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Exactly. WiiFit is not a new or innovative idea. It is an idea that was executed better than any previous version. In fact, if I was the suspicious type, I could call WiiFit a total ripoff. The XBox had Yourself!Fitness. Only the most hard core of fanboys are going to be able to claim that WiiFit isn't the same kind of game as Yourself!Fitness. And the WiiFit controller is just a supped up version of the Amiga JoyBoard. It was well reported that the JoyBoard had a meditation game, which is not far off from Yoga, and the skiing game IS Mogul Maniac. Puzzle games are just not something new. I haven't tried we music, so I cannot comment on it, but it seems clear that there these cames are not innovative. They are just very well implemented.

Pah.... the ability to see through things has been around for years. http://www.tomheroes.com/Comic%20Ads/classic%20ads /x-ray_glasses.htm

Back in those days they had a much higher level of importance. Getting Fun Club ment you got secret codes that were still secret. There was no gamefaqs site that everyone could go before you played the game. This won me a lot of cool points in the neighborhood.

Here's the first article announcing Legend of Zelda. It must have came out 2 years before the game was released.

http://www.tomheroes.com/Video%20Games%20FS/video% 20games/nintendo/nintendo_fun_club_2.htm

I find it funny if this is it.

I'm not so certain. I think, with today's technology and mass-marketing of games, $50 is more than reasonable...

Think about it... the SNES or Genesis game was a piece of hardware in itself. The game today is about $.10 of pressed plastic and some (terse and uninformative) manuals. Also, call me a fogie, but quality of many games (Half-Life 2 and others excluded) are ... eh...

Asking for more that $50 is like saying "find me on bittorrent, Buccaneer-Americans"... seriously.

Saying the "typical" (yet ever-shifting) demographic of games ranges from 12 year olds to 27 year olds. Say they on average make $10-$20 an hour. So after taxes, etc. they have to put down about 3-6 hours of blood sweat and tears for a game... Reasonable for something they will enjoy, but not really a compulsive buy at the $50 price point. Raising it to $60 or $70 puts a little bit of a twist and a flick in turning that particular blade.

The economics is clearly linked to how broad of a market base you have. Jacking the price up 20% may push people away.

I am still impressed with cheap, but wonderful games that are still available, some from indie firms, others not. Either way... I can't see myself (as a respectible, employed person in his mid-twenties) forking down more than $50 for a game unless I knew it was brilliant. I often wait a few months (egad) or pick up older titles I know are good that I never got a chance to play.

Just my 2 cents.

In other news, the fun is back oh yesiree, its the 2600 from A-atari.

C'mon, get with the program: Millipede was announced 23 years ago.

Genesis ... SNES'... It was the last recorded incidence of two consoles sharing the market without one shutting the other out, more or less.

The last recorded incidence? What about, for example, now? Or do you not think that XBox, PS2 and Gamecube are sharing the market?

Not to mention the N64 and original playstation in the last generation (though I guess you would say PS shut nintendo out there).

Unless you actually meant first recorded incidence, in which case you might have a valid point (but even then you've got to deal with Atari vs. Intellivision in the early days of consoles - see this site fora quick summary of most of the early console wars).

Like a space shuttle, only instead of reusable tiles they use ablative poorly-researched Greek mythology.

The official remake/sequel/port of MULE got canned because the company doing it insisted on adding weapons, and the author (thankfully!) wouldn't allow it. ( Source: Read in a game mag interview that I can't find now, and mentioned separately at Retrogaming Times )

But, if the original designer's new version had to be scrapped due to unacceptable monkeying with it, what are the odds of this knock-off *not* monkeying too much, especially given that sufficient monkeying might give them some legal protection? So, I'm not getting my hopes up.

if you can integrate this little guy into your CD dupe project.

Ah yes, nothing quite like the familiar "TCH! sssshhHHHHhhhh!" of sending a disc through one of the bad guys. I actually asked Keith Robinson (one of the Mattel Programmers) during a panel at CGExpo why the bad guys were blue and the good guys red in Tron. He dismissed the question as the geekiest question he'd heard. :-) (scroll down the page to see the paragraph mentioning the question.)

I found out later from a friend that apparently Disney had dithered back and forth right up until the end on what colors the good guys and bad guys would have. Apparently, the Mattel folks had worked from a pre-screening which had the good guys in red and the bad in blue. (I tried to find a link to the article my friend sent me, but Dave's Videogame Classics seems to have gone away.)

<plug type=shameless> Speaking of Intellivision, I'm actively developing games for it. I've released one game called 4-Tris and I'm presently working on another. I've even made cartridges! :-) </plug>