Nintendo Voice Chat podcast summary (DS 2 rumors, media summit talk)

DS 2 rumors

– Nintendo, like other technology companies, are always working on new hardware
– Rumors happen every year
– Craig says that when rumors usually come out of Japan, you should sort of listen since it happened with the DS Lite and DSi
– Doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll announce something
– Craig thinks Nintendo will keep the DS name
– Also rumors of stylus rumble from a patent
– At GDC last year, old IGN editor (works for Pelican or some other company) showed Craig what they were working on, it was a rumbling stylus (plug in cartridge that sends signal to stylus, similar to Nintendo’s patent)
– Scott believes the next DS will be on par graphically with the PSP
– Nintendo sees that devs don’t want to put a lot of money into handheld development
– Technology created for the GameCube can be moved over to the next handheld, saves them money and dev time
– Craig has heard from a few sources that the nVidia graphics chip rumors are false

Nintendo Media Summit

– Takes place on Wednesday
– When Nintendo last had a summit other than an event like E3, they revealed the DSi (also had a summit in Japan and Europe)
– Craig has heard that Nintendo will not be revealing any hardware, except for maybe the release date for the DSi XL in North America
– Miyamoto won’t be at the summit
– Nintendo won’t say what will be at the event exactly
– Games like WarioWare: D.I.Y. will probably be there
– Doesn’t seem like Iwata has a keynote at GDC this year
– Matt, Daemon, a few others will be going to the summit for IGN
– Cammie will be speaking about certain news items at around 9 AM PST, will probably liveblog it
– 10:30 AM hands-on play, can’t write about the stuff until the end of the night (around 9 PM or so)
– Pokemon HeartGold/Soul Silver, America’s Test Kitchen, Wii version of Prince of Persia will be there
– Matt thinks there will be some significant games there like Galaxy 2, Craig thinks Metroid: Other M will be there

Red Steel 2

– Craig has a copy of the game
– He thinks it’s really cool
– Some characters require huge slashes, like characters with a lot of armor
– Graphics, style, art direction look great, tight
– Voice overs aren’t completely awful, better than many games
– Shooting is tight
– Game seems more focused on swordplay
– Red Steel 2 so much better than the first
– Game has some problems, not 100% perfect

Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing

– Not a bad game
– Mario Kart the better game
– Craig wasn’t interested it back at E3, complete turnaround for him now
– Controlling characters, power sliding, weapons, like Mario Kart
– Game itself same across all consoles, except for the resolution
– In four player multiplayer, details from the environment stripped out (track itself isn’t different)
– Craig recommends it
– Wii version a little weaker with ghost data
– Can use Wii Wheel, nunchuck, Classic Controller
– No GameCube controller support

Reader questions

– Playing GameCube games on Wii won’t improve frame rate issues, it runs in GameCube mode
– Might see more New Play Control! games because they’re easy to do
– Nintendo didn’t see Apple’s app store being such a big deal, new DS might be persistently online through Wi-Fi or through 3G adapter
– Intellivision’s DS game is still coming