Dcubed

Namco's dev kit PCs still have Floppy Disc drives!? How old are they!?

Gen 1 really is hilarious. It's so hilariously broken and unbalanced that it's actually charming in a weird roundabout way It does feel like a (very ambitious) rough draft of what the series would eventually become and in some respects, I guess that enabled people to fill in the blanks themselves when imagining what the world of Pokemon could look and feel like.

Yeah I only cottoned onto it afterwards, it's still vague as hell though (and considering how massive the desert is, really easy to miss, even after the hint) Well it sold fairly well originally (300k+) so I just imagine it's a matter of high demand and people not wanting to sell. Oh and agreed about Smash 4!

This game... It's so gooood!! I'm up to world 3 and I'm loving it!! Even without the copy abilities, it's definately a worthy successor to Canvas Curse! The wide open level design is a great fit for the huge Gamepad screen. It really sets itself apart from the DS game in that respect and yet it is also a blast to just rush through as fast as possible too! The level design does a great job of encouraging exploration, while also encouraging speed running (drawing?), it's masterfully executed! It's also the most disgustingly adorable looking game I've ever played. I think I'm gonna have to carry a barf bag all throughout! (And also amongst the most visually impressive games I've ever seen as well; it really does look and animate like real clay!) Everything is polished to near perfection (about the only complaint I could make is that I wish there was a way to erase all the lines at once, like in Yoshi's Touch N' Go) I'm not that far into it yet, but it is already in the running for my absolute favourite Wii U game! After being somewhat disappointed by Tropical Freeze, this game blows me away! Can't wait to sink my teeth into the Challenge Mode. I can already tell that it's gonna be addictive as hell!

But still no new Conker game :p

Well, Next Level Games actually were working on a Metroid related game for 3DS, prior to putting it on hold when they were asked to make Luigi's Mansion 2, so it is actually a series that they wanted to work on anyway... Headstrong Games are the guys who made the Batallian Wars games and the Art Academy series (the former being a new IP loosely based on Advance Wars and the latter being a brand new IP of their own that they've continued to iterate on for the last 5 years). With Monster Games, you have to account for the fact that they're a relatively small studio of about 20-30 odd people. That's not enough to make really large scale projects anymore, so that's why they've been working on smaller scale projects this generation (as well as helping out Retro in making Tropical Freeze). With Pilotwings Resort, it was easy enough for them to make because they had a lot of pre-existing assets and code that they could take from Wii Sports Resort, but something larger than that is a big ask for a small studio like theirs.

Oh, they've given out copies quite early this time around it seems. Why pick a late August release for this one instead of July then? August is never really a good month for game releases. Is the multiplayer available to review yet? Or are you guys still waiting for the servers to come online? (cause the multiplayer looks like it could be decent fun at least)

Next Level Games? Retro Studios? Monster Games? Headstrong Games? The various outside studios that they've worked with over the years? They've all turned out fine and have always been positive about the suggestions and support that have been offered (and it's not like they haven't had their share of struggles over the years either - NLG chose to dedicate themselves to working with Nintendo exclusively after their bad experiences of working with other western publishers after all.). This one seems like such an extreme outlier in terms of experience that I really doubt that it's really an accurate account of what happened. It was a troubled project that span on its wheels for 5 years, by a studio who had never designed their own game from scratch before; it's actually pretty amazing that they actually let them keep at it for so long before finally pulling the plug!

See that's the part that doesn't make sense to me. It's not like Nintendo haven't maintained good relations with plenty of other internal and external western studios; so how convenient is it that this one studio that was plagued with problems throughout this project (one in which they had a large budget and more or less complete creative freedom to boot!) blames the Japanese NST managers... Not to claim that they're faultless here, but I get the feeling that this is a matter of us only hearing one side of the story here. This was the first time that NST ever tried making a game that didn't rigidly stick to a pre-established formula founded by another series (even Metroid Prime Hunters, which deviated heavily from the single player focus that the series was known for, was very heavily based on Quake); so the design staff were all rookies in a certain sense because this was the first time they actually broke out to do their own thing. And from the sounds of things, design was the one big problem with this game... If the simple act of killing enemies with the hammer was all it had going for it, then it sounds like a refocus on environmental destruction/interaction was actually the right approach to take. If anything though, it really should've been cancelled much sooner, rather than keep pouring money into a project that was going nowhere fast. Game concept design has never really been NST's strongpoint with their games generally, but rather they've mostly been good at taking someone else's work and building off of that. All of their other games have followed in that way, even from the beginning (their first project was re-skinning the unreleased Panel de Pon 64 into Pokemon Puzzle League) and generally the main characteristic features of their games came down as suggestions from various NCL staff (I know that Miyamoto himself suggested the Turbo system for Wave Race Blue Storm and I'm pretty sure I remember hearing that the Avalanche mechanic of 1080 Avalanche was also another NCL suggestion as well).

Well duh. Of course it's not gonna compete with the PS4 in terms of hardware specs... because this first NX system is a handheld; like I've been telling you guys all along

Wahey! Earthbound Beginnings complete! Impressions can be read here Next up is Kirby & The Rainbow Curse! Just started it and am already feeling sick from the ridiculous level of cute throughout!

So I finally finished it! That twist at the end actually ends up working better having played Earthbound first ironically enough! Speaking of which, it's really surprising just how much of Earthbound Beginnings actually ended up getting reused in Earthbound. Lots of enemies and locations very strongly resemble areas in its sequel, to the point where it's kinda not wrong to call Earthbound a spiritual remake of its NES predecessor. Much of Beginnings' music also gets remixed and used in the equivalent places that show up in its sequel too! Even the playable party members you encounter strongly resemble the ones from Earthbound! Of course that's not to say that Beginnings doesn't do things differently from Earthbound, because it certainly does. The story is completely unique and the way its told is very different too (it's kind of odd how you have a decent amount of plot at the start, then the majority of the game is fairly uneventful as far as plot development goes, then suddenly towards the end it hits you at full force!) Magicant also plays a much larger role than it does in Earthbound too, both in terms of story and as a game location (I especially liked the sleeping dragon, which would just taunt you all throughout until you were strong enough to fight it ) Like its sequel, the writing is irreverent and has that same weird vibe all throughout - usually funny and occasionally surprisingly dark. The translation is generally very well done for the time and the console it was released on; while there are a few oddities here and there, it's mostly really quite solid! Easily the best writing seen in any NES game; with a plot that is far more fleshed out and well developed than anything else on the system... ... speaking of which, the world itself is HUGE! I think it might actually even be larger than Earthbound's one! In fact, I think it's too big for its own good. It's enormously impressive from a technical standpoint, but it's also tedious and difficult to navigate at times. Compressing everything down in its sequel was definitely the right choice to make, but it's hard not to be in awe at the sheer scale of world that they managed to cram onto a NES cart! Gameplay wise, it plays... like Earthbound! The interface is almost identical (save for it lacking the talk button in its sequel), the battles largely play out the same way (though of course it lacks the rolling HP counter), many of the same enemies would reappear in its sequel, it has the same large seamless world map that Pokemon would later go on to steal (well, APE did become Creatures after all ) and most of the abilities and status effects (save a few) would go on to also feature in its SNES successor. It's really surprising just how much it resembles Earthbound! The main thing it lacks in comparison to its predecessor however is polish. The controls feel a bit stiff and unresponsive at times and menus can take a split second to respond to a button press - can be annoying at times. Likewise, the high enemy encounter rate and the very grindy nature of the game may also be a big turnoff for some players. Personally, I actually didn't find it too annoying, despite being someone who usually can't stand grinding at all; so obviously the game must've been charming enough for me to look past that! But yeah, no sugar coating it, it's a grindfest and generally isn't the most well balanced RPG out there. And finally, while the game is generally nowhere near as bad as most other NES era RPGs in terms of player guidance, it does have its BS moments where it's basically impossible to figure out where to go and what to do without a guide... You must have JavaScript enabled on your device to view Miiverse posts that have been embedded in a website. View post in Miiverse ... Yeah, screw you cactus! (the huge world map doesn't help in that regard either) I'd definitely recommend playing the SNES game first, before playing EB Beginnings, but it's definitely worth your time. It's a really great game underneath all that grinding, with some really forward thinking ideas that are still unique to it (and many of which would go on to be stolen by others... I'm looking at YOU Link's Awakening and Pokemon )

Not gonna lie. I'm half tempted to pick up Rare Replay, despite not actually owning a Xbone! The value there is insane! Let's just hope that they don't mess up the ports.

Hooray! The worst-kept-secret is out! Great to see that the story will reach its conclusion! If you're not enjoying the first game, you'll probably not like the sequel so much - unless the reason why you don't like it is because you have to re-do puzzles/dialogue when you're going for a different ending; in which case, VLR actually allows you to jump to various parts of the story that you've already seen at will.

Ok! Here ya go! GP3, Race 3 Results: GP3, Race 4 Results: GP3 Final Results: Also as an added bonus, something awesome that I managed to pull off during Toad's Turnpike

I recorded the whole thing. I'll get you the results shortly when I get back home. Last night was crazy! People kept dropping like flies!

They've done that with a few games, but usually on a case by case basis. I know that they toned down the colours and effects in Super Mario RPG for instance with certain attacks as well as the cannon flash effect in Secret of Mana on the Wii VC. Typically though they don't turn down the brightness on the game itself to prevent epilepsy, but rather it's with certain visual effects. Interestingly enough, with Earthbound in particular they actually added a per-pixel motion blur effect to one of the PK abilities to try and prevent seizures; that was an unusual one! The colour dulling is done moreso as a means of replicating the way that the original consoles/handhelds would output video. And with the GBA it's done as a means of restoring the intended colour balance, since the games were originally designed with the original model GBA's dark screen in mind. If you can, try and compare the two with the N64 hooked up to a CRT and the Wii U hooked up to an LCD HDTV. The difference should be even less pronounced than when comparing direct feed captures because of the way that CRTs output duller images than LCDs.

That comparison was probably not taken from an actual N64. Luckily enough, I just happen to have my N64 hooked up to a capture device! Lucky you! Here's a quickie comparison... N64 NTSC (please excuse the banding and colour bleeding, I'm using composite as I don't have an S-video cable for my N64 - but since brightness is what we're looking at, it shouldn't matter too much here) Wii U VC and a PC emulator screenshot As you can see, a real N64 does not output pure white, but rather a somewhat dull grey. When viewing a game on a CRT (the type of display that these games were originally designed for) as well, you'll typically find the image appears duller than on an LCD, so that also accounts for some of the difference.

The filter is there in order to replicate the original N64 hardware's dulled video output. The physical hardware would never output a pure image originally, just like with the NES, the DAC chip inside it would end up dulling the overall image when it generates the video signal that is sent out to the TV. I don't know anything about the flickering though, I've not seen it myself, but I assume that it must be a PAL 50hz issue since it doesn't happen with SM64 (I didn't buy OoT or Paper Mario because, you know... 50hz...)

Oh yeah, I'm IN this week too!

You don't seem to understand that they can't do what you're suggesting. Where does the manpower to make this hardware so quickly even come from? (They certainly haven't been going on a hiring spree as they haven't really increased in terms of company size at all). They only just started moving over software personel to this new project late last year/early this year when they restructured the hardware division. All while their software developers were knee deep in developing Wii U titles and the last big wave of 3DS software (plus starting mobile app development as well). You're only just now starting to see them wind down on Wii U development; meaning that there's still a long time to go until they're gonna have any launch software ready for this new console and handheld (not to mention the hardware itself - which still needs plenty of time to cook; and that's on top of them starting developing Qol devices too). What you're suggesting simply isn't feasible.

It's not about whether or not they want it out quickly or not. It's a matter of R&D reality. Hardware and its accompanying software (games, firmware, SDKs etc) all take a very long time to make (and the man hours required to get these machines out of the door are only getting longer and longer). The whole reason why the New3DS exists is to buy them time while they get the new handheld successor ready after all.

... yeah no. Mass production wouldn't happen a month before a console launches, you're typically looking at lead time of about 4-6 months before a launch (and possibly longer than that even, should you fall afoul of yield problems). Not to mention that Iwata said that the NX was due to be unveiled in 2016, not released that year. They always unveil a console/handheld around a year before its launch; meaning that the first NX machine isn't due until 2017 (probably March for the handheld; seeing as how the typical pattern goes by an E3 reveal, followed by a Feb/March release and then late 2017/early 2018 for the NX console)

Me neither. But I could imagine someone hitting the ceiling if they got into a conversation with someone through commenting on someone's post though.

The 30 post limit is a bit restrictive, but not too bad. Personally if I was going to put in a limit to prevent spam, I would not count comments towards the limit and just count newly made posts, but either way, I don't see myself hitting the ceiling very often, if at all... (BTW, if you're wondering "in-game" posts are the ones that you make with an ingame Miiverse posting option - like the Miiverse mailbox in Splatoon) I do like the new organisation layout. Miiverse really needed a better way of shifting through posts, rather than having everything lumped together. The screenshot album is also a very welcome feature Making screenshots mandatory is also a good idea; at last, we'll see an end to all those posts of people asking "how does I take screenshot?" that crop up all the time!