Calpis

My DS Lite's L button has been shot for awhile. Probably too much Earthbound and Castlevania, which basically can require you to press L repeatedly for the majority of the game. Other than that, I've never had any problems with my Nintendo handheld gaming systems. My PSP, on the other hand, has had multiple issues over the year that is was still working. Either way, I think the only reason I'm considering getting a 3DS on day one now is to beat a potential hardware shortage. I don't have much interest in the "launch window" games.

I enjoyed the movie a lot more than I thought I was going to. First half in, I couldn't stand the cheese, the fake techno-jargon, and so on but once he got into the grid, it turned awesome. I still can't stand the plot holes and that chick's role in changing humanity which made no sense to me, but overall I really enjoyed it and loved it whenever Jeff Bridges was basically channeling The Dude.

Did anyone else play Heiankyo Alien? That music brings back good memories. I like it all, but it might be just for nostalgia.

That was pretty awesome and this is the first time I've heard of Slender Man. Nice Work.

Point taken, but it comes down to how much development time and money they think they can invest compared to how many people will buy it equals profit, aka if they can continue to stay in business. If the company doesn't have the money to take risks (I honestly don't know about the financial state of Sega) then it becomes less about "How much do we 'care' to make a good game" and more of "We can't afford certain scopes of games at this point." I think game development is stressful enough that almost all devs really do have passion and want to make great games, but getting the money and time to do so is the bottom line. Also, I think at this point that fan game that everyone keeps bringing up is moot. It's not a full game and apparently the engine that they used to build it (Unity 3D?) isn't really all that great and is really CPU intensive.

Totally agree with Zircon. Just look at how long it took to port Cave Story over to WiiWare, and how many unforseen issues that they had to fix that didn't show up in the PC version.

Or if there's a history of tight deadlines, small budgets, or a bad game engine (if it wasn't made from scratch) that they were required to start from. Or any combination of those factors that can ruin the game. Bad games aren't always due to "shitty programmers". If there isn't enough time in the day to make a polished game and the budget doesn't allow for a larger development team, then it's not the programmers' fault that it was "bad". A little off-topic: I think that's one aspect that bugs me about a lot of gamers recently. They don't realize (or maybe care) that it costs a huge chunk of money to make a game, and in the end the business needs to make sure that they get a sizeable ROI. I think in the current state of the world, only Nintendo (maybe a couple others) really has the assets needed to be idealistic in their games and take a risk. Sonic 4 is a downloadable and I'm guessing that because it's going for what, ~$10 that the budget was pretty small. Gamers don't care about the business end at all. Sure, that's not their role in all of this, but it just bugs me that they feel they have to pick apart every game if it doesn't meet every expectation of the game they've been making in their mind.

Fair enough. The fanboy comment wasn't specifically about you though. Thing is I haven't heard/seen a real reason to call this a really shitty game. I don't see a perfect game, just not down to the level most harsh critics are talking it down to be.

Yeah you're probably not biased at all. You seem like a very reliable source of objective analysis.

AB: I already saw that and I don't see how that will make me eat my hat, especially after Zircon's comments. Bleck: I posted that clip a couple days ago. It's meaningless ranting about physics details that only fanboys think is important. I'll agree that there have been a bunch of bad Sonic games lately, but it's getting to the point that fans are getting hyper-sensitive about small issues.

So far I haven't seen any "heavy" faults of the game. Have you guys gone back and played, say, Mario 64 versus Sunshine or Galaxy? The physics (the main complaint I've heard about Sonic 4 versus the old games) feel very different from each other. Does it "ruin" them as Mario games? No. I agree with Kotaku's review, Sonic 4 doesn't look like it deserves the title of a full sequel, but it honestly looks like the same game it's always been. I just think you guys are blinded by nostalgia and can't look at the game objectively.

You probably gotta send it into Nintendo for repair. I've gotten that error message on two different occasions now and had to send in the Wii both times. The second time, the warranty was expired though, and it cost me ~$80 to fix it. I'd buy a new Wii if they had a system that allowed me to move all my VC and Wiiware games over to a new system, but they don't so I gotta rely on them for repairs. If you're really persistent and just try again and again to get it to read the disc then it might load up the game for you, but depending on the severity of the hardware problem, you might not be able to play the game at all until it's fixed.

So after watching this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6-1cGzPn3E and reading through this thread (the parts regarding Sonic 4), I've come to the conclusion that die hard Sonic fans are just wishy-washy crybabies. I've never been a huge Sonic fan, but I have played through most of the originals and some of the more recent games. Honestly I don't think any of them are really that great, nor that bad but I've never gone through a new game in a series that I do enjoy (like Mario, Zelda, Metroid, etc.) and cry foul and call the game 'shit' when the smallest details of the in-game physics are changed. OH GOD HELP US we need to hold a button down now to sustain our X velocity!

I think you've turned me into a believer. I've always thought the Genesis sound grated on my ears as I've been a true-blue SNES chiptune fan my whole life, but those MMX3 covers were awesome and improved on the originals 100%. Now I understand why I never liked the SNES original soundtracks for X2 and X3 much.

Man I hate that. We've always gotta put up with some shitty half-assed middle stage before arriving at something that works well. I can't stand the idea of DLC or post-purchase paid content, as a consumer. I understand the developer's point of view, however. It is better than the old days of freeware when you played a demo for a game on the PC, and they told you to send a check for $15 and they'll send you back some floppies with the whole game on it. I actually remember back in the early 90's, in my town they tried setting up automated kiosks that would allow you to buy the full game, and actually bring in your own blank floppies and the kiosk would copy over the game on to your disk(s). Didn't work out too well, I think the machine wasn't coded too well and constantly broke or something. But for me, I think that's a better solution anyway. I'd like to be able to buy games from vending machines instead of having to put up with people at GameStop asking me if I need help every 20 seconds, and also having to put up with the bullshit sales pitches every time at the sales counter.

Maybe I'm missing the point, but I think that digital download systems fix the issue pretty well. It subverts Gamestop entirely, and the lack of physical materials could possibly help with the initial price. But then there's the whole issue of a portion of the population that "needs" to have a physical copy of the disc/cartridge... Save for that issue, isn't it a win/win situation for consumers and developers?

I admit that the Prime series had objectively better games but I had a lot more fun with Other M than I did with any of the Prime games, and I bought and finished them all.

reading comprehension

I do Super Metroid speed runs at least once a month. So yes. SM doesn't include what you were describing. There's a technical difference between the kind of stuff that was in SM and your description.

Your argument, Bleck, about how Sakamoto should have done all this from the get-go isn't realistic. Just because you say that it was 'FULLY POSSIBLE' to implement a couple frames doesn't mean that it's true. How many games at the time of Super Metroid's development had cutscenes like you were describing? Not many, and the ones that did (Ninja Gaiden, for example) used it as a selling point on their list of game features, because to be able to make a cinematic like that was extra work because (I imagine) full-on scripting engines weren't normally built into games. At least, not to the extent that they are now. Several frames such as the ones you were describing would have been more work than it was worth, and games weren't made or thought of the same way 20 years ago than they are now. Cutscenes weren't the norm because of team size, budget, and time limitations. I know from experience that integrating a dynamic scripting engine for a game, while keeping the main engine together is a daunting task. And that doesn't even go into the challenges of creating that scene with ROM size, color pallete, and RAM limitations in mind. However, this is (again) conjecture, but I imagine that dev tools now include built in classes that aid in the development of scripted events. Not to mention that telling the game to load up a video file, as opposed to using the script engine to act out a scene, is much easier to implement.

Thank you Overflow and Malaki. I've been meaning to type something like that up about all this for several days now but didn't have the initiative. I don't think Sakamoto is being egotistical at all.

Sounded more like "Not everyone wants Super Metroid 2".

I didn't say anything about how resolution makes games more/less enjoyable. I said that higher resolution makes it easier to see. Graphics and resolution aren't the same thing, but you're talking like they are. When I was still playing games on an SDTV I said the same stuff you're saying now, but after having a decent HDTV(albeit 720p), going back to an SDTV is hard. Everything looks fuzzy, like I'm watching it through dirty glasses. I guess in that respect, it makes it less enjoyable. Doesn't make it a worse game, but at the same time it's ridiculous to argue that a resolution upgrade doesn't benefit the experience.

yeah because better resolution doesn't matter at all. We really should be playing games in 320x240. It made the pixels easier to see.

I have a question. Why do they keep releasing Other M screenshots in HD? http://www.gamestm.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/i_25030.jpg It makes me want to play it in HD now, but we all know that's not gonna happen (without Dolphin emulator and a better PC, of course)