Reminder: Game Night will be taking place later tonight. Please join us!
It’s been a longgggg time since we’ve had a Game Night on the site. I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit recently, in part because a few of you have brought it up. So, I’m officially bringing back Game Nights with the “revival” planned for Friday.
Austin’s Wii is broken, though he told me that he could try hopping over to a friend’s house to join us and he’ll most likely be a part of the IRC regardless. I haven’t really considered any format yet, so we’ll decide on which game(s) we’ll play in the chat.
If you’d like to take part, simply visit the site this Friday at 8 PM EDT. I’ll then post up an IRC page around that time. To join, you’ll just need to enter a nickname of your choice (no registration required).
I have no idea if we’ll be able to get back on a smooth schedule with these events, but I have to say that it’d be great if we can host them more frequently. The Game Nights I’ve been a part of have been a blast. Hopefully those of you who have participated feel the same way!
On this week’s episode: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, Mega Man 5, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.
Namco Bandai has opened a new teaser site for… something. What is it exactly? I honestly have no idea, though perhaps you guys can make something of the background image on the page.
Some fans are speculating that it might be .hack related, but of course, that’s nothing more than a guess at this point. All will be revealed in nine days.
You can check out the teaser site here.
Clash on the Big Bridge (Final Fantasy V)
One Winged Angel (Final Fantasy VII)
At Zanarkand (Final Fantasy X)
The Sunleth Waterscape (Final Fantasy XIII)
The Final Fantasy main theme
I really enjoyed the soundtrack sample on the game’s website. You can find it here in case you happened to miss it last night. If the rest of the music is similarly enjoyable, perhaps more fans will welcome the overall premise of this game.
DSiWare
Airport Mania: Non-Stop Flights – 200 points
Successfully Learning German Year 4 – 500 points
I’m sure that this is just a partial listing. I expect that at least one eShop game will be released and most likely a WiiWare title as well.
Thanks to Jake for the tip!
Despite being featured in Nintendo’s developer reel for Wii U at E3, Ken Levine reiterated to IGN that he has no plans to make any Wii U games at the moment. Levine, however, does appreciate the idea of being able to play a full-blown console game on the controller and likes that the “pad” features two control sticks.
“Just to be clear, there are no plans. I’m not saying it can’t happen, but we have no plans to do any games for that platform. There are things about it that, as a core gamer, really appeal to me, that have nothing to do with Fruit Ninja. I have nothing against Fruit Ninja, I respect all kinds of games, I love all kinds of games, there are just certain kinds of things that are more suited to my taste. There are some things, as a core gamer, as a guy who likes lying in bed playing… I’ve always had to sacrifice that core gaming experience when I lie in bed playing games. We’re now getting to a place with Vita and what Nintendo’s doing where that’s not necessarily going to be the case, where you can play full-on hardcore games in bed with the lights out while your wife’s asleep. I like that a lot. That means a lot to me. On the airplane? That means a lot to me as a core gamer, that you’ve got two sticks. That’s so important to me. The fact that the Wii U has got two sticks… I feel it’s like… It’s a great year for the core coming back and saying, okay, have your touch screens, have your motion control, we’ll try to make that work, and if you can pull that off it’ll be really good. But I want to have my cake and eat it too. I think these experiences are starting to allow that to happen. I love my iPad, but I mostly work on it, I don’t play a lot of games on it, because I’m not into that style or form factor, that three-minute experience.”
Levine has never been involved with the development of a Nintendo game before. Might he be more inclined to work on Wii U in the future? He did leave the door open by saying “I’m not saying it can’t happen”, so you never know what may happen.
The Irrational Games co-founder has also expressed some interest in 3DS, though hasn’t shared any plans to develop for the portable.
Ever since 2004, Shigeru Miyamoto has been connected with the phrase “upending the tea table.” Eiji Aonuma delivered a speech at GDC that year, partially discussing how Miyamoto can sometimes change the direction of a game’s development when it’s heading towards completion.
Aonuma was asked to reflect back on the famous phrase at E3 last month. Does the Zelda producer find the “Miyamoto Test” to be bothersome? Actually, no. Aonuma said that he thinks that it can be “quite necessary and useful.”
“Well, back at GDC, when that conversation was presented, I think it painted a picture of Mr. Miyamoto’s role inside the company as coming in and being a really disruptive force in the development process, but I view it a very different way and I think a lot of people do. It’s that his time to come in and flip things on their head is part of the development timeline. It’s an event that happens. It’s almost a ritual in that sense. And it’s a necessary process, because I find that when he offers that feedback, a lot of the time, he points out things that I, myself, was having trouble with and maybe felt that I couldn’t solve or didn’t have a good time for or felt like we didn’t have the time for and he comes in and really gives focus to everything. So I’d really like to reinforce that fact that I don’t view the process that people refer to as ‘upending the tea table’ as something unpleasant. It’s actually quite necessary and useful.”
