Dcubed

Really quite looking forward to this one! The original Wii Party was great and featured some of the most creative uses of the Wiimote seen on the platform! (And who didn't love Spot the Sneek? What a brilliant idea that was!) Can't wait to see what they're cooking up with the Wiimote & Gamepad combo (the twister style game looks fun )

Well at least you'll be able to play Toki Tori 2 in bed

Cheers! BTW, you disable the Restore Points feature on 3DS by pressing Start/Select, R and X simultaneously (making it exactly like the Wii VC - where you get Suspend Saves when you quit and that's it) Pressing it again reactivates the Restore Points feature I don't like to cheat :p

Unless Wii games get added to the VC in emulated form, what you're asking is impossible...

Yup. It's particularly bad with NES and Mega Drive games since their sound chips were directly tied to the screen refresh rate (meaning that the EU versions of games had slowed down music ON TOP OF the slower gameplay and massive borders ) I dumped PAL completely back in 2006 and replaced my entire retro game collection with NTSC versions. There is no way in hell that I'm going back!

Oh hey. Couple of Qs about the Wii U VC... Is there an option to disable the Restore Points feature like on 3DS? Can you use multiple controllers while the game is played off TV? (for playing multiplayer using multiple controllers on the Gamepad screen alone) Is the game displayed on both screens simultaneously?

It's nothing to do with accounts (the Wii U already detects whether or not you've already purchased it before), but rather it's an issue with the way that VC games are emulated on a per-game basis. Each VC game has its own emulator written for it, unlike Sony's system where they just have a generic PS1 emulator that they dump games into. The upside to Nintendo's method is that the emulation quality is 100% perfect and absolutely second to none (while Sony's games are littered with problems - Silent Hill's audio glitches, FF8's crashes on PSP and FF9`s slowdown on PS3 instantly spring to mind...) The downside is that there's a lot more R&D and QA work that must go into each VC release and that each emulator has to be re-made for Wii U one by one. The fee is a cover charge for the not insignificant cost of remaking each emulator. If you just want to play the VC games you already own on Wii U in Wii Mode, you can do that at no extra cost. There's no realistic way they can make it free, unless you're suggesting that they settle for lesser quality emulation (which defeats the main selling point of the service...)

Well either way, one of us will find out soon (not had a chance to play it for the last few days, but hopefully I'll be able to make up for lost time on Friday!)

I'm a bit disappointed that this is a sequel to Xenoblade (at least in terms of gameplay style). Was hoping that it would be something a bit different. That being said OHEMGEE!!! GIMME!!!

The 3D parts look very different from Kirby's Epic Yarn at least. I wonder if they're gonna have some sort of shifting dimensions mechanic that switches the art style, or if the "Epic Yarn" parts of the video are just from a really early build and that the 3D part is a "target render" that represents what the final game will actually look like? I hope it's the latter. Would be disappointing to have it look exactly like Kirby's Epic Yarn...

There was no way that the Wii U VC games would be made free to those who purchased the Wii VC versions of them because of the way the VC works. Unlike other services like the PSN PS1 classics, which use system wide emulation that emulates the whole system (and the publisher just dumps the ISO into the emulator), the VC has emulators written for each individual game. While Sony just have the one emulator that they write for each new console (that replaces the old one and runs the same standard ISO), the emulation quality is imperfect. Nintendo's approach however guarantees perfect emulation but requires much more work to be done on each game, as they have to re-write each game's emulator from scratch for each new console they release. There is a lot of dev and QA work that goes into each VC release that must be paid for. The fee that they charge covers the (not unsubstantial) R&D cost of developing the Wii U emulator for each game. BTW, I called this happening at least a year ago. You can all go ahead and call me a soothsayer now Well it's not like ND hasn't delivered megatons before (Hi SM3DL, Monster Hunter 3U and 4, NSMB2 and Fire Emblem Awakening!) but yeah, this one was something special (if VERY slapdash!)

At least bloody make it so that if you're playing the Wii U in HD resolution, it sets the VC emulator to run in 60HZ! It's a trivial thing to do (and hell they actually do it for NES games on the 3DS!) Maybe I'll wait a little longer though, at least until E3. If they offer 60HZ SNES games on the 3DS, maybe I'll just get the ones I want to play portably on there instead. I'd rather not have to deal with messing around with multiple region consoles again, it's such a PITA! TBH, I'm actually happy with my current setup. The most important thing is that I can play them on my TV, with pixel perfect image quality at their proper intended speed and screen size and that's all I ever really wanted all those years ago Off TV Play is just a bonus really (that could easily be covered and then some, with true portability, via a 3DS release. Having GBA games on the Wii U but not 3DS is just plain weird though! Hopefully they extend those games to the handheld VC soon enough. At the very least, I'm happy to see those GBA classics finally get re-released anywho )

Absofuckinglutely it is!!! It's a complete deal killer as far as I'm concerned. Basically, UK versions of games move 12.5% slower than they should do and come complete with massive boarders around the screen. The whole reason why I started importing in the first place was to get away from all that crap! At least it means that my US Wii now serves a purpose again I guess I'm not even joking. I'm buying a US Wii U next month for the sole purpose of playing my US games on the Gamepad (though I'm not gonna import anything physical. Sick of playing that importing game) Screw you NOE!

After that Nintendo Direct I feel like a right jerk now I got pretty much everything I predicted and asked for (even though Yoshi Wii U looked much closer to Kirby's Epic Yarn than I had expected) and then some! (I didn't call GBA games on the Wii U and certainly not SMTXFE!) But the whole thing left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. I get a bad feeling about the whole thing; it's really obvious that Iwata's hand is being forced here as they clearly weren't ready to show the stuff they announced there. The details about Zelda Wii U also worry me. I get a bad feeling that Aonuma is being forced to pander to his fanbase, rather than being able to make the game he wants... That came across to me like a check list of things that they know the fanbase wants and that they're just trying to make them happy (and Wind Waker HD also seems like it's being made for them, rather than for Aonuma himself - though if Greezo is making it rather than EAD, then that's ok I guess...) The only thing I want to really see from Nintendo is for them to make the games that they actually WANT to make themselves - not pandering to mouthbreathers on the Internet I really hope that my suspicions are wrong here (though considering that I correctly predicted almost everything that would be shown here, that's not a good sign!)

WAIT!? Wii U VC GAMES ARE STILL 50HZ!? FUCK THIS BULLSHIT!!! (Places order for US Wii U and hugs his US Wii with its massive VC library )

So I finally caught up with the ND... Wow! That being said, this one left me with a twinge of sadness. It does feel like Iwata's hand is being forced here (they were blatantly not ready to show off a lot of the stuff they showed) and I'm a bit worried about the Wii U Zelda game (I get a bad feeling that Aonuma is being asked to pander to his audience here, instead of being allowed to make the game he wants to make ) Also I do hope that Wind Waker HD is being done by Greezo and not EAD. Would be such a tragedy to see them being stuck working on remakes... Not sure how I feel about this one... The stuff they announced was all great, but there's an uncomfortable feeling about the whole thing that rubs me the wrong way...

There's only one announcement I really need to hear about the VC... 60hz support for all Wii U VC games in Europe!

It should have gyro controls for aiming though... They were pretty damn awesome in the 3DS version!

OH MY GOD, THEY DID IT AGAIN! An interview with the composer of Nintendo Land... (Ryo Nagamatsu) http://www.destructoid.com/an-aural-tour-with-the-composer-of-nintendo-land-part-1-242631.phtml On DK's Crash Course... You brilliant bastard! Can't believe that I never noticed that!

TVii is already out in the US and Japan, so it wont be that...

There are quite a few unlockables... Nice little game BTW. Made by just one man too! Scratches that Mega Man itch quite nicely

Isn't that basically Mario Kart 7?

Honestly, I'd love to see that happen. Wii Music is one of my favourite Wii games and has a lot of potential in a sequel! Why does this ND have to happen while I'm working!? I'll have to wait for the whole day to end before I can watch it and find out what's going on!

That doesn't mean that they'll only "be talking about what kind of Wii U titles and services Nintendo is developing". They could talk about 3rd party titles in addition to stuff from Nintendo... That comment about this including "services Nintendo is developing" makes me think of the Virtual Console. Could we finally see details (and a possible release!?) of the Wii U VC service? (PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!! MY GAMEPAD IS CRYING FOR DKC, SUPER METROID AND WIND WAKER TO BE PLAYED ON IT!!!)

That (size and shape adjustable) d-pad on the right hand side of the touchscreen is the reason why You don't need to claw on the 3DS, even without the CPP.