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Visionary Nintendo President Yamauchi Dies
First time accepted submitter trickstyhobbit writes "Former Nintendo president and majority stockholder Hiroshi Yamauchi has died. He was president of the company for over 50 years and saw the development of the NES, SNES, Nintendo 64, and GameCube among other devices." His career at Nintendo is worth reading about.
This guy had a lot of intuition. He didn't like to play video games, tried a couple but was annoyed and frustrated. Yet he still had sole approval whether or not a game should be licensed on the Famicom/NES. Someone would sit down and demo the game and he'd say yes or no based on that! Coming from the Atari crash, quality was important and this guy had an eye for that. Not to take away from Yamauchi but I must say RIP Gunpei Yokoi who sadly committed suicide, but was incredibly important in Nintendo's success as well. I recommend reading Game Over and 1UP - How Video Games got an Extra Life.
Twinstiq, game news
Too soon?
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Why does everyone badmouth that system? It wasn't the Playstation, but it wasn't that bad either. If you *really* want something to forget, the Virtual Boy and Power Glove are much better candidates.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Yeah, don't get it either. Best Zelda they ever did was on the N64. And Mario 64 kicks ass too. N64 rocks.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
The N64 had some downright amazing games, and this is the first time I've seen any real hate/badmouthing for it. It's hard to dislike the console that brought us Mario 64, LoZ: Ocarina of Time and Majoras Mask, Banjo Kazooie, Goldeneye 007, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Starfox 64, Mario Kart 64, Perfect Dark, Super Smash Bros, and... well, the list just goes on.
That being said, this is sad, sad news. This is one of the men to whom I owe a large part of my childhood, and can blame part of my adulthood on as well.
But people love the Power Glove, it's so bad. Hollywood even told me so.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
Before someone else posts it:
He clearly should have used the UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, B, A, START to pick up a few more lives.
ba dum, bum
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That's Konami. This is Nintendo. Hold A and press Start to continue from where you were with a new set of lives.
If you *really* want something to forget, the Virtual Boy and Power Glove are much better candidates.
The Power Glove is unforgettable. My steady stream of curse words (like when it didn't punch when/how I wanted in Punch Out) is still resonating all over the universe like the Big Bang.
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
It made them money and it was a critical success. Unfortunately it was the machine that came out in the period in which they lost market dominance so it's tainted by that.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Yeah, PlayStation got a lot of attention for using discs, because it meant they could have actual recorded audio tracks and lots of shiny looking cutscenes. But those characteristics really don't make a game that enjoyable. I still miss the fast load times of cartridges. Haven't played Wii U, but it seems that Nintendo has always put good load times ahead of "ooooh shiny". The Gamecube used smaller disks, and many games had almost no noticeable load times. Meanwhile, everyone was waiting minutes for things to load on PS2 and XBox. The first party titles for Wii also had great load times. It's not impossible to have quick load times on a disc based system. I don't know why so many developers don't pay attention to this aspect.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Ugh, Nintendo Potatoes are so casual.
And I don't think anybody has forgotten Goldeneye 007 on the 64.
Did anyone try blowing on him?
I have a Wii U. I haven't really noticed a huge difference between load times on disk versus the external USB2 hdd. From what I've read, the transfer rate is comparable and most game data is sequential. For most first party games (Nintendo land, NSMBU, Pikmin 3) the loading times been fantastic. Third party games have been good as well (such as Rayman Legends), with the possible exception of Lego City Undercover (off the hdd) where the load times are noticeably bad.
Have you checked out the LttP sequel coming out? It runs on an almost exact replica of LttP's map, but has added some interesting mechanics. No clue about the story though so far.
Load times are there, but usually hidden very well. If you ever watch someone play Metroid Prime 3 on a hacked Wii, and are using a hard drive to load the game you'll notice that they can do things that the Load times with many doors prevents. For example, speed boosting though a long chain of doors.
"Yeah, don't get it either. Best Zelda they ever did was on the N64. And Mario 64 kicks ass too. N64 rocks."
The problem wasn't FIRST PARTY games, the problem was the LACK of games and franchises from the super nintendo and their non-existence on the N64 because of nintendo's bone headed move to stick with cartridges. The storage size of a CD allowed games like Final fantasy 7. JRPG's like FF, Xenogears, Fighting games like street fighter and derivatives totally skipped the N64. THAT IS A HUGE DEAL. Only an idiot that didn't play any third party franchises would say the N64 was wonderful. It was the key event in Nintendo's history that lead to Nintendo's long deflation and decline as a game company with much intelligence.
They became more about selling console hardware and not enough about supporting game developers. They are a technically illiterate bone headed game company. Why would you not go with DVD standard for the gamecube and make porting games from other platforms a huge chore/time sink for everyone? Another total idiot move. They make totally idiot technological moves every console generation. This is what caused me to stop buying their consoles. They don't grasp game development from a third party developer perspective. Not to mention how bad they screwed up Metroid with Other M and then the huge clusterfuck with the Starfox franchise, SF assault was just a travesty.
That is why the N64 was the worst decision in Nintendo's history they went from #1 game company with the super nintendo with all the popular franchises and they lost ALL the third parties that were pushing the gaming envelope OVERNIGHT to a brand new competitor with no track record. Nintendo didn't grasp their also ran status because they never took third party developers that make you successful seriously.
Many of us old timers fondly remember the super nintendo era and we hate what those dumbasses running nintendo did with the N64, the gamecube, and just anti-developer practices in general did to videogaming.
The Playstation controller did not have move/strafe - change view sticks.
It didn't have any sticks AT ALL.
It had a D-pad and some buttons. No analog sticks.
Compared to that, the N64 pad's analog stick was a godsend.
Sony didn't come out with the Dual Analog controller until after the N64's pad was out.
Hey, listen: I can think of one big reason why OoT was not as good as LttP...
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
I don't think FFVII was that good and the series got much worse since then. I think the reason FFVII doesn't get remade nearly as much (if ever) as the FF games is because it doesn't age well at all. It's very much a game of its time. It's far too cinematic. That was cool when it was new but it's a bad thing now.
I would love to have heard his reflections on life - a boy in Imperial Japan, then utter destruction and a cultural and economic 180, followed by a leading role in a superstar company in the rise of Japan as an electronics manufacturing superpower, and finally backslide as regional competitors rapidly gain ground. He saw so much.
This is slashdot. Everything is MS's fault.
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Let's see...
Silicon Knights: Point. I'll give you that one.
Camelot: Their parent company is Nintendo, who took them from Sega back in 1999. They've programmed exclusively for Nintendo and are even the creators of Waluigi. Thankfully, since they made the Golden Sun series, I can forgive them for that. Link.
Monolith Soft: Monolith Soft was formerly owned by Namco, who sold all 96% of their shares to Nintendo, meaning Monolith Soft is wholly owned by Nintendo and thus for all intents and purposes considered first-party. Link.
Tri-Crescendo: Their developed titles are almost exclusively Nintendo, though you have somewhat of a point since they've done work for other consoles.
Are you going to tell me that Metroid Prime and Donkey Kong Country returns aren't first party because they were developed by Nintendo's Retro studios? As far as I'm concerned if Nintendo owns the studio, it's first party. Beyond that, the original poster suggested that they hadn't done anything new in the past 30 or so years- which is an obvious falsehood since 30 years ago is when the original Mario Bros came out in the arcade. So, unless the poster was receiving arcade cabinets for Christmas...
Not to mention of course all the innovation done within its more well known titles, even if the stories themselves are often "rehashes", they've kept the gameplay fresh.