Tidbits about the development of the SNES
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 1 Comment
German website Nintendo-Online has conducted some research about the development of the SNES. Through their investigation, they were able to find a discover interesting facts. You can find a summary of what Nintendo-Online passed along below.
– The SNES was developed by Nintendo’s Research & Development 2 department under Masayuki Uemura, which had already been responsible for the NES.
– The buttons on the controller were originally named A, B, C and D, while the shoulder buttons were supposed to be called E and F.
– In 1988, the SNES was supposed to have 8 KB RAM. This was increased to 32 KB in mid-1989. The final console comes with 128 KB RAM.
– The main advantages the SNES had over its rivals TurboGrafx-16 and Sega Genesis were the high amount of colors displayable and Mode 7. The console’s bottleneck was its 5A22 processor, which, as already the NES’s processor, was based on the 6502 chip.
– The reason for using a modified NES processor was most likely the goal to make the SNES backward compatible. But as this feature would have increased the console’s price, Nintendo had to drop those plans.
– Instead, backward compatibility should have been made possible by the Famicom Adapter, which was basically a stripped down Famicom that you were supposed to plug into the new console to play the old 8 bit games. Although the Famicom Adapter had been publicly shown, it was never released, rendering the SNES absolutely incompatible to NES games.
– The SNES was first announced on September 9, 1987 by local newspaper Kyoto Shimbun. Announced were the consoles name, the 16 bit architecture and the planned backward compatibility. The console was supposed to retail for less than 20.000 Yen, but was finally released for 25.000 Yen.
– On November 21, 1988 Nintendo first presented the Super Famicom to the Japanese press. Instead of fully featured games, Nintendo showed mere tech demos, but also announced that Super Mario Bros. 4 and The Legend of Zelda 3 were in the making for the new console. Both games were sheduled as launch games at that time.
– The Super Famicom was supposed to launch in Juli 1989, but although the console was next to finished at this time, it was delayed to November 21, 1990.
More: SNES
New CoroCoro issue shows off the mysterious new Pokémon
Posted on 9 years ago by Dennis Gagliardotto(@LyonHart_) in General Nintendo, News | 6 Comments
In the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen drawings of what seemed to be a new Pokémon fans spotted while attending Pokémon the Movie: Hoopa and the Clash of Ages in theaters in Japan. Though we couldn’t make out what it was, one similarity showed that it seemed to be that a of a blob. Last week, we got an even better look at the new Pokémon, getting a more detailed visual with colors. Now, it seeems CoroCoro is ready to unveil this new mysterious Pokémon in the upcoming issue.
Though the issue doesn’t elaborate further on the new Pokémon outside of the photos, it’s nice to get a clearer look at what’s been teased for so long now. The new Pokémon is expected to be seen in full in Pokémon The Movie XY when it releases sometime next year. The full page from the CoroCoro leak can be seen below:
More: movie, Pokemon X/Y
A look at the construction of Nintendo’s Gamescom 2015 booth, highlight videos
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Videos | 0 comments
Nintendo has a video up showing how its Gamescom 2015 booth came together. Additionally, you can view a few highlight videos after the break.
More: Gamescom 2015
Nintendo Minute – Super Mario Maker Facebook Hackathon
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Videos | 0 comments
The latest episode of Nintendo Minute has now gone live. This week, Kit and Krysta have a report from the Super Mario Maker Facebook Hackathon. Check out the full video below.
More: Facebook, Nintendo Minute, Super Mario Maker
Images of two upcoming Splatoon maps
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Images, News | 6 Comments
Update: As some of you have pointed out, these maps were shown during one of the recent Japanese Splatoon commercials. We’ve taken off the rumor tag.
Since this deals with leaked content, head past the break for more information!
Nintendo publishes an original Zelda webcomic
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 15 Comments
Nintendo has published an original Zelda comic on the official Play Nintendo website. It’s based on an original comic by Seitaro Komatsu, which was featured in the Japanese magazine CoroCoro Comics Special.
Part one of the comic is posted below. I’m sure we’ll be seeing part two soon as well!
More: comic, The Legend of Zelda
New A Boy and His Blob game in the works
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 2 Comments
Majesco Entertainment has revealed that a new entry in the A Boy and His Blob franchise is in development. While specific platforms haven’t been announced, it’s slated for “all next generation consoles”, which would hopefully include Wii U. A game titled “Glue” is also on the way.
Today’s news comes as Majeso has appointed David Rector as its new CEO. Going forward, the company will be focusing on digital games as opposed to packaged titles.
Company EVP says risk-taking is in Nintendo’s DNA
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 31 Comments
Examiner has put up another excerpt from its interview with Nintendo of America executive VP of sales Scott Moffitt. In these latest quotes, we get to see what Moffitt had to say about Nintendo taking risks, which he says is “in our DNA”.
He stated:
“It’s in our DNA, it’s what makes us tick, and it’s what brought all of us to Nintendo. We like to be a company that’s willing to take some risks on a franchise like Splatoon, propose new forms of gaming to gamers, and see what their reactions are.”
“Often times, those [ideas] work, sometimes they don’t, it’s always risky to be an innovator, but that is woven into our DNA and is a bedrock value for Nintendo.”
As for why Nintendo continues to take risks, Moffitt says that it’s all for the gaming community. He explained:
“I think gamers have come to appreciate that from us, but also to respect it and expect it. They want us challenging the norms and challenging conventions, and I think that’s part of our role in the broader industry.”
More: interview, Scott Moffitt, top
Sakurai talks about players who are bothered by extra features in games
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 35 Comments
Super Smash Bros. director Masahiro Sakurai has once again written a column in the latest issue of Famitsu. In this week’s magazine, he tackles the topic of those who are bothered by extra features in games.
You can find a summary of Sakurai’s column below. For the entire column, check out the full translation on Source Gaming.
– Sakurai mentions how a game review organization handed out high marks to a simplistic puzzle game
– He says that since it didn’t have extraneous features warranting demerits, it was able to earn the high score
– Sakurai feels this isn’t the right way to review a game
– He’s been looking at user reviews for Fire Emblem Fates, and noticed that there were many comments saying “I don’t need this; I don’t need that, either”
– Ex: inviting companions to your house and stroke their heads/faces to raise your affinity level
– Sakurai feels that players who are bothered by this sort of feature should simply ignore it
– Sakurai: “Developers include all sorts of bonus features simply because they want to provide a little something extra for the fans.”
– Even if bonus features were removed, that doesn’t mean they’d “make room” for something else
– Sakurai: “If you approach game development with a demerit-based mindset, it doesn’t leave much room for anything extra, and games become pretty dry—and that’s just no fun.”
– Sakurai points out that Smash Bros. has plenty of unnecessary content
– However, taking out features means you’re left with “a bare-bones, niche-market game”
– Sakurai understands that some people want a minimalist-type of game, but Smash Bros. isn’t targeted at that niche market
– While some believe that superfluous features should be removed, others feel the opposite way
– Sakurai points out that not all bonus features to “plump up a game” are designed with everyone in mind
– Sakurai: “At the same time, games are a form of entertainment, so I sincerely hope people realize that “user abstinence”—not using unwanted content—is also a valid option.”
– Ultimately, he thinks you shouldn’t force users to play extra features in order to complete a game
– As long as the above point holds, Sakurai believes developers should be able to make games the way they see fit
– Even if you’re not interested in a certain feature, someone else might be
More: Famitsu, Masahiro Sakurai
Chris Pranger of Nintendo Treehouse elaborates more on localization woes
Posted on 9 years ago by Dennis Gagliardotto(@LyonHart_) in General Nintendo, News | 97 Comments
A few days ago Nintendo Treehouse’s Chris Pranger appeared on the Part Time Gamers Podcast to discuss what it’s really like in the process of localizing, touching on costs, to labor, to decision-making from how the market in a particular region looks. Obviously, localizing games from Japan to America is a lot of work. Tons of translations have to go into it as well as heavy consideration into how lucrative a product can be for a particular market and if it’s worth it. Chris Pranger touched on why attempting to localizing the more obscure titles is always a tough sell, and the laborious and arduous nature of it all:
The hardest thing for everyone to understand and to accept — and I’ve seen this first hand in the company, that this is typified — people think that obviously they’re right, and what they like or dislike has to be the norm. Why would it be otherwise? And they just say the classic “Why do you hate money? Why do you hate money, Nintendo?”
And it’s like “What are you talking about? We’re trying to make…obviously it has to make calculated risks, but at the same time, one of those risks…and I mean they’ll bring up games that are very Japanese games, like Captain Rainbow for instance. They’ll bring that up like “Look how many people want this. Don’t you want money?” And we’ll be like “Yeah, we do want money, which is why we know it’s a colossal waste if we ever try to localize that in this current market, because look at you people. You don’t make up a big enough group.
The hardest part for people to realize is how much money it takes sometimes to make a game like…if it’s a Japense game, to bring it over the States. Not just translating and then localizing and marketing, but if it’s a game that has substantial voice text, oh my goodness! That is a collosal cost to bring that over. And some games you look at and you’re like “Well how are they going to bring that over?” and it’s like “Well, they can’t.”
You look at something like even Xenoblade Chronicles. People love that game, you know, within a certain group. That game is not the type of game that just pulls in enough to justify the costs on that. So that’s like, we got it in the States by luck, that NoE decided “Oh, we’ll take the fall. We’ll localize that.” Okay, cause someone is going to have to eat the costs somewhere, because that game is guaranteed to not sell enough to justify how big that game is. You know, hundreds of hours, all voiced. That’s a lot of money that goes into that.
And people are like “Why do you guys hate money?” We don’t. That’s why you literally can’t make everything. And people don’t like finding out that their fanbase is actually too small to justify the costs of the thing they want.
It’s unfortunate that a lot of games we’d like to see localized don’t see the light of day due to market appeal in a region, but at the end of the day – as much as it’s great to appease the fans – business comes first. If it makes sense, and it can be profitable, it’ll be done. If not, tough luck.
