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.

I hate trading in games

Trading games to a game store always feels like I am being cheated. You can bring in a almost mint copy of halo 3 and be offered 15$. You could sell the same game on ebay and make twice that. But ebay has its own hassles. A friend of mine recently told me that he has launched a new site that hopes to help you turn your used games into cash while avoiding the hassles of selling to people who live across the globe. Electronic Game List launched on June 8th and is craigslist but no spammers, and a focus on trading console games. I really hope his site takes off because I think its a great idea.

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 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

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!

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.

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!

Nintendo and RPGs

After making my top rpgs list I was feeling rather discouraged. You might have noticed only one Nintendo game was on it. So, I mustered up some nerve and emailed Nintendo. I actually received a non automated reply! Basically the guy said the they are embracing third parties in many ways and through the virtual console indie developers will be able to make games for the Wii. Here is the email traffic:

Nintendos performance at E3 was superb. I cant wait for the Wii to come out. The only negative thing I have to say is I really hope Nintendo makes a better effort at embracing third parties. While I love all the games Nintendo publishes all your system since Nintendo 64 have had next to no RPGs. In this last generation gamecube got Tales of Symphonia. A great great game but it seems namco released the next part of the series on PS2. PS2 got Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, Kingdom Hearts II, Kingdom Hearts, Dark Cloud 2, The Four .Hack Games and Final Fantasy X to just name a few.

I dont care if the RPGs are from Square or some unknown. Track down someone, ANYONE and get them to make RPGs for the Wii. Even if it means you have to pay them. As I grew up on the Super NES, Nintendo will always hold a special place in my heart. I want dont want to like Sony, I want to buy a Nintendo console again but the lack of role playing games makes it hard to part with my 250$.

Responce:

Hello and thank you for contacting Nintendo,

I'm pleased to hear that you approved of our presentation at the recent E3 show. In addition, I'm happy to announce that there will be a place for independent development on Wii via the system's Virtual Console, and we are actively working with these developers to encourage them to create game for our new system. While I'm unable to offer you any additional details at this point, in the coming weeks and months Nintendo will provide more concrete details to everyone. When that happens, you'll see it first at Nintendo's website (www.nintendo.com).

Keep checking our website at www.nintendo.com for the latest on Nintendo games, systems, and promotions. When new titles are announced by the independent developers, you will be able to read about them on our site.

While on our site, also check out the My Nintendo program. With this program, not only can you monitor the status of a subscription, part order or repair order, but you can also register your games and systems, and participate in the Nintendo Forums.

Thanks for your email and good luck with all your games!

Nintendo of America Inc.

Wii Videos

Incase anyone missed the awesome videos that came out of E3, I made a playlist over at youtube with the best wii videos. Enjoy

Wii E3

Nintendo flexes

A couple weeks ago Nintendo revlealed the new controller that will be shipping with the Nintendo Revolution (which I will hence forth be calling NR). You can read all about it at 1up.

I am going to admit I hated it when I first saw it. In general I hate TV and with TV comes remotes. Thus remotes are evil. Plus I have grown up holding a piece of plastic with two hands not one. But....

I have spent some time looking into the controller and just plain thinking about it and it actually has grown on me. In fact it has grown on me so much that I believe now NR will be my system of choice for gen7. There seems to be a lot of misunderstandings of what the controller can do so I wanted to post my findings and predictions and hope maybe I can convince a gamer or two along the way that just maybe the new controller doesn't completely suck.

First of all its important to understand the expander port at the bottom of the controller. In many of the pictures you see a analog stick attached to a small white box then a wire running to the controller itself. This can be removed. That is the whole point of the controller, to be able to change the controller design very easily. Nintendo has gotten the custom controller business lately. More and more games seem to be shipping with custom controllers. The extender port allows Nintendo to continue this trend in a big way. If you never have tried a game with a custom controller than I suggest going and getting Donkey Konga for Gamecube. Custom controllers are very fun and allow you to interact with a video game that has been previously impossible.

Lets say you hate the remote and everything that it represents. Well, because of the expander port you do not have to deal with it. It would be very easy for Nintendo to release a standard controller that had a Dreamcast-ish slot in the top you could plug the remote into. The remote would only stick out a inch or two. This way all of us who miss two handing it can pick up one of those (for a very cheap price).

Getting passed the extender port brings us too the postition and tilt sensors. This allows so many new ways to interact with games. I believe this will allow many genres of games to feel more "real". The most recent issue of EGM talks about the experience of playing some of the Demos. The one that stood out in my mind the most is for metroid. The analog stick was used for movement and the remote was used for looking and aiming. Imagine that for a second. Imagine how amazing a fps would be. There is a trigger on the bottom of the remote, and a rumble pack installed inside it.

Your moving down a hallway when a bad guy pops out you point your gun(remote) at him and pull the trigger. When you pulled the trigger the gun in your hand gives a hard push back. On the screen your player fires a plasma ball which is traveling in the same direction you just fired.

Its the Time crisis arcade machine mixed with Doom 3. Personally I think this way of interacting with games is much more emersive than just pounding circle. The NR controller will revolutionize how we interact with games, and will open up hundreds of possibilities for games that could have only existed in our imaginations. I can't wait.