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Press the Buttons has linkage to and commentary on an N-Sider story explaining some of the wacky decisions that Nintendo has made over the years. From the post: "There are a lot of unanswered questions out there in Nintendoland: Why was there never a Metroid 64? Why did cliche villain Wario become a major character, and then only for the Game Boy? What was the Virtual Boy supposed to accomplish? Why was there only a Game Boy follow-up to Kid Icarus? The short answer is 'politics'."

ZephyrXero writes "That is the question asked by N-Sider.com in their article "Playing it safe". The article talks of how Nintendo's reliance on tried and true franchises may contribute to their lack of innovation and low sales numbers. Although most have already seen this problem brewing within Nintendo for quite some time, it is also becoming a problem for many other game developers throughout the industry." A nice counter-point to Sticking up for Nintendo from earlier this month.

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to N-Sider's in-depth coverage of the forthcoming Gamecube FPS, Geist. This title was shown at E3, but the article goes into a lot more detail than most about the game, which is being co-developed by N-Space and Nintendo. Geist is described as "..a hybrid title that combines the fast-paced action and perspective of a traditional first person shooter with stealth-based game play and a unique new mechanic: the ability to 'possess' other characters in the game." Perhaps not unique, since Shiny's Messiah did something similar, but with competitive-looking graphics and multiple ways around problems ("while watching people play the demo, I noticed no one person played it the same"), it's possible that some of the developer's earlier titles may be improved upon.

Use Perl is reporting that Damian Conway has been sponsored by several companies and individuals (most impressively Black Star who donated half of the needed $55k). Now Damian can continue working on amazing perl projects like Quantum::Superpositions and Lingua::Romana::Perligata for the next year! Malicose noted that Damian sponsor page explains a bit more too.