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Nintendo, Miyamoto Preview 2004 Releases
Thanks to Cube Europe for its article discussing forthcoming Nintendo products for 2004, including insight from Shigeru Miyamoto on his in-progress games. The information, sourced from Official Nintendo Magazine in the UK, "states that Metroid Prime 2, Geist, Pokemon Fire Red and Leaf Green will all be released in Europe before the end of the year", meaning a U.S. release for these games are also likely during 2004. Miyamoto is fairly guarded about his current projects, which also include Pikmin 2, and comments on the continued mystery behind the next Mario title: "With Mario 128 I have been challenging many unprecedented things, not found in existing video games... [and] prone to lose their freshness or to be imitated once they go public." Which Nintendo products are you most looking forward to this year?
I wonder if the translation was bad, or if Miyamoto was on a particularly cranky day - he usually comes off as much more genial than in that interview.
One has to assume Nintendo's got a bang-up E3 planned this year, though. Obviously the DS, but I'd guess new Mario and Zelda games announced at E3, as well as footage of Metroid Prime 2... probably good, considering the criticism they took for being underwhelming last E3.
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I wish Nintendo would recapture some of that old magic and do Space World again this year. For you kids, Nintendo used to have it's own trade show where Nintendo and third parties showed of their new games.
As mentioned in the comments, Nintendo's E3's have been rather underwhelming, but they have enough stuff to do a proper SW this year. However, I think the era of Nintendo having it's own little circle jerk (even a fun one) is over.
Don't get me wrong, I'm drooling over a myriad of things scheduled and rumored for this year, most defintely including Prime 2, Mario, Pikmin 2, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, and some others.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
I'm most looking forward to Mario 128... but I don't know if it's coming out this year! I understand if he doesn't want to give up gameplay details, but I would like to have a sense of at least the order of magnitude regarding the release date.
[we won't talk about the games at all because the ideas are] "prone to lose their freshness or to be imitated once they go public"
the old standby for Miyamoto/Nintendo. Let's just hope it's not another Mario Sunshine. They said the same thing about that, relating to the water pack idea. I really enjoy that game, but the mystery was more exciting than the reality, which should never be allowed to happen with video games.
I'm looking forward to The Wind Waker 2 (tentitive title). The Wind Waker was a blast, regardless of what the graphics looked like. I'm also looking forward to Mario 128. It's likely that both of these games won't be on store shelves until 2005 though.
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He is a god. I worship him. I have sacrificed my dignity (as I am approaching 30 years old with a Game Cube instead of a PS2 or XBox) for him. I know, I place him on a high pedestal. But look at all he has done.
I am a Miyamoto groupie. If I was good looking and female, I'd follow him around begging to have his baby.
But I'm scared...
This past generation of Miyamoto products leave something to be desired. They aren't bad. They aren't complete idol crushing abominations like Episodes I and II. They just aren't as good as they used to be, and I hope this isn't the beginning of a very depressing downward trend.
I really want more than Mario 128 to be good. I want it to be great. I'm running out of heroes.
I am not sure how this rumor got started, but I see it a lot. The original StarFox was created by Argonaut Games. Miyamoto might have consulted on it a little, but he deserves no real credit for making it the great game it was.
He did work on StarFox64, at least as an advisor. Technical attributes aside, I found it to be a much weaker game overall than the original, which was the reason I bought a SNES.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
Why the hell Nintendo isn't doing more with the Pokemon franchise than a few spin off titles and RPG's for the Gameboy Advance?
I'm a game developer, and let me tell you, if I could develop a game for that franchise, I'd develop a full 3D action RPG. Imagine if you will, Hyrule Field in Zelda Ocarina of Time. Remember walking around that as Link? Well why not as Ash, with Pikachu following faithfully at your side? The Cube can handle much more detailed outdoor environments than Zelda could. With proper level design, one could explore fields, woods, towns, and caves, battling and capturing Pokemon. One possiblity would be to have a system whereby you target a Pokemon just as Link targetted his enemies, and press a button to toss a specific pokemon into battle against it. Battles could then progress in a style similar to Pokemon Stadium, or perhaps a realtime or timer-based battle system could be created. Pokemon attacks, timer ticks down, you have 10 seconds to make a selection or it recovers from it's previous attack and attacks again.
What is stopping them from doing this??? This would be exactly the sort of game which would put them back on the map. A game with the depth and fun of the RPG, but with the great graphics and awe inspiring environments of a third person game.
They already have all the characters modeled and animated. What are they waiting for? Mario Sunshine shows that they could model the sorts of towns that are featured throughout the Pokemon anime very well. They already have battle systems worked out, the strengths of the various attacks. It seems trivial for them to do, and would have been a perfect way to put the Gamecube on top way back when. I thought when they developed Pokemon Stadium that it was leading up to this but the N64 came and went. Could they really be that shortsighted that they can't see what a great game Pokemon would make in 3D? They need something major to give Pokemon new life, and more limited 2D RPG's ain't gonna do it.
Ninendo would have to be fools not to have this kind of title for the next system. They need something fresh and new. Something expansive and grand. Something that takes games to the next level of detail and interactivity. A world teeming with life and filled with combat and adventure would be perfect.
I think pokemon has the potential to become a large adventure game on the vein of zelda wind waker, I even remember that final fantasy VIIi did some pokemon homage by allowing you to "trap" guardians and spells and I remember thats what made the game fun, unfortunately nintendo has opted has opted for bringing a clone of the 8 bit pokemon each year and name it after every color and/or element/gem they can get in the office thesaurus, what a shame.
Other than that every other nintendo game is offering fails to bring any enthusiasm. sorry.
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Starfox has always been one of my favorites. I remember back in the day when it was the first for SNES to have some kind of super FX chip, and it blew us away! And the Nintendo 64 one was even better. I'm super anxious for the next installment. That last Starfox didn't have anything to do with how the game is traditionally done, and it was pretty bland as a zelda rip-off.
I have to put my chips on Metroid Prime 2, even if it isn't a first party title exactly. Geist looks interesting too.
I don't think there will be a Wind Waker sequel this year (not that I don't want to be proved wrong on that conjecture) I mean, if you think back to fall of 2002 (8 months before Wind Waker 1) there was a lot of buzz about it already, details were scarce because, well this is nintendo we are talking about, but there was at least something floating around about it. Granted, for a sequel you won't need as much advanced hype since people already have a good idea of what a cel-shaded cube zelda is going to be like but I can't imagine Nintendo wouldn't be tossing out some images here and there to encourage healthy sales of the now dirt cheap gamecubes.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
Personally, I'd like for Nintendo to do something completely unexpected. Sure, you could argue that the announcement of the DS was "unexpected" and in a way it was.
But at the same time, Nintendo doing seemingly idiotic things (read: most decisions they seem to have made in the past who knows how many years) is the only I think you can really expect from them these days. I'd like for them to get me excited about their products rather than having me scratch my head wondering just what the hell they were thinking.
I can count the number of games I'm interested in that are coming out for the GCN in the next few months on one hand. What's up with that?
yes it is a shame.. I spent a year and a half developing that and because they were dilly-dallying with real 3d roam-anywhere shooting it kind of changed the gameplay and they hadn't quite got 3d-roaming down yet (2 years before Mario 64). However Miyamoto told me recently that a lot of the 3d-roaming techniques we developed for starfox 2 were simply pulled into Mario 64. (in starfox 2 you "roamed" as a robot walker thing and it was primarily a 3d platformer on those levels)
Anyway, we should have simply expanded on the original Starfox theme of flying through set and perfectly crafted stages. Sometimes Nintendo doesn't get it right.. but when it all goes wrong it simply won't release a game. You have to respect that.