Jamba

Well shit.... seems a bit late to NOT be announcing a delay. The release date is 4 weeks away :/

One thing (and yeah I think that this is a big deal) is that it's a really family friendly shooter. The whole thing is just packed with so much personality and flavour but founded with some solid mechanics. Pretty sure that I'm going to be picking it up based on the beta alone.

I've been thinking about how "open world" I like my games. I struggle with things like Skyrim as I like something more directed but I loved LEGO City and I'm a big fan of how Borderlands does it to. To me Zelda excels when it's like that (as does Metroid). Gives you enough room to get into trouble and find a challenge but compartmentalises enough to not ruin a more controlled style of game design. But all of these only work when you're inspired to explore and rewarded by doing so.

Just downloaded this... looking forward to giving it a spin!

Nor me. I'm not sure whether Nintendo is actively trying to make themselves irrelevant but whatever. Not going to keep my Wii U around long enough to play it anyway. I still think it's likely that Nintendo are playing the PR game on this though. Didn't they say that they weren't going to show the Wii U in a press conference and then showed it in a direct.

Yes, you're right. It's a horrendous thing for Nintendo to do. I was at a lecture by a publisher who was stating the minimum order quantities from Nintendo on DS cartridges and it was horrible. A huge investment of cash and a second run was almost the same price. This was why games like Castlevania disappeared of the shelves right away. Nintendo control the production and want to rinse out cash at every stage of the process. You think that they use propriety disc formats for paying reasons? Nope, its so Nintendo can control the supply chain and make more dollar.

I can quite clearly remember seeing Starwing for the first time (not playing.... my brother surely would not let me PLAY the Snes!) The whole opening to the game had such a brooding atmosphere, with the ominous cruiser eclipsing the view of the camera. Pretty menacing for the time. Then the menu music cuts across in a way that completely demands your attention, 'cause it's ACTION TIME! Prepping for your first mission continues to build that suspense with dark tones of the map music. It's a serious mission Fox... concentrate. There are words here somewhere but we never read them cos we HAD to get to the next screen as soon as possible. WARNING! WARNING! SCRAMBLE! GO NOW! SHITS GOING DOWN! And the next handful of minutes represent one of the most thrilling video game experiences of my childhood. Within 10 seconds you have the heart pumping synth/heavy guitar of the corneria theme giving you this amazing sense of urgency, your team mates all talking at you (video game characters didn't talk back then!) and this furore of 3D goodness heading directly for you face! Everything about the level design was putting things in your way, forcing you to handle this new 3D experience and really asking you to stretch your skills or there was a good chance you were toast. The enemies weren't like Mario, they were all out to get you, hell the buildings were out to get you too! The Arwing was loose and skittish which only added to that pressure and excitement. It's hard to look at this game now and get that feeling if you didn't play it in the context of the era. Starwing was simply the best graphical, audio and action experience design that was available at the time. It used everything it had at it's disposal, affecting as many of your senses as it could to increase this excitement, danger and twitch experience. It gave some real credence to the phrase "flying by the seat of your pants". By comparison Lylat Wars felt a bit more laid back. Nintendo had obviously taken a decision to flesh out the universe a bit and wanted to give you more of those vistas. But if you had played the SNES game, it felt a little slow. You were up against bosses that you'd fought before and I wasn't a great fan of the new content either. The submarine level was bad. I didn't think so at the time but retrospectively the handling was swimmy (ha!) and slow at the same time making it feel disconnected from the game world. Everything was slowed down making it super easy and oh would you look at that, they're going to let Slippy talk ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE LEVEL! By comparison the tank levels was a mixed blessing. It had some excellent level design in the way that your view was constantly restricted by the objects around you but essentially being locked to a pseudo-2D movement plane felt constricting. I suppose that's a tank but I wouldn't say I enjoyed it that much. In a lot of ways it feels as though Lylat Wars was Nintendo's directors cut of Starwing, where they wanted to add in a lot of the creative vision that they couldn't achieve on the SNES. More character development, more script (oh god some of the script is BAD) and getting to more viscerally experience some of the higher points of the game, like the escape from the final boss with Fox's dad-ghost guiding him. The game bit of the game just lost some of it's purity and fun for me along the way. For instance, I think that they need to get rid of the old charge shot. But how could I not talk about the all-range levels There were some great all-range moments particularly any dogfight with Starwolf. Some were a bit lacking but this truly delivered something above the SNES experience that continued on it's spirit of action arcade. The amount of "crap-that-was-close" moments are a testament to it's success. The multiplayer extension of that was also a lot of fun. As a 2 player experience it wasn't great but 4 players got really hectic. It was no Goldeneye or Mario Kart but it really felt like it could have been with a bit more development time and alternate modes. I'm not going to go into much detail about Adventures as it felt like a side game to me and I remember very little about Assault aside from it failing to capture that experience again.

I wish I could say parity would bring me back but in retrospect Nintendo platforms have always been about the unique games for me. The last Nintendo platform that I truly loved was the DS and a lot of that was to do with the mix of games that I couldnt get anywhere else. And thats not just about 3rd party. On the Wii the 3rd party support was weak and Nintendos output themselves seemed to lack a lot of what I like about games. Sony particularly have cultivated a strong 1st party line up (when theyre not shuttering studios) and their 3rd party relationships give birth to some incredible games. Then you have the cross platform stuff on top of that. I dont think that trying to chase that approach would work for Nintendo, theyre simply too far behind and im convinced that their culture as a company makes them disdainful of 3rd parties, particularly western ones. They need to sort their own house first and stop all of this looking backwards constantly. The retro thing is fine every now and again but we need a game as unique as splatoon every year to get Nintendo out of its rut. Will that make me game Nintendo exclusively? No... but it may convince me to buy the NX at all.

So I've just finished watching Season 2...

I don't really understand why people are entertaining this pic so much (aside from the normal information desperation!) 1) I can't fathom a single reason why there is any benefit to having a round edged display like that. 2) Having joysticks poking through the screen and buttons that would need to be display as well (to camouflage like that) as well as the round display would be hella expensive. Like, there'd have to be a good reason for it expensive. 3) Extra display area? Where? Like under your hands the vast majority of the time. Is that why we need the expensive display and the chance to waste more battery life?

I've played that before!

Very happy to hear about the release date. I'll stop worrying now! Put down my pre-order and will wait patiently until it comes out (just before my birthday ) I'm at a stage now where I don't want to watch any more media on it. I've seen plenty already and looking forward to the early game discovery. If all goes well, I really hope that they get some solid recognition for everything that they have achieved.

As Ashley pointed out, if it isn't a drastic change then it's not a Metroid Prime moment. So you're comparing the hate that a game got for being different to the hate a game is getting for being the same (well same-ish but suspiciously worse looking)? What are you trying to say with that comparison? I genuinely don't know what you're getting at.

And more dumbed down with less focus on what made it good in first place... Not being sensationalist at all. I've played both of those games and watched videos of Starfox Zero and also watched someone play it over their shoulder at an expo when the booth was quiet. I'm genuinely shocked by the lack of original thought that has gone into this game on all levels. And I'm not saying it looks like a 20 year old game. I'm saying that Nintendo have done almost nothing to move the series on in 20 years. The gameplay is almost EXACTLY the same. This was fun and absolutely mindblowing on the SNES but it's like the team developing it was afraid to stray away from the game engine from Lylat Wars. Take the jump of Zelda into 3D. Nintendo took what made the game great in experience terms and re-envisioned that for a 3D world. The adventure, exploration and danger. Can you say that Nintendo have ever been brave enough to do that with Starfox? This series needs its Metroid Prime moment.

You see, none of the footage I've seen or what I've seen of it in real life has me anything but disappointed. And slow paced? This is Starfox! A franchise that when it was released redefined what a computer game could be and how frantic and action packed it could be! The original has my favourite beginning of any game ever because it nails the atmosphere and you feel like you've genuinely been landed in the shit and have to fight your way out. This doesn't look fun to me at all though. If I don't at any point break a bit of a sweat or get my heart beat raised by the tension then this game is going in completely the wrong direction. The visual direction is already in the toilet but if they can't nail the game style itself (which they pretty much well defined) then I don't see why anyone is getting excited. Nintendo need to stop doing these half baked reboots of franchises. If they're not interested in pursuing the features that made them great in the first place then license the IP to a studio that wants to.

Are the Thanks from people under the video Serebii posted because people thinks this looks good? I know that people are looking forward to playing more Starfox but the video has only cemented my feeling that this game looks like a (nearly) 20 year old game. The pacing of that level looked horrendous and most of the tension is built by just awful camera work that is imposed on the player. I've played a free game on Google Cardboard that seems more fun that this. Hell, Red Alarm on the Virtual Boy is more fun than this looks!

So there hasn't been any update on the official news on the No Man's Sky website since December. I think it's safe to say that Sony/Hello Games aren't really handling the PR of this project properly well at all but is anyone actually getting worried about it's development now? Is this about to go Last Guardian on us?

For me, I say nope. I think the end of OoT is one of the few good computer game endings. Link gets reverted back to his original age (SPOILERZ!) and is essentially given the chance to go explore and enjoy his childhood in the now-peaceful Hyrule. A childhood which had to be stolen from him to complete his quest. It was almost like Nintendo saying: Well done! You've complete OoT... Now go play outside and have some real adventures.

I've just been catching up on the whole "pitch us something" thing. I would put a big speech up here about business development and building relationships with companies but really it's not going to contribute to the discussion. I think everyone's on the same page about it to the most extent. Nintendo feel like that kid you knew at school that only liked one game. It was sitting in the flower bed at the edge of the playground and just digging a hole in the ground with a stick... on his own. Keep your business model as niche as you like Nintendo. Your figures are showing that even that isn't profitable for you like it was back in the Gamecube days.

Loving this game for so many reasons. I'm quite near the end now with possibly only one laser left to get. I'm not really broached the mountain at all but I did do the initial puzzle at the top. Its so nice to have a game that is such a fun cerebral challenge yet is somehow still relaxing. Each time I get stuck stuck, I just go do something else and come back. Every time that I have, I realise that I've been thinking about it wrong. Trust your instincts... if it looks impossible, the way you are doing the puzzle probably is! I've already had more enjoyment out of it than I paid for. Very happy.

This article by Rob Fahey is quite a reasonable analysis into how substantiated the reports are: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2015-12-04-why-a-20m-target-for-nintendo-nx-is-actually-realistic

I don't expect June 2016 to be any more solid than Q4 2015. I can see why Murray was getting so annoyed at people asking him about the release date now. I'm guessing Sony convinced them to completely change the development schedule. Le sigh

Ah ok. The article I read said "this Friday". It's obviously written by one of those people that don't know what "next Friday" means.

And its going to be on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert tonight apparently.