Teppo Holmqvist

Nobody said in original Eurogamer article that European VC would be original limited to PAL-releases. Only thing that was said was that you can only buy VC games for European console from European site. "Only PAL-releases" was just stupid conclusion that Revo-Europe's news team drawed. And why Nintendo can't allow games to be bought freely? Here is five main reasons: Ratings: Most virtual console games were released long before videogames were rated. Nintendo needs to get rating for each game in each region. Selling games without European ratings is illegal in most EU countries. Or if it isn't illegal, game gets automatically R-rating as it hasn't European rating. And Nintendo must follow local laws, as it's legally responsible as a distributor for thse games. And no, Nintendo can't just convert US ratings to European ratings, because they don't rate games. Censorship: Let's assume that little Hans from Germany buys old NES classic called Hitler no Fukatsu: Top Secret* from NOJ's webstore. In this game, single allied soldier tries to fight against occultistic neonazis that try to resurrect Adolf Hitler. Who would be legally responsible for selling game with suspicious material to minors? Nintendo. Who would get all blame in the media? Nintendo. Licensing: Some videogames have different publishers in different regions, and contracts that bind company A don't bind company B. In these cases, Nintendo needs to negotiate virtual console distribution seperately with each publisher. One simple example could be Capcom that often sells publishing rights to another company in Europe. Localization: Nintendo is going to localize and translate new games for European market. They have been hiring translators for this few months, and they definitely don't want US versions of same games to spread into European countries. Price: Well, you can always ask more money from European customers, if they can't use exchange rates to their benefit and buy same games from USA. * Known as Bionic Commando in west

Yup, in the beginning of second disc (22 hours on the clock). And boy, they weren't kidding when they said it would be tough boss battle. It's nearly criminial to put boss like this to the game. *bleep* *bleep* chicken. *bleep*. Those optional bosses that I mentioned are also *bleep* hard to kill. Otherwise it has been fun ride so far.

Ryu Hyuabusa* and Kasumi** are already on this game, so I'm believing secret character will be Nintendo 1st party. * from Ninja Gaiden ** from Dead or Alive

Except that it's illegal. Emulators are legal and go under reverse-engineering laws. But downloading roms for games that you don't own is completely illegal*, no matter what urban legends people are often spreading about it. * It's copyright infrigement, plain and simple

Epyx is bringing C64 games for European VC, and first games should appear in december. One good thing with emulating C64 games is that you don't need to worry about loading times anymore.

Playstation 3 + HD-gaming (if you have HD-TV) + Comes with harddrive, no need for memory cards (this is important thing for parents). + "Free" online experience (don't mention micropayments) + Media support (Blu-Ray, MP3, etc.) + Most powerful console around (at least theoretically, but customer doesn't need to know that) + Strong brand (it's Playstation, goddamnit!) + Some promising exclusives on the pipeline + "True" backward compatibility with PSOne and PSTwo games (psychological aspect is important here, as about 85 percent of users don't use backward compatibility at all). + Quiet - Cheaper SKU doesn't have wireless support - Expensive (but quality costs) - HD-gaming (if you don't have HD-TV) - Limited supply during christmas - Really big - Small number of launch games Xbox 360 + Balanced + Current bundle comes with game in Great-Britain (Project Gotham Racing 3) + Excellent controller + Excellent on-line support + Good price + HD-gaming (if you have HD-TV) + Media support (DVD, MP3, etc.) + Some promising killer-apps coming for christmas (Gears of War, Lost Planet, Viva Pinata) - Backward compatibility is limited to some titles - Core package is basically scam, not worth buying - HD-gaming (if you don't have HD-TV) - Most games aimed for "mature" audience (read 16-year old chavs that think that they are mature) - Not much japanese support - Relatively noisy Wii + Comes with internal memory, no need for memory cards (this is important thing for parents). + Family-friendly games + Free online experience + Innovative (wiimote, nuff said) + Inexpensive (remember that products are always inexpensive, not cheap) + Promising exclusives in launch (Zelda, Red Steel, Excite Truck) + Small, quiet + "True" backward compatibility (psychological aspect is important here, as about 85 percent of users don't use backward compatibility at all). - Graphically inferior to its competitors (but remember the innovation!) - Lack of HD-support (if you have HD-TV) - New concepts unproven - Online system isn't so robust as with competitors (probably) - Supports only wireless connections from the box

I posted this also to NTSC-UK under nick "elkatas". noticed that there isn't first play thread for this game, so I decided to create one. Baten Kaitos: Origins prequel for first Baten Kaitos, RPG game with card based combat system that you either loved or hated. Main gripe that most players had with first Baten Kaitos was the combat system. Baten Kaitos: Origins hasn't discarded predecessor's card based combat system, but the system has got major revamp. The most important change in the system is that every character in your group uses same deck. Basic attack cards are same for everyone, but special attacks are character specific. You can play another combat card on the top of last one so long as it has higher number that card that was played before it. Instead of attacking, each character can use single healing or status card. Different armor cards are also there, but they are always valued with 0 and can be played only on the start of the combo. By my experience, this really weakens their effectiveness. Another major change in combat mechanics is that you can discard more than one card from your hand in single round. How many cards you can keep in your hand and discard during your turn is based on party's current deck level, that steadily raises as you collect technical points from defeated enemies. Progession is quite fast, and after playing game for nine hours, I can discard three cards per each character's turn. This makes game less luck and more deck building based than its predecessor, as you can relatively quickly shuffle around deck and get cards you need. Graphically Baten Kaitos: Origins doesn't really differ from its predecessor with its beautifully handdrawn backgrounds. As game is marketed as a sequel for the first game, you will visit many places from first game, but each background has at least some minor changes if compared to first Baten Kaitos. Music is little worse than in first Baten Kaitos and remind more of Motoi Sakuraba's Tales works. On the positive side, voice acting is much better now. It isn't great by any means, but not bad either (in first game, you just wanted to switch voice acting off so soon as it was possible). As I said before, I have played game now for nine hours and thematically it follows your standard JRPG conventions. You only have three characters in the game, so interaction between characters is bit better than in most JRPGs. Before I understood to manage my decks, combat did take very long time to resolve, and I was also forced to grind levels to beat certain bosses. But after I started to pay more attention to deck building and use discard button more actively, combat has gone way more quicker than before. In overall, so far Baten Kaitos: Origins has been fun little JRPG with fresh combat system. But from what I have heard from other players, game will get better more farther you play and there will be some serious WTF plot twists, like the case was with first Baten Kaitos.

Question: What else you need?

First official picture of Wii version. From GamesPress.

Never judge game before you have played it. That's how it works. I don't by any means except it to be good game, but I'm not going to slag it off either before I have tested it personally.

Attacked? We just answered on your rant* and pointed flaws in your arguments. I wonder how do you live in real world if everyone who disagrees with you is "attacking". And it is really moronic to say that game X is better than game Y, just because it has better graphics. You can't really say how bad Wii games are before you have actually played 'em. But nah, that would be logical thing to do. * Which was also written in hostile way.

Sigh.... Factor 5? Sure they did extremely good looking games, but their games lacked actual substance beyond being glorified tech demos. This was true during Turrican era and it was also true during Cube era. Probably will also be true during PS3 era. Silicon Knights? Well, made two games during nine years. One was good (but not that good) horror game. Other was just port of Konami's classic. And from what we have heard, Too Human isn't shaping up that good. Plus, they haven't struck exclusivity deal with any publisher. Free Radical? Well they haven't announced TimeSplitters 4 to any console, and if I have understood correctly TS as a series is on the copyright hell after EA screwed over FR. But they are working on unnamed Wii project (job application at Gamasutra shows this). Tom Clancy games? Well, I personally didn't care them after realism was toned down to appeal greater masses. And Wii is getting Splinter Cell: Rogue Agent. Plus Nintendo is d00m3d bullshit is getting cliched.

Bah... if I can only draw stick mens with Photoshop, it is clearly Photoshop's fault, not mine.

How Nintendo is stupid if Square-Enix doesn't want to translate 'em and European Union requires ratings for each game?

Sigh.... I'm assuming that they will be in 60 hz mode, because NES, SNES and N64 games don't have any region specific changes in code. Just flag that tells console which region game is for, plain and simple. If flag doesn't match console's region, game won't boot. But it's really sad most people here don't understand what hurdles Nintendo actually faces when it tries to get VC stuff to European countries. The main problems that Nintendo is facing with VC are localization and rating boards. Most old SNES games don't have any kind of localization at all, and translation always take time / money. Even Legend of Zelda 3 has over 100 000 rows of encrypted text* that need to translated to French, German and Italian before release. And you need to do this correctly. Hastily done translation is fucking annoying to read, and wouldn't really serve anyone. Good translation, in the other hand, means lots of work, and can't be really rushed (too many translators result in stylistically incoherent translation). In addition of having problem with localizing stuff, Nintendo needs to review each game again with PEGI, ESRB and other rating boards. In addition that this is takes time, Nintendo needs to pay for each review. Nintendo can't sell games with US ratings to most European countries under current laws. And they can't start European rating process before game is finished (read: translated to each language and finalized). Suddenly small localization turns into long byrocratic process which takes lots of money and time. This is also main reason why Xbox Live Arcade doesn't get retrostuff so fast as it was originally planned. * I know this personally because I have been translating game from english to finnish.

At least they have been hiring lots of people for localizing VC games, so I wouldn't be too worried about VC situation. And Epyx's spoke person confirmed that at least C64's Impossible Mission should be available on VC during this december.

"Why Wii can't be free, why? Why Nintendo doesn't give us money for buying Wii? How they dare to make profit with their console?" I thought we were already over this, but noo.... *Teppo excepts another twenty pages of pointless rant*

Aah.... it's nice to see some love for this old school classic. Fine game indeed. God I miss those light space flight simulators from the 90's. I have played through all Wing Commanders and I'm still disapointed that EA canned Origin.

It makes perfectly sense. After all question was "Which console/handheld do you believe will sell the best at Christmas?" PS3 simply can't do this with very limited supply (100 000 units in launch).

Does it work? There is guys in the Gamespot forums that won't import the game, before they know surely that it works with Freeloader.

Here is some interesting stuff that user _Holystar_ posted in Gamespot's BK: Origins forum: 1) Game has several, slightly different endings. Your ending is determined by how many optional bosses you have killed. 2) Japanese version had perma stuck bug in Como Mai. This happened when you started doing any sidequests before finish your main objective in the city. Poster doesn't know if the bug has been fixed in US version, but he recommends saving to another slot before coming to city. 3) After changing discs, you will nearly immediately get into extremely hard battle without any way to raise levels, heal your characters or buy additional cards before the battle (similar to infamous Airship, but without any warnings this time). Once again, it is recommended that you save into another slot when game asks change disc. 3) There is annoying "point of no return" area in the final dungeon, so be careful.

Not officially, but there was some rumours around European conference that Nintendo could be bringing Mother 3 only in Virtual console format to the western countries. Same batch of rumours also said that Wii would get Commodore 64 and Amiga 500 games. Commodore 64 games have been confirmed by Epyx, which actually raises reliability of this rumour.

They will, as it wasn't clear pricing mistake. Yesterday when Play.com's euro convertor wasn't working correctly*, my friend did order few Cube games with incorrect prices. All of them were sent. But my Xbox 360 bundle didn't ship for some strange reason. :p * Some items had lower, some higher prices than they should have been. Some fun examples; 1.5 euros for Xbox 360, 15 euros for Path of Radiance, 1999.99 euros for Matrix Revolutions.

N-Sider's reporter did hear rumours about adding Commodore 64 & Amiga 500 games when he was on NOE's conference.

Well, it is definetily different kind of title. That's probably the main appeal.