Dcubed

On a macro level (in terms of the order of enter dungeon-find map/compass/item/boss key-kill boss), yes SS does use the same basic concept; but the way that you go about doing that is totally different. Skyward Sword's dungeons are more like areas in Metroid; where you find yourself backtracking through different areas once you set up shortcuts or have obtained different items (a good few of the dungeons in SS actually have you revisit them several times throughout different points of the game too!) Even Twilight Princess (which was designed specifically to be an evolution of the OOT formula) deviates from the typical Zelda dungeon design greatly (Snowpeak Temple is probably the best example as it is absolutely nothing like an archetypal Zelda dungeon) With Skyward Sword in particular they actually de-emphasise the dungeons in general too. The main idea behind that game was to merge the overworld and dungeons together in order to blur the lines between the two. Zelda isn't just a series about dungeon crawling...

That has been Nintendo's focus with Zelda for the last 4 games (Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks, Skyward Sword and A Link Between Worlds). Each Zelda game since Twilight Princess has focused strongly on trying to break away from series norms. Phantom Hourglass did this by introducing a completely new control scheme, ditching the typical Zelda style dungeon structure (Temple of the Ocean King) , simplifying certain aspects of the series mainstays (like pieces of hearts being ditched in favour of just having full heart containers like in Zelda 1 and 2) and a new focus on multiplayer, customisation (ship building) and communication (trading ship parts). Spirit Tracks built on top of Phantom Hourglass with refinements of the new concepts brought in from that game (Spirit Tower, a simpler real-time multiplayer mode etc) and also ditched the typical Zelda overworld structure - while implimenting the ideas and concepts that they wanted to in PH but didn't have time. Skyward Sword went a step further and blurred the lines between overworld and dungeon, moved even further away from the typical Zelda overworld (going to a level select style structure) and overhauled Zelda dungeon design again (introducing more Metroid like backtracking) as well as overworld design (moving towards an open field design where landmarks and corridor like designs were removed and user-made landmarking was used in its place to enable new types of open field designs without the player getting lost and to enable gameplay where the environments get re-used and re-invented in such ways that they play off the player's knowledge of the environment that they had built up). And of course A Link Between Worlds ditched the usual Zelda item acquisition system in favour of the rental system and focused on allowing the player to complete the dungeons in any order they liked - as well as new communication features like Streetpass, new gameplay mechanics like the wall merging, dark light etc... The Zelda series has been constantly re-inventing itself for an age now. For how much some people love to rag on about how it supposedly always follows the "Ocarina of Time Formula", there are actually only 3 games in the whole series that actually follow this structure (A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess - even Wind Waker deviates significantly, despite also featuring the Master Sword and the plot souvenirs that lead up to it). Hell we actually have more games that follow the Zelda 1 structure (Zelda 1, Link's Awakening, Oracle of Seasons, Oracle of Ages), than the one from A Link to the Past!

In regards to the whole "nostalgia" debate, do remember that for Nintendo, their IPs are nothing more than vessels for carrying their new ideas and gameplay concepts. Excluding remakes (for obvious reasons), the way that Nintendo make their games involves them rapidly prototyping new gameplay mechanics and concepts and then wrapping one of their existing IPs around it (if none of their current IPs fit, it is then that they make a new one). A Link Between Worlds is a good example of this. The main reason why that game exists is because they came up with this wall merging mechanic and wanted to build a game around this; they tried a 3rd person view but found that it didn't work very well - it felt too rote and boring - so they prototyped a top-down view and it ended up working much better. However, Nintendo didn't have many resources to go around at the time so the game had to be pushed back; being restarted again when Aonuma decided to re-use the setting of A Link to The Past (both because he and Miyamoto wanted to experiment with an S3D re-imagining of ALTTP and because it would allow them to make the game very quickly). Thus "A Link to the Past 2" was born. Not as a nostalgic cash grab, but because it just so happened to be the best way to present this new gameplay concept. It's not that they use nostalgia purely for nostalgia's sake, but rather it's just a fact that they treat their past with respect and understand how to make use of it going forth. All of their new games are designed around new players in mind - even Zelda and Fire Emblem. What do you think things like Super Guide and Casual Mode (in Fire Emblem Awakening) are for!? Nintendo always go out of their way to make all of their games as accessible as possible and always go out of their way to attract new fans with every game. If they were just aiming at their existing fanbase, then they wouldn't bother introducing new ideas and concepts, they would just keep rehashing the same tired concepts over and over again. They know that they have to keep broadening their reach because their fanbase is dwindling and will continue to do so unless they can succeed in capturing new audiences - that's why they did the Touch Generations series in the first place!

Can't wait to see how they manage to shoehorn a US locale into this one when they localise it Oh yes. Of course cowboys always used samurai swords, doesn't everyone know that? :p

Well they have had game specific Directs and "Major" ones in the same month before... But yeah... If they were gonna have one this month, then they would've ensured that all of yesterday's announcements across Wii U and 3DS were saved till next week... They have only ever missed their bi-monthly schedule once before (IIRC, it was back in January 2013 and Iwata apologised that the Direct was a month late - I remember I was surprised because I thought that the December 2012 one counted as a proper Direct: That's also where we found out about the bi-monthly schedule originally too if I remember right!) As for the next one, I don't think that they're gonna wait till E3 because it would leave absolutely nothing dated after the release of MK8 (a potentially bad looking drought that would put off potential buyers looking to get a Wii U for MK8). So I reckon that they'll do one in mid-late May and call it a "Pre-E3" Nintendo Direct and talk about nothing but the June-September titles.

Hmm... I get a feeling that we're not gonna get a "major" Nintendo Direct this month after all... (They do a general "major" one every 2 months) Unless they're gonna pull a surprise one next week, I reckon that they might just wait it out until about a week or so before Mario Kart 8 launches (and will probably unveil a couple of release dates for upcoming games at the same time; or else we won't have a single upcoming game for Wii U that has a release date after Kart...)

Huh. I stand corrected obviously. Didn't think to check the Japanese date... Also these new courses for MGWT are all remakes of the courses from the N64 game apparently (albiet with different names and visual styling), so it's not that these would've been in the main game anyway since they've never done "retro" courses in a Mario Golf game before... I guess it really isn't any different, apart from the sheer amount of content on offer here...

That was different then. Because they were late localisations, the DLC had already been made by then and they weren't going to re-program the games to incorporate the DLC into them (which would delay the games' releases and take away a revenue stream while also costing more for them to make - it would simply have made no sense to do so). This time however, they could've easily have incorporated the DLC into the base game. Instead they choose to hold it back to sell it separately...

It's not that the idea of a season pass is bad per-say (even though this isn't actually a "Season Pass" in terms of the usual VG industry sense since they're completely upfront about what you're getting for the money, unlike actual Season Passes where you're paying for the promise of unknown future content - it's actually a golfing term for a clubhouse membership that has been used rather regrettably for the US version; hence why the EU version rightly calls it the "Three Pack Set" instead) but rather it's the day 1 DLC that bothers me... It goes against what Iwata was saying that he wanted to do with DLC... Typically Nintendo designs their DLC after their games have shipped in accordance with fan feedback. Here though, it's clear that this DLC content had been ripped out of the game to be sold seperately because we're seeing 2 whole 18 hole courses being offered on day 1... Now granted, they're offering far more content in World Tour than in any previous Mario Golf game (to the point where I would actually think that Nintendo would be stupid for throwing in that much content into just one game...), even without the DLC, but rather it's the principle and the fear that it may be a slippery slope. I think that the content on offer does look quality (and quite frankly, in of itself is an insane bargain. It's basically an entire sequel's worth of content for less than half the price of the main game, even ignoring the early purchase discount!) and I'm glad to see that they're accommodating people who choose not to buy the DLC when it comes to online tournaments, but I feel uncomfortable with the idea of Nintendo dabbling in the art of ripping content out of their games to be sold as DLC. I don't want to see them compromise their games...

Yeah I just noticed that (read the PR in a hurry earlier on - not much time free), but that's still substantially more holes than in any previous Mario Golf game... ... which begs the question... Why start doing day-1 DLC for this game in particular? This game is certainly NOT content starved, not in the slightest! Is it down to the delay? Or are they just using this as a way of getting people used to the idea of having content ripped out of their games and sold seperately? ("Look! Even with day-1 DLC, you're still getting a "complete" game! Look! It still has more content than any previous MG game even without any DLC - your future games won't suffer for it!")

10 course!? Holy shit! That's not "comparable" to past games, that's WAAAYYY more! (the console MG games have always had 6 full 18 hole courses and the handheld ones had 5 - this is DOUBLE the past handheld MG games even without the DLC!) That's nuts! I wonder if this is why the game got delayed last year, so they could prepare this DLC in time for around the game's launch? (Especially after all the complaints about MTOpen "lacking" in content). This seems like total overkill - MGWT will end up with almost as many full size courses as the rest of the entire series combined! I'm very uncomfortable with the idea of Nintendo doing Day-1 DLC, but I think that the delay has something to do with it here. That is an extraordinary amount of content for a Mario Golf game, even without the DLC! Something weird happened here for sure and I bet that it comes down to that last minute delay last year... Perhaps with how long the game has been in development for and how much they would've spent making this much content, they felt that they couldn't justify selling it merely at the normal price and are doing this to skim some more off the top...

As I mentioned in the Wii U VC thread, considering that Nintendo DO do this for N64 games, I reckon that it'll probably happen

Good decision to go with £19.99. It's a small difference physically but it does make a big difference psychologically. Hope it does enough to stir up some interest... Cause seriously, this game deserves it! It's kinda surreal to see DSiWare continue to live on for this long. There's still quite a few games seeing release even now! Gotta wonder why they don't just make them native 3DS games instead...

A looping Smash Bros stage!? What is this heresy!? I take it that you can only KO someone upwards or through the water then? That's pretty damn cool!

YES YES YES!!! Now HERE is a game series that could make fantastic use of the Gamepad (Gamepad screen = Camera Obscura) Lets just hope that we don't get another Project Zero 4 style fiasco, where game breaking bugs prevent it from seeing a western release... (Assuming that Tecmo develop this one in-house this time, hopefully that shouldn't happen here...) Yeah, Nintendo and Tecmo-Koei have been butt buddies for a good while now... They're probably Nintendo's closest Japanese 3rd party partner... (Spike Chunsoft are a close second)

The new Beam Sword looks AWESOME!!!

Nice to see everyone's enjoying it I've got the game but haven't started yet (still waiting for May to kick in and Mario Kart 8 to bring me back to Nintendo...) but I get the feeling that I'm gonna really enjoy this one I think that's there for tracking your club on the NPFC website...

Dunno where you read that, but that's not true. The only Monster Hunter game that has splitscreen multiplayer is Tri on Wii (and that's only for Arena quests - not the main multiplayer mode; which, like its PS2 prequels, was online only). And Tri is a very different game to the first two... It in no way makes them "redundant" and I actually take offence your dismissal of people who actually care about these older games... (Something that is systematic of the industry in general sadly - but that's for another topic...)

All three of the games I mentioned (MH1 & 2 and MGS3) were online only. They have no local play options at all (and indeed are sorely missed by me and many others... - infact somebody just recently built a private server for MGS3 to try and restore the online multiplayer functionality - it only works on chipped PS2s and on emulators, but it can be played... - not by most people though, since they wouldn't know how to get it working; which comes back to the point I was making before...)

Monster Hunter, Monster Hunter 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3's online mode instantly spring to mind for me... (And no, they have not been made "redundant" by any of their sequels either!) The idea of a game being made "redundant" by a sequel in general is also ludicrous. As if to suggest that a sequel instantly makes its progenitor worthless... (You could make a point for an enhanced version of a game making its original counterpart worthless - for things like Monster Hunter G going on from the original - but that's still a pretty flimsy argument, considering that it's very rare that such enhanced versions or remakes truly include everything from the games they stem from...) ...How offensive is that to all the people whose blood sweat and tears went into these games originally and to all the people with such happy memories to be told that their old shit is a pile of crap because the newer and shinier games exist now and that the old games shouldn't be cherished or aren't worth preserving! Burnout Paradise and Burnout Revenge don't make Burnout 2 or 3 redundant and nor does Fifa 12 make Fifa 06 or ISS64 redundant! People should be upset if these games are to be rendered unplayable or otherwise less playable for multiplayer (i.e they have no local multiplayer and were online only). Taking away the multiplayer of games they enjoyed and then "consoling" them with a new sequel that has online play (but again no local) is a kick to the balls that should not be tolerated!

For someone who seems to want to play Grammar Nazi here; it's pretty funny that you seem to pick up on a minor grammar error (where I say "can" - which I should've really deleted, but I didn't think it would be so much of an issue that anyone would care, considering that it had nothing to do with the point I was making anyway...) and yet you don't seem to realise that I am indeed correct in saying that the consoles don't allow patches to be installed by any means other than via download via the official servers; I never said that there weren't other means of doing so outside of what the console allows officially... (Not to mention that there are other ways besides TCP routing, such as install via USB through the use of custom firmware on PS3 or flashing a 360's DVD drive to allow for unsigned code to run; and using homebrew apps to inject DLC/updates etc onto the hard drive via USB - since you're so interested in this too, you'll surely also know that this is possible for installing DLC and updates for original Xbox games too - using the DLC that pirates have archived from Xbox Live when it was still up). Anyway; enough shitting up this thread. This is not the place to discuss methods of DLC installation or homebrew. This is a place to reminisce about aspects of gaming that have been lost (and indeed will be lost in the near future). You clearly have no interest in the point I was making to begin with, so please kindly drop it and let us carry on with what the topic was about to begin with...

The only one twisting things here is you. To quote an earlier post that I in fact made in response to YOU... Clearly reading a response to your own post is too much of a courtesy to ask of you... When did I say that patching was risky? Or otherwise morally ambiguous? (getting paid DLC without buying it off the store is a different matter; hence why I mentioned the word "illicit" since the same techniques would have to be used to get paid DLC onto these consoles without the presense of the official online servers). The whole point I was making was that it was something that should not have to be done in order to play the game as originally intended - especially not by someone who would not really know of otherwise feel comfortable in using these methods (which by their nature are indeed hacks - be it a hack of the game or console itself, or of a hack in the way that online TCP calls are routed - it is breaking the design of the way the system was intended to work). But chances are that your response to this post is pretty much "LOL TLDR" in disguise; so I think I'll probably just call it quits here since you clearly have no respect for me or anyone else's opinion other than your own... And Superplay while we're at it too! Always did love Wil Overton's art

Not via official means. That's what I'm discussing here. I'm perfectly aware that you can get DLC and patches onto these systems via hacky and illicit means, but that's well beyond the capabilities of your average joe. Little Timmy isn't going to download this kind of software and rig this kind of elaborate setup in order to get that update or DLC for a game 10-20 odd years from now and nor should they have to... Not every game gets one. It's hardly the industry standard; even if it is a popular means of re-releasing a game...

You can't patch them yourself. The consoles don't allow any way of patching games other than through their official servers (which is obviously the right way of doing it, lest they blow their security wide open). And those servers will go eventually. They'll no doubt last longer than the matchmaking servers, but they too will go the way of the dodo eventually because the PS4 and Xbone don't offer any sort of backwards compatibility and so cannot share servers... Of course some games will be affected more than others (not every game was Skyrim PS3 after all!), but every game that featured these day 1 updates will eventually be rendered in a less than intended state... It's not that patches are bad per-say (in fact, they offer solutions to problems like game breaking bugs that are only discovered after a game has been released - games like Metroid Other M could've done with having support for patches when their game ending bugs were discovered...), but rather it's that most modern games are built in such a way that they are shipped out before they are complete and are fixed up later; which causes problems for those without an internet connection (both now and in the inevitable future when these consoles' online servers are no longer active). Hell if they want to continue down this route, they could even press discs containing updated versions of these games later on down the line - that's what used to happen in the days before patching (and indeed Nintendo still does this with their games and consoles; while also offering online patches for people who already own these games)

No you can't. It's the successor to the Saturn, which was SEGA's 5th generation console. Dreamcast kicked off the 6th generation of consoles, but that doesn't mean that the older gen ended as soon as gen 6 started. After all, PS2 still had a good number of its best games only released after the Xbox 360 had already launched...