Crowbar Man

Ramaniscence: I can find good music these days too. I wouldn't call your list the "Norm" anyways. (2 Blizzard games, 2 Capcom games from series they HAVEN'T ruined yet, and a retro 80's style game. Payday was the only "normal" one, and the least interesting sounding one IMO). The argument here isn't that it doesn't exists anymore, its just that its getting few and far between. Isn't that kinda what I've been saying though? I mean you can argue all you want about what is "appropriate" for modern gaming, the fact is the music is often bumped back to a lesser importance. But lets pull out SOTC for example: A lot of that game is complete silence too, but when it comes time to fight there is amazing beautiful well composed music pumping through the game. Most of the time in any other game these days, this would be generic and uninteresting at best. Or a bunch of techno noise.

That was a good video, the only problem when he compares past and present is: A) I don't have any problem with the way the music sounds in the past (8bit) The music he picked to show "present" music is also amazing music (Halo, MGS, etc) but we don't get stuff like that very much anymore. :/ Well, I don't pretend to understand music theory or what not, but I would have to say MOST people like songs that have harmony/melody/etc. I don't think that has much to do with nostalgia. Well, this is about music, not necessarily about sound design. I don't think anybody can argue that games don't sound really great these days.

The whole people blaming things on nostalgia always bugs me. What does that have to do with me loving certain soundtracks NOW? How is it "Just nostalgia" when there are certain game soundtracks released these days that are amazing, but most are just falling flat and unmemorable? Also a lot of quotes about "hardware limitations" forcing people to be creative.. well yeah thats true maybe. But hardware limitations have been lifting slowly every generation, we didn't go from 8bit to full orchestra overnight. There have been amazing soundtracks released every generation, including this one. There are just a lot more generic/ambient ones made Vs interesting ones. A lot of the large old school franchises have also lost most of their classic catchy melodic or atmospheric feel in favor of this ambient movie style or just plain silence nonsense. Its just really uninteresting. Heck, outside of game music I'll listen to classical music, which is often memorable and "catchy" while being full orchestra etc. It really just boils down to the talents of the composers, and just think we have a lot of "make it sound pretty/passable enough" composers floating around Vs "Make it sound amazing" composers. I dunno, I play a lot of games and I pretty much only listen to game music & game related music... doesn't mean I know what I'm talking about but per se but :/ It is probably more of a taste thing, wouldn't you say? No, not really? Silence is the opposite of music. I'm not going to buy an OST of silence.

I'd say Rayman Origins/Legends are exception to the rules... high budget 2D platformers aren't the norm, but I am thankful that Ubi did something nobody else was brave enough to do Just dropping these by because why not? SOTC: SMG2: SM3DW: Its too bad all games couldn't sound like these tracks... but yeah you can do a full orchestra and not be completely forgettable. Just doesn't seem to happen in most modern AAA games these days. More examples: RE1/RE2 have some of the most creepiest memorable music. RE5/6, among being failures in many ways, have almost no memorable music (RE4 also lacked a little in this dept, but not as much as RE5/6). Dark Souls (currently playing) almost has no music. Good game, but back in the day King's Field (same dev) had such incredibly creepy & memorable music. So most of the time games these days just have ambient sounds / silence, and no music. And when they do have music, its so generic its hard to remember anything about it, like it wasn't even there. Not all cases are this way, but it seems to be the norm for AAA games.

I dunno... nearly everything Brandon just posted (the best examples of modern gaming probably) just sounds like nice orchestrated sweeps but no catching melody or anything to really remember. AssCreed 4 is close to having a melody... and DmC oh my god that sounds terrible.. I was looking forward to playing that one when I get around to it but I hope the whole game doesn't sound like that. I just beat Beyond Two Souls for example, and I couldn't tell you any of its music. It was nice sounding for the situations, but I wouldn't remember it if someone played it. It was just there, almost hidden. I definitely have no interest in its soundtrack. (and I grab soundtracks from nearly every game I like). I've also played and beaten Bioshock Infinite... nuff said? I don't remember any of its music. Maybe that one choir/hymn thing at the beginning. If I had to recall, probably a lot of forgettable orchestrated sweeps, and one terrible corny singing duo part I want to forget. The only memorable parts are the cover remixes of music into different eras, but that wasn't as memorable as say Fallout 3 / Bioshock 1's flat out licensed music (even if it was more creative, the covers were used too sparingly). I'm still very angry with Infinite so I could be mentally blocking it, who knows Outside some awesome indie stuff and some of Nintendo's recent outings, the last game I personally remember having a super strong and memorable soundtrack (outside of your average jrpg) was Shadow of the Colossus. That games music was amazing. We don't have anything like that last generation that I know of. (Please someone prove me wrong)

That is a very good album! Speaking of 9bit Records, their website seems to be back up: 9bit Records Also, Ubiktune (a really good chiptune album release website I mentioned earlier) is releasing a song a week, every week, all year, making a kinda of giant advent calendar album thing... http://www.weeklytreats.net/

Ignore this and skip to the Wii U stuff below unless you are bored: It actually isn't against the law (in the US, where the ESRB is), the ESRB will just fine the crap out of any store caught doing it, and repeated offenses means that store could be banned from receiving products I believe. There are a lot of reasons we don't want the government involved with what games can be sold, and many laws have been struck down to try to MAKE it against the law since the ESRB is a private organization (somewhere along there its also unconstitutional). Little known fact: This is the same for movies & the MPAA ratings (not gov controlled, private, not illegal just fined by MPAA, etc), but for some reason people still want games to be controlled by the government... :/ And yeah, unfortunately plenty of underage kids play M games. I'd say they are probably the most excited by blood and gore etc than any adult would be. That is why "M for Mature" is kinda a joke in a way a label, because it has nothing to do with maturity. AO games kinda don't exist anymore since you can only sell them on PC and online (no major retail chain will carry AO games anymore, and no consoles manufacturer will license an AO game). Most people wouldn't bother to pay the ESRB to rate them at that point, because the point of an ESRB rating is to sell a product on a store shelf. Fun Fact: A DVD can go "unrated" (meaning basically anywhere from G to NC-17 but they didn't wan to pay for a rating/rerating) and retailers will still sell a movie, but nobody will sell an unrated game. But all that is a little off subject. WAY off subject. Sorry! Repeat of the other post: THINGS COMING SOON: Wii Fit U on Feb 1st (Retail) DKC:TF still on for Feb. 13. MK8 in May. A Nintendo smartphone app is in the works More stuff that can use that NFC in the GamePad Quicker Boot/Game Selection for faster game boot up (Alternative to the one we have now?) Wii U VC is adding Nintendo DS games Which btw I think they could have a bunch of options for the DS on VC, like top screen = TV, bottom screen = GamePad, all on the tv, or all on the gamepad... The only example slide of DS on Wii U showed Sudoku using sideways "Book" style on the GamePad though. Hopefully better 3D native resolution, but no word. We'll see!

Brandon: As Mirby stated, hes cutting his pay in half for a while, and cutting other high ranking staff members by 30%~20%. Please try reading the articles posted Also in 2015~2016 they are going to release a new "non-wearable" platform for health benefits...whatever that means. EDIT: Lots of interesting things stated here: http://www.joystiq.com/2014/01/29/nintendo-envisions-on-demand-service-tied-to-ids-across-hardware/?ncid=rss_truncated * Nintendo IDs becoming much more important going forward, hopefully tying content to it instead of hardware (just do it!) * Suggesting something along the lines of a "Nintendo OS" support across multiple types of hardware, ala Android/iOS? * Smartphone Apps & licencing out IPs to 3rd parties in order to entice new customers. That licensing thing.. can go Good (F-Zero GX/AX, OoS/OoA), or ... bad (CD-I, Star Fox, misc)... I hope they are careful. Maybe they just mean like Hyrule Warriors, but I'm not a big fan of that idea either...

erm... same can be said for any rating. "M for Mature" means only adults should play it, but it doesn't mean it "will be" enjoyed by adults. Enjoyment is subjective to the individual. It is just a rating. However, an M suggests it shouldn't be sold or played by anybody less than 18, therefore the scope of audience shrinks significantly over T or E. Real adults shouldn't care what the rating is anyways, its a label to keep certain games away from kids. Also, Nintendo still pretty much only makes hardcore games 80% of the time. Just because they aren't spitting out COD clones like every other company doesn't make SM3DW, MK, Smash, Pikmin 3, etc any less "hardcore" titles. They opened up the casual market with their "Wii" label series, but not too much outside of that The problem is A) they don't have enough of those right now and a large portion of the market thinks only M rated games, or COD/Halo/GTA clones are "hardcore" Nintendo can fix A... I'm not sure how to fix B. I think the market is in the wrong personally and the modern demographic is a little ehhh.. but more Nintendo games might help. "Be like everybody and become soulless" isn't the answer. So Wii U News: Mario Kart 8 is heading towards us in May. Seems further away than I thought but I hope they get it right. Can't wait! Nintendo will be making Smartphone apps to advertise their products and provide more on the go information, but NOT making games for Smartphones. This makes sense, there are already PlayStation and Xbox apps. Kinda big news (though maybe a little late now) DS (not 3DS) games are coming to VC on Wii U. Now... I really hope they somehow increase the native resolution, because a 256 × 192 polygonal game on a 1080p screen isn't going to look pretty. Too bad no 3DS/DS attachment that lets you play 3DS/DS games on Wii U :/ THAT would sell units.

Iwata may have screwed up letting the Wii U be designed the way it was, but at least he is accepting responsibility. This isn't like other companies where higher ups cut lower staff when things go bad, punishing everybody but themselves for their mistakes. I have to applaud him for that. More companies should act like this

I guess I should of specified in my earlier post M rated and not "for adults", technically most of Nintendo's games are "made for adults" (anybody should be able to enjoy regardless of age) Thalzon: Nintendo didn't make either of those games. Silicon Knights made Eternal Darkness, and nSpace mostly made Geist. Nintendo published both, Nintendo does publish M rated games. Also as a side note: Sadly neither games sold extremely well unfortunately, even for GC games. As far as Fire Emblem (Rated T), is proof/evidence you can make a game that is mature (in the actual definition) and aimed at "adults" without having to resort to adding blood/gore/etc to push it to Mature (the rating). Though FE still cuts out the younger audiences, it hits a good range. Yes, the M rated market sure is an untapped resource :/ (sarcasm) Besides, Nintendo apparently doesn't have enough resources to make all the IPs people actually want from them ("Make us starfox! Make us Metroid! Make us Fzero! etcetc"), spending time to make yet another M rated IP (that none of their fans would probably even bother with) is probably a waste of time. Besides, they can publish M rated titles if they feel like it, it just hasn't done them very well in the past. 3rd parties are dumping M rated games all over the Wii U, they aren't selling either.

This whole "they need to make adult games" never makes sense to me. Nintendo hasn't ever done it in the past, why would they start now? They can publish and finance other things teams that do that kind of thing, why stop what they are good at to appeal to a smaller possible audience? Nintendo doesn't make adult games on 3DS and thats selling well ... you know what they do make on 3DS? Games! Lots of them! You know what is lacking on Wii U? Games! Last Year they published/developed only 3 high profile games (Pikmin 3, Super Mario 3D World, WW:HD (which was an HD port for WAY too much asking price, but still moved systems)), only published Wonderful 101 (wayyy to close to Pikmin 3, directly competing with themselves for no reason) The year before all they had was Nintendo Land and NSMBU, and I wouldn't really call those high profile. They published LEGO City Undercover but i feel they didn't push that one as hard as they could of. Thats it in almost 2 years span? This year we have Smash, DKC, and Mario Kart, and a whole bunch of "Maybes" which probably be delayed and will turn into just these 3 games. These are good steps in the right direction, but this seems small for a company that has positioned themselves as the only reason to buy their console.

G-Mixer: I never said they were popular, just they came before and were CD based. (I also forgot about Phillips CD-I but lets quickly forget about it) I also stated WHY the PS1 became big even though the Saturn came out first (by a few months) and they BOTH had CD media. Keep in mind, Sega was a big brand and Sony was basically a nobody to gaming. If it wasn't a perfect storm for Sony to come out with the hardware they did, they would of sunk pretty hard. They didn't win just because it was a CD based console, there were many other factors. CD-I and 3D0 were CD based and came well before PS1. It takes more than just that. Also Sega CD and Saturn had quiet a few fun games (NiGHTS says "Sonic who?"). Not as many as their competition so it didn't help their cause, plus many other factors, but you should really keep an open mind. Just because a console doesn't "Win" doesn't mean it didn't have good games. Exactly. Without diversity we wouldn't have all the new ideas and innovation. People keep saying Nintendo should get out of hardware, but look at how many innovations have come from Nintendo specifically because they were in the hardware business. Yeah, they made a ton of mistakes but so has Sony, so has MS. Nobody is perfect. Lets just see how it plays out, and enjoy the games as they come out!

Yeah, I don't necessary go by the rule of "only play games that get high scores" but if you did: (MetaCritic averages): Exclusives: SM3DWorld: 93 Wind Waker: 90 Pikmin 3: 87 NSMBU: 84 LEGO City Undercover: 80 Best Version: Rayman Legend: 92 Monster Hunter 3 U: 82 Not great Meta but still good and interesting/unique games: EXCLUSIVES: Wonderful 101: 78 ZombieU: 77 NintendoLand: 77 (only if you get it free/cheap) And unless they drop the ball, DK, Smash, Kart, X, SMT vs FE, Zelda, Bayo 2, etc should all be fairly highly rated exclusives when they come out. This system easily has the most exclusives vs any console going forward. Conversely, the only high scoring PS4 exclusive right now is Resogun, and on XBO is DR3, Forza and uh Peggle 2? I'm sure this will change in the future but that's all for right now. The real problem here is you won't get too many new 3rd party exclusives on Wii U at this point unless the system starts taking off, and 3rd party non-exclusives, unless there is a specific reason why, are going to better on PS4/XBO, 360, and sometimes even PS3 (heck, PS+ practically gives you amazing games on PS3, so even if they don't look as good as 360/Wii U, they are free!). So you have to weigh your options, you will be definitively limited in scope with the Wii U. This is its major handicap and it will not go away at this point due to the hardware limits / software tools. Though in my particular situation: I have a PC. I'm not a master PC race guy, I love consoles and own like practically all of them. But.. there isn't a compelling reason for me to get a PS4/XBO yet, as nearly everything whats offered there is going to be on the PC too (and cheaper). So I actually have FAR more Wii U games to look forward to than PS4/XBO at this point. I actually really want a PS4, but until IT has something I can't get elsewhere, I can't really justify the cost. (I'll get one eventually, just because, but no rush on it yet) If I didn't have a PC though, and couldn't afford both, I'd definitely would of gone for a PS4 over Wii U though. Not the first, Turbo Graphic 16, Genesis, and NeoGeo had CD addons, and the Saturn and 3D0 were disc based consoles too. But Saturn had its own issues (hard to develop for architecture (see a pattern?), hardware focused on 2D and treated 3D as an afterthought, poor tools and documentation, mismanagement in the US branch, high cost at first, getting a bad rep on hardware, etc) So keys to success in the console world: Ease of Development (both in hardware and in dev kits) Low price point Something special Money to throw at things and willing to spend it Brand Loyalty / Reputation Customer Appreciation Luck

If i remember correctly this wasn't like an anti piracy measure, but just simply a problem with the laser on the XB "Original", it didn't have the umph to push through the layers of a CD-R or something along those lines. I think the early 360's had a similar problem.

Agreeing with Malaki on the MK8.. if that isn't perfect, and doesn't push sales, and Zelda/Smash also aren't perfect or coming out ASAP... going to be another bad year for sales :/ I'm really hyped for MK8 though. It really can't come out soon enough! Well, SotC was amazing aesthetically (and possibly my favorite game of all time), but I don't think it could beat most Xbox "Original" games on a technical level. The game used a lower than SD native resolution, a very low frame rate, and TONS of sophisticated software framebuffer tricks to overcome the limits of the GPU and get it to look "just right". It took a team dedicated to making it years to complete. Its amazing what they did, but its more so the talents of the designers than the machine on that one. Even then, the PS2 made all their efforts still look bad. History crap, the rest of this post can be ignored: Missed this one: N64 was more powerful than PS1 in like.. every way. Better CPU, more RAM, better GPU. The only thing that PS1 had over it was the media but that was its MAJOR failing point. Carts WERE much faster, but couldn't hold any data (started out with like 4MB and the largest one ever made was 64MB... CDs are 600MB) in a time when multimedia in games was booming and devs needed more and more space. They were also expensive to produce, and Nintendo charged a very large licensing fee on top of everything. Also, the N64 wasn't super easy to program for and Nintendo didn't care to share their tricks because well, they want their 1st party games to have the advantage. They also broke off TONS of relationships with some of the biggest 3rd parties during this era because they had been so successful for the last 2 gens they got big headed. (this "we don't care" attitude also happened to Sony with PS2/PS3... success really does terrible things) The PS1 was the "dumb luck" machine. They had a simple, powerful enough machine with great multimedia / storage capabilities. They made something everybody wanted. (Something they haven't bother to do again until PS4.) And whats REALLY funny is Sony only entered the market because of the fallout between Sony/Nintendo during hardware co-op they were going to do. VG History is a funny thing. Anywho: NES: Pretty powerful for the most part, especially with the custom chips & software tricks they put in the carts to overcome the original specs limitations. SNES: Powerful GPU, awesome SPU, plenty of RAM, only weak point was its kinda slow CPU. It wasn't crippling and some games countered this with custom chips. N64: Powerful machine that was held back by its severely limiting Cart media. GC: Powerful machine, really not much fault here. It was more "politics" and popularity that held this one back, machine was fine. Wii: The FIRST truly "weak" machine (just an overclocked GC with more RAM) Wii U: Unfortunately, the 2nd "weak" machine, but no where near as "weak" as Wii was. GPU is not bad somewhere between last gen and this gen, RAM could be better (better than last gen), Media is 25GB (awesome!), storage could use some work... main failure point is the CPU is weaker than LAST gen's consoles, let alone this gens.

GC's graphics were definitely better than PS2. RE4 had to be scaled back in the PS2 port (reduced polys, reduced textures, some realtime cutscenes were recorded from the GCN game to preserve looks) for example. PS2's massive popularity was due to riding on top of the massive popularity of PS1, doubling as a DVD player when DVD popularity was booming, doubling as a PS1 (BC), and completely lying about all its specs to blow away its only real competition out of the gate (Dreamcast ) and when it showed up way under powered (most DC games looked better for a while) nobody seemed to care. Then by the time real competition came along (GC/Xbox), the install base was so large there wasn't much profit to be made elsewhere so most devs stopped bothering and focused on where stuff made money: PS2. This isn't true. PS2 was notorious for having an insanely difficult to program for structure (Emotion Engine custom CPU with 2 Vector units), Xbox "Original" was x86 architecture and easy. This is probably true though. They had tools to make PS2 games because PS2 games made money. Xbox "Original" was easy enough because of PC familiarity (x86, Direct X, nVidia GPU with programmable shaders, HDD). GameCube took effort (IBM PPC CPU with a custom GPU), so some of the (mostly US) 3rd party ports were super lazy ported and either looked worse or only slightly better than PS2. Back to the Topic: As far as the Wii U, it still needs what any console needs: Games, and games you either can't get anywhere else, or same games that look better than competition. It can't do the later (not even vs 360/PS3), so they better do the former, and quickly! Pikmin 3 / Super Mario 3D World are a good start, but they were both games that should of been available near launch. Now we are in a "waiting for another game" phase, yet again. Sure there are some other games (ZombiU, Wonderful 101, Rayman, etc) but Pikmin 3 and SM3DW are basically the only two big hitters from Nintendo inhouse dev :/ The game lineup this year looks promising, IF everything makes it this year. It'll be a slow crawl, but if they start you know.. pumpin games out, they'll start selling consoles.

Well, they don't NEED 3rd party support like their competition. So it isn't a big focus for them... however, they really need to get out of that habit. If they could make a system to capture both worlds, great 1st party support and great 3rd party support, they'd probably be king of the market again. Hopefully this round will be a wake up call for them. And as for why not develop for other consoles: Pride, Control, Profit, and healthy competition in the marketplace (for us). For Nintendo, there is very little reason to give up the hardware side of things. A few setbacks is hardly reason for them to dump a successful business they've been running for decades. After all, they've never bled money and operated in the red like Sony/MS's game divisions, and Sega. They made lots of money every generation. They just aren't making as much as they'd like this generation I'd really prefer that Sony/MS not be the only big guys in the market anyways.

Heck, in the article itself it says: Though that last bit doesn't make too much sense unless he was expecting Wii U games to run on their next DS. Also like Mirby mentioned, pretty silly to think Nintendo is going to seriously use HVD's. or have a CableCARD slot for that matter

I can start and operate my Wii U with just a GamePad Pro, Wii Remote, etc. its fully functional without the GamePad About the only things that stop working and need the GamePad are the eShop (amd maybe Browser?), which is not really the OS and could be simply updated. Mii creation is put to the Pad, but you could do that without a Pad last gen so Miiverse wouldn't be as interesting without some sort of touch interface to draw though (but again... 3DS (which now has Miiverse), smart device (which already works with Web app I believe, but read/post only no drawing), etc)

All I saw mentioned was 3DS integration (like Vita has integration with PS4), not mandatory requirement, but maybe I read it wrong.

I'm not sure why it would be mandatory. The GamePad isn't even mandatory in most games. It would be just an option. Like SmartGlass/Vita/GBA/etc

Well, to be fair, that is kinda whats going on with the PS4/Vita. And to a lesser extent, XBO/SmartGlass. And GameCube/GBA back then. The GamePad is costing Nintendo too much. I like it don't get me wrong, its just not enough of a selling point to warrant all the extra cost at this point. Integration with 3DS and/or Mobile Apps (which is what Nintendo is looking at now anyways) would of been more preferred than a higher cost and a device that is not really even portable. Also would of helped if they didn't drop the ball everywhere else. If they did everything else right, then the GamePad would of been a cool idea on top of it. Instead they focused completely on it, dropped the ball everywhere else, and now its the biggest liability.

I knew I should of posted tracer but didn't want to push too much ... also I agree with Brandon on the Tiny Barbarian DX soundtrack, its really good! D-Lux: she - Pioneer is also really good (and free!). EDIT: Not a fan of lyrics, or emo-type stuff, but sadNES - Fill My Head is something I guess if you like lyrics/chiptune/band combo stuff

Yeah I love the Genesis (I had both SNES/Gen back in the day) but I thought it was common knowledge the SNES pulled ahead by a large margin (~50 mil vs ~30 mil). Genesis' numbers were pretty impressive considering the massive hold Nintendo had gained on the industry at that point. But by "since SNES" I'm sure they meant everything after it.