News

Posted on 15 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in DS, News | 0 comments

Pre-order and guarantee yourself one of the finest gaming soundtracks evar. EVAAARRR!

As if there weren’t enough reasons to purchase Legacy of Ys: Books I & II, Atlus is offering one more (and just as a refresher, the others include a new localization, remastered graphics and music, optional touch screen controls, multiplayer, and much more):

Legacy of Ys pre-order bonus soundtrack
Pre-orders at participating retailers will secure a copy of a limited edition Legacy of Ys: Books I & II soundtrack CD, which will feature selected tracks from both Ys I and II.

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Posted on 15 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii | 0 comments

Producer : Kentarou Kawashima (Seven, Venus and Braves)
Art Director : Keiko Harada (Seven, Venus and Braves)
Main Programmer : Munehito Yasui (Baten Kaitos – Tri Crescendo)

• After much investigations, they found out that the average Japanese and European home game user identifies primarily three things in the games he plays, in this order : 1) Story and Characters, 2) World presentation, 3) Game system.
For example, he (the producer) thought at the time (of “Seven”‘s development) that rendering the gameplay mechanics more and more complex could alone make for an enjoyable game, when he found out that in fact, stressing the game system too much only lead to a dead-end.
Another example he brought up was about…the ramen restaurants : why is it that some ramen shop are radically more popular than some other despite serving basically the same thing – noodles in a soup : it’s because customers are paying, not only for the good diner, but also for the “experience” provided by the restaurant.
Which is why, he concludes, as for the game system and mechanics, so the means used to entertain the user wouldn’t be overdone, the question asked must be : “Which experience do you customer feel like getting ?”, and the answer from the customer could be : “If I play this game, what kind of experience should I expect ?”

• Comparison brought up by Kawashima : “Resident Evil” = “frightening” ; “Fragile” = “oppressive”

• Kawashima thinks that it’s essential than the creator reflects in his games the feelings he experienced himself, which is why they personally went out to take shots of existing locations (such as the Kawaji Dam, or the Tokyo Metropolitan Underground Discharge Channel), while observing the atmosphere, and listening to the environmental sounds. All of this seemed to have given a fairly high quality atmosphere to the game.

• The game should last around 30 hours. And because Kawashiwa considers that these 30 hours are most precious to the user, he wanted to make them the most meaningful possible.

• Kawashima’s cherished theory is that, if the consumer demands to personally experience something interesting, then the game creator should create interesting games from these individual experiences “First is to provides varied experiences, the technology comes afterwards.”

• Here is another thought from Kawashima : do the typical game user has a better response to the story of the superhuman which literaly makes the world revolve around him, or to the story of the average person which is confronted to occurrences he cannot control ? Well Kawashima himself, in addition to preferring the latter type, thinks that games haven’t explored this type of plot enough. He calls this line of thought “From action games to reaction games”.

• Fragile has actually been in development for around 2 years and became a fairly big project over time. “RPGs need a lot of money”, he says. As expected, they intend to recoup these development costs with the game sales, and derived products. But the distribution and advertising won’t be cheap either.

• At the start of the Fragile project, the game was supposed to be set in Winter (as opposed to the current game, which is set in Summer), and the main character was supposed to be a Treasure Hunter that looked like this :

• A few elements survived the transition from the early project, such as the bonfires, the messages written on the walls, or the pointer/flashlight mechanics.

• The main programmer (Yasui) wasn’t too hot on the battles as they were in the first prototype. He even proposed that the game would only consist of ruins exploration.

• Yasui worked hard with one other programmer to get the prototype version (the playable version which must allow the company to decide the fate of the project) up and running from the specification documents. So much that it was completed in about 4 months (he explains that his work on Baten Kaitos helped, as the Wii hardware is pretty close to the Gamecube), and the project could finally be greenlit.

• Seems like they had to change their art director at some point early, so Keiko Harada had the difficult task of inheriting her predecessor’s work.

• A big work has been done on the sound flow, and the co-existence between the BGM and the environmental sounds.

• The project has been on schedule the whole time, so at the final development stage, they could actually afford to up the quality of the game significantly.

Source

Posted on 15 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii | 5 Comments

Posted on 15 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 2 Comments

“We signed a brand new game in the middle of December…the 15th of December we signed the contract…Greg and I signed a contract and Fed Ex’d it back to the publisher and boom. We’re hitting the ground running now. We’re actually going to do kind of a diary of the development of that but I probably won’t release that until once the game’s been announced…I’m really really excited about it. It might be the game I’m the most excited about ever in my career…Hopefully I can tell you all about it soon. It’s going to be awhile probably…It’s not related to the other game with the Dracula character we released before.” – Jools Watsham, Renegade Kid developer

If previous work done by Reneage Kid is any indication, this new title could turn out to be a great experience. Moon and The Dementium have pushed the limits of the DS, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the new game falls in line with that as well.

Posted on 15 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii | 1 Comment

Now that Free Radical has been closed down and most employees have been relieved of their positions, character art and renders of Star Wars Battlefront 3 and TimeSplitters 4 have been released. The shots come from a 3D artist who released the work on his blog (though they have been removed since then).

Source 1, Source 2, Source 3

Posted on 16 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Site updates | 3 Comments

If there was one aspect about Nintendo Everything that I didn’t really like, it would have to be the text on the header image that you see on every page. It didn’t stand out too well, it was bland, and frankly, it was lame! So I was very pleased when a NE reader contacted me not too long ago and offered to change the logo a bit.

I did want to keep the main logo up since it does embody the saying “Nintendo Everything,” but I knew that it needed to be touched up. The image you see now was done by Julian and I’m impressed with the results. The text stands out and looks much more Nintendoish than it did before.

I’d really like to thank Julian for taking the time and effort to create the modified image. Moreover, I hope all of you guys like it!

Posted on 16 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii | 0 comments

Someone has pieced together a video of how Mirror’s Edge would work if played with the Wii Balance Board…

Not entirely sure how well this would work. It’s an interesting idea nonetheless.

Posted on 16 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii | 0 comments

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) today released its “Best of 2008” lists, which include the bestselling, most positively reviewed, most-wished-for and favorite gift products as determined by Amazon.com customers in 2008.

Bestselling Products

The following is a list of the bestselling products on Amazon.com in 2008 by total units sold:

* Books: “Breaking Dawn” by Stephenie Meyer (The Twilight Saga, Book 4)
* DVD: “Wall-E” (widescreen single-disc edition)
* Music: “Viva La Vida” by Coldplay
* Video Games: Nintendo Wii
* Software: Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007
* Electronics: Amazon Kindle
* Home & Garden: Oster 4207 electric wine opener
* Grocery: Senseo Douwe Egberts dark roast coffee pods
* Gourmet: Taste of Italy gift basket
* Health & Personal Care: Groom Mate Platinum XL nose and ear hair trimmer
* Beauty: Bare Escentuals bareMinerals SPF 15 foundation
* Toys: Wild Planet Hyper Dash
* Baby: Munchkin Mozart Magic Cube
* Apparel & Accessories: Levi’s men’s 501 pre-shrunk jeans
* Shoes and Handbags (Amazon.com and Endless.com): crocs Cayman sandal
* Jewelry: sterling silver open Double Flower pendant, 16″ – 18”
* Watches: Casio men’s Pathfinder multi-band solar atomic silver watch
* Sports & Outdoors: Razor A Kick scooter
* Home Improvement: First Alert CO600 plug-in carbon monoxide alarm
* Automotive: Accutire MS-4751WC digital programmable tire gauge with light

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Posted on 16 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Wii | 0 comments

“Swimming will be a part of it, but it won’t be set in an Olympic pool going back and forth. This is a pure action game. We will spend a very pretty penny in marketing this project because it’s important to us. We believe it’s the next Tiger Woods project…It could be here for the next 10 years.” – 505 Games president Adam Kline

As much as 505 Games is hyping up the project, I can’t help but continue to remain skeptical. I’ve become a bit of a Phelps fan after watching him in the Olympics, though this kind of game seems rather risky.

Source

Posted on 16 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News, Wii | 0 comments

“If it sells well enough, sure. Of course, you can’t really say how well it’ll sell at this point, but if it does great — if we can get a lot of people to play it and enjoy it — I’d love to make another one.” – Yuji Naka

Sadly, I don’t think we’ll see any more Let’s types of titles considering the sales in Japan thus far. Let’s Tap only sold about 5,000 units in its first week. That’s pretty disappointing since the game is very original.

Naka also discussed another game in production from Prope. He said, “We’re actually planning on making a game like Sonic right now. We want to keep trying to make various kinds of games.” Hopefully the game won’t be based on some of Sonic’s more recent outings!

Source