Dr. BUGMAN wrote:I only ever played a few chapters in the first (here) Fire Emblem and all I can remember is that it had Pegasus(i/es?).
Speaking as someone who's been chomping at the bit to be able to play the 3DS game for over a year (less than 2 weeks to go!), you make me sad :(((((
j/k. I've never paid any attention to SMT though, so I have doubts that I will be in any hurry to pick that game up, but points to IntSys and Atlus for going through with something so bizzare. If only to see heads asplode from bewilderment in both fanbases, anyway.
Sort of like Sonic Adventure DX, where the higher poly playable characters clashed with everything carried over from the original.
SADX looks butt-ugly compared to the DC version. It may have had lower poly characters but everything is really crisp and colorful. And Knuckles' head doesn't look like a box. And Sonic doesn't look like he's made of wax.
I would be more excited for a Majora's Mask or even an Ocarina of Time HD remake. Wind Waker has the most timeless visuals of all the 3D Zeldas already.
I will be interested to see what other changes they'll make, though.
I like Sonic Adventure DX more than the Dreamcast version because I can skip all the cut scenes, I don't have to hear a loud-ass screech every time there's in-level voice acting, and I don't need to be online to unlock all the neat stuff. The Game Gear games are a fun distraction too, considering I no longer own a Game Gear.
Crisis wrote:I would be more excited for a Majora's Mask or even an Ocarina of Time HD remake.
I'm just waiting to see where they're going to go with Mario U-niverse (totally calling that title, hyphen and all. Either that or they'll use the WiiU symbol as the U). I'm surprised to hear it's going to have any kind of playable demo at E3. The gap between Mario 64 and Sunshine was 6 years, and from there to Galaxy was 5 years. Galaxy 2 was only 3 years, but obviously that didn't need as much work. It's only been another 3 years since then, so we could speculate that either we're getting an engine that's very derivative of Galaxy, the game is smaller, or they're just being a little more aggressive with deadlines than they were a decade ago.
The level design of the 3d Marios seems to be trending in the same unfortunate direction as Sonic went after SA1: they're made to be obstacle courses more than worlds to be explored. I think the worst we could get is a Sonic Heroes situation, a rushed game leaning heavily on nostalgia designed around an unnecessary experimental gimmick where the levels have degraded into a banal series of roadblocks. I don't expect that, and even if any part of it is true I still trust that Nintendo cares enough about quality to make the game better than Heroes turned out, but I have a feeling they're going to rest on their laurels with this one and not try anything as inspired as Galaxy 1.
I'm also curious to see if Koizumi managed to sneak in as much of a story as he did in Galaxy 1.
I think the trend with the Mario games has been more of a progression from chaotic free-form level design towards smaller, tightly controlled stages. But yes, I would like to see this trend reversed.
Ideally I'd want to see the series move back to a more free-form style, but I think another Galaxy-like game is more likely. Dunno what the setting will be this time though.
I'd like to see a game that mixed the tighter, obstacle focused stages of the Galaxy games with a few more open-ended ones.
Both Galaxy games had one or two more "arena" style areas with Sunshine-esque searching and collecting type challenges. I'd just like to see the balance tipped a bit further in that direction, and with larger stages. Maybe they will do that, now that they have a controller with a camera stick again.
That said, I think Galaxy's obstacle-course school of level design has pretty strong roots in the franchise... they're the closest the 3D games have ever come to Mario 3's design philosophy. And they're awesome. So I wouldn't want to lose them. I just think there's room for a little bit of everything in a game with stages as separate and disparate as Mario.
After posting I stumbled on an interview where Koizumi actually addresses this.
Wired wrote:Wired News: Getting on to Galaxy specifically, the general opinion of the game is that it’s the true sequel to Super Mario 64 and that Sunshine is more of a spinoff — does your team see that as being the case?
Yoshiaki Koizumi: Maybe one of the reasons for that line of thought, that Sunshine wasn’t really in the line of spiritual progression of these games, and one of the reasons for that is that Miyamoto said that at one point. That Galaxy is the "true sequel" to Mario 64. But as far as the actual themes of the games, Sunshine is very much in my mind in that same progression. The whole idea, for me, is about the exploration of a hakoniwa, a miniature garden. It’s like a garden in a box, where if you look at it from different angles, you can see different plants and arrangements. And you have that sense of surprise and exploration. There’s always things you can find.
...
WN: What’s interesting is that Galaxy takes a step more towards linearity. You don’t have any worlds in Galaxy that look like Mario 64′s big sandbox areas where there’s seven or eight stars all in one big location. Galaxy‘s more point A to point B. Why cut down on that exploration?
YK: In the process of developing, we used this metaphor of a hakoniwa very often. But creating a hakoniwa is actually incredibly difficult, because there are so many layered elements that have to work together. In the case of creating a multi-objective level, where you can have several different paths and routes through it to different objectives, we have to blend together, but not create obstructions, where you have to pass over the same terrain. So it requires a lot of thinking just to layer those pieces on top of each other in ways that don’t obstruct each other. But not only that, it has to actually work. It has to be fun.
A lot of the work that I did on Sunshine, thinking about how to keep those elements all working together when you have multiple paths in a single stage, was very much applied to Galaxy in coming up with the "zone system," which is kind of a simplified version. We have all of these modular elements, different planets, and flight paths in between them. So being able to move around those different modules made it so much easier to adjust the balance of difficulty and keep the paths from obstructing each other. In that sense, setting this game in space was an evolution along that line of thinking. This is really one of the best ways to create a hakoniwa with those different attributes.
This was immediately after Galaxy was released though, so his feelings could have changed since then.
I think all the new consoles are going to suffer from low sales. The jump from, say, PS3 to PS4 isn't going to be as big as it was from PS2 to PS3.
Plus, in these austere times, it's hard for the average consumer to justify spending $300+ on a new console (plus accessories & games), for something that is marginally better, especially when they can get games for free on their phone.
Obviously, the consoles are not aimed at the same market as casual mobile phone gamers. But there's no denying that the mobile market has had an impact on consoles.
I think Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft would be better trying to develop an 'on-live' style technology. That way their next hardware platforms could be relatively cheap and they could improve performance as broadband speeds increase.
Apparently that article was such a click hit that they just released a "sequel" with a more specific breakdown of sales numbers (for US only, I guess?). I think more editors could learn a thing from Nintendo's recent history of turning questionable launches or weird products into hits, but probably what the 3DS has taught them more than anything is that readers will come running if you predict Nintendo's failure.
Yeah it's not quite the disaster that people have been making out. It's also not terribly relevant to gamers - Nintendo has been the underdog in the past, but it hasn't put them out of business or stopped them making games.
What's a little more concerning for me is that last-gen consoles outsold the Wii U by quite a wide margin. That would suggest that the low figures are due to low demand rather than things like the global economy or iOS/Android disruption.
I think right now it's just a hard sell (and as with the 3DS, public awareness isn't very good, still thinking it's just an "upgraded" machine and not a new one) with so few games available, and arguably the most attractive one is not only a 2D platformer, it's also hard to differentiate from the one on Wii. I don't think a new Pikmin is going to turn it around or anything, but that's what I'm waiting for and I'm someone who wants to want a Wii U, so it seems to me that other people who are going to be even harder sells are waiting for other games or surprises down the road as well. People have gotten used to seeing these things flying off the shelves just on their newness, but I don't think that trend could keep up forever. Just like Big Smile suggests, it'll be really telling if the PS4 and Xbox whatever are met with a similar response.
Well, the yen has just been devalued, which -- if my rudimentary knowledge of global economics is right -- should mean a price drop on exports, including The Wii U and PS4.
That said, my interest in the Wii U had plummeted when I heard that Rayman Legends is no longer an exclusive. Thanks, Ubisoft!
