Big-N

So soon after the Nintendope stuff I ran into a brilliant animation chronicling the progression of Nintendo’s hardware. Enjoy.

http://youtu.be/yh61hYpqEzI Join me, Eric, in my new video game series where I try and remember what it was like to play games from my youth for the first time. Our exciting first entry, Super Mario Brothers.

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“A little on the nose there, Nintendo, but you’re right. This game dropped on the 25th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda”] [/caption] Skyrim and Skyward Sword are two vastly different games, but playing Skyward Sword made me realize just what felt off about Skyrim. It’s that uncanny valley problem again. When your game strives for photorealism as much as Skyrim does, it can’t help but feel a little off when your character doesn’t move like a real person. LoZ: SS has none of those problems, as you might imagine, because it looks so stylized. ...

Project Café now has a “real” name, kids: Wii U. The video above will explain just what it is while simultaneously confusing the hell out of you with respect to just what this thing is. I have a lot of faith in this idea. It’s ridiculously cool and it could have tons of potential, but I’m just scared that, despite its ability to handle the current generation of games, it’s going to be left in the dust as the competition shifts generations too. I guess I don’t have to worry about that until 2012 (EDIT: good catch, Dave), but that’s my only real Wii U concern. All I want now is to be able to play it already. ...

Video Games | Green Day: Rock Band | Spike VGA 09: Exclusive Debut Trailer HD XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii Right around Christmas of 2009, Zelda Reorchestrated completed a pretty ambitious musical project: a reorchestration of the Ocarina of Time soundtrack. The free, 82-track download is available to download here and I’ve given the songs a listen or two and they’re fantastic. As someone who actually owns the original Ocarina of Time soundtrack, I was impressed by the high quality work that this fan group was able to bring to bring to the project. Not only are the tracks faithful to the original music, they’re actually a vast improvement from the original MIDI-synthesized tracks that we’ve all become accustomed to. ...

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Wallpaper courtesy Pet-Shop on DeviantArt”] [/caption] Ruminations on video games as an art form - this could very well become a Mother 3 review. There will be spoilers here. Seriously, don’t read it if you want to play Mother 3 and not have the plot spoiled. There’s a trite comparison that floats around the internet almost every month that always gets my eyes rolling. Inevitably, someone will call such-and-such the Citizen Kane of video games or ask what the Citizen Kane is or claim that the medium is immature because we’ve yet to hit our Citizen Kane. It’s exhausting and, quite frankly, futile and stupid. To begin with, Citizen Kane opened with good reviews and was generally well-received, but it didn’t start to gain notoriety for ten years. It didn’t even make #1 on a top movies list until twenty years had passed. When the Citizen Kane of gaming hits (god I hate that phrase), we probably won’t know it for quite some time. The more important point is that movies and games are apples and oranges. ...

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“How awesome would it be to see this guy outside your window during a flight?”] [/caption] After a fun few days in Sapporo, it was finally time to head back to Tokyo. We were officially on the home stretch of the trip with only three teams left to see. I was starting to see the end of the trip in my sights and, I’ve got to admit, it was depressing to think that all the fun would be done so soon, but I was also ready to get back home to my own apartment. ...

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. July was an interesting month for sales. It seems that if your name wasn’t EA or Nintendo, you didn’t even crack the top ten list for game sales. In fact, Nintendo’s month of dominance is even more astounding when you consider that the top sellers included New Super Mario Bros. and Mario Kart DS, games well past their prime. This tough economy is making it rough to be anyone but Nintendo, but I’m sure that the holiday season will bring other games to the forefront. There’s lots of good stuff in the pipe. ...

This was a piece I wrote for Gamers With Jobs to try and score a writing gig. They ended up going with two other writers, so I figured I’d post what I wrote here. Enjoy. It was last month when I realized that something had gone terribly wrong . There were fifteen people in my apartment, maybe a tenth of them lifelong gamers, and they were all here to play video games. Most strange of all: there I was, microphone in hand, belting out “Don’t Stop Believing” in front of my friends. As my voice cracked on the high notes I wondered how I reached this point. Wasn’t I the same guy who refused to go to karaoke bars to avoid singing in public? Weren’t these people the same ones who scoffed at Final Fantasy and Halo? ...

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. I figured I’d start with BlazBlue today, since the game just came out and I sunk an evening in playing it. I don’t have all that much to say about it yet, but it’s intriguing in a very not Street Fighter way. The fighters are all insanely detailed and designed in an intricately anime fashion, leaving no moe niche unserved and the fighting system is deceptively simple, but actually WAY complicated, as most of these things are nowadays. I haven’t had a whole lot of time to sink into it, especially because Street Fighter IV has nabbed my attention yet again, but I will keep posting impressions as I play. ...