Slashdot Mirror
How The Revolution Will Change Games Forever
1up.com has a lengthy article discussing the possible ways that Nintendo's next console will change the face of gaming. A nice pie-in-the-sky article for a quiet Holiday afternoon. From the article: "... We're sick of waiting, so we came up with a list of hypothetical Revolution game concepts -- some pulled directly from Nintendo's Tokyo Game Show video that showed actors but no real games, others pulled from some of the popular ideas we've heard floating around -- and took them to impartial third-party developers to find out how practical it is for games on Revolution to be more than just gimmicks. Over the next five pages, we talk with developers from Harmonix, Radical Entertainment, Foundation 9, Atlus, and Midway to figure out how many of these hypothetical game ideas that are floating around have the potential to become actual games, and what advantages/problems might come with that as a result of the Revolution's remote control-shaped, motion sensor controller."
On the downside, most of the interviewees are thinking "we don't want to tell you any of our remotely good ideas until we get them to market", so it's less useful than it could otherwise be.
The first one is talking about using the controller as a baton for a music game. They talk to the guys at Harmonix (very cool company, they just released the AMAZING Guitar Hero). While the guy didn't seem to know it, the game Mad Maestro for the PS2 could be played this way with a baton controller (which I don't think was released in the US, only Japan got the controller). It was actually supposed to be a good game. Still you could easily use a pair of controllers to play onscreen drums, I think that would work great.
They mention using the controller as a sword or lightsaber. I agree with the mention that this would be problematic because there is no "feel" to it. While you can make it rumble, I don't think that will be enough. You swing your sword and your opponent blocks you. But your controller keeps going (maybe with a rumbling). I think that would be a problem.
They talk to the guy behind Trauma Center for the DS. While it is an interesting idea, I agree that the surgery wouldn't work as well as on the DS because you aren't touching a screen like with the DS. But the idea of using the controller in other parts of the game for diagnosis (otoscope, test reflexes, etc.) sounds very interesting. I like the idea he suggests about hooking up a DS for the surgery part and using the revolution controller for the rest.
That's all I can remember right now. I'll post back with more if I think of it and I think it's worth it.
I can't wait for the revolution. I don't know about its graphics. I don't know of a single game for it (they have confirmed various sequels and such but we've never seen anything about them). But I as still far more excited by it than anything else. Between the unique controller and Nintendo continuing to push against "more of the same", I can't wait. When they do something, they tend to do it right.
I hear a full 45% of Mario Kart DS owners are playing online. They may have waited to do it, but it sounds like they knew what they were doing. I haven't picked up the game yet (I intend to), but it looks great. The only thing I wish is I hear the online races are only four players. It would be nice if it was 8 (even if each DS supplied one computer player). But that is a minor gripe.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Nintendo's entire point with vastly simplifying the control over the other current generation offerings isn't to 'change games forever', it's to create a new market away from what most people currently consider video games to be.
They are trying to make Xbox360/PS3 vs Revolution an irrelevant argument by creating something for people that can't even fathom playing Xbox360 and PS3. Once they start marketting it heavily, it'll probably be mostly about showing grandmas playing with their grandchildren and any other 'fish-out-of-water' type imagery they can come up with that tries to change peoples' notions of who a video gamer is.
Even if it does become possible for grandma to play video games, I can't quite fathom how nintendo is going to convince grandma that she wants to. I guess that lies entirely in what games are made. It's already been shown that grandma will play internet card games if she can manage basic internet usage, I imagine Nintendo could muster up an easier to use version of that, but will they?
I expect that we won't see the slim silver/white wedge that their PR department has been coming out with. It will probably be made out of cheap plastic with handles and other superfluous design elements that aim more for the young gamer market
I hate to interfere with your attempt to work out your self-esteem issues, but for the record, they almost certainly will release something like the elegant designs they've shown at E3.
The previous "toylike" design focus was apparently largely due to Yamauchi's influence. Now that Iwata is truly in charge, Nintendo has shown many signs of being a much more flexible company and responding to the market rather than Yamauchi's personal image of what Nintendo should be (note the dramatic change in style from the original GBA to the GBA SP).
We live, as we dream -- alone....
If you can find them, try to read some interviews with Shigeru Miyamoto from when the N64 and the GCN were first coming out.
Basically, what Nintendo has always done was this. Someone at Nintendo (most often Miyamoto-san) said, "I have this really great idea for a game! But the controller everyone is using won't work for it."
And Nintendo goes..., "Well, what kind of controller do you need?"
And Nintendo R&D goes to work. They get a prototype controller, they make their game, and the game designer says, "It still doesn't work right. You need to do this, this and this." And R&D goes back and makes the changes that the game designer suggested.
Throughout Nintendo's history, their controllers have been influenced not by R&D or management or marketing but by what the game designers need to make the games. They went to a dpad when everyone else was using joysticks, because they had a game that wouldn't work right with a joystick. They added more buttons, and especially shoulder buttons when they made the SNES because there was a game that needed the extra buttons, and having more than 4 buttons accessed by the right thumb proved to be uncomfortable and complicated, so they found a better place to put the extra buttons. Remember the N64 controller, and how bizarre it looked when your first saw it? The reason it was designed that way was specifically because of Super Mario 64. At the time, there simply didn't exist a controller that could play this game Miyamoto had been working on, their flagship title, so they made a controller that had the new features he needed, analog control, camera buttons for camera control, and easy access to thumb and forefinger buttons, but they added the 3rd prong so as not to give up dpad control, since there were still many games that worked better with a dpad than with analog.
It was Miyamoto's decision to change the button shape and design on the GCN controller as well. He wanted games to be more intuitive, he was working on Pikmin at the time, and he wanted a few things on the controller changed so the game would work better.
Now, conversely, the VBoy was designed to do 3D, but they designed and built the unit first, and then designed the games later. The only other time in Nintendo history they've done such a thing is with the Nintendo DS (I say this only because I've not heard anyone at Nintendo say they had a particular game in mind when they created the DS, but I could believe that Kirby Canvas Curse inspired the creation of the system), but they worked on enough game ideas for it, before releasing it, that they didn't run into the same problem as they did with the VBoy, which was that it wasn't really comfortable or fun (another reason I can believe they took an R&D before Game Design approach with the DS is that it's nto really comfortable to play in a game that requires quick access to all the buttons).
So while I can't say the controller will be an unqualified success, I'm optimistic because, the way everyone at Nintendo is all smiles whenever they talk about the controller, I suspect we'll learn soon that they had a game idea they were kicking around for a while, but which they simply couldn't make with the existing control scheme and voila (too lazy to find the accented i) you have the Revmote. (Which actually may be why Mario 128, which was announced years ago for the GCN, never came into existence, and is now being mentioned as being a game for the Rev.)
just some guy