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Animal Crossing MMOG / DS Flash Card Rumored
Though there are no official announcements at the moment, Next Generation is reporting on two interesting possibilities for the future of Nintendo products. In a report filed yesterday, the site hints that Nintendo may be considering a MMOG version of Animal Crossing , to be released on the Wii console. Also exciting: the possibility of a Flash Card for the DS that would allow classic Nintendo games to be (legally) played on their handheld console. "The uncontrollable homebrew and piracy communities that use the DS rely on similar devices ... this should, in the long term, allow Nintendo to exercise some control over at least the former through the simple step of offering a path to publisher-supported content. Compared to the slightly vague WiiWare proposition, this has the possibility to revolutionise homebrew development - at least in terms of distribution and the possibility of mainstream success - but how far the notoriously controlling Japanese giant will allow that community the creative freedom it requires to flourish will only be seen in practice."
An MMOG version of Animal Crossing might be enough reason to convince my wife we need a Wii. I think the outline of the clock is burned into the corner of our television.
why would I buy a Nintendo branded flash card when I already have an N-card?
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
As a new owner of an R4DS micro SD cartridge I'm glad to report that homebrew on the DS is totally wicked. There are productivity apps like e-readers, media players, web browsers, IRC clients, wardriving packet capture utils, and much more. Also, many retro PC games like Doom, Heretic, Hexen, Flashback, Lemmings, SCUMMVM, and lots more have been ported to the DS.
Considering Nintendo's resistance to homebrew I'd be wary of an officially supported solution. I think your best bet is to go with a third party solution. This would enable you to play homebrew NES, SNES, MAME, and other ROMs using their various emulators. This ought to be legal, DMCA notwithstanding.
I have a flash cart and guess where I bought it... Wal-Mart here in the US. It was a Datel branded "Max Media Player" and it had a NoPass-like device to put in Slot-1 and a Compact Flash card reader on the bottom, its not the greatest for homebrew as it doesn't contain any extra RAM, but I have a NES and SNES emulator working fine on it, along with a few homebrew games, I don't believe commercial games will run on it though, but recently I saw a Datel product "Games and Movies" that was another flash cart-like device. So they aren't as hard to come by as Nintendo makes you think they are.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
I would just like to point out that you can fit a copy of every single NES game from every country on Earth on a 256MB flash device. It's going to be pretty damned insulting when they try and pull $5 per game or something similar.
I knew that the rumors that nintendo was planning there own flash cart for the DS were probably true when nintendo started raiding manufactures of other flash cards. I personally own a RD4 and love it. The homebrew scene on the DS rocks and not to mention the fact that I can load all my DS games onto one cart and not have to carry extra crap around to play everything rules.
I also hate buying a game and hating it so if I can DL it and try it out first all the better. Plus being a collector I can buy the game leave it factory sealed and still play the copy I downloaded. If I like the game I will support the company and but it but if it's crap and I am only going to play it for a few min then I have no problem dl'ing a copy for that purpose.
-Fatal187
They're still trying to figure out what type of game animal crossing should be on the Wii? That is seriously dis-heartening.
We willna be fooled again!
... The only question is what treasure does he drop, and how soon will he respawn?
After finding it in a Slashdot comment, I really want to play with the Colors! painting program. What's the quickest way to get that up and running, assuming that I know absolutely nothing about DS homebrew?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Just buy an R4 + microSD card, install the R4DS software onto the microSD card (it comes with it on a cd) and then copy whatever apps, games, music, etc you want onto the microSD card. Put the microSD card into the R4, put the R4 into your DS, and turn it on.
Why the hell hasn't someone unwrapped the format used on the NES, TG-16, Genesis ROMs and figured out how to encode your own ROMs to run on the Wii?
DLDL patching is only needed for shitty cards. Just get an R4 so everything will work with no patching or dicking around needed.
... The only question is what treasure does [Tom Nook] drop, and how soon will he respawn? Don't try it. You don't want Copper, Booker, and their clones from every other town on your server to beat you down.DS Wifi Lib Test lets you probe for 802.11b access points.
One wonders if this is just a chrome PR spin on the original plans to have Animal Crossing on the Wii have an online component that allows you to visit your friend's villages, or is it more of an attempt to allow multiple players to all take trains to the next town so they can whap the locals with their nets?
The main question - are we talking true MMORPG or are we talking multi-instance MMO where each time I visit your village it's a virtual copy, so that I can't jack your fruit (the stuff is always nailed down, even though you can turn it on or off)?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Having paid off two mortgages to that crazy raccoon, I can safely say that this MMO rumor is a dud:
1.) The fun of 'time-travel' would be ruined as all players would be forced to go by a standardised PST.
2.) The novelty of owning your own house, mixed in with other players, sort of demotes this to a Animal-Second Life.
3.) Friend-codes: Yeah, I'm sure that won't cause any problems here... I really don't expect kid-safety-first Nintendo to stop using this anti-pedo measure anytime soon, and probably won't make an exception here.
Nintendo are always the innovators of this market. Why would they try and imitate an existing engine just to try and make more dollars?
I hope they do drop the friend code system and allow people to interact freely online. The biggest problem is though, will they continue support for the game once it has been released? I reckon once a few exploits have been found it will just ruin the game for everybody. Nintendo need to allow their games to be patched.
Time traveling is is pretty much cheating, and like all forms of cheating, the 'fun' wears off pretty quickly for most people. I wouldn't exactly call 'lack of being able to cheat' a flaw in the MMO idea.
Rumored? Where? It can only be a rumor if it has actually been talked about. I am curious as to if this was actually "rumored" or if it was blind "speculation" or even ignorant "wishful thinking."
Starting with Animal Crossing, what on earth would make Nintendo change its position on online gaming so much as to make it a MMO of any kind? They barely let you play with people at random over the Internet. The only times they do, they usually remove anything that could establish communication between users who don't know each other. It is incredibly unlikely that a game that they advertise for children's use be the first game that allows users to communicate with anyone as they want in a MMO fashion. This seems almost like the rumors about the Revolution, before it was really announced, where people believed it would be some virtual reality system that allows you to create your own games and weird stuff of that nature. Based on the interviews I have seen with the creators of the series, they only added "lame" online support to support Wii's features, such as the bulletin board connecting to Wii's bulletin board, etc. I can't even see where the developers have once even hinted at the possibility of going beyond that. The article links to no new interviews where anything like this was made.
As far as the DS card, again, I have searched all over the web and there isn't even a hint that they are considering such a thing, other than people talking about the "rumor" the article's author probably started to begin with. And to be honest, I don't see it happening for two key reasons:
1) If it is released, and older Gameboy games can be downloaded, Nintendo will have officially killed the Gameboy brand once and for all, eliminating the "third branch" explanation of the DS. The reason the DS can't play Gameboy games was not a technical limitation, but an artificial one that they put on the system so they could ensure that if the DS failed, the Gameboy brand would be untarnished. The DS is not the successor of the GBA, and this seems to suggest that they are planing to make it one. By giving the Gameboy to DS, they have killed the Gameboy off once and for all.
2) I don't expect Nintendo to suddenly turn the tides against what they have advocated for more than a decade. The idea that they are going to suddenly support homebrew is fantasy. It is not Nintendo-like to suddenly accept something of that nature until it is proven to be in their financial benefit. Even though we like to think of Nintendo as the company that will take chances (such as with Wii) to be honest, they aren't. Look at Nintendo 64 where they stubbornly stood by cartridges and Gamecube where they stood stubbornly against online gaming. They tend to stick by their policies only until Sony or Microsoft kick their butts for doing so. Nintendo probably won't adopt support for homebrew not only until Sony and Microsoft have, but also had their asses served to them on a silver platter for not doing so. The tides are not flowing in that direction.
I don't know where this "rumor" started, but my guess is that the rumor started with the article linked to. Neither of these things are very likely at all, just by looking at Nintendo's past, and the fact that they won't be willing to take such a risk now they are the alpha dog of the console developers.
Linux on the DS is actually getting slightly useful if you have a Slot-2 card with GBA RAM on it. You get a wireless webserver, ftpd, telnetd, openvpn/ssh/telnet clients, a mature web browser (links) and I even managed to get clam-av running on it. It is suffering from a lack of developers recently though. http://www.dslinux.org/