In 1991 and 92, Nintendo Power produced a set of five Player's Guides to be offered alongside new subscriptions and sold in stores, with four of them covering multiple games (one book for the SNES, one for the Game Boy, one for the NES and one collection of passwords for games across all systems), and the fifth being essentially a souped up Super Mario World strategy guide called Mario Mania.

But along with all the SMW maps and strategies were several pages of Mario history and an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto, which contained the now-famous quote in response to a question about Mario's changing appearance from game to game: "Who knows how Mario will look in the future? Maybe he'll wear metallic clothes!" This, of course, was five years before the metal cap showed up in Mario 64.

I won't reproduce the interview here, however I will scan this drawing from the book because it's awesome.

That is one cool rabbit.

Anyway, the book also includes obscure trivia that caps the coverage of each world, and that's what I bring today. You can't properly call yourself a Mario nerd until you can recall at a moment's notice his comparative running speeds in SMB1 through 3 and SMW. As usual, click any image for a bigger version.

Don't you feel more enlightened now? How about some Mario records?

Unfortunately, I don't know how the later games have influenced these records. I don't think there's been any power-up only used once like the Kuribo's Shoe, but has there been any enemy as rare the one-shot Walking Ptooie? You could say things like the Chain Chomp or eel from Mario 64, but they're not really enemies since you can't actually fight them. Klepto the Condor in Shifting Sands Land? Or was he not fightable either? This question will keep me up at night. It also makes me realize I should play Sunshine again, because I can barely remember any enemies from it at all.

I should make a mental note here to scan in the artwork from the book sometime, as it has a unique full page picture for each world in SMW, and I haven't seen them reproduced elsewhere.

Posted by Bill at 5:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Let video games transport you to the magical world of rocks.

• Next Gen's E3 previews continue with Microsoft and Midway's lineups.
• You know what's even better than a video game movie? A movie based on a video game everyone's already forgotten. Fear Effect is coming to the big screen in 2008.
• New Sega Rally game set for next gen systems. To be titled Sega Rally Revo, but has no connection with the Revolution.
• New high res screens of Final Fantasy III. Not that high res, because c'mon, it's a DS.
• Guardian names the best songs about video games. Kinda more like the only songs about video games, except they omit Pac Man Fever.
• 1up offers a helpful list of every Wii title known so far.
• The director of Oldboy was approached to direct a Metal Gear Solid movie. Then he decided it wasn't his thing.

Posted by Bill at 5:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Remember the times when we couldn't go a day without someone new popping up on a message board, claiming to be a Nintendo insider and offering tantalizing hints as to what secrets the Revolution might hold? Game blog Moz La Punk revisits the comments of one such "insider" who may have been onto something.

The poster, who went by the pseudonym of "nthngsshcking", made many statements but firstly we must look at how this person ended their post, he/she wrote: "Kodak Theatre = Mushroom Kingdom!"

At the time this meant nothing but lately some lucky people in the press industry, such as IGN.com, have been recieving invitations to Nintendo's pre-E3 media briefing and included with that invitation was this brochure.

The brochure, which you can see at the link below, says "Kodak Theatre" with "Mushroom Kingdom" below it. The article says they actually refer to the presentation as "Mushroom Kingdom", but the picture's too blurry for me to tell myself.

The rest of nthngsshcking's comments are reproduced at the link. Most of them are vague, but they hint at the idea that's been going around for some time that the mysterious other Wii secret will be some new way of displaying games. He says at one point, "As a matter of fact, a video demonstration of what 'Revolution' can do circulated the internet weeks or months before E3, and then conspicuously disappeared. Such a sneaky little box! I’ll leave the rest to you!"

That would seem to refer to the Nintendo On video from last year, but he also says the system won't need any visor or helmet, which was the whole focus of the On.

You can read the rest at the link and decide for yourself. Personally, it seems like somebody just got really lucky. I seriously doubt Nintendo is planning any projection system or any other kind of weird display method that people seem to think is the other secret. And I seriously doubt that someone who would know all about the system would get their jollies teasing people on an IGN message board, especially when they'd know they wouldn't be vindicated until a half a year later. Still, that's a hell of a guess.

Link: Moz La Punk

Posted by Bill at 5:01 PM | Permalink

There have been plenty of comments on what the English-speaking world think of the Wii, but what's Japan's take? A reader at Joystiq has translated some comments made on 2chan, Japan's giganto all-encompassing message board.

• post 39: "Wee is an english baby word for pee or penis according to foreign forums. This might be bad. May be this is why foreigner's response is pretty bad."
• posts 47-49: "I think Revolution was a better name."
• posts 60, 62: "It is better naming than Revolution."
• post 116: "It looks good if you write it, but awkward if you say it."
• post 122: "'Can I have Wii.' It's little bit embarrassing to say it."

The posts also talk about some puns in Japanese that work with Wii. The comments to the Joystiq article itself also include some translations of how other countries are, uh.. handling the Wii. Basically, it seems pretty much people in every country and every language are having the same reactions we are.

Update: Joystiq has also gone around asking people on the street -- not necessarily gamers -- to respond to the name simply written down on a piece of paper.

Link: Joystiq

Posted by Bill at 4:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

News about E3 comes in a drip at a time, and rather than stuff it all in the Newsbits post, I'll mention it here.

IGN states with confidence that Halo 3 will be shown in trailer form during Microsoft's pre-E3 press conference. They get this from "independent sources who recently spoke with Microsoft executives", which is apparently good enough for them. The rest of the article is just them speculating on what the trailer might contain (if it exists), which some other sites have taken as fact.

Gamers looking to replace the Max Payne shaped hole in their lives have been looking forward to Alan Wake, Payne developer Remedy's next project. They'll have to look a little farther down the line, though, because Wake will be a no show at E3. At best, they say an announcement may be made within the "E3 timeframe."

Speaking of no shows, Rockstar looks to have almost zero presence at the expo this year. No new games, and no new GTA. It seems the only showing they'll have is the Table Tennis title they're working on for the 360, which will be shown at Microsoft's booth. It's possible they could come out with a surprise announcement of a new GTA, but you'd think if they were planning something they would have at least reserved a booth.

Posted by Bill at 4:29 PM | Permalink

Now this is interesting. In a recent interview with Japan Vibes (which, oddly enough, is a French magazine), Final Fantasy I through VI character designer Yoshitaka Amano mentioned Final Fantasy XIII as one of the projects he was working on. He wouldn't say anything about what he was doing for the project, or what system it was for.

This is worth noting for a couple reasons. One, it's one of the first mentions of FFXIII in any capacity. There was a rumor in EGM recently which said that the game would be shown in trailer form at E3 as it had supposedly been in production for some time, but Square gave out the usual "We have made no official announcements" response. This acknowledges that it's in development, which certainly no one doubted, but it's the first semi-official word all the same.

Secondly, it confirms that Amano is still working on the series. Considering he's done work for all the Final Fantasies, some might take this as a given, but after longtime series producer Hironobu Sakaguchi left to form his own company (and took some FF veterans with him), and longtime composer Nobuo Uematsu went freelance, you can't be too sure. The question on the mind of many, though, is not whether Amano is doing work at all, but what kind of work is it.

Some have taken the news to suggest that Amano might be back on as a character designer. This may be due to the mistaken belief that Amano was removed from the series after Final Fantasy VI, where Tetsuyo Nomura took over as character designer because Amano's flowing, ornate art was too difficult to replicate in 3D. Actually, Amano has worked on every installment of the series, acting as "image illustrator" for every FF from VII onward, excluding FFIX where he returned to character design. Thus the work he refers to may not be any different from the work he's done previously -- logo design, promotional images, etc.

There's always the possibility they may use him again as a designer, just don't take this as the evidence for it. What is worth noting, though, is that he seems to do his non-character design work rather late in production. Witness this interview from December of 2000, where he says he's in New York to work on images for FFX, just six months before the game's Japanese release. If he is doing his regular image illustrator job for FFXIII, it may be further proof that the game is very close to completion already.

Source: Games Are Fun

Posted by Bill at 3:37 PM | Permalink

I swear to God I'm not going to do that again... much. But IGN sat down with Nintendo VP of corporate affairs Perrin Kaplan to ask the questions everyone has been asking themselves over the past 24 hours.

IGN Wii: Revolution seemed to be a pretty cool code-name that a lot of our readers liked. Why abandon it?

Perrin Kaplan: You know, I thought it was a neat name, too, but it's not as fitting for what we're trying to do. You think about Google being an unusual name. You think about Virgin Airlines. Amazon. Napster. All those. I think it's as unique as those. They aren't just unique, but loved names for places that we all know. And I think this is more fitting and the two Is work on a bunch of different levels. It looks like two people with heads who can play, which is the inclusive nature of everybody. It looks like the controllers. So for us it looked like a couple of different levels.

Basically, she reiterates the idea that the name is meant to be unique and emphasize the system's simplicity and community (as opposed to the epic revolt conjured up by the Revolution). She compares it to the likes of Google and Napster, which I don't think are really the same thing at all, but she does bring up one other name I hadn't thought of: Virgin (as in Virgin Airlines, Virgin Mobile, etc). That's a better example, I'd say, as it shares Wii's innuendo problem, as well as not sounding like a very tough or cool name for a company -- especially one dealing with the young hipster cell phone crowd. And yet, it's become its own word in a way, without people breaking into sly smiles every time they say it. So while I still think an extra syllable or two wouldn't have hurt, Wii will most likely find its own place eventually and, at some distant date, there will come a time that we won't hear even one pee joke about it.

Link: IGN

Posted by Bill at 3:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

No, this isn't the same guy as Star Locke, who wanted a 50% tax on video games (and abortions and soft drinks, among other things). This time it's Senator Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa of Texas District 20, who will be proposing a 5% tax on all video game sales (not just violent games) at the state's Senate Finance Committee meeting this weekend. His rationale?

"You have all these kids buying video games, and sometimes they are good, some are bad and that's not my call," he said to the paper. "But I think that we can generate [money] to put toward the schools they go to."

Of course, he does little to explain why video games specifically should be taxed; Why not pears or Precious Moments figurines? Oh, kids play video games, well... Then why not tax action figures and Pokemon cards and backpacks and Pixy Sticks?

I could go through all the reasons this is the most braindead law to be proposed yet -- starting with the fact that the average gamer, statistically, has been out of any school this would be helping for a few years -- but you know all that already. The real problem is not how ludicrous an idea this is, but that many politicians wouldn't see it as such.

The real lesson to be learned here is to stay the hell out of Texas. But then, I've never understood the desire to be there to begin with. Dust and heat and cowboys, no thank you.

Source: 1up

Posted by Bill at 1:09 PM | Permalink

If you want to play GBA or DS games on your TV, well.. this is not the way to do it. The device essentially takes video of the handheld's screen and sends it to the TV. Alternately, you can use this Dockable Entertainment system which plays GBA games.

• Valve is working on several projects for the Xbox 360.
• Next Generation's E3 previews continue with Konami and Lucasarts.
• College kids have too much time on their hands.
• Another former Gizmondo exec has been arrested, this time for posing as a police officer to buy a gun without a background check.
• Costs involved in getting the PS3 ready for launch put Sony's game division in the red to the tune of 100 billion yen for the year. That's roughly $870 million.
• Game development team offers its services to the highest bidder on Ebay.
• Bethesda has launched its Star Trek: Legacy official site.
• Some new artwork has been released for the recently announced Elebits on the Wii. Definitely has the Pikmin look, but less bright and cheery.

Posted by Bill at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Details have emerged on Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, an action RPG which will feature over 140 characters from the Marvel universe. Of those, players will be able to control over 20 Marvel superheroes, including Spider-Man, Blade, Wolverine and Captain America. Players will also be able to build and design their own Marvel teams, as well as fight alongside friends in on- and offline co-op play. The game is expected to ship for next and current gen systems, as well as PC, in the fall.

Source: Wham

Posted by Bill at 4:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

EA has confirmed that a new Madden title on the Revolu--dammit, the Wii will appear in the form of a playable demo at E3. This new Madden will be the first in the series not developed by EA's Tiburon studios; it will instead be handled by a Wii-specific development group at EA's studio in British Columbia. As such, this won't simply be a port of Madden 07 (in fact, there's question as to whether it will be called Madden 07 at all), and will use the Wii's capabilities to the fullest extent.

Players will hike the ball by mimicking a quarterback receiving the ball from the center, and then pass it to a receiver by making a throwing gesture with the free-hand controller. The faster the passing motion, the more of a bullet pass it becomes (in previous Madden editions, bullet passes were made by holding the passing button down longer).

Kicking the ball will be accomplished by sweeping the controller up as if it were a kicker's leg striking the ball. A fast, level swing will make for a hard, straight kick.

The Revolution controller will also come into play when running the ball, as jerking the controller left or right will make the ball-carrier juke to either side, while shoving it straight ahead will make him stiff-arm the opposition.

Sounds interesting, but I'm wondering how many people are going to end up throwing their controllers accidentally when really getting into making a pass.

Gamespot has a lengthy interview with EA's John Schappert about the game, and Gamasutra also spoke with John about the process of making a Madden title for a unique console.

Posted by Bill at 3:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Alongside the name bombshell, some people understandably didn't notice at first that there were a few other details about the system released. Some of this may not be new, but let's just take a refresher course. The console won't use a disc tray, but rather "a single, innovative, self-loading media bay will play both 12-centimeter optical discs used for the new system as well as Nintendo GameCube discs." Unfortunately, the system will not play DVDs out of the box, and instead will require a "small, self-contained attachment" for them.

The system will have a number of Wi-Fi enabled games at launch that will use the newly announced Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Also, the console will have an expansion bay for SD memory cards, to complement the 512 megs of internal flash memory.

As for the name, it's been noted that one of the reasons for the change is to give the system a more sleek, consumer electronics feel. Just as the remote is meant to be more inviting to people who might be intimidated by a controller, the name keeps potential non-gamers from thinking "oh, that's another one of those game systems, that's not for me."

So in short, Nintendo has carefully named their game console so it doesn't sound like a game console, and packed it with controls that are meant to make it seem like something more than a typical game player. Why does that sound familiar.

Source: Next Generation

Posted by Bill at 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hooray!

Official word has come down from the heavens, and the Nintendo Revolution is now the Nintendo Wii. Yes, like "we." Or wee or whee or any other number of puns that must already be flowing into your mind (flowing, one expects, much like a flood of wee after a three hour movie). The official site has this to say about the name:

Introducing ... Wii. As in "we." While the code-name "Revolution" expressed our direction, Wii represents the answer. Wii will break down that wall that separates video game players from everybody else. Wii will put people more in touch with their games ... and each other. But you're probably asking: What does the name mean? "Wii sounds like 'we,' which emphasizes this console is for everyone. Wii can easily be remembered by people around the world, no matter what language they speak. No confusion. No need to abbreviate. Just Wii. "Wii has a distinctive "ii" spelling that symbolizes both the unique controllers and the image of people gathering to play. And Wii, as a name and a console, brings something revolutionary to the world of video games that sets it apart from the crowd. So that's Wii. But now Nintendo needs you. Because, it's really not about you or me. It's about Wii. And together, Wii will change everything.

Isn't it delightfully horrific? Over a dozen barges are being put into service solely to transport the vast quantities of terrible jokes that this naming will bring forth. "I can't wait for E3 when Reggie will show us his Wii!" "My girlfriend thinks I like playing with my Wii more than playing with her!" "If I can't have a Wii right now, I'm just gonna explode!"

Oh, God. Nintendo, you never disappoint.

Update: CNN has an interview with Perrin Kaplan at Nintendo about the name. One of the reasons cited for naming the console now instead of at E3 is to give gamers time to vent, so they'll be used to it by the show and won't be distracted from the games. If you know people are going to need time to vent about your name, shouldn't that indicate that it's a bad choice?

Posted by Bill at 1:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

I know this isn't news and I don't really do reviews here, but this is still a blog which means I get to write whatever the hell I want.

I'm a little behind everyone else on KH2, as it's been out for almost a month now; I was busy toiling away at Oblivion and wouldn't stop until I had wrapped up my current guilds and the main quest. But now that I'm about 20 hours into it, I have to admit a certain amount of disappointment. I was not a huge fan of the first Kingdom Hearts, but it was not entirely without charm. KH2 started well enough -- amusing Final Fantasy cameos, interesting Disney worlds once you got past the five hour prologue -- but now it's really starting to sag. I can attribute this to a few main faults.

1. Maybe I've just gotten too strong somehow, but battles are really getting repetitive. Early on they were almost fun, especially the boss battles if you were good at using reaction commands. But now every fight that isn't a boss is just a matter of hammering on the x button indiscriminately. Early on I at least had to partially pay attention to what I was doing. Now I don't think I'd even need to watch the screen. The last few boss battles have been poor, too (for reference, I just finished my first visit to the Pride Lands), and mostly consist of hammering x with the thrilling addition of sometimes using a Limit, thus hammering triangle and x for a while.

2. So many cutscenes. I've played Xenosaga, so I've seen worse, but they still seem to be worse than the original KH. What's especially annoying are the cutscenes that end and return you to your character so that you can walk two feet to a door and start the next cutscene. I wouldn't mind them so much if it weren't for the fact that..

3. The cutscenes suck. There are a few reasons for this.

a. An issue that became apparent in the first game is still around for the second -- they simply can't use all the high-animation models at once, so they have to pick and choose who will actually lip sync (or try, anyway) and who will stand around doing a canned animation loop while some mouth textures cycle through on their faces. It's distracting and it looks bad. Almost as if to compensate, the animation on the "good" models is overacted most of the time.

b. Re-enacting movies. I've seen the Lion King, thank you, I don't need to sit through it again. I especially don't need to sit through your embarassing condensed version. They try to shove 60 minutes of a movie into 5 minutes of cutscenes, sloppily jumping from key point to key point and stuffing in signature lines without any of the lead-up or proper delivery that made them signature to begin with. Timon and Pumbaa have to say hakuna matata somewhere, who cares if it makes sense. Oh, and be sure to take that Heat of the Night quote from the movie completely out of context too, that's good. Then, to take it to a whole new level of ridiculous, do scenes exactly like the movie except randomly throw Pete into the middle of them.

c. Replacement actors. What makes sitting through these re-enactments even more cringeworthy and even more like a bad middle school play production of a particular film is listening to some poor chump tasked with sounding like Jack Sparrow or Jeffrey Irons. The first KH was notable for how many of the characters were played by their "official" Disney voices (even if it was the official non-movie voice, like Dan Castellaneta doing Genie in the TV series). Here it seems like you run into as many mediocre sound-alikes as you do the real people.

d. Lack of plot development. The final nail in the coffin for these scenes is not only that they're boring, but they serve no purpose. The last several areas I've been to have consisted of Sora showing up to go "hey fellas what's happening in this world" and then leaving after repeating the Cliffs Notes version of that movie's script. Is Sora actually supposed to be doing something other than randomly poking his head into other people's homes? Yeah, Maleficent shows up every once in a while, but she accomplishes exactly Jack and Squat. Somehow in the last few hours, the game has become a season of Sailor Moon, where bad guys show up for two seconds, create a new monster, the heroes immediately defeat it, and the process starts over again in the next episode.

Obviously I've still got a ways to go, and things could pick up. But that still makes for one hell of a lull in the middle of the game. As it stands right now, the only thing the game has going for it is that it looks great, minus the animation problems, with certain areas actually being rather amazing from a technical standpoint. I presume the distant backgrounds are done with a skybox of some sort, but they're incredibly seamless.

I just wish there was something other than the background worth paying attention to.

Posted by Bill at 4:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Pirate Baby's Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006, kind of an ultra-violent Metal Slug inspired side scrolling beat-em-up animation.. thing.

• Silent Hill director Christopher Gans will helming an Onimusha film sometime in the future. Oh... good?
• The Wall Street Journal claims Microsoft is going to buy in-game ad company Massive, Inc.
• The Oklahoma Senate has approved a "games as porn" bill that will undoubtedly be shot down in court six months down the line.
• Sega announces Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz for the Revolution.
• Next Generation has previews of what EA and Eidos will have in store for E3.
• EA settles overtime class action suit.
• What in the God damn is this.
• In additon to the recently announced Lumines 2 for PSP, the PS2 will also get a version of the original game called Lumines Plus.
• PSM claims PS3 will launch in November at $399.

Posted by Bill at 4:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)