Dcubed

Mushihimesama is out now! Aside from being locked to 720p only, it seems to be a great port! Functionally identical to the 360 version, only now in English (and you know, not ultra expensive! Plus the 1.5 mode is actually purchasable and not stupidly limited to just a handful of ultra rare copies!) The game picked up my Wii arcade stick (via the Mayflash adapter) just fine and it works without a fuss, even alongside someone else using a 360 controller as player 2. Anyone who's into shmups, buy buy buy! Really should try these games at some point. Problem is that I know for certain that I'm never gonna actually finish them :p

Right, so Bonus 3, 4 and 5 are out now! You must have JavaScript enabled on your device to view Miiverse posts that have been embedded in a website. View post in Miiverse You must have JavaScript enabled on your device to view Miiverse posts that have been embedded in a website. View post in Miiverse You must have JavaScript enabled on your device to view Miiverse posts that have been embedded in a website. View post in Miiverse Bonus 5 is really mainly a bit of an in-joke. I actually made it a while ago, but I wanted to upload something else first before getting it out. Most people won't get it, but if by some small chance you do; yes, the sound clip is taken straight from the original video

Right! The first of my new Bonus levels is up now! AF1C-0000-00DB-115E I am currently making more Bonus levels, but feel free to have a crack at this one right now

MWAHAHAHA!!!!! YESSSS!! My idea that makes use of checkpoints works exactly like I was hoping it would! I'm brimming with inspiration! Oh you guys are gonna love my next level... BTW, I get the feeling that most people don't get the point of Mashiko's crappy levels... Oh I can only hope that some of them will learn from them at least...

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/events/151029qa/index.html The English version of the investor's Q&A is out. Not much really new, except for one little blurb that says that they plan to start promoting their mobile apps around 2 months before their planned release dates. So that means that we'll be seeing more in-depth details about Miitomo in January.

I personally enjoyed NSMB2 much more than NSMBU. Underneath the surface it actually is one of the most interesting 2D Mario entries; with wide open levels that have an oddly meandering pace that really stand out from the other NSMB games. You can definately tell that they were designed by different people who didn't work on the other NSMB games. The Coin Rush mode was good fun too. A shame that the Streetpass leaderboard concept was flawed (you could only set one high score to beat and it only ever counted up to a maximum of 30,000 - which was achievable in a good few levels; making the whole high score chase pointless because everyone would set their target score to one of those levels and it was impossible to do better), because trying to squeeze out as many coins as possible in each level was good fun! Also it has The Impossible Pack, which definately lives up to its name! NSMBU was completely unnecessary though. It so badly wanted to be NSMB Wii, but the level design just falls so far from it. It lacks the flow, the right level of challenge and the bevy of ideas that NSMB Wii brought to the table. The level designs lacked the touch that Miyamoto and Tezuka brought to NSMB Wii (they personally took charge of the level design in NSMB Wii, actually designing courses for it, and it SHOWS!) NSLU was way better though. Instead of trying to just ape NSMB Wii, it went off on a tangent and was content with being its own thing. It works so much better as a result because it has a clear design focus; short courses with as much packed into a small space as possible. The result is an adrenaline rush that is tight, focused and inventive!

Yup, perfected every song on Ultimate, including all of the DLC songs (yes, all of them) Lets just say that they have a lot more patience than I do

Yeah, you could easily end up putting hundreds of hours into this little gem; especially if you're insane enough to attempt getting a perfect chain on every song like one of my friends did!

Agreed. If Mario Maker and Splatoon were available at or near launch, the console' fortunes would've been very different. NSMBU was a huge blunder. Having yet another 2D Mario sidescroller that looked near identical to NSMB Wii as your flagship launch title was a big mistake; especially since it didn't really make much use of the Gamepad (yeah there's the 5 player Boost Mode, but that's a pretty minor thing really).

I have no issues with controls for N64 shooters; personally I think that they control just fine Perfect Dark is still by far my favorite FPS. Nothing else comes close!

To be fair, Super Mario Maker is infinitely more accessible than Little Big Planet. The Gamepad makes it so much easier and quicker to make levels that it's not even funny. I only ended up ever making 1 level in LBP because it was just so complicated, clunky and time consuming.

Gamecube's making a late comeback it seems! Still got a ways to go before it catches the N64, but there's still a chance! Poor 3DS and GBA though... Not a single vote!

I quite liked Mario Sports Mix actually. Ok, it's not going to win any awards for its gameplay depth (definately don't go in expecting the depth of Camelot's Mario sports games), but I had a decent time with it. The gimmick courts are pretty fun and it has some neat ideas along with some great music! I'd say it's worth picking up, but not before any of Camelot's work (or the Mario Strikers games). Yeah, even though it's a real shame that it looks to be criminally lacking in content, the multiplayer will no doubt be fantastic.

Animal Crossing and MP4 were slow burners which sold very well over time. The majority of Prime's sales came from its first week and then dropped off a cliff until it was given away as part of the bundle (which was also why you saw so many used copies for bargain prices back in the day). It's hard to say what kind of effect that these games had on the GCN's overall hardware sales because they didn't explode out of the gate and fizzle out like Prime did. In the context of Wii U though, it's fair to say that at this point in its life; a Prime game would have a more appreciatable impact on hardware sales than another Mario Party or AC game though because it fills a gap in its library; unlike say, a hypothetical Mario Party 11. Though it doesn't really matter much at this point as it's far too late for it to make much of an impact anyway.

Mario Sports Mix might have very basic gameplay that doesn't have much depth (which makes sense considering that it was made by Square Enix internally, who have very little experience in making non RPG games), but it certainly wasn't rushed. The production values were very high, the game was one of the best looking on the console and it was packed with content.

Nice week. Good to have a good few lower profile titles at once. Contra Advance isn't really a great port though. It replaces the overhead levels with two levels from Hard Corps (kind of similar to SGN'G Advance's arrange mode - but that didn't remove anything) but there's so much missing (you can't even hold more than one weapon at a time!) that I can't recommend it (and the music sounds just horrible!). Also it's obviously going to lack the two player co-op mode here on the VC. SGN'G Advance was great because it was a quality port that kept everything from the original and added stuff on top of that, but Contra Advance? Nah.

Yeah, that top 10 Wii games list was good fun. We should do one for 3DS and Wii U respectively when they are about to get replaced as well. Doing a tier list for the Nintendo consoles would be interesting to see, but it's not really the right time right now; considering that there are still many games yet to be released for Wii U and 3DS, it's not really fair to compare their unfinished libraries to everything else that has come and gone. (and technically speaking, Wii still isn't finished either until Rodea The Sky Soldier is out )

Maybe we can do that just before the NX console comes out? That way we can look back on the finished Wii U and 3DS life cycles.

Well it would be hard to not have any sort of nostalgia factor at play here :p Personally I'm surprised at the lack of votes for the SNES so far. Would've thought that would be higher up on the list... I suppose that there's still plenty of oldies here that have yet to vote, so the scales may yet be tipped No GCN love is probably even more surprising though. Even the NES is beating it right now!

It most certainly IS relevant. The traditional gaming market sector may be doing ok, but that's not the sector that Nintendo are aiming at. Nintendo were after the same expanded audience that made the Wii and DS a huge success, but they've jumped onto mobiles where they get their games for "free". Since Nintendo are not looking to jump back into that traditional market sector, their biggest challenge is in finding a way to get this wider audience to understand why their games have value (and trying to find a way not to confuse the shit out of them :p ) Their games are still doing new things, but not in necessarily the same way as with the N64. Star Fox Zero is a pretty obvious example something we've never seen before with its unique two screen gameplay, as is Super Mario 3D World (we've never seen a multiplayer 3D platformer before and certainly nothing in a way that works similarly to a linear 2D game in 3D space). Their games might be starring familiar characters, but they're definitely still breaking ground and bringing new ideas to the table. The people who say otherwise are not looking beyond the surface and in many cases not even looking beyond the visual style. More and more though people seem to have the impression that a new idea can only come from a new IP, but that's far from true. While it shows that Nintendo should cut down on the use of their existing characters if they want to avoid this criticism, it doesn't make it true to say that their games are bereft of innovation.

Well my point was purely about quantity, not quality. I'm not arguing either way on which library I think is better, I'm more interested in seeing what others think about that matter :p And my other point is that they're not trying to appeal to the same audience as the traditional mass market. The reason why their consoles are struggling is not because they've suddenly stopped making groundbreaking games but instead it's because their own target market has been ensnared by mobiles and tablets and because the value of software in general is dropping rapidly as a result. Microsoft and Sony's platforms are not being affected as dramatically as Nintendo's ones because their target market is less interested in these platforms in general (though even they have been affected to some extent as their console sales are still lagging behind last gen on a month to month basis). It's not a game quality problem per-say but rather, it's a matter of wider socioeconomic challenges that are making selling consoles to their target audience a challenge for them. And for Nintendo, they can't go ahead and jump into the same market as MS and Sony, even with "epic" productions that push boundaries of production values and story because their brand is like kryptonite to that audience. Instead they attempt to appeal to a different audience and push boundaries in ways that are different to other developers. Rather than competing in terms of budget, with lots of voice acting, tons of FMV, interactive movie esc set pieces etc, they break ground in other ways like novel controls and social features like Streetpass and Miiverse. While there's a point to be made for them making too many 2D platformers (and I'd happily agree with anyone who says that focusing on that genre so heavily was a big mistake, despite the fact that each one has been high quality and has brought plenty of new ideas to each respective series), it's not really fair to discount games like Nintendo Land, Pikmin 3, Kirby & The Rainbow Curse, Bayonetta 2, Wii Sports Club, Wii Party U, The Wonderful 101, Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water and Captain Toad as derivative or low in quality because they feature existing characters or haven't sold well. All of them have broken ground in many ways, be it game design and/or unique controls that could only be done with the Gamepad.

I always much preferred the PS1 to the PS2 myself. Generally speaking I think that the libraries for Sony's consoles just got worse over time. But then again, I love oddball niche stuff :p

Add on the eShop titles and suddenly the list grows much larger They all follow a pretty standard template. Not unlike the many Mega Man sequels really.

I liked that one. Really amazing for a launch title! Sure it was rough around the edges, but it was crazy ambitious for its time! Gamasutra have a postmortem of the game's development process. It's a really interesting read!

Been seeing a lot of love for the N64 recently, so I thought it would be fun to see if I'm right in guessing that it's most people's favorite round here! Couple of rules in place that I think make things fair. When judging a console's library, Virtual Console and hardware backwards compatibility does not count (otherwise it would be pretty unfair really), ports and multiplatform games do count (though bear in mind if there was a better version of the game available at the time on a different console during that same generation - remasters/ports on later gen consoles shouldn't be taken into account as they were a non-factor at the time) and newly made downloadable games from WiiWare/DSiWare/eShop do count (games are games and many of them would've been viable retail releases back in the day). Let's keep the bickering to a minimum and have at it! : peace: