Nintendophiles 05.13.09: Pokemon remakes, New Guitar Hero, Contra

Posted by Theo Fraser on 05.13.2009

The latest installment of Nintendophiles brings you news of Pokemon Gold/Silver DS remakes, Red Steel 2 being MotionPlus-only, a slew of new Guitar Hero games coming your way, Tatsunoko vs Capcom licensing issues, and a look at Contra on WiiWare! Don’t miss out on the week’s big Nintendo stories.




Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Nintendophiles! I am your host Theo Fraser, and miraculously my slipped disc in my neck has seemingly cured itself...in a week. Hmmm. Normally I'd be angry at doctors for misdiagnosis, but then if it wasn't a slipped disc, I guess that means I was just a bit of a pussy. So I'm sticking to the ‘miracle' story.

This week's Tidbit News is still in the ‘unconfirmed' stages, but according to a listing on Amazon, a version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is coming to the Wii, alongside releases on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. CoD: World at War was actually pretty decent on the Wii and sold relatively well, being one of the few legitimate FPS titles on the console. As such, there's certainly a market for Modern Warfare 2, so it's not a particularly far-fetched concept. Hopefully Activision clears this one up in the next few weeks.

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Grab your Master Balls! Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver come to DS!
Credit: CVG

What originated as a rumor last weekend after being hinted at on a Pokemon-related Japanese TV show has now been officially confirmed. Pokemon Gold and Silver are coming back to your screens, this time via a DS remake. Titled Pokemon Heart Gold and Pokemon Soul Silver and scheduled for a Japanese launch this Winter, the games will utilise the engine found in Pokemon Pearl/Diamond/Platinum, giving the decade-old titles (Japan received them a year before their debut in 2000 in the US) a nice new lick of paint.

Much like the Fire Red and Leaf Green remakes, these titles will include all the new features found in the more recent games, in theory giving the Johto proceedings a somewhat fresh feeling. Of course, Gold and Silver were relatively innovative for the series back in their day, introducing a real-time night and day system, Pokemon breeding, and Pokegear, such as a radio and a mobile phone, used to receive news about legendary Pokemon locations and trainer challenges. Gold/Silver brought the series total to 251 little critters, including Ho-Oh, Lugia and the elusive Celebi. Celebi was originally only available to gamers with the English version via special Nintendo promotional events. It will be interesting to see what approach they give for the remakes.

The Japanese TV show mentioned earlier (which name translates to Pokemon Sunday) broke the news of the titles' existence, and actually showed some decent little snippets of gameplay. I'd link the video here, but the rest of the vid is just so fucking weird I really can't condone its place here. We'll put it down to Japanese humor; I don't get it. But here's a screencap from the video to give you an idea of what to expect. It looks better in motion; the resolution of the screencap isn't fantastic, but like I said, it's just to give you a taste. Once again, I fully expect Heart Gold and Soul Silver to be playable at E3 this year, where we'll be given more media on the game than we can possibly handle.





No official word on a Western release, but with a reasonable amount of effort going into it and more than likely a very high demand from consumers, I see no reason why we won't see this one on our shores sometime around the middle of next year.

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New Guitar Hero, DJ Hero, Band Hero titles on the way
Credit: Cubed3

With Guitar Hero: Metallica's development done and dusted, Activision's GH team have turned their attention to the next batch of music/rhythm games, including a couple of spin-offs as well as the next incarnation from the main franchise, Guitar Hero 5 (Official name TBC. Universal Tour? GH5: Milking It One More Time?). So let's take a look at each of them individually.

First up on the list is Guitar Hero: Van Halen. There's not much else to say on this one really; it functions just like the Metallica/Aerosmith versions that we already know. Containing the Greatest Hits of the band, Van Halen will be supported by tracks from blink-182, The Offspring, Queen and Weezer.

DJ Hero has been mentioned countless times before, and actually caused somewhat of a controversy due to various legal conflicts, as well as the apparent misinformation that DJ Tiesto would be involved with the game (with his manager confirming that he isn't), but it's ‘proper-real-official' announcement implies that all such issues have been resolved. A range of hip-hop, R&B, dance/electronica and Motown tunes will be at your disposal, with Activision promising a more contemporary soundtrack to broaden the game's appeal. The company has also revealed rendered shots of what the turntable controller will look like:





Just three buttons? I mean, I obviously don't know exactly how the game will play, but with only three buttons, I can't see it presenting much of a challenge. Perhaps by broadening the game's appeal they're also hoping to appeal to younger gamers or the more casual fans and thus want to present a more simplified control scheme. I'll reserve judgement for now while we wait to hear the specifics.

Next up is Band Hero, which is the family title of the bunch with an E10+ rating. In terms of a songlist, Band Hero aims to feature more current Top 40 hits, again in theory giving a wider appeal to the general public. Activision stressed its "easy to pick up/hard to master" approach as being something new for the Hero titles...but hasn't that always been the concept? Guitar Hero: World Tour introduced the Beginner difficulty, and you'd have to be pretty damn awful at life if you couldn't cope with that. Still, I've got no qualms with them entering into the realm of Pop to cater to a slightly different audience.

Finally, as mentioned earlier, we have the highly anticipated Guitar Hero 5. Little is known at this point, but a couple of new features were revealed, such as the ability to drop in and out of songs as well as change band members, instruments and/or difficulty levels on the fly. If ‘Extreme' is kicking your ass, you can simply knock it back down to ‘Hard', instead of having to quit the song and start over again.

Looks like 2009 is the year the Guitar Hero franchise REALLY becomes the cash cow.

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Red Steel 2 only compatible with MotionPlus
Credit: Nintendo Power




In what doesn't come as much of a surprise to me and yet seems to be sending ‘shockwaves' through the Nintendo community, Ubisoft have confirmed that Red Steel 2 will only work in conjunction with the MotionPlus accessory. Considering the swordplay, which is taking up a massive part of gameplay time, only functions properly with MotionPlus, I can hardly say I'm surprised, and it's certainly for a justified cause. Why bother presenting the option of playing the game with a vastly inferior control method? Red Steel 2's creative director, Jason Vandenberghe, gave us the lowdown on the company's decision to make it MotionPlus-only.


Jason Vandenberghe: It's a huge risk. We have no idea what the penetration rate for Wii MotionPlus will be. We assume high. We would like it to be high...I would love to say to you that it'll be compatible with just a regular controller, but the gameplay simply isn't there without MotionPlus. That core experience just isn't there without it.


Now fair enough, I can see some people arguing that Ubisoft are potentially limiting their audience by demanding all players to have forked out the extra cash for a new accessory, but as Vandenberghe says, the gameplay just doesn't function properly without it. Personally, I commend Ubisoft for being the first to take this brave approach. I hope others follow suit and take the plunge too. The technology is there, we might as well all use it.

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Tatsunoko vs Capcom encounters issues for US release
Credit: Joystiq



Wii fighting games have been few and far between, mainly due to the very legitimate concern that the Wii remote simply has too few buttons to accurately control a complex fighting system. With this in mind, anytime a serious offering rears its head, it's usually cause for fans to pay attention. Such attention was given to Tatsunoko vs Capcom, the crossover fighting title, which has been very well received since its December launch in Japan. "TvC" manages to cover all its bases in terms of controls, as it offers a simplified combat system for casual fans with the Wii remote, while also allowing core gamers to use the Classic Controller or a Gamecube controller, which brings the benefit of 8-way joystick control for basic movement. Control methods aside, it also helps that it's a pretty damn good game in general! Capcom would be rather dumb not to bring it to the Western market, right?

Well, yes, they would be very dumb indeed, but Capcom aren't the ones to blame here; they're trying desperately to get the go-ahead for a North American launch. The issue lies in the Tatsunoko properties, which unfortunately prove rather troublesome once we move outside of Japan. Seth Killian, Capcom's Community Manager, gives an insight as to why we'll likely be waiting a good long while for this one.


Seth Killian: It's a lot of 'dance with the lawyers' on that one. The rights holders for Tatsunoko in Japan are one company, but in the U.S. it's ... 13 companies -- and some are very attentive and some are not.


Attaining rights from THIRTEEN different companies...that's quite a steep task. It's obviously not impossible, so I don't think we need to completely rule out a Western release; it's just looking more and more unlikely at this point. That's a great shame, but there's very little anyone can do. I'm not entirely sure why the various US outlets of Tatsunoko properties are quite so against the concept of the game, but it's not my decision, so hey. On the upside, Play-Asia are probably peeing their pants in excitement over the number of orders they're about to receive...

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Contra reborn on WiiWare

Released this week in Japan with little-to-no prior fanfare was Contra ReBirth on WiiWare. If you consider yourself to be an avid gamer, Contra likely needs no further introduction to you. It's an absolutely classic series, and the following footage of the WiiWare tribute speaks for itself. Suffice to say, it's looking frickin' sweet, with really slick presentation to go alongside the standard, lightning-quick Contra gameplay you'd expect.

Contra Rebirth 'Area 1 Boss' gameplay

It's yet to be dated for a Western release, but I can't see one being too far away. Everyone needs more Contra in their life; this should be right at the top of your Most Anticipated Downloads list.

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The 411 Games Crew

Tommy Coloma keeps you up to speed with The Release List.

Ramon Aranda hosts this week's 411 Games: Fact or Fiction.

It's the RPG Edition of the 411 Games Top 5, brought to you by Todd Vote.

Mark Salmela presents B3yond the Report.

Armando Rodriguez has another instalment of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly for you here.


And on that note, I'll sign off for this week. Next week may be a little sketchy, as I've got some massive deadlines coming up at uni, but if I see things getting crazy, I'll try to arrange some sort of cover. Take care people!

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