Nintendo Direct 12/11/2015 (EU): Not-so-live Impressions

It's very late. I'm very tired. It can only be Nintendo Direct Not-so-live Impressions time.

• 00:00 -  Jeez, that YouTube description. Freaking spoilers, Nintendo. :D
• 00:11 - Yay! Shibata!
• 00:28 - Aww. Rest in peace, Mr. Iwata.

• 00:42 - Well bam, there it is: Twilight Princess HD!
• 01:02 - Oh boy. I'm so ready for this. I might have been one of the only ones, but I freaking loved Twilight Princess. I've been hankering to replay it for years, but man, that Wii version looks like jaggedy garbage on a HDTV.

• 01:05 - Hmm. This is maybe not the full visual upgrade I was expecting. :D Looks like a more basic uprezzing. Even so, this is a big step up from that PAL Wii version smeared all over a big TV.
• 01:47 - What's with the music here. Twilight Princess had awesome trailer music and a rad trailer to go with it back in the day.
• 02:17 - Uh Oh! Outsourced remake. Between that and the lack of graphical pizazz here, I'll bet most of GAF is shitting all over this right now. :D

• 02:25 - Oh yes! Oh fuck yes! I will buy the crap out of that amiibo! (Failing to see how this makes it more than "a prettier remake of the same game", but carry on, Shibata.)

• 02:32- Compatible with the existing Zelda amiibos too. Eww, pee column Link. Come on, Nintendo, how about a proper adult Link amiibo?
• 02:39 - Oh. I was kind of expecting this to be releasing imminently. I still have hope that this isn't taking the place of the new Zelda on the Wii U though, but with this releasing next year (almost certainly), we're getting into more dangerous territory on that one, I fear.
• 02:47 - Okay, March 4th. Yeah, that early in the year, I think it's safe to say that they're not positioning this as a sort of consolation prize for Wii U owners. Hype train re-engage!

• 02:56 - Oh snap, it's a retail release. I was thinking digital with the amiibo released to coincide with it, but hell yeah, I'll take this, especially with the soundtrack included (which, surprise, I really loved).

• 03:28 - Oh crap! A wild Zelda Wii U appears! Really wasn't expecting a confirmation of that here, but I'll also take that. Looks more cel shaded than the last time they showed it, I think. And whoa, does Link have brown hair here?

 

• 03:29 - No, it's blonde. He's wearing a hood, not unlike the one Zelda wears in Twilight princess when you first see her actually. Some connection maybe. Time to revise your timelines, everyone.
• 03:44 - Oh? Some stop and swap action with the Wolf Link amiibo. The Twilight Princess connection plot thickens... Or not...
• 04:02 - I'm trying to think what Zelda games they haven't released on the Wii U VC yet. Majora's Mask and.. Minish Cap, maybe?

• 04:07 - Of course! How could I have forgotten the two DS games. Such a great fit for the Wii U. You won't even be able to play these on your TV! :D (2D sprite-based games with minimal touch screen interaction: those are the types of DS games that'll look good and work well on the Wii U, Nintendo. Not these.)
• 04:41 - It's a Zelda-heavy direct. Triforce Heroes now. Yep, still don't even have a 3DS. :D I did just pick up Four Swords Adventures for the Gamecube though, and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles actually. Now all I need is a house and three hookers to play them with.

• 06:03 - Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam. *Sigh" And all of a sudden the realisation that there's no true Paper Mario sequel on the way becomes a crushing disappointment once again. I'm sure this'll be fine though.

• 07:30 - For a second there I thought they were adding Paper Mario's badges to Mario & Luigi in the form of cards. Nope, these are just glorified items. Wouldn't want to add any interesting wrinkles to that super fun M&L battle system, would we? :D #SoSalty
• 07:47 - Okay, a few of these amiibo cards have badge-like functions, but again, most of these just work as single use, stat-altering items, as far as I can see. 

• 09:28 - You know, the papercraft battles might be the most interesting thing here to me. Well, aside from the story, which I'm sure will be fun.
• 10:22 - Updates for Wii U games in 2015 now. Slopes! Slopes! Slopes!

• 10:36 - Man, I feel terrible for not having played Splatoon yet. Between Yoshi's Wolly World, watching every bit of Glastonbury coverage (it was fun while it lasted, TunnelBear), Mario Maker and a bunch of other things, it just slipped off my radar. Of course I still bought it though. (I mean, it did come with an amiibo. Come on.).
• 11:59 - Cool that they're still supporting it with new content though.. I wonder if this is where they start charging however.

• 13:22 - Yes. Give me my slopes. Damn it!
• 13:34 - Just the stuff in the recent update so far. Really happy with checkpoints. Everything else, I could take or leave.

• 14:12 - Ooh yes! Finally some searching options, and tags by the look of things.
• 14:23 - Seriously, Nintendo!? A web site, not something in-game? This is going to used for searching by virtually no one, meanwhile loading up levels within the game alone will be as much of a crapshoot as ever. Plus, Mario Maker Hub is already doing exactly this anyway.
• 14:46 - Okay, there is a little integration with the game. Marking a course as a favorite on the site and having it waiting in the game will make sharing levels a little easier at least. Providing people use this site, that is.
• 15:04 - December for the Mario Maker site. Well, can't hurt to throw my levels up there as well, I guess.
• 15:08 - Queue absolutely none of my levels :D (Giants Rule, people: AA63-0000-0092-A8BD Catch it!)
• 15:21 - I'm somehow not expecting any of Dan Ryckert's atrocities to show up here either. :D

• 16:02 - I hate all these people. :D Also, "Nigge"? Really?

• 16:56 - "Which level will you play first?" None of the above, Nintendo. None of the above. #SoSalty

• 17:18 - Xenoblade Chronicles X, and I think I'm having a Chystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers flashback.

• 17:48 - This still looks great, but, and maybe I'm being a terrible person here, I still haven't played the Wii original, so I'll be skipping out on this one for now come December.

• 18:33 - Speaking of skipping stuff, I hear Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash might be one to miss. Definitely won't be bothering with Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival either. That Tom Nook amiibo though? Maybe.
• 18:43 - Wait!? What the hell was that Mario Tennis song? ♫Tennis. This is Tennis, with Super Mario... something♫. What? I... What!?
• 19:10 - Ooh, a new guy.

• 19:27 - Fast Racing Neo. Graphics look quite nice. Played the demo of the first one on the Wii though and found it a bit unwieldy.
• 19:37 - With the color switching and extreme speed here, I'm getting shades of Ikaruga and Burnout here. Hm, might give this a look if there's a demo on offer.
• 21:07 - Yeah, that looks quite sharp. Man, imagine what a Wii U F-Zero could look like. *sigh*

 *Sorry guys, forgot to turn off YouTube annotations for majority of the following pics. That's why you can see an info link... thing in the top right corner of  most of them. D'oh!

• 21:14 - Typoman: a puzzle-platformer with a unique art style, finally. :D (Actually, the art styles I usually like, but you couldn't get me excited about another indie puzzle-platformer at this point.)
• 21:43 - Yeah, this one's a pass for me, I think.

• 21:59 - Steamworld Heist for 3DS. I should probably play Steamworld Dig at some point, right? 
• 22:17 - Hats! Do people still care about TF2 hats? I'd have to imagine that Dota 2 and those dumb steam cards have eaten into that market a fair bit.
• 22:31 - This seems like a neat game (that I'll probably never play either). :D

• 23:07 - So this is Nintendo Badge Arcade. Decorate your 3DS home menu. No thanks, I'm good.
• 23:15 - Nintendo finally getting into that lucrative desktop theme market.
• 23:27 - Oof, charging for random items in games is always gross.
• 23:57 - Pokémon Picross. I have no thoughts on this whatsoever. :D I should probably play the DS picross games, just not on Wii U.
• 24:00 - Another "free to start" game. DeNaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Another Bloody Reblog: October 2015 Pick-ups and More

Okay, I’ll admit it: it's been me all along! :D

No, not much in the way of rarities here, I’m afraid. This lot's mostly made up of a bundle of Mario-related games I bought a few weeks ago, mostly games I already had in some form, but never on the NES/Famicom. It’s been kind of neat to go back and play Mario 2 and 3 without the Mario All-Stars enhanced graphics for the first time though, and it’s proved to be a great refresher course for Super Mario Maker, even though I didn’t quite plan things out that way.

Also picked up a few Konami classics (the two Wai Wai World games and the Famicom version of Kid Dracula, which is super fun), plus Downtown Special: Kunio-kun no Jidaigeki da yo Zen'in Shūgō, a follow-up to River City Ransom set in old-timey Japan (JiliK: history expert). I was really temped to grab that one up on the Japanese Virtual Console, but there’s far too much text to try and play it in Japanese. Thankfully though there’s a translation patch out there though and with the cart, I can put it to use on my Retron 5.



Picked up a few Super Famicom and Gameboy games too. Puzzle platformers aren’t usually my thing, but I spotted a copy of Mario & Wario going for a few dollars and I couldn’t resist. Mystic Ark was much the same. All I know is that it’s an Enix RPG that involves collecting people that have been turned into dolls, or something. Eh, it was two bucks and there’s a (really well-done so far) translation patch. It’s got to be worth a shot at least.

The other two SFC games I’ve played a fair bit of already. Magical Taruruuto-kun (top left) looked like a pretty neat cartoony platformer in videos. From what I’ve played of it though, the platforming seems super basic, but the game’s also quite frustrating because if you take a single hit, you not only die, you go back to the freaking map screen. Heisei Inu Monogatari Bow: Pop'n Smash (centre left), I’m enjoying a lot though. It’s a wacky tennis meets soccer game, more or less, where both you and the computer have goals sealed off by blocks. The basic aim of the game is to smash the blocks by lobbing a ball off them with your tennis racket and getting it into your opponent’s goal. There’s definitely a bit of jankiness to it, but it’s been pretty fun, frantic action so far.

On the Gameboy side, I also got the portable version of Kid Dracula, as well as Metroid II and Donkey Kong Land, which I've actually been enjoying quite a bit. It’s impressive how much of the SNES game they managed to cram in there, especially in the animation department. Granted it looks kind of like garbage, and it can be tricky to play with the big character and limited view of your surroundings, but it features all-original levels and the Retron’s save states take a lot of the frustration out. I’d say it’s worth a look if you can get it for cheap and preferably Retron/Retrode it up.



Some new additions to the family. That brings me up to 13 amiibos now. I think. :D Definitely still a few out now that I’m thinking of getting. I’d be surprised if I make it to the end of the year without picking up Sonic and Fox, and maybe the Duck Hunt dog. Overall though, I find most of the amiibos they've released so far either fall into the categories of cool-looking figures for characters I have no attachment to (Palutena, Little Mac, Shulk, ROB) or characters I like with figures that I don’t (Gannondorf, Wario, Link). Chibo Robo will be mine though. Oh yes, he will be mine.



Club Nintendooo!!! Having blown most of my remaining points on the Link Between Worlds soundtrack a few months prior, I was just short of getting the MK8 soundtrack when it appeared, of course, at the eleventh hour before the service shut down, leading me to spend..... too much on eBay for a copy once they started going out to other members. But boy, that soundtrack’s awesome.
That’s not the only Club Nintendo soundtrack I picked up in the last while though. I managed to snag the Ocarina of Time, Animal Crossing and Kid Icarus: Uprising all for about €20 each thanks to a saved search I set up. Not bad. Actually bad though: Pokémon 2BA Master. Thanks, Laser Time.



If the Mario Kart 8 soundtrack hit at the eleventh hour of Club Nintendo, the Endings and Credits CD hit at the twelfth. This time though I wasn’t about to spend *cough* *cough* *cough* euros on the damn thing. Instead, I bought a few unused Club Nintendo codes on eBay, enabling me to clear out the last of my stars in style. (Though it really bums me out to think of how many more I'd still have to play around with if I hadn’t spent all my Gamecube era ones on all those terrible wallpapers. Damn it, Nintendo.)

Also grabbed the Mario 30th Anniversary double CD, and, let’s address the elephant in the room: I bought the Data Discs Shenmue soundtrack...



...which is pretty rad, but it’s the thing that finally got me to cave and get a turntable, and I held out for so long. Vinyl is just something I have no attachment to or nostalgia for. Now I have this bulky-ass player and (already) a stack of records that I don’t know where to put, and I'm just ripping everything to MP3 anyway. Couldn’t we have skipped the middle step and you could have just given me downloadable versions of hard to find/non-existent video game soundtracks, Data Discs/iam8bit?



But no, you had to get me out there buying vinyl-exclusive early Now compilations didn’t you, because hey, I might as well. I’m already swimming in a sea of the stuff!

Another Bloody Reblog: Pickups 26/05/14

(Originally posted on Tumblr)



Holy crap! As far as retro collecting goes, I am in deep at the moment. Really need to put together a proper blog post when I get the chance, but for now let’s just take a look at today’s haul.



WWF Wrestlemania 2000 (N64, PAL) £3

Kirby Air Ride (Gamecube, US) £5

So Kirby’s basically the reason for this entire package. :D After searching fruitlessly for months for a cheap US copy I could run on my Wii in 480p, I came across this disc only one on Retrogames, a site I used to buy SNES and N64 stuff back in the early 00’s. Having already saved a good €20-25 on that, I decided I’d have a poke around their Bargain Basement section. It was all downhill from there. :D

Wrestling’s never something I’ve been into, but the glowing reviews for the N64’s WWF games in particular always had me curious to try one of that era’s games out. Eh, can’t go too far wrong for £3 anyway.



Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon (N64, PAL) £4

Another N64 game I’ve been eager to get my hands for ages. Haven’t had too much experience of the Goemon games, but I’ve heard very good things about this one and it looks completely bonkers, which is always a plus. £4 is a great price for this too. I’ve never seen it go for less than €16-17 on eBay. Mind you, this was listed as having a non-working battery. Pretty sure this doesn’t have even have on-cartridge saves, so I’m hoping that just a mistake.



Excite Bike 64 (N64, PAL) £7

Wave Race: Blue Storm (Gamecube, JPN) £5

And the last N64 game, Excitebike 64. Don’t really know too about this one to be honest. I guess it kind of passed me by in the midst of my fervent Gamecube anticipation back in the day. It’s always been on my list to check out though and £7 wasn’t a bad price at all.



(Though the contacts in all of them could do with a clean.)

In another case of chasing that 480p dream, I also picked up a Japanese copy of Wace Race to replace a PAL copy I bought back in January only to immediately regret it once I saw it in action. Yeah, 480i isn’t a huge step down in image quality, but having played a bunch of NTSC games through component on my Wii now, it’s hard to go back.



Ninja Gaiden (Xbox, PAL) £3

Finally, a copy Ninja Gaiden for the OG Xbox. Not really sure I’m up to the challenge of this, but for £3, I couldn’t resist. I hear the NES games are unlockable here too, but I imagine there’s a pretty good chance I’ll never even get that far. :D

Animal Crossing: Back to Wiiville

Over the summer I spent a fair amount of time messing around with Dolphin, even throwing Animal Crossing to see if the NES games would work in it. They didn't, but seeing as I had my old town loaded up I thought I'd take a wander around and take a few screen-caps anyway.



Jealous? So yeah, as you can probably gather from the statue, I played a lot of Animal Crossing on the GameCube. In my defence, I really was at a pretty loose end gaming-wise at the time.

I picked up a copy on eBay in 2006; I think in early November. It was only meant to be a bit of a diversion before I strolled into my local gaming establishment to pick up a Wii the following month (hence the town name). Of course, there were no Wiis to be had, anywhere. So until I decided "fuck the Wii for now, I'll get a PS2" in the Summer, I had to make do with this, a few half-finished games ,and a couple of eBay purchases to tide me over. It was a pretty rough time; I played freaking Doshin the Giant for goodness sake. To completion! :D



To the right of my glorious monument, it's the Able Sisters, still sporting a bunch of my patterns on their wares. Got to say I never got tired of seeing my fellow villagers in that blood spatter shirt.



Looks like I've got mail. Not sure who was the worse spammer: the Happy Room Academy or my in-game mom. Also, a random billboard with my shoddy Tetris pattern on it.



Tah-dah! So, having started this town just before Christmas, I was just in time to grab a bunch of stuff from Tom Nook, allowing me to live out my secret fantasy of having Christmas decorations up all year round, as well as a few bits of snowman and Jingle furniture.



Mmmm, nice!



I do have a few bits of ranch furniture too though, which I thought worked well with the festive theme, even if those bastards at the HRA didn't agree.



But down in the basement is where all the really cool stuff is. Like cockroaches. Also down here are a collection of the shirts I wore while playing through the game. Ugh, how pathetic is that?. Probably not as bad as saving the letters you get from your in-game mom in the post office.

Which I also did, for quite a while.



There's some stuff down here too from when I popped the game in a few times in late 2007 to check out the events I'd missed the previous year, like my birthday and Thanksgiving.



Over here a few tiles from the model Animal Crossing town. I couldn't bring myself to throw them out, but equally I couldn't be bothered to complete the set. Oh, and I think that's a fishing trophy from the tournament in June. I think some time travel was required for that after I missed it the first time around. That's something I did a lot, either to go back to stuff I missed, or to play through several in-game days at once. Like I said: loose end. :D



In the corner: a couple of lockers storing even more of my virtual junk. Pretty sure they're mostly full of wallpapers and carpets, which I almost never changed so I don't know why I was hoarding so many of them down here.



And finally, the only reason for me to come back to Animal Crossing these days: my game room. Man, those NES titles were such a great addition to the game, and the possibility of acquiring more was certainty the chief reason I played as much of this as I did. Well, at least until found about universal codes. Never going to happen again though. (Thanks, Obama.)

Clearoutageddon Part Five: Video Games! (and More)

As someone who keeps banging on their big gaming backlog, it's fair to say there's a good chunk of my gaming collection I could probably do with getting rid of. I'm not quite there yet (I'm still labouring under the (mistaken) belief that I'll get around to playing everything some day), but there were certainly a few games in there that even I had to admit I'd never touch again:



So, these two, I picked up in late 2006, in an attempt to squeeze some last-minute fun out of the Gamecube. Hitman 2 seemed pretty intriguing. Not being the greatest at stealth games though, I never got more than a few missions into the game before I'd put it aside and later end up deleting it's (huge) save file to make room for something else. Having decided to give the game another go on PC, there was no need to keep this version around anymore.

Having been THE football franchise to get on N64, and having sunk an immeasurable amount of time into ISS 98, I was cautiously optimistic about ISS 2 despite the middling reviews. Within minutes of putting it in, I knew the critics were right. It felt janky, the most glaring problem of all being that a player would freeze for a few seconds after receiving a pass. Something I can't fathom making it past testing,which pretty much rendered the game unplayable.



So first off, this is the Australian version of F-1 World Grand Prix. You're guess as to how it ended up in a crappy Kerry toy shop is as good as mine. I got this for Christmas 1999 after being wowed by the visuals on TV. Turns out I don't like Formula 1 games, or at least I didn't have the patience to get good enough at this one to find out one way or the other.



While we're on the subject of me having no patience, these are all games I almost immediately gave up on in the face of their complexity and/or difficulty. In my defence, I bought the lot of them with gift vouchers. Well, apart from NFS, which I sort-of inherited from my brother after he forgot about it. And I did give the two racing games a second crack before I sold them. Still couldn't get anywhere though; as far as racing games go, if there aren't karts, burnouts or ridges involved, I'm in trouble.



This is one of several fighters I picked up before I finally realised the genre just isn't for me. Apart from a select few older games anyway. I'm a bit gutted I sold this for a pittance though, minutes before I noticed another offer for €10; Street Fighter Alpha II - apparently rarer than I thought.



If I could have gone back and given this to a fourteen year old me, I have a feeling it'd be up there with my favourite N64 games. Back in 2006 though, I no longer had the patience or lack of other distractions to get past Body Harvest's clunky gameplay and lack of checkpoints.



I'm kind of ashamed to admit to it, but I only learned to use a keyboard and mouse for shooters in 2008 when I started playing through No One Lives Forever on PC - the PS2 version I only avoided because of how busted it apparently was. Only a couple of weeks earlier, still WASDphobic, I picked up this PS2 copy of Deus Ex - a game I didn't have the means to play back in the day, but that I'd always been interested in checking out. Several years later, of course I still hadn't played it, but if I ever do, it wasn't going to be this version and frankly, I needed the shelf space, so off it went.



But it wasn't without company. I sold it as part of a (depressingly) cheap bundle of other PS2 stuff I didn't want any more on a classifieds site. Just like Deus Ex, I'd recently upgraded my (unplayed) copy of Snake Eater to a superior version in the form of the MGS HD collection. PES 3 and Viewtiful Joe, on the other hand, I'd given a shot but I just couldn't get into. And Fantavision, well that's actually exactly the same version I'd tried to give away as a broken disk earlier in my clear out campaign. I'd since replaced it, but when I loaded up this disk again to make absolutely sure it was busted, it worked; perfectly. I'm not sure what changed exactly, but now finding myself with two copies, I bundled the resurrected version in with this lot.



And finally (sort of): my GameStop anti-haul. So, three of these I ended up with duplicates of after they disappeared into some sort of courier-based time crack, only to emerge again several months later. At which point, I'd bought them again elsewhere. But hey, at least I got a free Child of Eden t-shirt for my troubles. :D (A size too small, but anyway.) PGR4 though, like the other racing games here, I just couldn't get into. Did quite like the soundtrack though.

Not wanting to be arsed selling the lot of these online (and getting short-changed again), I decided I'd throw them into GameStop instead and just take whatever credit they gave me. Even with that attitude though, I was a little surprised by how little I actually got: 70 cents for PGR4 and €3.50 each for the rest.



Hah! But little did they know that I'd only bought PGR4 used for €1 on their web site. Getting €0.70 for that was tantamount to giving me €42 for a previously used copy of [insert current, big triple-A game here]. The joke's on you, GameStop. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha *inhales* ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, and so on.

But wait, there's more!