Dcubed

As great as MMZ2 is, I was hoping that they'd churn out more downloadable Wii games quick like... I want to upgrade my collection already!!

Just Mega Man Zero 2 this week. Have to admit, was hoping that they'd power through the rest of the GBA Castlevanias straight away...

It was still a far cry from what was in the arcades at the time, but yeah. It was a real quantum leap for performance over its contemporaries! You also started seeing a lot more arcade ports in general, even in its early years with games like Strider and Ghouls N' Ghosts. Also helps that the FM sound chip that the MD used was very similar to the ones that a lot of arcade systems like the CPS used.

Heh, to be fair, it's Mario. He's so average that he doesn't deserve to be used (so everyone else gets used instead :p )

I'd like to see them do that for the downloadable Wii games anyway. Would be nice to have a place to talk about them, even without screenshots (besides, it's not like there aren't already certain games that block screenshots anyway :p )

This isn't really a new direction, this has been their goal ever since they restructured themselves back in 2012 (that's what caused Bayonetta 2's original cancellation). They're now taking the next step towards that. They're largely getting out of the packaged games business and are looking to focus on digital and especially PC/mobile. This shift has generally been working out quite well for them and their efforts on PC have not only been of good quality, but have also been commercially successful thus far. I have no complaints if it means that we get more high quality re-releases like Valkyria Chronicles PC! (The Miku games next please SEGA! )

Some more details about Luigi's Mansion Arcade here http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=983117 I still think it'll eventually get an eShop release (the controls look perfect for the Wii U Gamepad and I bet that this and Pokken are running on Wii U based arcade hardware already anyway )

That's what this is for (and yes it is indeed possible to get it working with GCN games on Wii U, hackers have managed to get USB controllers working with GCN games on Wii U via homebrew methods) It's only a matter of time

Ahh, it's so great playing through MP1 again! It has aged so well! (still looks great too!) But those faster loading times!! YES!! Even if you own the disc version, I urge you to get the eShop version! The faster loading times make a world of difference! No more waiting for doors to open! (and you will not believe how fast the elevators move now! )

It's gonna be fantastic when this game gets re-released as a Wii download! Not only will it benefit from the faster loading times, but it'll also be fully playable Off TV on the Gamepad because it originally supported the Classic Controller! Hurry up and re-release it already Nintendo/Capcom! The best version of this game must be made even better!

Not to mention all that 1080p resolution FMV and all that recorded audio and voice acting. That's what takes up the most space after all. I still find it really impressive just how small Nintendo's games are in general. Even when they have space to burn, they'll always go out of their way to use as little of it as possible! As for the extra 1GB in size the MPT takes up, don't forget about the new front-end menu that was added as well. That probably takes up a large amount of space too (the original ones are still there as well, just inaccessible for the most part - MP1 and MP2 were released seperately in Japan under the New Play Control label and these are the versions that are used within MPT - in fact you can actually catch a glimpse of MP2's original menu if you choose to play the multiplayer mode ) Edit: Hey, just had a thought. If they get round to re-releasing GCN games on the eShop, I wonder if they'll do some sort of deal for the games that were released on both GCN and Wii, like if you buy the Wii version of Twilight Princess, you get the GCN version for free? Now I can perfectly understand why they wouldn't do that with the VC games, because there's a cost involved in getting the emulation working properly for each version of a game, but with these Wii/GCN re-releases, there's no cost involved at all because they're not actually being emulated, but rather are running natively... Sounds like a solid way of increasing the value of these games at no extra expense to Nintendo (not to mention that realistically, almost nobody outside of the most hardcore of the hardcore would ever buy both GCN AND Wii versions of the same game - so why not put the other versions to use in a way that adds value to the package and the service as a whole?)

Yeah true. For a Wii game it is massive (in fact, it's the largest Wii game ever made - mind you though, it is a bit of a cheat since it's actually 3 games in one of course - the actual largest single Wii game ever made is Metroid Other M - which was around 7.3GB), but these days it's actually pretty small compared to the stuff we have to download from other consoles

Was expecting a worse average TBH, not completely unsalvagable Either way, I can't play this week because I'm working this Thursday as usual.

He goofed. You don't need to copy it in step 1, just download it and then copy it to your SD Card in step 4. The rest of the instructions are all accurate though

The former. USB 2.0 is over twice as fast as the Wii's DVD drive read speed (9MBps vs roughly 22-25MBps) so the load times improve accordingly. It's actually pretty impressive that they got that working seamlessly because these Wii games aren't actually designed for the improved speed! I know that it can cause lots of problems with homebrew solutions (not to mention dealing with when hard drives go into sleep mode and the game doesn't know how to cope - of course, Nintendo's own solution accounts for that nicely ) People aren't really giving Nintendo the credit they deserve for getting these games to work properly. It's not easy getting these Wii games to read from a device that they were never designed to read from (and they haven't actually gone in and edited the games themselves to make it work - everything is done externally from the game itself, which is not only hard to pull off but also has the added benefit of making it incredibly easy to re-release Wii games from this point onwards - all they have to do is do some basic QA testing to make sure that it works and then put it out on the store, no per-game work required ). And how on earth they managed to get the Gamepad to map to the Classic Controller I have no idea; again, very impressive considering that the Wii games have no idea that they're being played on a Wii U and have no way to directly access the Wii U hardware functions). There's a good reason why it has taken them a while to get this working Hopefully they'll be able to do the same with GameCube games, but that's more of a technical challenge (all sorts of extra things to consider, how do you handle getting GCN games to recognise USB devices - considering that the GCN mode cannot recognise any of the Wii's functionality like the SD Card slot or the USB ports, how do you implement a way to return to the Wii U Menu, considering that the GCN mode has no way of returning to the Wii Menu without just shutting the system down and powering it on again, how do you handle virtualising the memory cards - do you have a memory card per game? Or do you share them amongst games, how do you support games that recognised saves from other games like MGS Twin Snakes? How do you deal with disc swapping? How do you deal with games that use the GCN microphone?) It's a big challenge, considering that you cannot edit the games themselves here. If they were emulating these games like with the VC, then dealing with this stuff would be much easier, but if they plan on handling GCN games like they do with the downloadable Wii games on Wii U, then dealing with this stuff will be much harder (but on the plus side, if they can get that working, then it's pretty much guaranteed to work with every single GCN game - with no per-game work required; thus enabling them to re-release any GCN game they want, with no real programming work required, enmass whenever they feel like it!) Personally though, I reckon that the Wii U Gamepad will play a larger role with GCN games though. Now since the games will almost certainly require a GCN controller (plus the GCN controller adapter), I reckon that they'll probably have the system controls like memory card management and disc swapping handled by the Gamepad itself (because there are obviously no spare buttons on a GCN controller and GCN mode cannot access the Wii Remote/Wii Classic controller anyway); plus there's no way to overlay any sort of menu on top of a game in GCN mode because you are running the game within all of the same limitations as an actual GCN console (nor is there anyway to pause a game in progress within GCN mode). Now remember that these games are running in Wii/GCN mode and in these modes, the console has no way of rendering anything directly to the Gamepad (the "Wii games cannot be controlled via the Wii U Gamepad" message that appears when playing Wii games normally is actually rendered by the Gamepad itself, just like the Wii U Quick Start Menu and the TV Remote function), so I reckon that they'll take the same approach here and have all of the GCN system menu stuff be rendered by the Wii U Gamepad itself - this also bypasses the limitation of not being able to render anything on top of what is already being rendered by a GCN game on the Wii U console itself, because you are bound by all the same limitations of a GCN while in GCN mode. So you'll be able to use the Gamepad's GCN menu to insert/remove GCN memory cards, swap discs, reset the game and return to the Wii U menu, with the Wii U console internally turning itself off back on when you choose the option to return to the Wii U Menu (it's a bit of a clunky way of handling getting back to the menu, but it should work - I think that's how they manage to get back to the Wii U Menu from when you quit a downloaded Wii game, or start the Wii U Menu channel while in Wii Mode anyway - Notice how the Wii U console always seems to reboot from scratch when you quit a downloaded Wii game? - so they'd be doing basically the same thing as what they do with Wii games anyway). Memory card management will probably be done from the Wii U Menu itself before you start up a GCN game; so that solves the problem of having people messing around with file management while a GCN game is running - preventing any sort of glitches that might happen if someone is stupid enough to delete their save file while playing a game. So yeah! What seems simple from the outside is actually really difficult and complicated to pull off! It's fun to think about how they'd actually go about getting it to work though! (and that Gamepad is the key to getting it to all work properly - without it, there's no way that they would be able to find any acceptable way to get digital GCN games to work )

Yes you're right about the Basic units, they were launch models that have been repackaged, but the Premium models are not. They have continued to manufacture the Premium model consoles ever since. They did a recall on the Basic consoles (which is why they reported negative shipments in that one quarter last year in Europe) and repackaged them in the new bundles. The Premium units are the only one that they've been manufacturing for a while now. The reason why you aren't seeing many special edition Wii U consoles is because Nintendo is fighting for shelf space at retail right now and wouldn't really be able to convince retailers to make space for multiple colour Wii Us (that's also why the US generally doesn't get as many 3DS/3DSxl variants as we do and why they're not getting the normal sized New3DS, they wouldn't be able to get the coverplates on store shelves). Back in the GCN era, Nintendo got around the problem of low console demand by forcing retailers to stock GCN products if they wanted to be able to sell GBA stuff. They can't get away with that in the current climate though... That's also another reason why Amiibo is so important for Nintendo right now. As long as it continues to sell, it ensures that retailers will have to maintain a healthy amount of Nintendo shelf space if they want to continue selling them

The Wii U never ended production. They have been manufacturing new units all this time, that was an old rumour that Iwata himself debunked a few quarters back.

Buying the game from the eShop along with a decently sized USB HDD would still be significantly cheaper than buying the disc version from eBay

Interesting to see how they handle the install process. I reckon that they'll force you to use the internal storage for the game install and if you choose to download the eShop version, they'll force you to have the game itself stored via USB (so you won't be able to download the game to internal storage at all). The idea behind this install would be to load from Disc/USB and internal storage at the same time (in order to increase the overall loading bandwidth) so having the downloaded game and the installed data on the same drive would obviously mess that up (like it does for games like GTA 5 PS360 and Titanfall on 360 - lucky that the Wii has some decent internal storage of its own that is seperate from the HDD, unlike the 360 and PS3, so it can bypass this issue!)

Yup! Very nice surprise (though why so early? The game isn't out for almost 4 months!) Either way, I'm not playing it. I know that I'm gonna get the game anyway, so why bother playing the demo? I'd rather just have it all feel completely fresh going in

If it weren't for that utterly disastrous 2nd GP, that would've actually been an ok start to the year... Just a shame about that 2nd GP... Good games though! : peace: I'm Excited! Hooray!!

Roughly 7.5GB. Yes, load times will improve massively. All downloaded Wii games get their load times cut by more than half (it's not really noticeable in SMG 2, but it makes a huge difference in DKCR!)

The number 1 Xbox 360 seller for roughly 2 years on the trot... Many download games have also cracked the million seller mark on console as well, like Castle Crashers for instance. Then there are exclusive free to play games that have downloads in the millions...

Good man! Better to overkill than underkill when it comes to storage, I mean, if you don't end up using it all with Wii U then you'll end up using it in the future with the next console anyway (plus powered drives are generally more reliable than USB powered ones as well)

Awesome! That came out of nowhere! (probably were planning on having them all playable in 8 player Smash originally before they decided to cut features to get it out the door in time for last November) I wonder if they've also added more playable stages for 5-6 player Smash? (the stage list for 5-6 player Smash was larger than 7-8 before) Edit: Replays still work, so no balance changes have been made.