goichi suda

The Wii that Wasn’t

  • Reading time:6 mins read

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.

Samurai Champloo: Sidetracked

  • Reading time:3 mins read

by [name redacted]

Expanded from my weekly column at Next Generation, and posted on the game’s release date.

Samurai Champloo is the latest hit by Cowboy Bebop creator Shinichiro Watanabe, who might well be described as the Sergio Leone or Quentin Tarantino of the anime world. killer7 developer Grasshopper Manufacture has what might be described as strong aspirations to be the Quentin Tarantino of the videogame world. So this is a sort of clever pairing.

A Japanese trend I’ve begun to notice lately is the subcontracting of lucrative licenses to the most prestigious niche or up-and-coming developers – the likes of Treasure, Dimps, Cavia, Yuke’s. These are damned good developers, each with specific skill sets, specific views toward what makes a good videogame, and a substantial cult following. The trend is not unlike Hollywood’s recent predilection toward matching big blockbusters to the Cannes elite, resulting in movies like Batman Begins and the Spider-Man series.

Over here, any parallels are more the exception than the rule. The closest you really get are the likes of Neversoft, which sprang out of nowhere with Tony Hawk and – despite its success – has managed to keep relatively small and self-contained, seemingly more interested in exploring its ideas about design than in growth for the sake of growth. Treyarch is another good example. Maybe some past incarnations of Shiny or Raven or BioWare would count, though in their current forms they’re a little too… important.

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

  • Reading time:11 mins read

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.