Nintendophiles 12.10.08

Posted by Theo Fraser on 12.10.2008

Konami tease brand new Metal Gear title, Monster Games’ uber-secret Wii project, Play On Wii switchable covers, Sonic and the Black Knight having some of the best visuals on the Wii, and the latest trailer from Dead Rising all feature inside this week’s edition of Nintendophiles!




Welcome, one and all, to another instalment of Nintendophiles after a week's absence. I was all set to upload last week's entry when my laptop caught a particularly malicious virus, which blocked access to the internet as well as blocking all my anti-virus software. Fun times! Everything seems to be sorted now, so hopefully I won't have any issues such as this in the foreseeable future. What a pain!

In the previous Nintendophiles (the 11.26.08 edition), some interesting debate in the comments section started up, which included reader Eric's views on Nintendo with regard to casual fans. Take a look...


Nintendo's backed itself in to a corner now : By going after non-gamers and casual fans with the Wii two years ago, they got exactly what they wanted. Be careful what you wish for, because by concentrating strictly on that demographic, their user base is basically just Nintendo die hards & casual gamers. They, Nintendo, have not fostered an environment where third parties feel comfortable developing for them - in part because of the technical inferiority, and the lack of a hardcore audience - and they're taking zero steps to reel them in, so the cycle continues. Which is why most developers aren't bringing in the franchises hardcores love to the biggest selling system in the world. That statistic for Madden on Wii is pathetic. I HATE hearing excuses from fanboys (I love Nintendo, I'm a die hard, but let's keep it real here) & Nintendo itself like, "But we DO have titles for hardcore games, like Smash Bros, Zelda, Animal Crossing, etc.). NO, YOU DON'T! Hardcore gamers don't, in large part I would think, play Nintendo franchises(esp. Animal Crossing, WTF?!). They play Metal Gear, Gears Of War, Socom, GTA, Final Fantasy, etc. You can't possibly compare Twilight Princess & Mario Galaxy, amazingly wonderful as they were IMO, to the top franchises of 360 & PS3 in almost any way, especially in demographics! Nintendo should be taking all this Wii $ they've made on the past couple of years and invest it in ways to bring more third party franchises over, and the audience along with them. The biggest selling system in the world, I would think, should be played by all types with a variety of titles. I may be a Nintendo fan, but I know sometimes I can take a break from stomping mushrooms & racing carts to shoot some people in the head or rape hookers once in a while. Give us the option, Nintendo! Push this "kiddie" image over to one half of your identity, and welcome another audience with the other. It's bitten you before - badly - and I'd hate to see that happen again. Unfortunately, it looks like it is. Here's hoping for some improvement in the latter half of this generation's cycle.




Alert! New Metal Gear teaser sparks up rumors of Wii version
Credit: Cubed3

A fair amount of hubbub (that word is not used nearly enough) has sprung up on games-related websites over the past few days due to an interesting message on the official Japanese Konami website. The text "A Next Metal Gear Is...?" is displayed, following an ambiguous image, shown below:





Due to the picture's ambiguity, a ton of speculation has arisen, as you'd imagine, so let's try and dissect the possible theories coming out of it.

1. The universal ‘on' symbol, albeit with a slight twist to infer the Metal Gear "alert" status of soldiers and enemies. Green color would suggest Xbox 360. A possible port of MGS4?

2. Font used for the ‘I' characters = akin to the Nintendo Wii font.

3. ‘i' could represent iPhone. Which would suck, but it's a possibility.

4. Swapping it round as someone has done on an online forum; flip the ‘on' symbol and put it before the two ‘i's and it reads like "Wii". Kind of. Plus, the Wii's LED is green when switched on (possibly clutching at straws with this one, but it counteracts the assumption that it ‘must' be a 360 title purely because the text is in green.)

5. The concept of MGS on Wii is not entirely far-fetched. Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes saw success on the Gamecube. Highly unlikely to be a port of MGS4, but a new iteration is very possible.

6. Many believe it to be related to the DSi, which is again very plausible

7. Snake was in Smash Bros, so he's no stranger to the Wii...


Those are just a few ideas to whet your appetite and get you thinking. As always, it's a case of wait and see. Let's hope it doesn't turn out to be a big disappointment for Nintendo fans.




Rockstar representative gives the lowdown on GTA: Chinatown Wars
Credit: 1UP

I've spoken in great detail about Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars in recent months, but I simply can't stop as the info just keeps on flowing! Rockstar's Gordon Hall took some time out last week to speak with 1UP, discussing the upcoming DS title, going into more detail on why some design decisions were made, as well as divulging a few more snippets of gameplay information.


Hall: Actually, the game isn't really isometric; it's true 3D through and through. What we've done is place the camera pretty high up during most of the gameplay. There are many reasons for this -- some visual so you get a sense of movement and scale, some regarding the technicalities of the hardware and how many polygons the DS can display -- but the main reason for this decision is one of gameplay. Right from the very start, we decided to make the game as fun as possible for the platform, even if that meant it lent more toward an arcadey experience, as we all agreed this would work best on a DS. With this type of hardware, we felt it was important that the player had a good view of the action at all times.


Very little in-game footage is available, but judging by screens, I'm not entirely sure I agree that it's "true 3D through and through", but I maintain that people shouldn't disregard the title purely based on its isometric (sorry, "high up" camera) viewpoint. Hall also made some interesting remarks about the title's cel-shaded visuals, citing the reason as a way of giving the game its own distinctive artistic style.


Hall: This cel-shaded look is just one example of this happening. Another is the graphic-novel approach we took with the animated 2D cut-scenes. They're very GTA, yet feel almost Japanese in their style.


Fans worried that the DS won't be able to support a full-blown GTA experience as we've all become accustomed to can sleep easy. Great attention to detail has been paid, with "street clutter and the ability to inflict damage to vehicles, through to the littlest directorial edits" included. With more than 900,000 lines of hand-optimised code in the title, this is Rockstar Leeds' biggest title to date, and, according to Hall himself, is the best game he has ever worked on. High accolades indeed!

Touch-screen usage was briefly covered in the interview. We already know that the bottom screen will take the form of a PDA, where you can access emails, keep track of your drug empire and the like, and we also know it'll be used in various mini-games throughout the adventure, such as hot-wiring a stolen car. Now we can add to that a key-code lock disabling mini-game (most likely a touch-screen keypad) to get into locked warehouses, as well as buying and using lottery scratchcards. This will act like the ‘rubbing' mini-games of WarioWare: Touched!, requiring you to hastily scrub the touch screen to reveal the contents of the scratchcard to determine whether or not you're a winner. According to Hall, the touch screen has been implemented at every feasible and appropriate opportunity. At this point, the title is sounding absolutely awesome; I just need to see it in motion and in a lot more detail before I can pass further judgement.




Knight in Shining Armor: New Sonic title looking beautiful!

With Sonic Unleashed recently released onto store shelves, focus has turned to SEGA's latest hedgehog offering, Sonic and the Black Knight, which features sword-fighting alongside the usual ‘Speedy-Gonzalez' gameplay. The aforementioned title, Unleashed, ended up being ‘OK', but nothing special, as has been the case with most of the recent 3D Sonic titles. Is Black Knight set to buck that trend? I won't hold my breath just yet, but in terms of visuals it's certainly going to be right up there with the Wii's finest. Check out some of the latest in-game screens...













ExciteTruck developer working on top-secret Wii title
Credit: Neogaf

You may remember ExciteTruck as a launch/early Wii title (depending on the region), that was met with a very positive reception, save for the fact that it was generally considered to be far too short. Developer Monster Games were commended for making excellent use of the motion controls, especially considering how early it appeared in the Wii's life cycle, and racing fans the world over eagerly awaited the company's next project. Rumors of ExciteTruck 2 circulated earlier this year, but nothing came of them. Now, however, it has been determined that the developer is indeed working on a new Wii title, which has been kept under wraps for quite some time.

A recent blog entry from a game designer at Monster Games revealed that the team are currently working on a "highly confidential" top-tier Nintendo game, and which has been in development for two years, i.e. pretty much as soon as ExciteTruck was shipped. 20 employees have been involved in the development, and the product is apparently already nearly finished. According to the blog entry, the development process has been "so private the designers must darken their monitors when the bottled-water deliveryman enters the office." Because as we all know, it's the bottled-water deliverymen that spread all the industry secrets...

Of course, this brings us to the point that if the project has been kept so under wraps, it must be something pretty big, right? ExciteTruck 2 would be really cool, no doubt, but it's not worthy of all this secretive nonsense, mainly because most gamers with their heads screwed on properly would expect a sequel at some point in the near future. For a project this private, it's got to be something big, and something unexpected. With SEGA being pretty busy for the foreseeable future with numerous projects, it is possible (and this has been discussed by a wide variety of sources) that Monster Games have been given the lucrative task of developing the next F-Zero title for the Wii. Obviously, they're no strangers to the racing genre, and could easily have built upon the engine already established in ExciteTruck. Plus, if we recall the weeks leading up to this year's E3, it was heavily rumored that the new F-Zero title would debut during Nintendo's keynote speech. This evidently never came to fruition, but it's very possible that rumor of Monster Games' new project snuck out.

I'm still playing F-Zero GX on the Gamecube to this day, so if we really are getting a new entry into the series, and it really is being developed by a proven commodity such as Monster Games, then us hardcore gamers have another great title to look forward to. With the title in question supposedly being very nearly finished, I'd wager we'll hear some concrete info come the New Year. Stay tuned...




Play On Wii titles to include switchable covers
Credit:

Shock horror! World exclusive! Ground-breaking news! Etc etc. Yeah, OK, this little news bit really isn't going to set the world on fire, but I thought it was a neat extra that Nintendo have thought about with regard to their Play On Wii Gamecube remake titles.

Every gamer has their own way of organising their games collection, whether it be neatly stacking in alphabetical order, or simply shoving the box under the bed, and Nintendo have tried to take into consideration this aspect of a gamer's life by releasing their Play On Wii titles with switchable covers. OCD gamers need not fear any longer!

On one side, the ‘official' Play On Wii boxart will be displayed, which has the original Gamecube art encased by a white border, with the Play On Wii logo clearly visible. Swapping the cover around makes the title look like a ‘normal' Wii title, with the Gamecube art spanning the entire case, as you can see in the smaller diagram of the picture below, in the bottom right hand corner (taken from Nintendo of Japan's official site):





The question remains, how will you have yours? (And perhaps, do people really care?)




Catching up with Dead Rising

It's been well over a month since I've had anything to report on Dead Rising: Chop ‘Til You Drop, the Xbox 360 Wii-make, but Capcom recently revealed a swank new gameplay trailer, showing off some innovative kills and a sneak peak at a couple of the early boss battles.





I noticed a couple of collision-detection issues in places, especially when throwing objects at enemies, but I'm willing to forgive Capcom on this front, seeing as how they've managed to squeeze everything out of the Wii in order to fit that many zombies on screen at any one time. Check out the section where Frank West blows up a grenade, killing an entire screen-full of zombies. The Nintendo Wii is proving to be the console of choice when it comes to arcade hits, and Dead Rising is just one example of how well they can work.




The 411 Games Crew

Chris Vicari brings you The PC Spotlight, with news of the HL2 mod "Black Mesa: Source" (looking awesome, by the way), changes to Battlefield: Heroes to avoid legal issues, parents blamed for kids having access to violent games, and more!

The Full Circle: 360 News Report is written by Joe Roche, focusing on a Fable II patch, some free online gaming, and the new James Bond game, to name but a few topics covered in this week's report.

Derek Robbins takes you through the Top 10 Worst Sonic Games in this week's 10th Hour.

B3yond the Report, also by Derek Robbins, covers the content of the Street Fighter IV Collector's Edition, the top 5 selling PS3 games overseas, Midway facing some serious trouble and more.

Vincent Chiucchi talks more about the Metal Gear teaser in this week's Select and Start News Report.

Tommy Coloma updates The Release List to help you keep track of the latest games to hit store shelves.

Drew Robbins has some great news for PC fans in The PC-Centric Extravaganza, with the rumor that Fable II could be coming to a desktop computer near you!


After all the virus-crap from last week, this week's column ends up being late because my internet decides to go down for 5 hours. Joy. I sincerely hope December starts improving rapidly!

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