Nintendophiles 12.14.06
Posted by Theo Fraser on 12.14.2006
Thoughts and views from the Game On exhibition in London, lots of announcements, and I’m still desperate for a Wii!
Here at Nintendophiles, I always like to keep things positive. And there's always much to be positive about; Nintendo have had/are having a fantastic year. But on a personal level, I'd like to talk about what went down last week on the UK launch night of the Wii. On the grand scale of things, yes, it was a success. 50,000 Wiis were sold nationwide in less than 12 hours, meaning that one Wii was sold approximately every second. Those of the type of figures Nintendo should be extremely happy about. The thing is, there were an absolute ton of people who went home unhappy at midnight (not even the official launch day!)…myself included.
So, I go into town at about 11.30pm on Thursday 7th, park my car, and hop out to the Gamestation store around the corner. So much for a "midnight launch party;" there are 7 other people there. At 12.05, the doors open, and I am the second person in. The 7 other people have grown to 9 other people, and they're actually couples or in groups. All in all, 5 Wiis are about to be sold.
I go to the counter, hand over my pre-order receipt with a huge Cheshire cat grin on my face…and I hear that fatal noise. "Hmmm." Uh oh! The weedy guy behind the counter turns around with a sheepish, apologetic smile. "I'm afraid we don't have one for you sir." Alarm bells go off in my head, to the sound of "WTF?!!" Apparently, the store only received 15 Wiis. I was number 40 on the list.
Now, I understand that it's all done on a "first-come-first-served" basis. That's fair enough. But they are seriously telling me that they have 15 Wiis in stock right now…5 of them are being sold, leaving 10 sitting on a shelf…and they still aren't going to give me one? Someone can't be bothered to get off their ass and come and collect it, and yet I still get penalised? I did not like that one bit. They said they had tried to call me, but I had no missed calls on my phone all day, so they either didn't try hard enough, they don't know how to leave a message, or they are simply lying. So I ended up walking away a little bit ticked off. And I didn't get my refund…
The fact of the matter is, there just weren't enough consoles to satisfy the demand. It's perfectly acceptable for the Wii to be sold out; if someone walked into a shop on December 8th and expected to just pick up a Wii and take it home with them, it's pretty obvious that they'd be left empty handed. The problem, however, comes with the fact that there weren't even enough consoles to satisfy the pre-orders. In no way do I blame Nintendo for this; it's the greedy high-street shops who are to blame. I understand that the shops didn't know how many consoles they'd receive from Nintendo, but come on…a little common sense wouldn't go amiss. If I had known before hand that my tiny local store had already taken 40 pre-orders by early November, I would have taken my £20 deposit elsewhere. So Gamestation are at fault for taking my money when it was pretty obvious they wouldn't be able to meet customer demand.
I was told that they are getting another batch in the following week (at this point, that's probably sometime tomorrow), but even then they can't guarantee me one; it might take up to two weeks but, "You should definitely probably get one by Christmas!" Definitely probably? Wow, that fills me with confidence.
There does seem to be some strange issue with the distribution of the Wii over the country. I've received a few emails and seen quite a number of reports over the past week about the shortage of Wiis across the UK, with many people in the same situation as me. So how come my store (admittedly small) only gets 15, and yet another Gamestation in Birmingham (admittedly larger) gets a whopping 400 consoles despite the fact that only 320 had been pre-ordered! Basically, someone somewhere has cocked up a bit!
\ tedious rant
GAME ON!
Onto more positive things! I've just had a terrific two days in jolly old London, even going so far as to go on the Tube for the first time in my life! Yep, it's one exhilarating experience after another! Nevertheless, I genuinely had an awesome time on Tuesday, as I spent the afternoon at the National Science Museum, where from October until the end of February they are holding a massive video games exhibition, entitled "Game On" (sponsored by Nintendo, hurray!). I wasn't sure what to expect, but I paid the £6 entry fee (concessions…I pretended I was unemployed. Sue me.) and got right in there.
Going into the museum, all I knew about the exhibition was that it covered the history of computer games. The tagline reads "From Space Invaders to Electroplankton!" I'm not sure I would have included Electroplankton as a selling point, but what do I know?
Stepping inside the exhibition, it's evident that a lot of money has been spent on it. There's a massive wall display detailing a timeline of events of the industry. Unfortunately it's not terribly detailed, mostly resorting to lists of major releases and events from each year. But it's presented in a colourful, informal approach, making it great for all ages.
So, from an information standpoint, I didn't really learn all that much. I don't want to sound like an absolute philistine here but…WHO CARES?! THEY'VE GOT GAMES!!!
For a Nintenerd like me, I was in heaven. I'm not great with estimates, but I'd say there were probably around 150 different playable games situated around the hall. Pretty big number, wouldn't you say? And I spent about 4 hours there, so I think the best way to tackle this is to start from the beginning.
First of all, you are presented with a big line-up of arcade machines. I instantly dove on Donkey Kong and then Space Invaders to satisfy my nostalgic side. It was brilliant playing an arcade game for free! There was a huge wall projector with Pacman on it, but it was in use, so didn't get to try that out.
(That's NOT me in the pic, in case it's not obvious. I'm not quite as effeminate as that.)
When I was at the exhibition, I wasn't particularly aware of a system or path through the games on show. If I'm honest, it looked a little bit like they were thrown together in a random order, but it appears as if that was not the case, as a little bit of delving (visiting the official science museum website at http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/gameon/abouttheexhibition.asp was a start!) showed that the exhibition was split into 13 sections. Those sections are as follows:
Early Arcade Games
Consoles from 1972 to the Present Day (one select game for each console)
Games Families (ie genres)
Sound
Cinema
Games Culture- USA and Europe
Games Culture- Japan
Multiplayer Games
Kids Games
Character Design
The Making and Marketing of Games
Magazines
Future Technology
So as you can see, they covered a hell of a lot of ground there. But let's get back to the games.
The Consoles from 1972 to the Present Day section was a great showcase of consoles, and they even had a proper Famicom, as opposed to the NES hardware we are used to. I'm very glad I wasn't around in 1972 as ‘Tennis' on the Magnavox Odyssey was an extremely tricky affair that I wouldn't rush to reattempt.
I was impressed by the favourable showing from Atari, with many of their classic games on show. Did you know that early on in Atari's life they were bought out by Warner Bros? You do now.
The Gamecube was represented by Mario Superstar Baseball (um…I don't know why). Bit of an odd game. Maybe that's just me though; I'm not big on Baseball, so maybe I just "didn't get it".
The Games Families section was one of my favourites. First of all, I got to play Final Fantasy VI (III in the US…although it was the Playstation re-release from 1999). I stayed on it for about 20 minutes, and the controller literally had to be pried from my grasp. Visually, it doesn't look all that different from IV, but the story was extremely gripping right from the get go. With that in mind, the GBA re-release of V and VI is already down on my Must Have list.
Also in that section was the Gamecube version of Animal Crossing, which I have never played before. And do you know what was amazing? 3 of the townsfolk from my DS version were also in the Game On town! Although they were extremely rude, as Bluebear, Jitters and even Satan himself, Egbert, ALL failed to recognise me! So they won't get Christmas presents from me! Although I'm tempted to post a firecracker through Egbert's mailbox.
Anyway, it was fun seeing Animal Crossing on the big screen. It was weird going back to the screen-by-screen movement, as opposed to the fluid map of Wild World, but graphics-wise I thought it looked very pretty.
You know the other week I talked about Sin and Punishment on the N64? And Ikaruga? Boy, you don't know tough till you've tried Gradius V (PS2). Wow. That is a BEAST of a game. I lasted roughly 26 seconds before being blown to a gazillion pieces.
Super Monkey Ball 2 was in the section too, and I was also surprised how tough that gets early on! Might have to pick that one up on eBay sometime.
Moving on to the Sound section, I played Rez, which I've been reading quite a lot of recently; the weird music blaster…thing. Shoot enemies to make music. I wouldn't call it ‘fun' as such; it was mainly surreal, and I think I had a very odd expression on my face whilst playing. But I definitely liked the concept behind it.
Next, I skipped ahead to the Games Culture sections, which were also great. I own Prince of Persia: Sands of Time on the PC, so it was interesting comparing it to the Gamecube version on show. Funnily enough, it actually looks better on the GC and runs a lot smoother, although that could reflect on the state of my old PC (it fails to run on my new one for some inexplicable reason).
Project Gotham Racing 3 was available to play for the Xbox 360, and I actually really enjoyed it. I don't usually like the PGR series, but this one handled very well…and it looks beautiful.
The Japanese Games Culture area was brilliant, as they had a whole suite dedicated to Steel Battalion for the Xbox. And by that I mean the whole works. A massive screen in front of you, and all those intricate controls and panels. That was great for the ‘big kid' in me, as I got to press lots of shiny buttons! And then get blown up by big mechs. Damn hard game! Gotta love pressing "eject" though. Fun stuff.
I liked the multiplayer area too; that was set up very well. Pretty much all of the other games were just single player affairs, so it was good to grab a controller next to some completely random stranger and piss them off with headshot after headshot in Halo 2. That's right, yours truly PWNED THE N00BS! Yes, they may have had the combined age of 17, but that's beside the point.
An Eye Toy was set up in the same area, so I had a quick go on that. I had no idea there was a Super Monkey Ball Eye Toy game. Incredibly difficult to control though; you'd need the collective reflexes of Neo and Morpheus to stand any chance of progressing far into the game.
Electroplankton was um….weird. Like Rez, it's a nice idea, but it's just a bit strange! Clever use of the DS though, I'll give it that.
And then for the most embarrassing part of the trip. I was casually walking past the Kids section when I happened to catch sight of ‘Hey You, Pikachu!' on the N64. This was never released in the UK, so I thought that was a pretty cool find. For those that don't know, this used a microphone attachment, and you spoke to Pikachu and got him to carry out various tasks for you…he was basically your bitch for the entire game. Great fun. But um…it was in the god damn KIDS SECTION! I've never felt so stupid in my life! Aside from the fact that I felt compelled to shout "PIIIIIIIIKA!" into the microphone so much it scared the other children, I looked like a complete dick because the chair assigned to the console/screen was a tiny toddler's seat, barely a foot high…and I still sat on it. I obviously have no shame!
There was some seriously awesome artwork scattered around the exhibition; concept art from Jak and Daxter, character models from Max Payne, and level designs and plans for Grand Theft Auto III. One part that really stuck in my mind was a part in the GTA III area, where they showed a single screenshot from the game, and displayed the developer code beneath it. It's incredible what goes into just one frame.
I ventured into the small Tomb Raider area, celebrating the success of the franchise, and played the original PS1 game. And I was blown away by how choppy the gameplay was! Seriously, the frame rate was terrible! And it was extraordinarily unresponsive. I don't really recall it being like that all those years ago, so maybe it was a bad version or something…either that, or we were just a lot more accommodating all those years ago!
1-800 COLLECT! As a completely irrelevant aside, they had the Nintendo Powerglove on display. How awesome is that? I want one!
At the end of the exhibition I was rewarded with a five minute playtest on the Wii. There was also a playable PS3 there too, and you could choose which one you wanted to play. First of all, can I just say GOOD LORD the PS3 is huge! That thing could sink a battleship! But I got to see it in motion on a massive HDTV screen, and it looked fantastic. The game being played was MotorStorm, and it looked like a right laugh. Some kid was playing it, and he kept dying in incredibly painful fashion. Graphics-wise, of course, it's outstanding, and I was very impressed with the physics. I saw a LOT of biker-falls-off-his-bike animations, and they were context-specific and varied every time.
For the Wii, we were only allowed to play Wii Tennis, and I had to be paired up with three other guys in their late 30s, who wanted nothing to do with me at all. There was a big queue forming, so I think the stewards wanted to speed the process along. Anyway, I PWNED so no worries there. And the three guys hated me even more.
Once the game was done, that was it, and my time at the National Science Museum had come to an end.
Overall thoughts? If you're looking for in-depth info on the business, and the history behind every console and every major release, your best bet is probably the internet. But if you just want a have a GREAT afternoon playing almost 200 of the most significant games ever released, this is the perfect place to visit. The exhibition continues at the Science Museum until the end of February (Feb 27th, I believe), and will then move on to another destination. I understand that it finished its stint in Seattle in September (woah, I'm tongue-tied after saying that), but if it rolls around again some time next year, do yourself a favour and get yourself along to it. I'm positive you won't regret it.
New Zelda in the works?
Credit: Game Informer
The US gaming magazine Game Informer revealed in the most recent issue the rumour that a new Legend of Zelda adventure has been in development for at least 12 months, scheduled for release later next year.
So far, Nintendo have yet to officially release any details or anything resembling confirmation, but it doesn't sound too far-fetched an idea when you consider that the last year has been spent polishing Twilight Princess and making sure it was Wii-ready. I imagine we won't hear anything concrete until the new year, but keep you mousse pointed at 411mania for all the latest, breaking news as it develops!
Big announcements coming from Square Enix
Credit: Gamesradar, IGN.
Good Lord, Square Enix have had a busy week! First, we get the news that Dragon Quest IX (an actual sequel, not a spin-off) is heading its way towards the DS. The big news this time round? It's changing from a turn-based affair to more of an action-RPG, akin to the likes of the Tales Of series, where real-time combat is the name of the game. Multiplayer is a big aspect of the game (with up to 4 players being able to join in and play co-operatively), but the development team are making sure they make the single player element just as enticing. Specifics of how the DS will be used are unknown as of yet, but we do know that the action will take place on the bottom screen, with dungeon and field maps adorning the top screen. RPG fans will want to keep an eye out for this one. Here is the first lovely, lovely screenshot, courtesy of Square Enix themselves.
But that's not all! Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates (also for DS) will be in PLAYABLE form at this weekend's Jump Festa event in Tokyo. Currently, there has been absolutely no information on this game, so the Jump Festa event will certainly shed light on it for all of us.
And just when you think things couldn't get more insane…they do! Battle details for Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings were released a few days ago in Famitsu magazine, and it looks as if it will take on a real-time strategy approach, or at least incorporate some RTS elements into it. Supposedly, gameplay is in 2D, unlike the FFIII remake, and party members attack the nearest enemy automatically, with the player being required to point the character in the right direction. The stylus will in theory be used to draw the surrounding area for magic attacks. Screenshots should follow in the coming weeks.
Wii-less until 2007?
Credit: IGN
Prior to the launch of the Wii in PAL territories, retailers told GamesIndustry.biz that customers who have not yet pre-ordered the console are unlikely to receive one before January. [How about the people who HAVE pre-ordered it, eh?]
This doesn't come as much of a surprise, as all the big UK retail firms were struggling to cope with the demand. Some retail stores, such as Currys and PC World, expect to receive 4 batches of the Wii between now and Christmas, but these will all likely go towards pre-orders that have already been made.
If you haven't pre-ordered one, and can't wait until next year, try a local independent store, as they aren't necessarily obliged to carry out pre-orders, and may have a Wii lurking around somewhere.
One Million and counting
Credit: IGN
Kyodo News has reported that Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo, has revealed last week that the Wii has already sold well over 1,000,000 across the globe, despite only being on sale for less than a month. The US is accountable for 50% of the sales. Good stuff!
On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to meeeeeeee…a ton of swank links to look at!
Andrew Mellick presents The Sixaxis, where he looks at the game that caused quite a stir at E3 this past year, Assassin's Creed. And hey, it can't be all that bad; he does have a picture of Reggie this week!
Tommy Coloma has the Halo 3 trailer for everyone's viewing pleasure, as well as a story about some cops who don't really seem to be in the Christmas spirit yet. Plus, his views on Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin! It's a must for all Nintendophiles; the Negative Edge News Report.
Will Scott tells us what should have been done in the first place with Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, and he's got some great ideas that you must check out for yourself in this week's Unlockable Content.
And capping things off this time is Damian Sarcuni in Angry Gaming, where the Hate Master asks…"What happened to all the badasses?"
That's all from me, and hopefully when you join me next week, I'll have my Wii. But I won't hold my breath.
