Animal Crossing City Folk is an epic disappointment

I loved Animal Crossing for Gamecube. So naturally, I was looking forward to Animal Crossing: City Folk for the Wii. I got it over thanksgiving break and well...... its not worth the money I spent.

We can all agree that graphics are not everything, yes? So if a game is not going to improve its graphics with its next release how does it draw in potential buyers? Content and features. Well Nintendo has failed in that department as well. The game is EXACTLY the same as the version for the Nintendo DS. It even has some of the same bugs! Its so much the same game that when starting a new game it even asks you if you want to import your town from your DS.

When I go to KK Slider to get the weekly song the credits begin to roll down the screen and I feel depressed and confused. There is a very long list of people who worked on this game, what they have been doing these last couple years is beyond me. Oh and for a final kick in the groin, Nintendo decided to put a copy lock on the save game file. All that time I spent playing this game over thanksgiving break on my little brothers Wii (because obviously I was with family), gone. It refused to copy to my SD card.

The major push for this release was the city. The city is terrible. Five whole buildings. One auction house, which is empty. One theater which is stupid. One furniture and clothing shop that does not change items very often, if at all, and has prices in the 100,000 bells range. One hair salon which lets you change your hair style (for 3000 bells, and only once a day), but does not actually let you pick your haircut. The game asks you a series of questions like what kind of look are you going for, mysterious, radiant, etc etc. and poof you get a haircut. Its alot like playing Russian roulette. One fortune teller that does not seem to really do anything and a guy that will change your shoe color for 500 bells, again you dont actually get to pick your shoe color, you answer a random question and the game guesses at what shoe color you really wanted.

Another new feature is the Wii Speak (in game voice communication), I would love to review it but unlike the various other dongles and gadgets for Wii games, this one did not come with the game. It is sold separately for an extra 30$. The friend codes are back again. I, and many others, have complained so much about these that there really isn't anything new I can add to the chorus. As stated in a previous blog post, Nintendo PR seems to think we like the friend codes and how each games has a entirely new code to trade with your friends. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Thank you Nintendo for protecting me from myself.

Save your money and don't buy this game.

Nintendo, you fail me. No, you fail us all.

The game company I once loved has forsaken its core fan base to embrace themasses. It has forgotten those that still bought and encouraged others to buyits console and games even while Sony and Microsoft were gobbling up largechunks of market share. We stayed because we knew that one day Nintendo wouldreclaim its crown as King of the gaming industry. Nintendo has reclaimed thatcrown but things are not as we, the Nintendo fans of yore, had hoped.

Spinning back to the Summer of 2006. Nintendo crushes the competition at E3 withtheir new motion sensing controller. Videos quickly spread across the Internetof gamers waiting in long lines just to get a chance to try it. The fan basebecomes reignited with hope and excitement and in turn begins to beat the louddrums of fandom, generating massive hype around the Wii.

When we found out the hardware specifications of the Wii would pale incomparison to that of the Xbox360 and the PS3, we said that graphics alone donot make a game good. We reminded people of the joy they had while playing the2D games of the 1990s.

When we found out that the Wii could not output a HD video signal, we parrotedthe company line that only 10% of households had HD compatible televisions.

When we found out Nintendo would not allow us to easily communicate and gamewith our online friends, requiring instead that we exchange 16 digit numberswith each one of our friends to send them messages, we reminded everyone thatNintendo cares deeply about the safety of children.

When we found out that the "Wii Numbers" we had previously exchanged with ourfriends would not even allow us to play online games with them, and that eachonline game would have its own 12+ digit number that will have to be exchangedwith friends, we again reminded everyone that Nintendo cares deeply about thesafety of children.

When we found out that titles offering online play would not allow communicationwith other players whether it be text or voice, we again reminded everyone thatNintendo cares deeply about the safety of children.

When we found out that the online play in Super Smash Brothers Brawl was barelyusable due to bugs and lag, we reminded everyone how popular Nintendo was andthat the servers are probably under heavy load.

When we found out the Wii only had 512mb of internal memory in comparison to20gb+ on the other consoles we reminded everyone that there was an SD expansionslot that would allow us to increase the available memory for downloaded gamesand save files.

When we found out that the wii does not support SDHC cards (allowing for sdcards above 4gb), we reminded everyone that they can purchase multiple sd cards.

When we found out that save files and downloaded games could only be read fromthe 512mb internal memory making SD cards useless for this purpose, we remindedeveryone that they could still view photos from their SD cards.

When we found out that while the Wii could read DVD games, it could not play DVDmovies, we reminded everyone that they probably already had a DVD player andthus did not need DVD playback on the Wii.

When hordes of terrible games started to appear for the Wii, we remindedeveryone that every game console has bad games and that Nintendo at least wasstill producing quality games.

When we watched Nintendo's E3 2008 showcase, that involved games without score,without a concept of winning, without even a goal to accomplish. ShigeruMiyamoto proclaiming that children's toys are more interesting than video games.A middle aged woman talking about and showing photos from her skii vacation. Andthe utter shock and eerie quiet emitting from every core gamer, every Nintendofan in the room. What do we say? What can we say? We can remind people that E3really isn't a big deal, like it used to be. We can say that while no games wereshown that the core audience would be interested in, they did announce a newpikman.... We can say.....We can say......... I can't do this anymore. I'm donewith Nintendo. I'm done

Nintendo has pushed a Linux using, open source loving, Nintendo fan boy to buy a Microsoft console. And while I grip that elite edition, black, wireless,controller in my hands and play Halo 3 over Xbox Live with my little brother, acoworker and his friend I smile because I am remembering what its like to play on agame console that's made by people who care about its users.

Super Smash Bros Brawl: New Characters

I grabbed a copy of this game about two weeks ago. You owe it to yourself to try it out. The game is incredibly fun. As most everyone here has played a "smash" game before I am not going to review the game mechanics. If you like it you like it. But I just wanted to touch on the new characters.

Character: Pit

Cons

Just about all his attacks are very close range and do little damage.

Pros

Difficult to suffer from falling death as he has wings.
Arrow from Pit's bow attack is controllable before fire by changing angle of bow.
Arrow from Pit's bow attack is controllable after fire by arcing the arrow up or down.
Easy to string quick attacks into a series of combos.

Character: Wario

Cons

Awkward movement and attack style
Difficult to string attacks into combos

Pros

Can run over opponents with motocycle

Character: Ike

Cons

Slow attack style
Short range

Pros

Attacks deal large amounts of damage
Attacks have a large area of effect

Character: Pokemon Trainer

Cons

Bulbasaur sucks
Easy to fall off edge with squirtle

Pros

Switching pokemon allows for quick adaption in the heat of battle

Nintendo to Discontinue Gameboy Advanced and Micro?

With the recent redesign of Nintendo.com the only two products featured on the homepage are the Wii and DS. Digging through the site there is no mention anywhere of the existence of things like the gamecube or the gameboy. But I happen to still have the link to the old gameboy advanced website http://www.nintendo.com/channel/gba It links to a pretty interesting page:

OLDER SYSTEMS, GAMES, and ACCESSORIES

Older systems, such as the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo Game Cube, Nintendo 64, NES, Super NES, Virtual Boy, or older Game Boy systems may be more difficult to find as retailers tend to only stock the newer systems. In most cases, the only option is to buy used or refurbished products.

Certainly the new site is nicer looking than the old one. But considering I can still go pickup a gameboy advanced sp at the local walmart... it may be premature to strip them from their website. At one point Nintendo was saying that the DS was a seperate line from the gameboy and they would continue to develop independently. This to be no more?

Nintendo Search Engine

Information about Nintendo is spread across the internet. Because of this finding specific information about Nintendo games, systems and plans can be frustrating.

I have created a google custom search engine that focuses in on websites that talk about nintendo. At this moment I am up to 45 sites being indexed. Hopefully other find this as useful as I do!

Try it today with a simple search for "Manhunt 2" and quickly find out all kinds of information about the game

I am constantly looking for new sites and blogs to add to the list of indexed pages. If you know of one that should be included please let me know. If you run a small blog this can be a great way to drive more traffic to your site.

Nintendo under the impression gamers like friend codes

We’ve seen, in the feedback we’ve gotten, that people don’t mind the friend codes. They like them, because it keeps them playing with the friends that they do know, and it keeps their games “undisturbed,” if you will. (Go Nintendo)

Is there anything I can even say in response to this that will do this comment justice? I had been digging the internets trying to find an interview that had a response from nintendo to the complete mess that are friend codes. For those of you not in the know to play a online game with a friend on the wii. One needs to get said friend to add your friend number to their friend registry and you need to add their number to your registry. There are two big problems with this.

1.) Friend codes are GAME specific. What this means is everytime a gamer buys another game that supports online play she has to go through the process of adding each one of her friends again and getting them to add her back.
2.) Friend codes are a series of 12 digits. This makes it kind of hard to remember and tedious to enter in.

But the fact that Nintendo thinks that we are okay with friend codes. Nay that we LIKE them amazes me. One of the first loudest complaints on the nsider forums (Nintendo's now dead attempt at an community) was in fact the friend codes. What complicated matters further was that exchanging friend codes on the nsider forum was a ban-able offense.

Part I: My Wii is collecting dust.

I had and have high hopes for this console but some of Nintendo's old blunders are coming back to haunt them. As horrible and painful as it is for me to say ... XBox 360 may be the best overall console of this generation. It pains me because as someone who grew up with a Nintendo controller in my hand I want Nintendo to win. For the last couple generations Nintendo has been the ultimate under dog. A company that still makes good games but has been left by the way side. The Wii is no different.

This is not to say that the Wii will not be successful. One just has to look at the sales numbers to see that people are digging the Wii. But with this generation Nintendo heads off in a new direction. They are looking to get their wiimote into the hands of people who may never have thought of themselves as a gamer. This strategy seems to be working wonders for their bottom line. So the obvious question is with Nintendo finally back in the minds of consumers why am I sad?

I am not the consumer that Nintendo is targeting secondly the prelaunch promises to fix the mistakes of the past are falling to the wayside.

Friend Codes
This was one of the first complaints that started showing up all over nsider forums (RIP) post launch. Nintendo hiding behind protecting children, made it very difficult to add a friend to your wii's buddy list. How the Wii is setup you can not send a message to another wii owner unless you have registered them as your friend. The process to do this is painful at best. First you need to get ahold of your friend through some other means of communication and exchange wii numbers which are ~20 digit long unique identifier for your Wii. Now you both have to go into the wii address book and register your the wii numbers. Now what happens if you have a friends wii number but they do not have yours? You can not send them a message and the wii will not tell you that anything is wrong your message is just lost in the noise.

Protecting children is a good goal but not all wii owners are children. I do not need Nintendo to protect me from myself. It would have been nice to provide a way to disable this setting. Parental Controls are available for the Wii. Many Nintendo apologists said that this can be fixed in a patch. In a couple months it will be a year since launch and Nintendo has stuck to their guns. It is safe to assume at this point that this attitude of protecting owners from themselves is here for good.

Future commentary include:

• Part II: Online Play



• Part III: 3rd Party Support



• Part IV: Game Genres



• Part V: Flash Storage

Homage to dead games

My memory is filled with hundreds of hours from my childhood playing games on my Super Nintendo. Super Mario World, Final Fantasy 4, Megaman X* they're all classics. Every once in awhile I like to go back and play these games. When I play them I feel the same as I did when I originally played them. Its a very positive feeling. Later I ended up getting a Playstation and there are plenty of memorable games for it that I still sometimes go back and play. The point being I like to go back and play some the older games because it reminds me of my earlier years.

I can go back and play almost any game I have ever played but there are a few exceptions; online only games. There are two games that I regularly played that I can never go back to again Wormhole and Earth and Beyond. For whatever reason the company that created each of these games decided to shutdown their servers and because of the nature of online gaming there is no way for me to play these games without a dedicated server

Each of these games have not only been erased from my life but culture as a whole. Sure there a couple sites out there that still have old articles about these games but eventually that content will rot or the domains will get snatched up by squatters. Those people that still remember the game will eventually forget or die. 100 years from now historians will still be able to insert a semi working cartridge of Super Mario World in a SNES and get a feel for the game, or even load up a rom in a emulator. What can historians do for these dead online games? Nothing. Even if they knew they existed the best they could do is find a old cd and install them and that only applys to Earth and Beyond. As for Wormhole, there never was a CD or a installer it was just a java applet. All these games and any other online game is destined for a end life of rot.

Thus here is my attempt to delay the inevitable, to stop everyone from forgetting. Here is my Homage to dead games.

Wormhole (Centerfleet)
Fast paced multiplayer space game. Think hardcore Astroids. When the match begins each player is in their own part of space and in the center of the arena are the wormholes that lead to the other players worlds. You can't enter them but the weapons you pick up can. Fly around for a couple seconds picking up random bombs and lasers then come back and lob them into Green's (another player) wormhole. On his side he is likely doing the same thing looking around for weapons to shoot at someone but out of nowhere things are shooting at him and exploding all around him. Lucky for you green wasn't fast enough and slides into a rather large explosion.

The person with the most kills wins, or was it a single death experience? I honestly can not remember. The memory rot has already begun. But what I do remember is that my friends and I had a blast playing this game. We would sometimes stay after school and each grab a computer in the lab and do 4 person free for alls. It was great because the person who just killed you was sitting right next to you. I wish I could go back and play this game again, but alas Centerfleet the company that created wormhole got into the Cellphone game business, they renamed themselves Centerscore. On their website they say that they want to make versions of their old java games for the cellphone. If they ever do remake wormhole, I doubt it will be the same game. Just some expensive brew game calling it self wormhole just to piggy back off the success of their old game, but sharing no relation to the original game.

Earth and Beyond (EA Games)
One of the largest server pulls in the mmorpg business. Overnight EA converted the hours that people had invested into this game into nothing. Players need to remember that the corporations that run these games are motivated by profits. Over time as graphics become outdated and the players start to become bored the population numbers drop. Eventually the costs out way the money coming in through subscriptions. If a game requires more money to run and maintain then it is bringing in then expect the plug to be pulled.

This was such a large high profile discontinuation of an online only game that I would like to hear from the ex fans. If you used to play this game and enjoyed it leave a comment or send me an email telling me your thoughts on EnB. Do you miss the game? Good Riddance? Does it bother you that you can never go back to play it again? I will post your responses in a follow up. If you have a blog I will post a link.

Wii Virtual Console 2007

Nintendo has turned around its online offering and is now selling great classic titles. The new vc offerings are a swift blow to the competition. How Sony and Microsoft will keep up is beyond me.

NES:
Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Mario Bros., Pinball, Soccer, Solomon's Key, Wario's Woods, Donkey Kong Jr., Ice Hockey, Tennis, Super Mario Bros., Baseball, Urban Champion, Gradius, Xevious, Ice Climber, Kid Icarus, Kirby's Adventure, The Legend of Kage
SNES:
F-Zero, SimCity, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, Super Castlevania IV, R-Type III: The Third Lightning, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Contra III: The Alien Wars, Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country
Nintendo 64:
Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64
Genesis:
Altered Beast, Sonic The Hedgehog, Ecco the Dolphin, Golden Axe, Columns, Ristar, Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, Gunstar Heroes, Space Harrier II, ToeJam & Earl, Bonanza Bros., Comix Zone, Gain Ground, Streets of Rage
TurboGrafx-16:
Bomberman '93, Bonk's Adventure, Super Star Soldier, Victory Run, Alien Crush, Military Madness, R-Type, Dungeon Explorer, Soldier Blade, Moto Roader, Vigilante, New Adventure Island

Wii launch day thoughts

I got a wii at launch day because I have been very excited about the new controller. Some complaints I have.

1. SD cards are utterly useless. I got the system update that let me copy game saves to my sd cards which is great. The problem is if I then remove that save from my system memory the game will not detect it and ask to recreate it. This means to use my sd card to increase my save game space I would have to copy over my saves before every game and then when I am done playing copy over the save back to the SD with any changes there might be and delete it off the system memory. This really is unacceptable and clunky. Secondly I read in the virtual console FAQ that we are not able copy our downloaded games over to SD cards. When I originally heard that the Wii only had 512mb of internal flash memory I figured that would be okay because we could use our SD cards to hold everything but it seems nintendo does not have that same thought.



2. Virtual Console is lame. First of all I find it hilarious that the only game I wanted to buy was not for sale. Its this little known game called... SUPER MARIO WORLD. In fact vgreviews listed it as the #1 game for SNES. Instead of smw what do we get? fzero and sim city. excuse me for not dropping 8$ for that mess. I wasn't too angry about this until I saw the Japaneses virtual console launch list. It seems Nintendo Japan knows exactly what gamers want with a virtual console... while Ninteno USA is massively out of touch. The game selection is so much larger it makes me wonder if Nintendo just didnt care about the american market.



3. All the online channels dont work. I am just disappointed that the forecast, news and internet channels are disabled. I was excited about these features as they had been hyped at the nintendo website for quite some time. It would have been nice the website to also say that these would not be available at launch.

So I guess in summary I have no issues with the games. They all are very fun but the online experience and the treatment of SD cards leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.

New Facebook Group

600$!? Fuck that. I want a Wii [Facebook]
For everyone who is jaded by all the bad news coming out of Sony. Grab a wiimote and come play with Nintendo!

Top 99 Games

I have been crunching some numbers in regards to IGN's recent Top 99 Games list. Here is what I have found out.

• 33% of the top 99 games are exclusively on a Nintendo console.



• 20% of the top 99 games are exclusively on a Sony console.



• 5% of the top 99 games are exclusively on a Microsoft console.

Couple things I noticed when I was tallying everything. First of all almost all of the top xbox games have been ported to PC. Since the rule was exclusively on a system I could not count these. But if when I think about this it makes sense because Microsoft is not just in the console business they also wish to encourage people to use their operating system. If I can't play my favorite games on a mac then I am more likely to stick around. In a way I want to count PC games for Microsoft.

Secondly, Nintendo is the king of the handheld market. What really helped push up Nintendo's numbers were all the Game boy Advanced games on the list.

What does all this mean? I don't know you tell me. Feel free to blast the hell out of this.

Tales of Symphonia

I believe I have talked about this game before but if you have not played it then you are seriously missing out. It is one of the best roleplaying games to come out this generation. I found this ToS anime music video over at youtube and it is very well made.

Create a Mii right now!

Joystiq has put up a flash simulation of what the Mii Channel on the Wii might be like. They have done a great job. Here I am in Mii form:



In other news I have created a google group dedicated to the discussion of all things Nintendo. It is called Wii Love Nintendo. Please head over and join up. We will be talking about everything from games to speculation on big N's next move.

My dream aggregator

There are certain features missing from all the RSS aggregator out there. If someone were to implement them it would save the world tons of time. In fact I would be willing to donate money to a pool to get these features implemented in a single client.

• Bayesian Tagging - Tagging is a great feature. Unfortunately in its current state it is really only useful for archiving purposes. Lets say I get on and want to see todays news on Nintendo. Well I can't I can only see yesterdays news on Nintendo because I have to tell my aggregator which articles to give the Nintendo tag. Why not keep track of what I am tagging Nintendo that way when new articles come in the aggregator can properly tag them. If I only want to read about certain things then I don't have to comb through hundreds of feeds my aggregator has done it already.


• Redundancy Checking - The more feeds that I add to my aggregator the more articles I get about the same event. It gets really old reading about the same thing over and over just with slightly different wording. There must be some way to compare two articles and determine a percent chance that they are about the same thing. Once the aggregator figures out which articles are about the same thing it would display only one of them and under the description it could say "24 other feeds also wrote about this" which would be a link to see the other articles. But there should also be a way to mass mark all that are about the same thing as read.


• Daily Dumps - Sometimes I dont want to sit on my computer to read the news. There should be a way to dump your feeds into a pdf file for printing purposes. You could specify certain requirements such as a time range or only a certain tag to include. Also it would format them in such a way to be easy to read and deal with the redundancy checking. Almost like your own newspaper. That way I could print this thing off take it to school and read through what happened while sitting in class.

To summarize my complaints about current aggregators there needs to be more work done by the program and less by me. They need to be smarter and they should learn from the information I feed it.

Kirby and friends

Kind of a slow news day for gaming and tech. Granted it is 9:29am. I decided to post a couple of game trailers for games that look interesting. No zelda or mario though everyone has seen those 100x over.

• Kirby's Adventure - Kirby is up there with mario for greatest video game character ever. Almost all of the kirby games are fun. Actually no I take that back two of the kirby games are fun. Kirby Superstar and Kirby Canvas Curse. Both very fun games. There has been a few stinkers though namely Kirby Air Ride. There hasn't been a classic kirby game in a awhile and the ones that have come out haven't been as good as superstar. Kirby adventure looks to knock superstar off its seat as the best kirby game. Hopefully this game will come out soon because I am seriously tired of waiting.



• Megaman ZX - Finally a decent megaman for a nintendo console. I could never get into the battle network thing. Plus I haven't been excited about a megaman since X4 (which rocked cause zero was the man!). This game is looking to start a brand new story on the Nintendo DS. The two people you see in the trailer who look like megaman and zero are actually not them. That aside it looks amazing. Instead of different powers you get different suits. Unlike the old suits of the MX days these suits completely change the play style of the character.

Wiishlist

Wiishlist.com is a great site. They are tracking what stores are currently preordering the wii and the various launch titles. They also provide some wii news at the bottom of the site.



Wii updates of the last couple weeks:

• Nintendo reminds the world they are launching on time, unlike certain competitors.



• Nintendo has already recieved some of the processors from IBM

It seems the return of the marios is upon us.

Wii vs PS3

This was added four weeks ago so I am alittle late catching this. Someone made a apple style commercial for the wii. Its hilarious!!

PS3 Delayed in Europe

I just had to break my silence to post about this. Launch information is now out for the PS3 and it is absolutly hilarious.

Launch Units

100,000 Japan
400,000 North America

Thats not all, PS3 is being delayed in europe until 2007.(Source)

bwahahahahahaah. hahahahahahaahah. hahahahahaha. ha.. ha..

It seems that Nintendo's best PR for the the wii comes directly from Sony. Lets see... 600$ and even if you wanted to spend the money you wont be able to get the console. Oh and lets not forget games will be costing between 59$ to 100$(Source). Sounds like sony is ready for a great launch! Forgive me for not being excited.

I am sure this is old but I find it highly entertaining. VIVA LA NINTENDO!

Resident Evil 4

I know this is a old game considering it first appeared on amazon July 14, 2004. But for those who are looking for a awesome game to play look no further than Resident Evil 4 for gamecube. I was absolutely stunned when I saw the graphics. RE4 easily passes all the games for gamecube and possibly all the games for this console generation in the graphics department. But good graphics do not make a good game.

In the gameplay/controls department I would have to say RE4 is top notch. I hated the older RE games because the controls were horrid. But for RE4 the developers have mapped the controls onto the gamecube controller perfectly. Plus, there is a button combo that does a 180 turn! The feel of the game is 75% gore 25% suspense. The gore is over the top it seems the developers took ever chance they could to throw in another exploding head. The gore doesn't take away from the game. Getting your head chainsawed off really would bleed that much. The major problem is that the game just isn't scary. I wanted it to be scary. I even tried playing with all the lights off at three in the morning no dice. There were a couple times where I jumped and some of the game's atmosphere really was intense but as a whole I would have to say the Doom 3 demo scared me more.

The final verdict is the $12.95 (Amazon, 6|26|2006) that this game costs used is chump change compared to the amount of fun this game has brought me. If you are interested and would like to see some in game footage put to good music, then look no further than raypinot's Resident Evil 4 -- Stupid MF. WARNING: Not for the squeamish.