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Zelda On The DS, Sega on the Revolution
At the Nintendo Keynote today, Company President Iwata reiterated the same 'think differently' ideas that he espoused at last year's GDC. This time he had concrete data to back up his industry disruption message, detailing the millions in sales their 'Brain Training' line of games have racked up. Along with his message, he announced a new Zelda title on the DS, and the fact that Sega Genesis games will be on the Revolution, a part of the online library of games they're offering.
I'm actually in the .1% of people who owned a TurboGrafx (and later a TurboDuo). These systems are emulated wonderfully in Magic Engine. I'm excited about the Revolution's support of Turbo games, but I hope they add in the Konami games from Japan, as most of the American games were just crappy (with some notable exceptions).
There have been three GDC writeups so far, including one from the Sony keynote, and all of them fairly lengthy.
Nintendo's keynote gets what, three sentences?
While lacking the details some of us were hoping for, such as an official name or any extra info on the Revolution itself, this is still some damned good news.
With all that Nintendo is bringing out this year, such as Metroid Prime: Hunters, The New Super Mario Bros, (supposedly) new Pokemon games, and now Phantom Hourglass, it makes me weep softly at my lack of funds. At least I have even more reason to wait until DS Lite hits the shores. Between all that, Twilight Princess, and the Revolution, Nintendo is most likely going to get all of my free income this year, and rightly so.
The announcement that Genesis games will be on the Revolution is completely awesome; even though Sega has put out the classic Sonic games 18 times over, it will still be fun to play them on the Rev. Plus, you have games like Echo the Dolphin, Road Rash, and more. Even better, this could pave the way for 32X, Sega CD, and Sega Saturn games. I doubt we'd ever see Dreamcast games; while the Revolution will certainly be more powerful than the Dreamcast, would it be able to emulate the Dreamcast?
So, while these might be more minor announcements in the face of other things coming from Nintendo, but it's Good News none the less.
Although, we still don't have a specific state side release date for the DS Lite, do we? Dammit.
FYI - Dev kits for the Revolution are running about $2k, which, from what I understand, is dirt cheap compared to what N has charged in the past, and what Sony and MS are charging for theirs.
Hopefully, N will allow indie developers to distribute directly through the online system, thus lowering the barriers for publishing a game.
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
Actually I was totally stoked to see them using cel-shading again and it was one of the first things I noticed on the trailer.
Wind Waker's art was awesome and inspired. I can't say the same about Twilight Princess unfortunately.
I guess Nintendo (and Sega, and Hudson, and anyone else who gets involved) will now be setting their lawyers on all the 'abandonware' ROM sites for outdated consoles...
You must think in Russian.
Seriously, why does Disney insist on using Mickey as their mascot. They should like, get with the times.
Besides, the games are fun. That's all there really is to it. It's a somewhat familiar feel with the characters, but almost always with completely new gameplay (not just new levels, new things that happen, new stories, new interactions with the environment, all kinds of innovative things). Say what you want about the characters, but there's a REASON people tout Nintendo as being innovative. It's because they are.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Uh, dude? Read what you just pasted.
the rumor is that Microsoft plans on announcing Wednesday a developers kit
Wednesday was yesterday. Unless you can find a news report about this actually having happened on wednesday, your rumor was wrong.
At any rate of course DirectX and XNA games will continue to be available to develop dirt cheap-- they're PC games!! You can develop them for free!! But just because the XBox 360 basically runs PC games does not make a PC development environment equal to an XBox 360 or Revolution development kit.
holy crap, they gamecubed the DS and TurboGrafxed the revolution!
nintendo is pulling a whole lot of good shit out of their asses lately!
compared to the PS3 keynote...well there was just no contest!
Sony: "Uhh yeah the tech specs are awesome, 1080p, PSP is sweet, and there's another God of War game. Yeah. Buy Blu-Ray because it's the best LOL"
Nintendo: "Revolution is now SEVEN FUCKING CONSOLES IN ONE"
Isn't the very fact that Nintendo will now make available it's SNES library for a charge the very same reason they where so "nazi" about people's downloading and running their stuff for free? The day SNES9x/ZSNES matured, Nintendo tried it and said "hell, our future consoles can also do this, and we can make a fortune off it!"
Apart from this, I must say the Revolution plan is brillian:
1. Make a controller that inspires radical game design for a wider audience
2. Make avilable for that audience games whichh they have fuzzy feelings for from childhood.
3. Tell the same crowd (now parents) the console is safe for kids
Of course they won't "win the console wars", but they will win a market previously sceptical and hard for Sony and Microsoft to gain grounds in. Nintendo were allways a smart company, they actually make money!
Looking at the trailer it seems that the view sometimes switches depending on the scenario. The one dungeon scene almost looks exactly like it would belong in A Link to the Past except it's been fleshed out. Then there are other parts of the video that look like Wind Waker.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.