Dcubed

99% certain that Amiibo Touch & Play was made by EAD Tokyo (probably Hayashida's team). It's blatantly using the same UI code that was used for Super Mario 3D World and Captain Toad (animations and such feel basically identical).

Looks fantastic! This may well be the first Kickstarter that I actually back! I LOVE the look! It's so charmingly 90s! (and the name is very clever as well!) Gameplay looks very ambitious; looks great so far... Hope they're not biting off more than they can chew though...

Yeah, I reckon that there's a decent chance of them doing that. Normally I would say no, but for a multiplayer focused game like this one? I can see it happening

Since when did this thread become the catch all Nintendo discussion thread? Well it probably would've been simply overwhelming had they gone for SM64/SMS style physics in a game like SM3DW. EAD Tokyo's games feature much more compact and tightly focused level designs that revel in per-level gimmicks; much more than what you see in the first two 3D Mario games (which are very sparsely laid out in comparison and feature much fewer moment to moment level mechanics). A game like SM3DW or SMG would be frustrating to play if the physics engine was as momentum based as SM64 or SMS; sort of like what Tetris would be like if it had realistic physics. It's just a matter of design focus. But yes, it's really shocking just how well designed SM64 is; especially for their first bloody attempt!! It broke an obscene amount of ground when it came out (and still does many things that most games today can't even begin to compete with, like Mario's base physics engine)

Too late, all gone. Should've done this... :p

Yeah, Epic Yarn is a really underrated little gem. So much better than Wario Land: The Shake Dimension was! (Really quite shocking how much of an improvement it was for me; bit like the jump from Super Mario Ball to Metroid Prime Pinball!). Really creative and interesting level design, coupled with some really unique and interesting mechanics (and some clever Wiimote usage too) and some well designed 2 player action too! What a lot of people don't seem to understand is that the difficulty in that game comes not from beating it, but from earning the medals (keeping hold of those beads is pretty damn tough in the later levels!) You get out of it what you put into it

Same here. I've got a bad feeling about this one. Seemed great at first, but everything since has rubbed me the wrong way...

The Battletoads fight looks AMAZING!! If I had an Xbone, I would totally double dip for it! The Kratos Fight by comparison is a bit lame (it's not bad, but it's not even close to how awesome the Battletoads one is!)

Should really mention that I'm working this Thursday, so I'm out. Agreed. It's more interesting if we don't always do it.

The idea is that they want to lock people into their ecosystem in the same way that people are locked into iOS or Android. Once you're in, you would expect your existing purchases to carry over to any future hardware; in the same way that you expect it from your mobile. The incentive to upgrade comes from other factors though; be it new hardware features, new ways of playing games, hardware aesthetics or whatever - but people who come from mobile expect their existing stuff to just work on the new machine, so not having BC is a huge barrier for them (imagine if Apple released a new iPhone that ran none of the existing apps!) Latency reduction won't happen to a point that Nintendo would be satisfied with until fibre-to-the-home becomes a standard around the 3 major territories and that's not gonna happen for a very long time... ... nor does it get around the problem of the enormous bandwidth and maintenance costs associated with game streaming... For a dedicated hardware maker with certain standards of latency, it's not gonna be viable for a good long while. Firstly, they're probably looking at making their next console cheaper from the outset (and certainly their next handheld). Secondly, they're not looking to get out of the dedicated hardware business so putting their games out elsewhere is not a viable option; they're trying to sustain their hardware business, not dump it!

First off, the Wii U's poor hardware sales come down to a huge number of factors; be it poor branding choices, too high a price, the rise of mobile gaming, poor choice of marketing mix; really, the number of potential factors is near infinitesimal. You can have a must-have feature or game, but if everything else is working against your product, it's not going to succeed. Onlive was a gargantuan failure and PS Now is an experiment that has future goals in mind. It is probably not making much of a profit at all (in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a money loser), but it's an investment into their long-term future, so that's why it's justifiable. If it ends up being a part of Nintendo's future, it's going to be a very distant one; probably not within the next 10 years. Predicting that far out is absurd! With this new NX platform and their shared hardware architecture plan though? It is by far their best option. The alternative is to start from zero again and be crushed by the rise of mobile. It's not going to be the only intended killer feature for those who already own previous Nintendo hardware; for them, it's just a value-add. For newcomers though? It's a way of getting them into playing Nintendo games at very low prices.

Nintendo isn't aiming for that audience though... Their target audience is both younger and older. People who have a strong nostalgia for the games of old as well as those who are new to gaming in general. For them, the VC is a much stronger factor than with Sony's audience (I think we've actually gone over this before :p ) and it's something that is clearly a much stronger focus for Nintendo than it is for Sony or MS. Despite the fact that the VC has always had something holding it back (be it the poor shop design/online setup of the Wii, or the lack of hardware sales for the Wii U; something that comes down to lots of different factors, like price, branding etc), it has always been their strongest driver of digital sales and it continues to be so to this day. If they're gonna compete against the tide of mobile devices with massive App Store catalogues and devalued games without giving up on quality games and dedicated hardware, then their best shot is with a large catalogue of games at highly variable prices from day 1; and the only way that they can realistically do that is by leveraging their legacy. Online streaming might one day become a viable option, but right now it is not. It's too expensive to maintain and doesn't provide the responsiveness that Nintendo demand from their games. With Playstation Now, Sony are looking at a future that eschews the need for dedicated hardware at all, while Nintendo are looking at ways to allow them to keep making dedicated consoles/handhelds. PSNow is likely to be a test bed for whatever succeeds the PS4; but since Nintendo aren't looking to get out of the hardware business, it's not a viable option for them. 50 years is an absurd amount of time to be asked to predict! By that point anything NX related would be emulatable anyway, so godonlyknows what method they would be using by then (or if they can even stick around that long). If streaming is the future, then it's a really distant one. And they're not looking to branch out to mobile as a replacement for their games, but rather it is meant as an entry point for mobile users, as a means of entering Nintendo's ecosystem. That's what Iwata has always kept saying, even well before the DeNA announcement; and nothing that has been announced has gone against that yet. The idea is that they're trying to introduce new players to their IP and move them over from mobile to their platforms. Whether or not it'll work remains to be seen though (I'm pessimistic about it, but that's beside the point).

The idea behind this NX console/handheld is that it is designed around a shared hardware ecosystem. It is meant to be like the iPhone/iPad; where they stick with the same ARM/Power VR combo with boosted specs over time; so yeah, I expect them to stick with this Power PC/AMD GPU combo (with specs increasing over time) for the forseable future. BC is integral to their future. It is what will allow them to keep their ecosystem alive and well (with lots of high quality games at highly variable prices) without them having to devalue their games to the point of unsustainability or re-enter the losing battle against MS and Sony over the 12-25 year old males/KGOY market. And this shared ecosystem also allows them to release new games on both platforms at a greatly reduced manpower cost; meaning that releases can be more frequent too (especially seen as they can hit the ground running; since it would be pretty much the same as developing for the Wii U - hardware that they're familiar with now). Going down this route means that Nintendo can prop up their console/handheld ecosystem on their own; without having to rely on the major 3rd party publishers who will never support them (it's politics and not hardware specs that prevent them from getting proper 3rd party support) And it's not like BC has prevented Nintendo from re-making their games anyway... (nor does it prevent them from making the original versions of their games available either)... even when OoT and MM were on the Wii VC, they still made OoT 3D and MM 3D as full price retail games. So what is the benefit of dumping Power PC for ARM or X64? It's not going to gain them any extra support, because the major publishers just aren't interested in Nintendo's vision of the industry (plus Nintendo's family friendly brand is toxic to them) and it doesn't necessarily gain them any extra performance either (especially not in a handheld; as X86/64 isn't exactly known for being power efficient...) It also means throwing out all of their existing technology and programming know how... For no real gain. It would just mean that they'd be starting from scratch, having to re-learn development all over again, with a library of zero, and still with no large scale 3rd party support to back them up. It doesn't make sense.

Supporting Wii U BC means that you also get Wii and GCN BC at no extra cost, because the Wii U hardware is derived from those two consoles. Supporting Wii U BC also means that every single VC game currently available for Wii U (and technically Wii as well) is also playable at no extra cost. If the next console is a turbo charged Wii U (which it seems like it's going to be, based on what Iwata was saying about their next console and handheld sharing an archtecture based on Wii U), then every single past Nintendo console is automatically supported out of the box from day 1, without them having to invest anything extra into the hardware cost. And you can bet that this is gonna be a big selling point. Hundreds of high quality games at variable prices (from full price retail games down to £3 NES games) all there at day 1. That is how they compete in this age of race-to-the-bottom pricing. Likewise, the same applies to their handheld too (though BC with 3DS is very much questionable about how they're gonna handle that...); which will almost certainly effectively be a miniaturised and downclocked Wii U (that runs in widescreen 480p instead of 720/1080p); meaning that it too will have near full BC with everything from day 1 at no extra cost in terms of hardware (of course it won't support periphrials like Wii remotes and such, so those games won't be playable on there). But if the handheld is using Wii U derived hardware at a high enough spec to handle it, then that also means that they'll be able to make all existing Wii U VC/downloadable Wii/GCN games playable on there from day 1; without having to re-code anything at all - which also makes it very much financially feasible to have crossbuy across the board for all past games (since the games will just work out of the box, without any actual porting being needed to be done) That's why it makes perfect sense. If the NX handheld/console are derived from Wii U hardware, then supporting all of their past games comes at zero cost and gives them a huge running start; and a huge library of quality games from day 1 is their best shot at competing in this age of established app stores with thousands of low price games.

If the NX console can play Wii U games, then it will also be able to play Wii and GCN games natively by default; because the Wii U's hardware is a superset of the Wii (which in turn is also a superset of the GCN). Just like how the 3DS can play GBA games, because it has the DSi hardware inside it (and the DS/DSi just so happens to incorporate the GBA hardware inside it). As for the handheld... With it supposedly being based on the Wii U's hardware architecture, as long as it has at least Wii level specs, it'll be able to play both Wii and GCN games technically (not that you'd actually be able to control most Wii games without a Wiimote though :p) There's a good reason why Nintendo is investing so much into the Wii U VC and not into the 3DS VC service... Dreamland 3 is well worth your time. It's not exactly my favourite in the series, but it's really very underrated with some cool ideas and some great music! A bit sluggish in terms of control and pacing, but it has plenty of good ideas and interesting gameplay throughout : peace: Dreamland 2 however is definitely my least favourite of the Kirby series (and I've played through them all). If you've played through all the other Kirby games and love them, then go ahead and give it a whirl, but every other Kirby game is better IMO.

Personally, I think that the issue of longevity in terms of physical vs digital is a bit of a misnomer because the real problem is not really the lifespan of the game itself, but rather its the lifespan of the hardware it runs on. Be it physical or digital, the game will still be completely useless once the hardware it runs on expires. Digital games can be backed up onto multiple storage devices, so even if the eShop went down before the discs succumbed to disc rot (which they will do eventually - not even physical games last forever), the digital games can be repeatedly backed up anyway. That is why backwards compatibility is so important. THAT is what will really keep games alive. Be it through emulation, or through hardware means, the games will only last for as long as they can be run on hardware that is capable of running them. Going by their current roadmap, it's very likely that the Wii U VC version IS the NX version... I'd be very surprised if they make any changes at all to the currently available VC games when their next gen handheld and console come out. Everything points to them just running the Wii U VC games as they are on their next console and handheld (as in, literally running the exact same code; exactly as it is now). With the Wii VC, they HAD to start again because there wasn't any real way that they could abstract any of the OS related functions (and they had a laundry list of features that they wanted to add that they simply couldn't); remember that the Wii didn't have a proper OS that ran in the background, so they couldn't do anything like running games from USB, or adding Miiverse support, or anything like that. With the Wii U VC however, they have all that nuts and bolts stuff abstracted; with things like USB loading support and such being handled by a separate co-processor that handles all OS related stuff. This means that (assuming that the NX console/handheld is indeed effectively a turbo charged/underclocked Wii U as everything is pointing to), there will be no need for them to do any sort of re-coding/upgrading process to have everything run on the NX like a native game does (so there should be no need for any sort of "Wii U Menu" next time around)

Probably because we've got the Amiibo Touch and Play thingy coming out this week... which incidentally includes demos based off the US versions of Super Metroid, Zelda ALTTP and Kirby's Adventure; despite the actual games being 50hz only...

Great stuff, vid is pretty much perfect! : peace: Last night was honestly a time where you could use the words "epic" and "fail" in the same sentence and it actually wouldn't be hyperbole Just a shame that you weren't around long enough for me to get to select my other custom stage I made. We kept trying to select my custom stages when we switched the rules back, hoping that we'd get a chance to play them all - and of course, we would get it right after you left :p Would've made for a brilliant addition to the vid, but ahh well. The fight it ended on was purely epic anyway!

ARGH!!!! WHY DIDN'T WE SAVE THAT LAST REPLAY!?!?!? That "Bowsercide" was amazing!!! Great matches though! All Gifworthy, right from the start! : peace:

Sorry 'bout that. Got rid of it. Well I'll be playing later on at least! I've got a bunch of new stages I've made and I'm eager for you guys to try them! Not before I can finally get one!

All well said! It's a concession that keeps everyone happy really. Even for us who played these games on the original consoles back in the day, you probably found yourself asking friends/family to help you through the tougher parts of these games growing up anyway. Save States/Restore Points are basically the closest equivalent you can get to that with these classic titles; so it's no surprise that a lot of people really appreciate them being there. In this modern era, people just don't find the time that they had before; even many kids find themselves bombarded with heavy demands on their time and patience these days, be it through social demand or just the sheer wealth of entertainment/educational/social networking content out there - or if they do dedicate time to playing games, they often don't have older siblings who cut their teeth on those tougher titles back in the day to fall back on. As long as you are rewarded for playing games in their intended way (the satisfaction of recieving no "Mark of Shame" for beating it without resorting to fall backs like Restore Points or Super Guide), these systems are fine by me!

Not really... The "DLC Scam" that Sakurai is referring to is in reference to games that are deliberately broken up and sold incomplete under the guise of the content being "added" later on (or on day 1 even). Those are scams because the publishers/developers are being deliberately dishonest about what they're selling you. With the sole exceptions of Mario Golf World Tour (where the game was sold at a lower price, despite containing more content than previous MG games out of the box) and the upcoming Fire Emblem If (where each version of the game is being sold at a lower price than normal, with the other scenarios being sold separately), all of Nintendo's DLC has been developed after the launch of the base game. They made complete games and added content afterwards (or, in the case of those two previously mentioned games, are being broken up so that they can lower the initial entry price and still make some money on those that are willing to pay the full price for the game). There's no "scam" here because they're not lying to you. Same as with games that use the Amiibo; you are getting a complete game out of the box where some of the content is only accessible (or indeed playable for those games that rely on their built in memory card function) if you own the corresponding Amiibo figurines. It's no different to games that required accessories that were sold separately to have all of their content accessible (like Metroid Prime GCN; which required you to have a GBA/GBA-GCN Link Cable/a copy of Metroid Fusion, in order to unlock some minor extra content).

ARGH!!! From 1st to 4th in the blink of an eye on that last GP!! I was soooo close!!! Either way, considering that I went in blind, I think I did pretty good! (And I totally didn't get lucky with 3 red shells in 2nd place on that one track )

Right! Well, I'm jumping into this with ZERO practice! Nice knowing you guys! : peace:

OH MY GOD CHEESE LAND!!! YES!!!!!!! I was really worried that they'd ruin it by getting rid of the really broken shortcuts in the original GBA course... but while they've obviously removed that one really major one, they've added tons and tons of shortcuts and ways to break the course! It's different, but it totally captures the spirit of the original!! It's so ridiculously open and abusable! Even the CPU players try to break it!! It's definitely my favourite course from this DLC pack! In short, it's...