Ranting about Nintendo in 2022

I’ve been thinking about Nintendo consoles a bit as I continue playing my Wii U over pretty much everything else.
Nintendo makes a lot of really bad decisions with their consoles.
Don’t get me wrong, they pretty much saved the video game industry with the NES, and the SNES was a fantastic follow-up with many games worthy of all time greats status. Where they really start making truly bad decisions was with the N64.

The N64 in hindsight is a really weird system. Even more than just the controller I mean. They used expensive to produce Cartridges limited to 64MB when everything else was going to cheap 700mb CDs. And the system was built with the intention of eventually needing expansion memory, but was only ever needed in 2.5 games. The expansion pack was just bundled with DK64 by default which just leaves me wondering why they would build a console with the intention of eventually needing it?
The N64’s revolutionary thing was supporting 4 players out of the box, while all of the other systems were still only 2. This is probably why party games were such a focus for the N64.
N64 has some of the all time great games from Nintendo, but every part of the system suffered from delays and the library of notable titles is almost 50% Rare.

With the GameCube, Nintendo was all “ok, lets make a really powerful system, technically more powerful than the PS2.” But then they kneecap it with the mini dvd which can only hold 1.4gb XD
Still one of the most impressive library of games from Nintendo. One of the best controllers from Nintendo. And I think the last time Nintendo was ever aggressive with the price point of their console.

The Wii was sorta Nintendo giving up on trying to go up against Sony/Microsoft and it worked for them. Overall the Wii was a solid system. The Virtual Console helped fill in the droughts between Nintendo titles by giving us older Nintendo titles to play. Third parties gave support in often times really weird ways, but still helped fill out the library. And there are some truly great games on the Wii.

Wii U was a marketing/branding disaster. While in my opinion the Wii U is the best Nintendo console since GC. It had the bonus of basically having the entire Wii library at launch and support for all of those Wii peripherals. More powerful than the 360, but of course not as powerful as the PS4/XBO that would release a year later. The Wii U had a fantastic library of games from Nintendo. And while I don’t think the tablet as a second screen ever really worked as well as the DS/3DS, I loved that it let me play most games from the tablet while my wife or kid was watching the TV. Mentioning my kid, it is also worth saying that the Wii U has a library of games that my 4 year old LOVES. Kirby’s Epic Yarn for Wii was played on Wii U, and then we played Yoshi’s Woolly World which I think is one of her all time favorite games right now.
The Wii U shouldn’t have failed, but Nintendo sure found a way.
With Nintendo ending all support for the Wii U in less than a year from when I’m writing this, I think it is worth mentioning that installing homebrew on the Wii U is super easy and basically lets you turn this system into the ultimate Nintendo Console, able to play almost every Nintendo game from the NES to the Wii U. That is the entire Zelda library of games at least until sometime next year!

So after a pretty short life, the WIi U is replaced by the Switch. The Switch isn’t significantly more powerful than the Wii U. And half of the Switch library is just ports of Wii U games. But it resolved the branding issue, the odd tablet design, and finally fulfilled the dream of playing on the toilet, any toilet!
I think one reason the Switch worked while the Wii U didn’t is because Nintendo dropped their handheld support. There is a good argument to be made that if you had a 3DS, you didn’t need a Wii U. There are a surprising number of Wii U games that had a 3DS version or similar enough that you didn’t feel the need for the far more expensive console. This also gave them more development resources to make games for the Switch. They had a fantastic library of games on the Wii U that were ready to port over to the Switch which also meant they didn’t have as many droughts. This didn’t stop Nintendo from making bad decisions though. The online with the Switch has been a huge mess, initially being free, but then going to a charged version. The entire voice chat mess and other features requiring you to use your phone to access. Save backups are basically unsupported for most games. Most annoying to me is that they started the VC support from scratch all over again, but this time its a subscription tied to the online. Made even worse with how N64 games are only part of the premium subscription.

This cycle of success and then failure is really common in the gaming industry. PS2 is one of the best selling consoles of all time, best library of games, and then they follow it up with the PS3 which is overly expensive, and hard to make games for. The 360 is the first to claim the HD generation, unseats Sony’s hold over gaming outside of Japan, and then completely whiffs with the Xbox One with its odd focus on TV, initial Kinect requirement, and pre-release marketing of requiring an always online internet connection.

I really like Nintendo. Their games and especially their handhelds have been part of my gaming library since I first got interested in games. But Nintendo really does seem to succeed despite itself a lot of the time.

The Haruhi Post of 2014

Sometimes you just have to accept that a show you love won’t come back. But you can still get excited when it pops back into the limelight with a flurry of recent news and events.

Dear Esther Thoughts and Spoilers

Dear Esther is a Half Life 2 source mod turned retail and plays very similar to the free mod Stanley Parable, you awaken in a world all alone and walk forward as a narrator tells you a story.

“A deserted island… a lost man… memories of a fatal crash… a book written by a dying explorer.”

The focus is on exploration, uncovering the mystery of the island, of who you are and why you are here. Fragments of story are triggered by moving along the linear paths until you hit a dead end. At the dead end you simply turn around and you’ll find a new path that branches off and you can continue walking forward. There are also a few moments of well composed music that stand out against the simple environmental sounds that fill most of the game’s soundtrack.
Now if this sounds good to you so far I am sorry, this “game” is the most boring 80 minutes I’ve ever spent with this hobby.

I’m going to keep the spoilers below the page break. Before that however I want to say that this game is the worst aspects of “art games”. It is boring, almost to a criminal degree. You can only move at a slow walk, unable to interact with anything at all, the only thing you can effect is finding a trigger for the narrator, but his story is such a jumbled mess that I started wishing he would stop talking his nonsense. The story is poorly told, convoluted, and completely full of itself. I am glad that I played this “game” because now I know it’s hogwash that doesn’t deserve any of the praise it received.

Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy

The 3DS hasn’t had the strongest line up, all three games I had bought for it in the last year were ports of older games. With my July turning into a lot of traveling, including my first trip to Otakon, I decided I needed a new 3DS game, and Kingdom Hearts 3Ds wouldn’t be out in time.  So I talked myself into the Final Fantasy Rhythm game. I was very hesitant going in since I completely suck at games like Rhythm Heaven DS and Elite Beats.

At the 7 hour mark I realized this may be the best FF game they’ve released in the last decade. And the funny thing is it has nothing to do with story, or visuals. This game is just amazing music, the best from 25 years of games with fantastic music.

The Rhythm game is fun and the perfect amount of challenge for me. It isn’t afraid to have you replay songs to get better at them and I want to replay the songs, not only because I love them, but each time is another chance to improve my aggregate score, collect all kinds of items, unlock more songs, modes and even characters, level up my party of final fantasy heroes who learn skills that can slightly change the experience and so much more. You can even replay songs with nothing equipped increasing difficulty, but increasing the chance to get more collectables and a boosted score. They have found a way to make me love grinding. Even after beating the game I’m no where near done. I’ve now clocked 20 hours and still going strong.

I will probably talk myself into buying a few of the dlc songs, FFVI songs are some of my all time favorite. But I really hope square realizes the prices are a bit much and eventually release a cheaper bundle.

Making a comeback

I have thoughts I no longer want to leave contained in my head to rot!
This by no means that I have the free time to post again, if anything I’m busier than I’ve ever been.
Yet here I am attempting to make a comeback to the blogging scene. (Even if my most popular post was a capture post of all the Nerv logos in the first remake movie)

This’ll be fun 🙂

The US Anime Industry

It’s probably in large part thanks to the recent PHX Comicon that I now find myself buying more anime and I want to say Funimation may just be the greatest and yet worse thing to happen to our industry in years.

A lot has changed in the US since I started paying for anime. The most significant has been our move away from the Japanese standard 3-4 eps per DVD release, and now (outside of Bandai) pretty much every release is either the full season or maybe split into two releases.  We’ve got new companies throwing their hats into the game with sub only releases. There are international BluRay releases. Legal streams of most current anime through crunchyroll and Hulu, lets not forget the ever growing instant library on Netflix. And the greatest/worst of them has been Funimation, releasing many of their shows for free streaming and combo BlueRay/DVD releases for full seasons for only $60, though I can usually find them for 30-40 on Amazon or RightStuf (its almost like they hate money).

For the last year, Funimation has received almost all of my anime budget, and their selection of shows still leaves me wishing I had more money to give them.  But I now won’t even consider paying for each DVD release for Bandai’s K-on.  I bought each special edition of Haruhi, but now I won’t even consider paying for anything less than 12 episodes at a time. I know I’m not the only one who has been spoiled by this.  It can’t possibly be good for the industry and with reports of Funimation’s parent company attempting to sell it I wonder how long things will last.

We’ve just had one of the largest manga publishers, Tokyopop, shutdown suddenly and it has only been a few years since Geneon shut their doors as well. Bandai has been extremely skidish over the changing market, and blew my mind when they actually released KuroKami on BluRay as dub only. Bandai then seemed to quickly disappear from the US market up to bringing over K-on and I worry that they could be following Geneon if K-on proves to be too great a loss for them… though, they do still have the Haruhi movie coming sometime soon (Wendee Lee said she had just finished her work in dubbing it and that it premiers at this year’s Anime Expo. I’m hoping the BluRay is not too far behind!)

I love being able to buy my favorite shows, and Funimation has made me feel as if I’m actually getting a sweet deal and not being ripped off compared to the live action boxsets. I just hope this bubble doesn’t pop on us.

(First post using WordPress on my Android, not sure how well it’ll turn out..)

Games from Around the World

 

I was listening to some podcasts recently and it was mentioned just how culturally wide Video Games are compared to any other medium.  After thinking more about it, it’s really quite amazing.  We have games coming from literally ALL over the world and we don’t even have to separate them into a different category, like “Foreign Movies”

Mario(Japan) sits there right next to Medal of Honor: Heroes 2(Canada), Assassin’s Creed(Canada owned by the French) sits right next to Alan Wake(Finland), and Heavy Rain (Paris, France) sits right next to Heavenly Sword (Cambridge, England). Let’s not forget Call of Duty created by a California team, the most recent release (BlackOps) had portions of the game developed by teams from all over the world.

My point is we have games developed by different people not just from all parts of the world, but actually still IN all parts of the world.  All those different cultures and experiences defining and shaping the gaming experiences they share with the rest of the world and BEST of all, we don’t segregate it.  Everything is listed in Alphabetical order, be it the turn based japanese RPG or an american rack up points for shooting someone in the face.

Another fascinating aspect of video games, I visited Washington DC in November of last year, and I was constantly seeing things that reminded me of my trips through Fallout3, I could pull up a map of Arlington and see where the landmarks lined up.   I’ve heard stories of people who have said the same after visiting New York, Paris and Tokyo.  That through games like Grand Theft Auto, The Saboteur and The World Ends With You, they then recognize land marks and know what directions they would go to find others.  Video Games have an amazing ability to teach, history, skills, culture, and so much more, and do it in a way that you may not even realize you are learning anything at all.  All you know is that you are having fun playing a game.

Gaming isn’t the same the world over, I know what does well in Japan doesn’t always do well here and vice versa(especially when Microsoft is involved).  The PS3 and PSP have a much stronger following in the UK than in the US, but they sometimes end up waiting an extra year for games from Nintendo. And really, that’s the only thing that I think we still need to improve, we need more localization teams to help spread gaming to every corner of the Earth. I can’t think of any other entertainment that is so widely distributed the world over and I love it.

So what happened…?

I’m still alive, and about once every other month I check this thing and am amazed that its reporting more traffic than it ever had while I was active.  There are two posts I would like to do soon, one is the Eva post for the 2nd movie, and the other is about AX2010.

The lack of activity though can be traced to:
1) having a full time job. 
And
2) having a Facebook account.  Usually my posts originated from wanting to tell /somebody/ what I thought was cool, and FB fills thaw void well enough with MAL forums completing the process.

Truthfully the reason behind this post is almost as much testing out the WordPress app for Android as it is anything else.

Anyways, I’m excited for this new season of Anime that is upon us, and I hope to post again soon…. or at least within the next month.

I HAZ A PS3!!!!~!

The world is coming to an end, for I have a PS3. First gen, 60GB, full backwards compatible to boot.

Having barely scratched the surface of available xbox360 games, or even simply completing half of the ones that I own. I somehow found myself on Craigslist buying myself a PS3 so that I could finally get back to playing my PS2 games.

I’ll invite anyone who has a PS3 to friend, since I’m pretty much the only person I know who both has a PS3 and has it hooked up to the internet, but the only online game I own currently is Fat Princess. I’ll also own Wipeout HD relatively soon, but probably not until November when I feel I can finally spend more money of video games.

Of course the FIRST (and only retail) PS3 game that I had to buy was Valkyria Chronicles. I’ve been planning on getting a PS3 just for this game since AGES ago, it just so happened to finally be the right time I guess.
Though, I never watched the anime, I saw snips of the first ep that they were turning it into an abomination that no fan of the game would accept so I never watched it.

I have beaten Flower,  it was actually the first game that I bought. It’s been an amazing game, and all that I have left is to find all those trophies, which should be fun. I love showing people the grass in this game, it really is a great game to show off the processing power of the PS3.

Anyways, I’m pretty happy with it so far, though getting it to play happy with my router was a huge pain. It also required a redesign of my entertainment center, but it’s all been worth it.  And now I can finally go back to being a PS3 fanboy…….. ahhh shitz, they’ve ruined it.

And The Daughter of Twenty Faces is Finished.

It may have taken FOREVER for Live-eviL to finish it, but it is finally.  I’m still downlaoding it, and will FINALLY be able to finish this thing later today.