gamecube

Nintendo Reveals Wii Pay-For-Online Play, WiiWare Compression

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

In a curiously confidential session, Nintendo Network Administration Group Group Manager Takashi Aoyama spoke at length on the thought process behind the Wii’s online offerings.

Amongst his anecdotes were a story of how WiiConnect24 came out of early dial-up concerns, during planning stages around 2000 for a GameCube network. (Maybe if users could download content overnight, that would alleviate some of the cost and delay — except, wait! This is dialup!)

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

The New Generation – Part Two: Masterminds

  • Reading time:23 mins read

by [name redacted]

Originally published by Next Generation.

Something is happening to game design. It’s been creeping up for a decade, yet only now is it striding into the mainstream, riding on the coattails of new infrastructure, emboldened by the rhetoric of the trendy. A new generation of design has begun to emerge – a generation raised on the language of videogames, eager to use that fluency to describe what previously could not be described.

First, though, it must build up its vocabulary. To build it, this generation looks to the past – to the fundamental ideas that make up the current architecture of videogames – and deconstructs it for its raw theoretical materials, such that it may be recontextualized: rebuilt better, stronger, more elegantly, more deliberately.

In the earlier part of this series, we discussed several games that exemplify this approach; we then tossed around a few more that give it a healthy nod. Some boil down and refocus a well-known design (Pac-Man CE, New Super Mario Bros.); some put a new perspective on genre (Ikaruga, Braid); some just want to break down game design itself (Rez, Dead Rising). In this chapter, we will highlight a few of the key voices guiding the change. Some are more persuasive than others. Some have been been making their point for longer. All are on the cusp of redefining what a videogame can be.

The Wii that Wasn’t

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by [name redacted]

Originally published by Next Generation.

Market analysts call the Wii a return to form after the relative flop of the GameCube. Design analysts call it a potential return to form after the relative rut of the previous fifteen years. Whatever the spin, when people look at Nintendo’s recent misadventures, generally the Gamecube sits right on top, doe-eyed and chirping. Its failure to do more than turn a profit has made its dissection an industry-wide pastime. Everything comes under the microscope, from its dainty size and handle to its purpleness to the storage capacity of its mini-DVDs. The controller, though, has perplexed all from the start.

Ambition and Compulsory Design in Animal Crossing

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by [name redacted]

The thing about portables – and not everybody cottons to this – is that people use them differently from other game systems. You cradle them in your hands, within your personal space. You drag them around with you, pull them out of your pocket like a dime novel, then snap them closed when you step off the bus. Where console and PC games ask you to set aside blocks of your time, portables fill the cracks in your day.

All of these situational dynamics, and the psychology lurking behind them, inform the basic checklist for a portable game.

( Continue reading at Game Career Guide )

Gathering evidence that the Wii is what the GameCube should have been

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The system: small, inobtrusive.

The controller. The GameCube pad was a strange half-measure.
* Its premise: standard controllers are confusing, overly abstract, and have too many buttons, mapped too arbitrarily.
* Its solution: make the buttons more intuitive to find, and more intuitively map actions to them.
* Result: everyone was confused and annoyed.

Original games, conceived for said controller.
* Super Monkey Ball
* Pikmin
* killer7
* Luigi’s Mansion

What else?

Defining the Next Generation

  • Reading time:28 mins read

by [name redacted]

This article was originally intended as a conclusion to NextGen’s 2006 TGS coverage. Then it got held back for two months as an event piece. By the time it saw publication its window had sort of expired, so a significantly edited version went up under the title “What The New Consoles Really Mean”.

So we’re practically there. TGS is well over, the pre-orders have begun; Microsoft’s system has already been out for a year (and is now graced with a few excellent or important games). The generation is right on the verge of turning, and all those expensive electronics you’ve been monitoring for the last few years, half dreading out of thriftiness and secret knowledge that there won’t be anything good on them for a year anyway, will become the new status quo. Immediately the needle will jump and point at a new horizon, set around 2011, and everyone will start twiddling his thumbs again. By the time the drama and dreams resume, I’ll be in my early thirties, another American president will have served nearly a full term – and for the first time in my life I really can’t predict what videogames will be like.

A Cosmetic Conundrum

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by [name redacted]

Part seven of my ongoing culture column; originally published by Next Generation, under a different title; something like “The Problem With Game Consoles”. People seemed to take this article more seriously than I intended.

In May I finally saw a PlayStation 3 up-close – and dear lord. Whereas the Xbox 360 at least puts on a pretense of tenability, sucking in its gut like a real man, Sony’s system sets a new standard for girth. Maybe it was the rotating display, walled behind likely-bulletproof Plexiglass – yet I swear it must be the most outrageously massive game console that’s ever been designed. And that’s on top of looking like a space ship based on the template of a waffle iron. Whereas the Sega Genesis looked like you could top-load a CD into it, the PS3 looks like you could top-load a side of bacon.

This Week’s Releases (April 10-14, 2006)

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by [name redacted]

Week thirty-five of my ongoing, irreverent news column; originally posted at Next Generation. Two of the sections are expanded into full articles, posted later in the week.

Game of the Week:

Tomb Raider: Legend
Crystal Dynamics/Eidos Interactive
Xbox/Xbox 360/PlayStation 2/PC
Tuesday

Something that people keep bringing up, yet probably don’t bring up enough, is that the first Tomb Raider was a damned good game. And what it seems Crystal Dynamics has done is go back to the framework of Tomb Raider 2 and to break it down, analytically. What they chose to do is bring the focus back to exploration – in part by introducing some new gizmos, in part by making the environments more fun to navigate. Reviews nitpick a few fair issues; still, the overall response seems to be a huge sigh of relief. Maybe it’s not the best game in the world, or all it ever could be. Still – it’s not terrible! The theme that keeps coming up is one of nostalgia – that, for the first time, someone has managed to recapture what makes Tomb Raider interesting. And that sentiment is itself interesting.

Buttoning Down

  • Reading time:14 mins read

by [name redacted]

Originally published by Next Generation, then later BusinessWeek, under the title “Revolution Pressing the Right Buttons“.

There’s only so much you can do with a button. You press it, something happens. You don’t press it, something doesn’t. If it’s an analog button, and you press it even harder, maybe that thing will happen even more: maybe you’ll run faster, or you’ll punch with more vigilance. Maybe if you hold down a second button when you press that first one, something subtly different will happen. Instead of lashing out with a whip, say, the little man on the TV screen will throw a boomerang. Either way, he still attacks; the second button just changes how he does it. Those are more or less our options: do something, do more of something, or do a different kind of something. It’s all very straightforward. So too, then, is the history of game controllers.

Fingers

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Despite the propoganda you may have read, the Xbox 360 has one of the least comfortable controllers I’ve held. It tries to be ergonomic, and is molded to hands that aren’t my shape. My knuckles bang. My fingers are cramped. Of course, my hands are irregular. And I hate every ergonomic input device I’ve ever encountered. This is like the split keyboard of game controllers.

For those unfamiliar with the changes, the 360 controller is basically a remolded Controller-S with the “white” and “black” buttons moved to the shoulders and turned into triggers, with a big “ON” button in the center, and (usually) without a cord. I’m not even going to get into the cordless issue, as far as typical controllers go; this is just about the corded version.

Now. Controllers are probably one of the major things holding back videogames. I hate them, as a whole. You’d think, with controllers being the most direct interface people have with videogames, people would put more thought into their design. There aren’t any good standard controllers right now; the GameCube one is clever, though it has too many compromises to do what it really wants to. And I can’t even think of many positive examples, historically. The only “good” ones I come up with are simply practical and competent, like the Genesis six-button and the (Japanese/version 2) Saturn pad. The S more or less falls into this category. Unambitious, but solid and distinctive.

As for the next generation, well. The Revolution should be interesting, at least. Other than that, ick. You can trace the mentality behind the systems by looking at their interfaces. Sony’s desperately trying to make the PS3 seem different, but not too different, by making the controller exactly the same except shaped like a batarang.

Similarly, Microsoft has decided to take the Controller-S and mangle it without any particular direction. The “on” button is… sort of interesting, I guess. It feels misplaced on a traditional controller. The thing that distinctly bothers me, though, if it’s possible to get over the ergonomic issues, is the button arrangement.

The white and black buttons (and indeed the start and select ones) get a lot of flack for their uncommon placement on the S. People aren’t really thinking this through, though. They do work, and work well, because they’re used for uncommon functions and because they’re placed in an out-of-the-way corner of the pad. If you need to access them, they’re at hand; yet otherwise there’s no confusing them.*

Anyway. Shoulder buttons are primarily useful for state changes; things you need to hold down while you access the face buttons. Four shoulder buttons is overkill in this regard. I see no purpose for them, especially since I have yet to encounter a person who is not constantly pressing the wrong shoulder button in PS2 games. (Notice this! Did a bell not ring?) They’re hidden, too similar, and secondary in your attention, and therefore easy to confuse.

Iif those extra two triggers are used at all, they’re usually for toggle functions or other things more suited to an out-of-the-way face button, like “select” in NES and SNES games. So, you know. In most cases, that’s the wrong place for them. Leave the shoulders uncluttered for things that actually need the placement.

Since removing the face buttons unbalances the start and select (OOPS, I MEAN “BACK”) buttons, they’ve been moved to the center where, whoops, suddenly they’re ripe to be hit accidentally again — never a problem on the S. Yes indeed.

The other thing that bothers me is, the original Xbox isn’t that bad a system. Yes, it’s big, not too imaginative, and it’s too firmly positioned as the tits-and-beer console. It’s really well-made, though, and there are some good ideas in its device and execution. And for a while, Microsoft was doing a good job patching the holes (fixing the controller, starting up Live). There was real potential for the 360 to be its own beast, and use past success as a foundation for something neat, as far as mainstream consoles go. Something with personality, and with balls (to go with its testosterone).

What we’re ending up with is a timid, sterile system designed by focus testing. And the pad’s an example of that.

I don’t think I need to explain how much Sony’s controllers now and have always sucked. And yet the PlayStation line is one of the biggest commercial successes in the history of videogames — so clearly Sony must know what’s going on! They’ve got four shoulder buttons on their pad, so let’s put four on ours! We didn’t really know what to do with those face buttons anyway.

Again, nobody’s thinking. The only reason there are four triggers on the PS2 pad is because the PS2 pad is the same as the Dual Shock, which is the same as the original PlayStation pad except with two analog sticks. Why two sticks? Because the N64 only had one. Likewse, the original PlayStation pad is the same as the SNES pad except with four shoulder buttons. Why four? Because the SNES pad only had two!

And now Microsoft has crawled up and inherited this idiocy, just showing how desperate they are. They’ve lost whatever vision they had; all of the creative people behind the original Xbox are long gone, leaving Microsoft with a body and no brain. All they have to go on now is high-definition displays and removable faceplates. Just — fuck you, you know. If you’re going to waste our time, then go away. Leave videogames to the professionals.

*: I understand some people hit the one on the left accidentally. This puzzles me a little. Perhaps again it’s just my hand shape; it’s never been an issue for me. However, even should my thumb somehow stray, that they are a different size, feel different, and are sunken into the pad should send me a signal. Fundamentally, I just see no reason why my thum should stray down and to the right from its “home position” on the bottom point of the diamond.

I should have gotten the horizontal stand.

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So, I now have a PS2. However, it chooses to patronize me. When I put in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: Extended Edition: Disc One, the system complains. It asks me if I really want to play such an inappropriate movie. I insist that I do. It asks me for a password. I enter zerozerozerozero. The movie plays. I go into the options, to change the parental settings… and it doesn’t allow me access.

I shall have to do research here.

Shinobi is rather entertaining, so far. I don’t know what people are complaining about, as far as difficulty. I kept falling to my death on one section, although that was due mostly to my own stupidity. I do know that the dub could… use some work. I wonder how the original acting is. Hotsuma’s inherent envelope of cool stoicism is shattered somewhat whenever he opens his mouth and a high-pitched, bored American voice burbles out.

The PS2 memory card browser utility is interesting. I like how it applies old PSOne saves to 3D tiles. I like even more the way PS2 games can use polygonal models for their icons. Lament of Innocence has a little, animated Leon. Standing next to him is a slightly-chibi K’, from The King of Fighters 2000. Next to him is a blow-up of his fist, from KoF2001. All different sizes and shapes. Eccentric!

I also got a second controller for my Gamecube — an orange one, to replace the orange one on the old Gamecube that my old roommate from college, Matt, used to have. It will be of aid in future Monkey exploits. Now that, you know, I have people to play with.

What a novelty.

It seems the one E3 feature I have yet finished (I assure, more soon pend) has gotten slashdotted. Although this is common for some other writers, it is a first for me. So. One more item on the checklist.

I received two emails in a row, in response to the article. The first, from the person who informed me of the slashdot link, is titled “Contrats on KOF:MI article being slashdotted!”. This is a good title, to help me sort out the message from all of the others with titles like “tuft blustery” and “all i want is.. dumbbell abdicate” and “Generic Phentermine is just as good!” Thing is, the message just after it is titled “Congratz 2 a real player”. That one was also in response to the article, although from… someone else.

It is time to eat burritos.

I think tonight I will probably finish the next article. It’s just. I take a while to do things.

Who shot who in the Embarcadero in August 1879?

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So. I have my Gamecube and my Dreamcast back again. I can comment a bit on my three new Gamecube games.

I do not yet quite understand P.N.03 — although I think I see what it is trying to do. If I can get into the right mindset, and respond in the way that the game seems to be hinting I should respond, the game might be rather enjoyable. It is not, yet. We shall see.

I enjoy Pikmin. Or. I enjoyed it. I am not sure that I do anymore. I have reached a level where it seems that none of the remaining challenges can be passed through anything other than force; pushing through with as many pikmin as possible, to overwhelm and, as the old Roman kids say, conquer. It’s getting too clever. The game has a great premise. It’s just. Huh. I don’t know if I want to play a lot further. Given the time limit, I am unsure that I will be able to complete the game this time through anyway. It seems clear that the whole idea is that I am supposed to play through the game multiple times, before I am proficient enough to complete it. At first, I thought this might even be something I could want to do. I am unsure now. We shall see.

Super Monkey Ball is pretty much what I expected. There is not much to say here, except that I sincerely doubt I will ever pass level fifteen in Advanced mode. It is too much of a balancing act, and I do not have the reflexes. Heck, just the wobbling brings back uncomfortable flashbacks to a series of nightmares I have had through my whole life, where I am hanging onto control of a situation by the edge of a proverbial toenail, trying my best not to fall (in whatever manner) — yet never quite succeeding. Instead, I am trapped on the edge, nearly in tears, unable to either let go or find safe ground. Just the mechanics of the level make me shudder.

After the first two sections, I had no problems with Metal Gear Solid. I barely passed the second area — almost no health, guards chasing me. Since then, roses. No setbacks. I got past Psycho Mantis on one go, then let it rest for a while. I’ll get back to it in a bit. Odd thing is, Vera came over the other day, after having suggested she teach me how to play. She threw the game in, and began to run around. She had the exact same problems I did.

I have a map, now. Jesus, San Francisco is big. I had no idea. I seem to be right in the center of the portion of town that I associate with the area. It also seems to be where Vertigo more or less took place. I guess this must be the old part. Looking at the map, my guess is that town used to extend down to Market Street and West to… oh, I don’t know. Somewhere before the Western Addition, anyway. Let’s say Russian Hill. Somewhere around Van Ness. Then I guess that all of these other big places — Haight-Ashbury, Twin Peaks, and whatfor — used to be their own little island communities, and that the city just sprawled and filled in all of the cracks.

Now I have no need to be afraid to walk more than a few blocks outside the door. Heck, I even know how to find Coit Tower! I think that speaks for itself.

…

All this writing puts me in the mood to gnaw on living flesh.

Yet another benefit of living in the city.

Eek? Oh.

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Today, between not killing myself on a bicycle and not killing myself by running face-first into a tree branch, I went to a used game shop. There, I found… games. I saw a loose cartridge of Dynamite Headdy, and one of Rocket Knight Adventures. I passed both over, as I do not accept Genesis games without cases if I can help it. I saw a copy of The Adventure of Link, gold cart, mostly unblemished, for five dollars. It rattled.

I walked out of the store (collectively, over two vacancies over five minutes) with Tengen’s version of Sega’s Alien Syndrome, for the NES; Acclaim’s version of Toaplan’s Tiger Heli, for the NES; Capcom’s version of Capcom’s P.N.03, for the Gamecube; and ICO.

I… think the above cost about fourteen dollars, in total.

My only memory card is currently elsewhere. After plummeting twice off one or another high precipice, I have decided not to play too much of ICO until I have something to fall back on. Nevertheless, I will comment on what I have seen thus far:

Damn.

…

I need juice.

Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg (GameCube/SEGA)

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by [name redacted]

Billy Hatcher is not a bad game, on a mathematical scale; merely unremarkable. Even its bugs and annoyances are, in effect, boring. If the game were more novel and ambitious in its problems, then it would give me some grotesque passion to carry forward. As it is, the game gives me nothing to work with.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Everyone does (what Nintendon’t!)

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What Nintendo really needs to do is pay more attention to third parties. The current impression in the development community — and it’s been this case almost since the beginning — is that it’s kind of a waste of money and effort to pay too much attention to Nintendo’s box. Sony has the marketshare, so put all of your money on Sony and you don’t have to think; you don’t have to worry.

Nintendo needs to conduct some psychology experiments. Figure out what it’ll take to change that impression — to give third-part developers confidence that they’ll be on at least an equal level with Sony, that there aren’t any demographic problems, that Nintendo intends to listen to and to help developers even more than Sony will. Lower licencing fees. Get a few key secret blockbuster third-party games contracted for launch — and get all of this ready before they unveil their next system.

Then they have to go to the public — convince them that Sony is the old guard, and is no longer hip. Go a bit more in-your-face about Sony’s weak spots (the fact that their systems break if you breathe on them, for instance). Make people think “hey, they’re right. Sony’s become kind of boring now. Maybe I’ve been missing something over here…” Position themselves as the mythological kings of old, revitalized, reborn, and ready to reclaim their throne from those who have been keeping it warm for the last decade or so.

This is what has to be done, in a nutshell. People won’t care enough otherwise, to make a huge difference over the performance of the previous two consoles. If Nintendo doesn’t have the constant and substantial software support, and if they’re still seen as kind of dismissable and fuddy-duddy by the mainstream, they’ll not be in a good position.

It’s all about relations; public and private. Nintendo doesn’t like to talk to people. They need to change that, fast. Make everyone really, REALLY believe that they’ve got a winner this time — as Sega did during the first few months of the Dreamcast. Only more so. And keep that momentum. Don’t let go. They need to pace themselves, and plan ahead to always have a next card to slap into place. Make sure the public and press never come too far off the launch high. Don’t just make it, then lean back and expect things will work out (as Nintendo has been wont to do). That people and games will come. It won’t. They won’t.

Another thing that’s important is to beware of potential sabotage from Sony. Try to anticipate what weird tricks they might pull, and build in some safeguards. Always have something better stashed away, to counter a weird claim from the other side.

So I guess there are two themes. Communication and planning.

If they can accomplish all of the above, Nintendo will have a winner. In theory they have got more weight and substance as a videogame company; if they’re just smart enough to bend and use that fact in a comparative, qualitative sense — and if they’ve enough developers on their side to back it up with — people will be attracted.