If people could add games that didn't actually exist to their Wishlists. I mean there's a very limited application for this sort of thing but honestly I don't care if you want Animal Crossing 3DS, EVERYONE ON THE FUCKING PLANET WANTS IT and I am personally sick of hearing about it. Maybe the ability to do this would cut down on the obnoxious chatter a little? Maybe?
Or would this lead to an uptick in people posting their wishlists?
See? Look! It's a game and stuff! Nintendo has been attaching random gimmicks to their products for years, and then abandoning them if they don't stick. Remember GameCube/GBA connectivity? Remember the e-Reader? Neither of those things hung around and people were perfectly in their rights to be skeptical about them. But what made products like the Game Boy Advance and the Nintendo DS sell were that at heart they were just solid upgrades to devices that already did what people wanted them to, with weird additional features that never caught on. The 3DS is like that basically, it's a portable gaming system with the processing power of a Dreamcast (I think) and backwards compatibility. Does it really matter if the 3-D thing doesn't last? What's really important to this thing is that it's basically a stronger version of a device that Nintendo has been selling since the eighties, and quite successfully.
Nintendo has a long history of cautiously upgrading what already works for them. Portables like the Game Boy were always more underpowered than competition like the Game Gear or the PSP, but they had an advantage in that they were able to run on less battery power and were supported by a large library of titles even when Nintendo's consoles weren't. Since those original systems came out, Nintendo has always been a generation or so behind the competition in terms of the raw processing power of their handhelds, but they've stuck to the same strategy of making their devices relatively affordable and not messing with a successful model too much by only adding things that seemed absolutely necessary (color graphics, a backlight). Their slow crawl into the online market has been rather annoying, I'll admit. It would be nice if they decided to actually support the 3DS market... thing with old Game Boy titles the way they supported the Virtual Console. The option of playing old Game Boy games on one system instead of digging them out with my old GBA SP had me excited back when it was suggested that this sort of thing could be found on the DSiWare.
You know it's a Nintendo device when... The dual screen thing was a big leap last generation, I'll admit. But it sort of stuck. Not every game makes full use of both screens, but at least it's there if somebody has the proper idea for it. This generation they're testing out the 3D thing and if that doesn't work, well, then Nintendo is just going to use the "portable Nintendo console" tag as their selling point like they always have and things are going to move on like nothing ever changed. Nintendo has the strength of their brand name and the fact that they can keep putting out new systems that take advantage of the market as long as they can make them efficient and take advantage of the edge this gives them in the handheld market.
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I can't honesty quantify it, it's just strange. There's something so odd, so desolate about those games. Even happy, cheery stuff like Kirby's Dream Land 2 or the Game Boy Camera. Something that just seems sort of out of time. I can't really explain it, I think it's sort of a personal thing. Maybe it has something to do with the old grayscale color scheme on the old Game Boy, but I sort of get the same feeling from some of the later Game Boy Color games. Maybe that color selection just gives everything sort of a stark, lonely feel. Maybe it's all the graphical minimalism of the stuff that had to be scaled down for the old Game Boy's tiny screen and its' weaker processor. Perhaps it has something to do with the weaker sound system that the system needed. I can't really say so for sure.
I'm just biding time with Wario Ware: DIY right now while I think of what game to play next. I'm thinking of something else from the Dragon Quest series, seeing as how the fall and winter months always seem appropriate for long, grinding RPG's for some reason. Maybe Dragon Quest V or IX. Or I can always just try to finish DQ VIII if I'm feeling cheap and don't feel like buying another game for between Christmas and New Year's. Always kind of regretted not finishing that one.
I think I've found my official "Game of E3." Have you seen the trailer for Kirby's Epic Yarn? Have you? That game just looks flat-out awesome. I don't typically like to gush
about how games look either, but this game just takes art style to a place that I never would have considered before. I'm even cool with the pun title because this game looks so fun. Now honestly the gameplay looks a lot like standard Kirby platforming stuff with some neat-looking tweaks to work the art into things a little more, but I'm cool with that. The Kirby series has always been one of my favorites over the years, so I'm happy with getting more of the same when it comes to the gameplay. Looking at the trailer for the first time I was reminded of the Paper Mario series and how those games worked the unusual design of the paper theme into the game itself. I hope that this game can do more of that when it comes out. Other than that, I'm just going to wait and see. I feel really encouraged by the early stuff that I've seen from E3.
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I've had two days with it now, I don't think I've been this into a game in a long time. I mean, I did put a hundred hours a month into Pokemon Pearl between February and this week, but I never played it for eight hours straight like I've done for two straight days with this game. I haven't even unlocked all the pre-made microgames yet, because those are time-based. All I've managed to produce so far is one crappy game (self-depreciation) where you catch snowflakes on your tongue and a slight variation on it where you try to avoid catching bombs on your tongue, but I've never felt so involved in terrible project-making before.
Now that I've had a chance to try out most of the game-making tools, I do have a few thoughts:
It's kind of disappointing that your color palette is so limited. I mean you do have the option to import stuff from all the games Nintendo produced using what I You won't see any art this good in any of my games! assume were the same tools, and there are a bunch of stamps and other stuff for the art-challenged, but I really wish that there was a wider range to choose from.
Is there any way to create 3-D objects in this game? I don't think there is. I haven't seen anything that suggests that there is, which would make it kind of hard to make some faux-SNES FX Chip stuff or something like that. Not that I'd be good at something like that anyway.
I don't think there is a way to make different difficulty levels for a game other than importing your own game and modifying it, is there? That annoys me. I think that one of the better trademarks of the old Wario Ware microgames was how they changed at different difficulty settings and were able to surprise you. This isn't the worst problem, but I think that it takes away from the depth that you can put into your games.
Having to trade friend codes bloooows. I know that Showcase lets you download games from contest winners and stuff like that, but I wish I could just pop into a restaurant with WiFi or something like that and download something new.
On that note, I don't know what my FC is. Don't ask.
The tutorials really are spectacular for learning how to make the tools work to your advantage. And I have to note how much I like the dialogue between characters during these instructional sections.
Again, it is really easy to get lost in creating stuff in this game if you approach it as someone who already enjoys creating stuff. And actually getting the AI to work the way it's supposed to can be incredibly satisfying. Even if your game sucks.
It's easier to come up with ideas when you're not playing Wario Ware: DIY. I don't understand this. It also applies to creative endeavors outside of Wario Ware, by the way.
So I hope to get really deep into this game this summer. It feels like a minor struggle right now, but it's fun learning all this stuff. It's also really nice that you can take this game with you anywhere you go or play it in front of the television because it's portable. It can be annoying to do something like this if you have to wind yourself up for it beforehand. Maybe I'll even figure out how the online works.
It's more entertaining than I think it should be. I mean, I don't even know what EXP does outside of the quest system, and yet I enjoy picking it up anyway. It's like that with editing pages too I guess. Curse you Giant Bomb, and your ability to get something out of me for nothing.
The giant squid just wants to raise the roof is all. I don't think I bought a single game between July of last year and January of this year. So I missed a lot of cool stuff. I didn't have the time for gaming for once, I swear.
I like portable platformers, what can I say? Blame the Kirby series or all the Mario Land games or something like that for getting to me when I was young instead of Ultima or Mortal Kombat or whatever but games like The Legendary Starfy get priority over everything else when I pick out new games. But since it was such a slow game-buying year for me I didn't really get around to this one. It really does remind me a lot of the Kirby series though so I think I'll have to pick it up sooner or later before it runs out and never returns. It doesn't bug me that much if it's easy or short, games like this are ones that I usually end up coming back to every year when the mood hits me.
Rhythm Heaven demonstrates proper singing technique. I was surprised to hear Rhythm Heaven referred to as a "spiritual cousin" to the Wario Ware series when Jeff reviewed it. That wasn't the idea that I had in mind when I pictured a rhythm game. Those comparisons are what make me want to try this out, because outside of the Guitar Hero series I have very little interest in the rhythm genre. If this game really is worthy of the comparison in terms of quirkiness and it's overall replayability then I probably really do need to give it a shot. It could hold me over the Summer if I'm too embarassed being seen playing a music rhythm game around school or whatever (I shouldn't be but I probably would think that way).
I don't know why I skipped GTA: Chinatown Wars. I didn't think that a modern GTA game on the DS would work much less be as good as the reviews made it seem. This weekend I saw it for only twenty bucks which seems like a really big bargain. I didn't pick it up though because I'm already playing through Bowser's Inside Story and I didn't want it to get lost in the meantime. That might have been foolish though because if it really didn't sell then there's the possiblity that once it's gone retailers won't bother reordering very much. Another factor might just be that GTA: San Andreas was really the only GTA game that I ever got into. GTA IV was too preachy for me and I never got more than halfway though III and Vice City. Maybe that's why I avoided it until the price went down.
I know that Scribblenauts is considered a dissapointment but I still want to try it deep down. It seems like such a cool concept even if they sort of messed up the execution. Some of those words have to have some cool results. I also find myself wanting to play the newest Professor Layton game but I don't know if I'll find the time or the cash to fit it in between all of these other games. I really liked the first Professor Layton game so it stands to reason that I'd love more of the same if that's really what "The Diabolical Box" is.
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I was just looking at my own "Top 15 of the last 10 years" entry and I realized how much stuff has happened in 10 years. I mean fuck, I'm old. And I'm just going to keep looking back and at this and realizing how much older I am than when I wrote this. LIKE RIGHT NOW. With every word I age. Dammit! I'm so old I am!
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