Get Over it Already!

I've been hearing and reading a lot of complaints about how crappy the Wii's graphics are. Sure, the Wii may not look any better than a GCN right now, but who cares? It's not like Nintendo lied to you about the graphics. They have specifically said that they're not in the raw graphics output race anymore. They have also said that if what you're looking to get out of a video game is just pure graphics enjoyment, the Wii is not for you.

The Wii isn't about pretty graphics. Nintendo is taking what they've done for the handheld console business and bringing that philosophy to the home consoles. The Nintendo DS and the Wii are both about new ways to experience and play games.

So I'm tired of hearing about Wii's graphical power. If you want to complain about it, keep it to yourself. If you want the best possible graphics in the world get yourself and Xbox 360 or a PS3. The Wii can't compete graphically with those other home consoles, so get over it already!

Happy Birthday Mario!

21 years ago from this day, Super Mario Bros. was released for the Nintendo Famicom. Believe it or not, Super Mario Bros. is still the highest selling game of all time with roughly 40 million units sold worldwide. Happy Birthday Mario, now hurry up and tell us when Super Mario Galaxy is going to be released.

Dead Rising Scares Me

I've been wanting to play Dead Rising for about half a month now, but find myself unable to boot up my Xbox 360 and play that game. It's not that I'm bored by the game or have some other game to play, I'm scared of it. No, the game isn't that scary. What I mean is that I'm scared of the game breaking my $400 gaming investment. Ever since Dead Rising came out, there have been rumors of it literally causing Xbox 360s to die. At first I thought that it was just the initial batch of Xbox 360s sold last year that were failing and even then I assumed that people were just not treating their console with care. Then I started hearing about how some new Xbox 360s were dying as soon as Dead Rising was booted up. Now I find myself unable to play Dead Rising due to being afraid that it'll cause my Xbox 360 to die. (It costs $180 to have the console refurbished by Microsoft.)

I know, it's stupid to not play this game because of this phobia. There are millions of Xbox 360s in the world and a good portion of them playing Dead Rising I'd assume. The percentage of failure is relatively small, about 5% I think. Are these systems just poorly manufactured or were they the victim of a lack of T-L-C?

I really want to play Dead Rising, but I don't want my Xbox 360 to die. Hopefully I'll be able to just throw the phobia out the window and just enjoy this awesome game before the Wii launches.

Are Wii Ready?

Hopefully by Thursday of next week, we will know when the Wii is launching and at what price it will be launching for. Signs are pointing to the Wii having a nice and smooth world-wide launch this year. There doesn't seem to be any hardware shortages nor any problems with the manufacturing process. The only real worry we can have is that Nintendo will delay the Wii to next year cause the software isn't ready - something that they are well known for.

If you haven't noticed, the Wii is close to launch (from what I gather, expect a late October / early November 2006 launch) and we've barely seen any of the games! We don't even know the full capabilities of the Wii itself! And on top of that, we're still not informed of all the functionalities of the wiimote! Is Nintendo doing this purposely to keep the competition (read: Sony) from copying the ideas and technology?


Poor Sony. Their egos have put them in a pretty deep hole. First they screw up the PSP (where are the good games at?). Then they have a rootkit fiasco in their CDs. Then announce the scary price of $500/600 for the PS3 at E3. On top of the scary price, Sony also managed to show nothing note worthy at E3... yawn. And no Kaz Ridge Racer, sorry... Riiiiiiiiidge Racer!, didn't help. And recently Sony has to decrease their estimations on the shipments of the PS3 by 75%. Let's not forget to mention that Europe now has to wait until Spring '07 to get a PS3. (At least they may have a chance to avoid the initial BSOD'ing and DDoD'ing PS3 batch.)

So to that news, I say: "Thanks Sony!"

Thanks for opening the door for either the Xbox 360 or the Nintendo Wii to kick your ass.
Thanks for making me a millionare when I sell my pre-ordered PS3 on eBay.
And thanks for screwing the developers, forcing them to make/port their games to another console.

Hype will only get you so far. Where are the good games at Sony? You can't ride the Metal Gear Solid cash cow forever. You still lack an icon like Mario, Link, or hell... even Master Chief. Kratos maybe cool, but he's still on the PS2.

Sony, you obviously need history lessons. See Wikipedia for NeoGeo, 3D0, TurboExpress, Atari Jaguar, and PSP. You fail to learn, you fail to win.

Wii!!

Odd Similarity

Check out this video from the upcoming Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball 2, which shows off the new Marine Race mode. (If that link didn't work, go here and watch the video titled 'Marine Race'.) Now watch this video from the Nintendo 64 game, Wave Race 64. Is it just me or is the track that Tecmo chose to show off their Marine Race mode very oddly similar to the Southern Island track in Wave Race 64?

First I'll give props to Tecmo for at least (seemingly) basing their new mode after one of the best jetski racing games ever made. Wave Race 64 is one of the N64's best games and, in my opinion, is the only game thus far to accurately simulate water physics (I'm sure plenty of you would disagree with me on that). Props aside, I have to wonder how well the racing game would play. Juding from the previous game's "volleyball" and the fact that the "volleyball" hasn't changed at all in the sequel, I would have to say that the Marine Racing mode is also mediocre.

No one will know how the game plays until it is nearly released to the public. Tecmo seems to do that a lot with their games. To me, that just says that they know their games are all graphics and no gameplay. Shiny oversized gravity defying bouncy graphics... with realistic tan lines...

Since my buddy Eron didn't like the Shadow of the Colossus video I posted last month, here's another video. This one actually uses music from the game and shows off some really cool moves in the process. Enjoy.

Super Smash Bros. Online!

When Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo64 was announced, I was skeptical about the idea of Nintendo characters fighting each other. To me, it was a weird concept that I felt would never sell. Oh boy, was I wrong. Super Smash Bros. turned out to be one of my favorite multiplayer games for both the Nintendo64 and the GameCube. My friends and I played both games to death (we played the N64 version significantly more though - I'll go into that later).

Now that I'm in SoCal, I want to play Super Smash Bros. online with my friends back in San Francisco. Yeah, I know that Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii is coming out with online gameplay, but SSB:B won't be released until sometime in 2007 and I want to play online now. Thankfully, there are now ways to play both Super Smash Bros. Melee and the original Super Smash Bros. online.

Super Smash Bros. Melee can be played online via the infamous PSO Loader hack. I would try this method to play online, but not all of my friends have the GCN broadband adapter. However, I would say that the biggest downside would be that players 2, 3, and 4 lag by up to a second while playing. Lag == death, especially for fighting games. The lag also causes weird, yet entertaining, errors as you'll see in this video. A valiant effort to get SSB online, but the lag kills the experience.

Oddly enough, you can play Nintendo64 games online and it turns out to be a more enjoyable online experience than SSB:M online too! Playing SSB online resulted in no lag. Simply amazing! Yeah, there are less characters/stages in the Nintendo64 version but SSB is so much fun, I'm willing to "settle" for the N64 online until Brawl comes out. If you want to see an online fighting game done right, try SSB. (Just ignore the graphical glitches - those are the emulator's fault.)

It's funny really. Using the latest hardware, Xbox Live Arcade's Street Fighter II' Hyperfighting suffers from terrible lag (1+ second delay from input to screen? No thanks.) yet a N64 emulator suffers nearly zero lag. What's up with that? It is the way Xbox Live's network structure is set up that is causing the lag? Or is it buggy network code? Or could SFII be doing the same thing as the SSB:M online hack where player 1 is the host and player 2 has to wait for his own data to come back from player 1? Either way, it's really funny and only helps me enjoy SSB even more.

Going back to what I said earlier, my friends and I spent countless hours playing SSB on the N64 yet in comparison we barely played SSB:M on the GCN. Why is that? SSB:M is a better game overall. It's more balanced, offers more characters and stages, and has tighter controls. I noticed this trend for most, if not all, of the GameCube's multiplayer games. We played the N64 versions significantly more than the GCN versions. Are the GCN versions actualy inferior or are they just more of the same that we've already played too much of? I'm betting it's the latter.

I find that Nintendo has a habit of evolving the gaming industry every ten years. The NES jump started the current industry after the crash, the N64 evolved the industry into the 3D era with analog controls, and the Wii is going to evolve the industry again with spacial controls. To me, both the SNES and GameCube are just more powerful versions of the NES and N64, respectively. I'm not saying that the SNES and GameCube are bad consoles, they each have their games that are contenders for the best game(s) of all time. I just think that these two consoles took the ideas of the NES and N64 and refined them into near perfection. If this history holds true, what can we expect of the Wii's successor? (Also note that Nintendo evolves the industry with controls, not graphics.)