8/16/2008 - nintendo e3 2008 conference in a nutshell

I resisted doing this, but Nintendo has to be taught a lesson. The more I think about what Nintendo did at E3, the angrier I get at them. It's not because I'm some Nintendo fanboy who up until now thinks that everything they've done is the second coming. Heck, I don't even own their last two consoles. The thing is, I do have a nostalgic love for the old Nintendo properties like Mario and Zelda and I can't stand to see them waste away their brand name with the current direction they presented at E3. It just wouldn't be good for the gaming industry as a whole, either. If competition breeds innovation then ceding the playing field to just Microsoft and Sony will just lead to a boring gaming landscape filled with first-person-shooters. Nintendo has to be shamed just as Sony was after their E3 conference in 2006. It eventually worked with respect to Sony as we are seeing their resurgence now. So with some very biased editing, here is the gamers' view of Nintendo's E3 conference:

8/10/2008 - Ninja Gaiden Full Story (2 Videos)

Much has been said about the cutscenes in the Metal Gear Solid games, specifically the latest one, Metal Gear Solid 4. The fact that some of them are over half an hour long says a lot about the willingness of fans of the series to endure such overindulgence in storytelling. There is no doubt as to the quality of the storytelling and production values in the game, but the length of the cutscenes really calls into question as to if it crosses the line from being a video game into being just an interactive movie. One of the pioneers of the video game industry in terms of including a cinematic storyline is the original Ninja Gaiden on the NES. Having richly animated cutscenes was really something of a revelation back then, when most "stories" were told through those small 8-bit sprites the size of Mario or Link. The storyline may be a little cheesy by today's standards, but the images were sure iconic. I mean, who could ever forget the opening scene with two ninjas dueling to the death? Give me that over cooking sunny-side up eggs any day. Here are all the cutscenes of the original Ninja Gaiden and it takes less time than many of MGS4's single cutscenes:





The other thing that has to be said of Ninja Gaiden is its incredible difficulty. I think a lot of us would have been frustrated enough to quit the game before reaching the final levels. But the desire to see the story through was such a great driving factor that we endured through those precarious platform jumps, and those stupid eagles.

8/3/2008 - E3 2008: Wii Music

Two years ago, Sony gave an embarrassing press conference at the annual E3 conference that led many to think that their $600 Playstation 3 console would be a flop in the marketplace where the XBox 360 has been out for a year already and where the Nintendo Wii would later dominate with its emphasis on casual games. If you watched the press conferences this year at E3 however, you would have no other impression than "Oh, how the mighty have fallen."

Sony has since recovered from its ugly stepsister status with its emphasis on hardcore games and with price cuts on the PS3, of course. The demise of HD-DVD also helped the Blu-Ray playing PS3.

Nintendo still dominates the sales chart with the Wii, however. Games like Super Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Bros. Brawl have so far kept the interests of longtime Nintendo fans. But with those core games having been released already, what would Nintendo give us at E3 to show that they're not just catering to the casual gamer? Well, do you know what they gave us? A big middle finger:



Unlike the 2006 Sony press conference videos, this one was not edited to look bad. Nintendo, what the hell were you thinking? You may be printing money with the DS and the Wii, but stuff like this really diminishes you in the eyes of your longtime fans. We grew up playing Mario and Zelda games and stuck with you during the 16-bit wars with Sega. A lot of people strayed to the Playstation and the XBox, but at the time the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube were on par with them hardware wise. You made a decision to emphasize gameplay with the motion controls of the Wii, but after a couple of years of waggling and casual games, it all just seems gimmicky. Diminishing online play with shoddy online support and no voice chat doesn't help you either.

And do you know what the worst thing about this video is? No, it's not the horrible rendition of the great Super Mario Bros. theme. It's that they dragged in Shigeru Miyamoto himself to make a fool of himself in front of the gamers who have so much respect for him. Nintendo, if you are seriously intending to make this kind of casual gaming the focus of your productions in the future, then you will have no future. You'll fall back to third place again and it will be much deserved.

6/24/2008 - Link Favors the Kirby Series

Nintendo really should re-evaluate their position and make Link talk in the next Zelda game. It was always understood that the technology wasn't there for speech even in the Nintendo 64 days, but there's no such excuse now. If Metal Gear Solid 4 can have hours of fully animated and voiced cutscenes, a new Legend of Zelda game should be able to raise its level of presentation to near cinematic level. It may be some kind of philosophical thing for Nintendo for Link never to speak, but I think it was the same kind of position they had with Mario for a long time, and he speaks almost too much now. If Nintendo doesn't have a speaking Link soon, they'll continue to be the butt of jokes like this one:

4/2/2008 - iPod with NES controller

As much as I respect the geeks out there who produce these creative mods of tech products, sometimes I think they're nuts. I mean, it's great being able to show off all these skills, but isn't there a more practical way they can contribute to society? Take this mod, for example. It's the coolest thing, alright: an iPod with Linux installed just so it can play a modified version of Doom. But that's not the extent of the mod. They took a regular old NES controller and added an iPod docking port to it so it can control your character in Doom!



As impressed as I am with this, I can't help but think that it's not going to win the Nobel Prize for engineering.

11/12/2007 - Contra Trailer

Contra 4 comes out this week for the Nintendo DS, and this is the one game for the system that makes me want to buy the system just for the game. Why? Well, it's because Contra III for the SNES was one of the greatest games ever! Contra exists for one reason: to kick your butt and make you like it. It's intentionally hard, but not impossibly so. Even though it may be the most unrealistic game in the world by having one guy (or two, if you have a second player) taking out an entire alien horde, it does have one all-too-realistic element to it: ONE HIT AND YOU'RE DEAD. That's right, no health bar, or hearts to give you extra energy. One bullet from even the weakest enemy will put you down... well, it takes away one of your lives at least. And that's why so many people resort to the most famous code in video gaming history: the Konami code. UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, B, A, START. It gives you thirty lives in the original Contra for the NES and is so well-known that it's printed on T-Shirts.

To celebrate the release of Contra 4, I have to feature this video from the TeamAwesome crew, the same people who made that ultra-cool Punch Out movie trailer for the Nintendo video contest. This "trailer" is of Contra, of course, and it pays homage to the movies of which Contra is based on: Aliens, Predator, Commando, and Rambo. Yes, it was a time when action movie stars were muscle-bound actors, not the sensitive leading men of today aided by stunt men and computer graphics. Those movies definitely hold a special place in my heart, and so does Contra for the same reasons.



By the way, TeamAwesome... you guys rock! Hope to see more of your stuff in the future!

8/29/2007 - Nintendo Sixty-FOOOOOOOOOOUR

Maybe I'm getting old, but when I got my Playstation 3, I wasn't really excited. Yeah, I obsessed over the pros and cons of the system when I was considering it over the XBox 360, and I'm still in great anticipation over the Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix game which was the greatest reason why I bought the PS3. But when I got it from UPS, opened the box, and plugged it to my TV, I was uncharacteristically calm. I think the last time I was really psyched about a video game system was the Super Nintendo. I think it was mainly due to the inclusion of Super Mario World, which was an ultra-sweet game that demonstrated how the SNES was technologically leaps and bounds better than the NES. As great as the NES was, and for all the hours and days I played on the NES, I was ready for more, and the SNES didn't disappoint.

While I was excited getting the SNES, I was nowhere near as apoplectic as this kid was in unwrapping his Nintendo 64:



Holy crap! If I didn't know better, I would say that he was taking caffeine intravenously. I actually like his reaction to his other Christmas present... I guess when you're that age, everything else is a letdown compared the Nintendo 64. Hmmm... I wonder what his reaction will be when he finds out it only comes with one controller and no games...

7/2/2007 - The Legend Of Zelda Retrospective Part 6

I didn't get into playing the Legend of Zelda games until I bought a used copy of A Link to the Past. It was a good, thing, too... the first Zelda game was hard as hell, and the second one just sucks (IMHO). I had subscribed to Nintendo Power and saw that LttP was voted the #1 game month after month (I think it was up there for at least three years!). I kept putting off getting the game because I thought it was just another RPG or a maze-type game, both genres of which I was not fond of. Boy, was I wrong!

A Link to the Past was the first game in which I became "addicted" to... and when I use that term, it doesn't mean that I would play it over and over. It's sort of an obsession I feel when the game is unfinished, a boss is defeated or an accomplishment achieved, but something else is unlocked in the process, forcing me to investigate further. And that is, in essence, the beauty of the Zelda games. They plunge you into a world where you use your dexterity AND your brains to get past certain obstacles only to have other obstacles appear.

Some people call A Link to the Past Zelda III because it was released after Zelda II: Link's Adventure, but according the text on the game's box, the story of LttP took place long before the first Legend of Zelda game. So, in essence, the game is a prequel to the first two games. The game that would follow in the series would be Link's Awakening for the Game Boy. But was this game a sequel to the first two, or a sequel to the prequel, or a prequel to the prequel? Things were getting more confusing. According to the manual, Link's Awakening takes place months after LttP, which makes sense, because the nightmare boss at the end of the game takes the form of some of the bosses in LttP. So after four Zelda games we have this as the "official" chronology: LttP, Link's Awakening, the original Legend of Zelda, and finally Zelda II. Everybody got that?

Then we come to the game that totally messes things up: the Ocarina of Time. Whenever you have a storyline that introduces time travel, you know you're in for a world of hurt when trying to keep a timeline straight. I'm not sure if it was in the manual, or the box, or in Nintendo Power, but OoT is supposed to take place even before LttP. Yes, that's right... a prequel to a prequel. I really have to ask now... WHY? Why obfuscate such an epic storyline by continually putting out games whose major releases are prequels (LttP, OoT) and then release minor sequels to those games (Link's Awakening, Majora's Mask respectively)? Why can't it be like the Mario games? Each game in that series is a direct sequel to the game before it. No prequel BS!

Well, the folks at GameTrailers tried their best to come up with their own Zelda timeline, trying to use the story elements as a guide while ignoring the "official" sequence as stated by various instruction manuals and boxes. They even go the Back to the Future Part II route by splitting the timeline to fit their concept. Note that this was postulated before the release of Twilight Princess, which I believe ruins their best laid plans...

6/28/2007 - An Incredible Mii

One of the Nintendo Wii's greatest features is the Mii Channel, where you can create an avatar of yourself (or anyone, really) and be able to use them in some Wii games. It's so much more satisfying to play a game using a character that looks like you rather than some generic sprite. The Mii characters lack realistic figures and are cartoonish, but they're still fun to create and you can make some great caricatures with them.

The Mii creation process is very forgiving in how you place facial features so you can do some pretty wild stuff. I've seen some very accurate looking celebrity Miis and some resembling various cartoon characters. This Mii in particular is probably the most creative one I've seen, though. I didn't think something like this would be possible, but here is a Pac-Man Mii that is about to eat a ghost!



Again, I love it when people make an effort to bring a touch of retro to these newfangled systems. And Pac-Man is just about as retro as it gets.

6/15/2007 - Punch-Out!! Trailer

If Mario: Game Over is the greatest Nintendo skit, this is the second greatest. There are so many references to Nintendo games, it's almost impossible to count. Even the music sounds like 8-bit music on steroids. Set against the backdrop of the early NES game Punch-Out, it's supposed to be a trailer for a movie about the comeback of Little Mac, the game's hero.



And boy, was Mac little... The sprite of Little Mac had to be small, because the NES could not do the wireframe graphics of the arcade game or the transparency of the 16-bit Super Punch-Out game. The point of making your character "transparent" was to allow you to see the telegraphed moves of your opponents. This allowed you to discern their pattern and weaknesses which are the keys to beating them. While most boxers are button-mashers, the Punch-Out game was unique, challenging, and rewarding... making it one of the greatest games of all time.

This "movie trailer" was an entry into Nintendo's "Short Cuts" contest: a contest to see who could make the best amateur short film based on Nintendo games. Surprisingly, this movie did not make the top ten for people to vote on! This is an absolute travesty, and this opinion is shared by most of the comments on the video. There is nothing in this video that is provocative or unseemly, so I doubt it violated the rules in any way. That means the judges just plain did not like the movie! What a joke!

5/16/2007 - Nintendo Wii: Welcome Back

There's definitely a market for the classic games out there. Microsoft started to really capitalize on it with the XBox Live Arcade. What's cool about some of their classic emulations is that they've enhanced the games to include multiplayer gameplay online and achievement events. Of course, Sony and Nintendo had to get into the act with their next-gen systems, the PS3 with the Playstation Network and the Wii with the Virtual Console.

The Wii's virtual console doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the XBLA, and that's a shame. I'd really love to see the original Super Mario Kart with online capability. I think I'd get a Wii on that basis alone! What it lacks with the extras, it makes up for in the games. You're never going to see any of the Nintendo games on the other emulation engines. That will be the biggest advantage Virtual Console will have in the long run, and this "commercial" exemplifies that fact. It' truly a well-done piece of fan-work:

Past Favorite - nintendo superfan

I've always wanted to be in a next-gen console launch line. It's not really about getting a game system before anybody else or playing the latest games before anybody else. It's all about the atmosphere... the group of people you'll encounter. I liken it to the midnight openings of Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings. Fanboys of any genre are people unlike any other, and fan obsession extends itself pretty well to the video game world. It doesn't matter that these guys pre-ordered their sytems months in advance, they still show up.

I think I can imagine what goes on in some of these launch lines... talking about the upcoming games, talking about some classic games, talking about past launch lines, playing handheld games, playing card games, singing songs. Okay, maybe not exactly singing songs, but if you're going to be in a line for over two days, some crazy stuff will probably happen. I always think I know what kind of characters might be at the front of the line, and this YouTube video pretty much confirmed my suspicions:



At first sight, you might think that this guy makes gamers look bad. He's been up for five days, he has that classic nerd lisp, and he looks like a bum. Even his "friends" are laughing at him. But if you parse his words, he's not one of those overly zealous fanboys who thinks his favorite game system is superior above all others. He's quite diplomatic towards other systems and towards other gamers who aren't early adopters like him. Despite his disheveled appearance, he's quite rational and would probably be fun to hang around with. Laugh at him if you want, but at least he has his 15 minutes of fame.