with that power - preferably granted by the gods. Parallel dimensions? Let's make up some. The gods will have something to do with it, naturally. Sailing? Let's make up a story about the gods flooding the land. Riding trains? Let's make up a story about train tracks serving as chains for some evil - created by the gods of course. Flying around between floating islands? The gods have send them into the sky of course. :p It's pretty clear that the principle behind this is that of building the story around the game, not the other way round. They'll invent as many species, sages or gods as they need, while centering everything around an incarnation of Link as a player character, an antagonist, a land with a specific twist and some incarnation of Zelda or other characters in distress.

The name is only the tip of the iceberg. It's because of the same form factor, the same design, the same interface - bar a gray nob that doesn't mean much to parents and co. and games that can easily mistaken for DS games by that audience. Everything reinforces the notion that "3DS" means "3D-DS" as in "a DS that displays its games in 3D". A marketing campaign that stressed "glasses free 3D" more than "all new system generation/successor to the DS" didn't help that either. Being sold for less than the DSiXL by now also creates confusion. Can't see anything like this happening with the WiiU, as long as Nintendo doesn't repeat the mistakes they made in last year's E3 presentation. That is to say, spouting "new controller, new controller, new controller" instead of "new console". Around 1:30 they're presenting the WiiU and despite lasting only a couple of seconds and probably just repeating what they were told to say, that should leave little doubt as for what exactly a WiiU is to the average consumer. And these women somehow seem to think there is a new console every other year, so it's probably not exactly hard to confuse them.

You get locked out and/or certain events explain why they're no longer available.

Concerning the drawing, you can attach pictures from the SD-card I think. The image is automatically cropped, but theoretically you can attach any image file from the SD card, no? There is Art Academy on the eShop, which allows to make more elaborate drawings and with a trick it's possible to import them in Letterbox: Just saying, when Colors! is released for the eShop sometime this year, you should be able to attach quiet elaborate paintings to the notes, that you did on the 3DS. Provided it saves to the SD-card (should be a given) and there aren't any limits to the image files you can attach.

If by that you mean that you apply a double standard when you presume to determine whatever is true to a name, then yes. Why is it you consider the true Nintendo the company that made the NES, Gameboy and their successors, rather than the company of the same name, that produced playing cards and all kinds of toys before they entered the videogame market? If you applied you philosophy consequently, than that would be the true Nintendo and today's videogaming behemoth would no longer be true to its roots. So yes, if you thought it through, you'd at least have to change your choice of words, as you're not applying "true" consequently to your "definition", but arbitrarily whatever way suits you. As long as you keep the esoteric discussion of what is true to a name separat from what is a Nintendo(MS, Sony etc.) game in the sense of "what games did Nintendo produce or have had produced for them", I guess everything is fine.

I see you do understand (civil) flight simulators. At least from what I've heard, that was exactly what previous MS Flight Simulators could be used for. The addition of missions here might just make it interesting for single player, too. Still, the main fascination comes from mastering a virtual vehicle, that behaves closely to how it would in reality. Just how close it will be in this entry remains to be seen. Then there are combat flight simulators, which are inherently mission-centered affairs. Multiplayer in those is essentially a kind of Death Match-game with very complex controls. At least from IL2 (1946) though I know that it's entirely possible to reduce realism and complexity until it's closer to flying in Battlefield than to an actual simulation. Edit: There's a video showing parts of the Beta. Seems missions are structured as challenges, like landing under certain conditions, collecting floating marks etc. and you'll be rated according to how well you did.

Might build a new PC by the end of this year or the beginning of next. I will certainly give it a try then. I like stuff that flies and shows some semblance of realistic behavior, but probably can't get into the really heavy stuff like the DCS series. I've never actually played MS Flight Simulator before. Only tried once or twice to click all sorts of things in MS Flight Simulator (Version 5.0) as a child on our old PC. I had no idea whatsoever what was going on. But I rediscovered the "Pilot's handbook" recently and it's the thickest manual I've ever seen. Edit: If this combines a more realistic flight model with some more game-like traits, some Pilot Wings fans here might also enjoy this.

I do get what you mean and I also get very alarmed when the word "true" is being used. A true Metroid, a true Zelda, what are these things? We can't define them, as it's not us who these games belong to. Anyone who owns an IP however, can define or redefine it to their liking, no matter if they're the same people who created it. That includes bending or removing any creative constraints set by the people who created the IP. Essentially you also deny the possibility of something evolving beyond what it originally was. You deny the possibility that Nintendo hires new employees with a different mindset unrelated to that of Myamoto & co., who might develop completely different IPs, which are nevertheless Nintendo games. You even deny the possibility that people's mindset change over time which might lead to a change of spirit in their games. You're arbitrarily limiting the spirit of any one company to one they - or a few people they employed at one point - had at a certain point in time of your choice, when both its spirit and employees are subject to constant change in the first place. Even when you claim this is the "artistic" way to see it, you're not honoring the possibility of artistic evolution or freedom with your lofty, but misdirected personal understanding of "<company> games". The argument isn't simple at all, because you hopelessly overstate the artistic portion of product creation and limit a product's belonging to its creators at the time of its inception, to the point where you don't acknowledge actual ownership or in fact reality anymore. It's like talking to a Gringotts goblin.

Rayman Origins should be playable with the Wiimote only, if I'm correctly informed.

While I largely enjoyed the first game, it tried too many things and didn't get any of them really right. The movement and jump-physics were extremely floaty and "character-less", which was unfortunate, as levels relied a lot on on jump'n'run-like traversal. Combat was unresponsive imprecise and shallow, which made the enemy encounters not much fun at all. The paint and thinner-mechanic was good for exploration, but was terribly integrated into the combat. Camera control was largely a mess, as neither the automatic camera nor the manual correction did work very well. The things that made it enjoyable were the main story with its branches and the sometimes beautiful later levels. Music was also a good, but suffered from lack of variety imo. Frankly, I haven't got very high hopes for this. Disney laid off a lot of people in their games department and Junction Point was said to be affected. I'm not convinced they are committed to having a sequel developed that truly addresses all the issues with the first game rather than just having another Mickey game to sell during Christmas. That said, this is a franchise with promise and I'd like to be proven wrong. They would absolutely need to create a compelling set of core mechanics though, instead of purely relying on the story and one gimmick on top of the most uninspired and poorly implemented set of mechanics to save the day. I'm also not buying that there won't be a WiiU port. A Wii version seems sensible, given that a (presumably) 100€ Wii with a Mickey game next Christmas could still move a lot of units. While they're trying to cover most of the home console platforms though, the omission of the WiiU seems inconsequent.

To expand on my last post a bit here, take this: We seem to understand different things when we say that X is a <corporate entity>-game. You seem intend to honor the creators of the game and deliberately read it as "Y developed game X, so it is a Y-game". In the context of this list though, it's clear that what matters is the platform exclusivity through publishing agreements or IP-ownership at the time. Even if we were to understand Y-game as "Y created the game", it's still inaccurate if we refer to companies. A game is created by a set of people and a game company may go through heavy changes in personnel through the years or become defunct, while the game is still available or sequels to the game are developed. Lets say fifty years from now Nintendo still makes Mario games, hasn't succumbed to the pressure of developing 1-dollar applications for all kinds of phones or been bought and is still a platform holder, but everyone involved in today's Mario games has retired or died due to having eaten too much contaminated rice after the nuclear fallout. Mario would still be a Nintendo game, even if the people developing it then will have nothing to do with those who develop it today. When everyone within a company is exchangeable though, the one thing tying the game to the company is the ownership. If the company doesn't own a game or series, that makes the whole company exchangeable.

If it were a Camelot game, then Camelot would decide what happens with it. If Nintendo owns Golden Sun, than they do however and that makes Camelot exchangeable. The creative legacy of the three Golden Suns may be that of Camelot, but they're (probably) Nintendo games. With Golden Sun it's indeed less clear than with Xenoblade. Xenoblade is a Nintendo game, because Monolith Soft is a Nintendo team now. That's the whole point of expanding your company by buying a studio. That's the whole point of IP-ownership. :p From a consumer's POV it has little consequence in the music industry that a label might have all the rights to a song. Your CD-player's doesn't distinguish between CDs from Universal Music or Sony. It's even morally questionable there, as songs are usually works of a very small group of people or even individuals. Games however aren't so much works of art done by a handful of people, as they're large scale projects that result in a product which somebody owns to some degree. If it's Nintendo, it's a Nintendo's product, no matter whose creative legacy is behind it. If Nintendo wants somebody else than the original developers to continue developing it, they just have somebody else do it. If Nintendo sells it to Microsoft, it becomes a Microsoft product. Much more importantly: If Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft own an IP, they decide on what platforms the games appear and that is what counts here.

The way I understand this, Camelot isn't owned by Nintendo, so not every game they produce is automatically a Nintendo game. We don't know who owns the Golden Sun IP. If it's Nintendo though, it's a proper Nintendo game. At the very least for the purpose of "Top-X" games on Nintendo's platforms through the years it can be counted as such. You'll have a hard time playing the Golden Suns through official means on anything else than Nintendo platforms. You need to start distinguishing between the owners and the creators of a game.

I know what you mean, but it doesn't make sense. Nintendo expanded by buying Monolith Soft (mostly ). It doesn't matter one bit, if Myamoto didn't personally design the game or that it wasn't developed by EAD. Monolith Soft is now part of Nintendo and so is this game.

"I can't take people's tastes serious, because they're different from mine." It just reflects that Metroid isn't exactly the hottest property in Japan. If we'd did some kind of "all time best"-list in a big magazine over here, they'd probably shake their had at it, too.

Likely there are contracts that determine who owns any IPs that Monolith Soft has developed in the past and any they develop while they're mostly owned by Nintendo. We don't know and are unlikely to find out. As long as Nintendo owns Monolith Soft though (80% of them at least), they will control what Monolith does and and any IPs or games Monolith Soft creates in that time are effectively Nintendo games. If they were to sell them again, that might be a different story. As for Xenoblade, I believe there was an Iwata Asks where they indicated that the development of Xenoblade had to be approved by Nintendo, so the level of control Nintendo has makes them effectively a subsidiary.

Depends on how patient you are with the game's beginning. During the first and maybe the second hour, you'll spend a lot of time doing missions with little variety, frying enemies with little variety over and over.

Not much to wonder about. Nintendo didn't have much to show at E3 as far as the Wii is concerned, because their teams are clearly either occupied with 3DS projects or in the transition from the Wii to the WiiU, which means there were no new big Wii games. On top of that, the console's most prominent feature was leaked a couple of weeks before E3. If Nintendo hadn't done an official reveal themselves, even the last bit of surprise would've been spoiled by a bunch of talkative devs. And it shows. Whoever designed this, created a convenient, vertically placed disc-drive and not much else. With the drive in the center and the slot's proportions suggesting that the console is only slightly larger than the drive itself, they made sure that there is no room for anything that needs cooling on either side of the drive. If consoles sold by looks, the PS2 would have been a still birth. As such there is nothing about the WiiU's design, that's in any way offensive enough to have a lasting effect on it's reception: If its greatest crime is its similarity to the Wii, then that's nothing to worry about. After all, it's called WiiU. A choice of name that's far too "stupid" to not have been deliberately chosen by Nintendo's marketing for a purpose.

The console is too far out for them to reveal new things at this stage. With a release sometime in the second half of 2012, probably even in autumn or winter, next E3 is more than early enough to release specific information.

Actually, it looks quiet elaborate for a kind of "E-Mail" substitute. It definitely has charm. The replay how a drawing was crated with the sender's Mii drawing at the corner of the screen or the voice messages, where the Mii "speaks", are cute. Seems far more appealing and less useless than the Wii's messaging system, at least. Still no communication solution for online matches. I'd have envisioned a kind of online-pictochat as a system-level feature, but while playing a game that's useless, too. You can't really write messages while playing a game. Best thing would be Voip, but as a system-level feature that seems out of question at this point.

Source. That's that. I'm not expecting much info before E3, if any at all.