It was raining the other day. I was meant to go trainspotting with my friend Dwayne, Dwayne Dibley. But he forgot his thermos, and Dwayne never goes anywhere without that. What to do? I got all my old VHS tapes out and re-classified them according to the date I recorded their content. Once that was done I was at a loose end, so I went to vgchartz and had a look round.
They have a lot of sales data there. It may or may not be accurate, but lets assume it gives a half decent idea of what sells.
The Wii has just over sixty titles that have crossed the million mark. From Wii Fit at twenty-odd million down to a Hannah Montana game that has just kissed the mill. The core Nintendo games are there, Galaxy, Zelda, Mario Kart and Brawl. Metroid Prime 3 is the least successful of these at around 1.3 million. Is this why the series is moving on with Other M?
These core Nintendo gamers know what they like then. One thing they don’t like is games like Madworld, The Conduit and Dead Space Extraction. Admittedly, its early days for Dead Space but the signs aren’t great. All these games are new, not part of a series, and perhaps that explains their lack of success. These have only just scraped the 300,000 mark so far.
Sequels don’t do that well. House of the Dead 2&3 is into the millions but House of the Dead: Overkill is way behind that, in spite of being made for the Wii and well-received. Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 nearly made the million, but the superior sequel PES 2009 is way behind. Tiger Woods ‘o8 is the best-selling Tiger game. The updates from 2009 and this year’s outstanding MotionPlus version are nowhere close to that, despite being better. Read more »
Have you downloaded the BBC iPlayer channel yet? I did and watched Ray Mears build an igloo. This is good, I thought. This is what I thought they meant well over a year ago when they said iPlayer was being made available on Wii. Not that you could get it through the internet channel as was the case up until last week.
Tried any demos of WiiWare games yet? Looking at the top twenty downloads on the shop channel it seems lots of people have. This is a limited experiment, not a change of direction. Not many WiiWare games are well known outside the cult of people that are `into` them. Funny that demos are available of games like World of Goo and the Square stuff like FFCEMUP and others that have the highest of the low profiles of Wiiware. I hope Nintendo decide to expand the idea of try before you buy, because it seems an obvious advantage.
Do you see that horse heading across the field?
Anyone else seen that Ant and Dec advert set in the pub? In the last twenty-five and a couple years I’ve spent a lot of time in public houses, sometimes doing things I’m not proud of and often lucky to avoid a custodial sentence. In all that time I’ve never seen one where no one is drinking. Yet Nintendo and their cheery, upbeat Geordie monkeys find one straight away. And its full of beautiful people, happy to play the Wii without fighting, stealing or trying to interfere with each other. Where are the ne’er do wells, the shifty geezers, the tarts, junkies, vicars, bores, violent misfits, lonely women and other interesting people you find in the boozer? Please make these ads more real Nintendo. Even if its only letting an untidy person have a Wii. By the way, which one’s Dec?
First off, merry Dreamcast day to you all and I hope it was a good one because today, on Wednesday September 9th, celebrates a decade of that wonderful (that’s questionable but…) Dreamcast, a console that brought us certain joy, with such classics as; Sonic Adventure, Ecco The Dolphin: Defender of the Future and Sonic Adventure 2, the Sonic game (in some opinions) that ended Sonics run of good games. The Dreamcast also brought much frustration with most games being only released in Japan and all the other ones being absolute rubbish (Though I’m sure Jack and Jason will have something to say about that) or , for those that weren’t rubbish, they were extremely hard. Many television sets and Dreamcast controllers were smashed in fury.
Some of you may already be saying to yourself ” But the Dreamcast first came out in 1998, on November 27th no less.” Well you would be right, but today ten whole years ago on the ninth day of the ninth month of the ninety-ninth year, it appeared in North America then very soon after appeared in Wacky warehouses, shopping centres and even houses across England on October 14th. But back to why I chose today to post this. Apart from me forgetting it’s original release day, an interesting trailer appeared. The trailer goes a little something like this:
Along with that SEGA also released Sonic and Knuckles for XBLA. It’s obvious to see SEGA are celebrating. The trailer is interesting to say the least and with Sonic games getting better recently a 2D sonic is a great proposition. I hope they pull it off. I leave you now saying, join the WiiDS blog team on October 14th for another Dreamcast treat, till’ then goodbye.
Do you cheat? If you go onto Youtube and search something like `conduit hackers` then you’ll see plenty of videos about cheating the multiplayer part of the game. Like everything else in life, whether you cheat or not is up to you. Because of the peculiar nature of the internet, cheating there is different from cheating in other parts of our world.
For instance, if we were in the pub playing pool or darts, even skittles – it doesn’t matter – and one person kept cheating there would be a brief period when they were invited to stop doing it. Maybe one time it was funny, but it wears thin after a while. At this point someone would stick the nut on the cheater and he would have reservations about doing it again. Thats how our social behaviour is regulated and developed, by the reactions of our peers. Of course, the internet doesn’t have this feature. You can be anyone or anything you want to be on there. And when you cheat at games you don’t get smacked so you don’t stop doing it.
I’m not a technical bloke, so all this talk of codes, hacks, lag switches and the like means nothing. I still think my computer is run by a lot of little pixies inside it working in a large open plan office to process all the stuff. When the internet slows down I yell inside telling the Pixies to stop hanging round the water cooler and talking about Eastenders instead of pedalling my internet. James and Jack could tell you about my prowess in the field of technology as they have to sort out the drivel I write on this blog so the three readers can make sense of it.
However, I live in a popular seaside resort in the North of England. Stay with me, there’s a point to this. It has a Tower, three piers, a large amusement park and all the vice you could wish for. You may have been here. Hope you had a good time and didn’t catch anything itchy. I used to work in the big amusement park on the Kentucky and Arabian Derbies. Good times they were too. If you don’t know the way the game plays its a race, a game of skill. You roll a ball up a table aiming for coloured holes. When the ball goes in the hole your horse/camel moves. Red hole moves furthest, blue next, yellow least distance. If you miss, you don’t move. First one to move their horse/camel to the end of the course wins. Add commentary and `humour` from some shifty wide-boys and you’ve got a great game.
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Bear with me, I need to give a little context first.
I recently received an email informing me that Yahoo’s Geocities site-hosting service is to be permanently shut down soon. This confused me initially, but then I remembered I do actually have a Geocities website.
GIMO (Gaming In My Opinion) was the precursor to GJOB, a website I set up and programmed myself to host my work and serve as a portfolio as I began my quest to become a games journalist. As you can see (if you click the link before Geocities closes), it was extremely primitive stuff and was an cantankerous bugger to manage – the fact that I had to update each page’s menu separately (yes, I was that ignorant) is what made me turn to blogging in the first place.
I’ve saved all of the editorial to my laptop for nostalgic purposes. For the most part, it’s paltry 200-300 word reviews for Special Reserve’s Game-A-Day competition (one of which won me a copy of The Legend Of Zelda: Oracle Of Ages), and a few Nintendo fanboy opinion pieces written in 2004.
Also written in 2004 was this little gem: Hyrule’s Worst Security System. This was a silly piece I wrote for a bit of fun on a Zelda forum. It’s a bit long – okay it’s very long – but I thought you might be interested in what my 18 year-old mind was once proud of!
Hyrule’s Worst Security Systems
We sent our testers throughout the land to try and break into some of the empire’s most ‘well-guarded’ locations, just to see what we could get away with. The results were not good, and are here for your entertainment.
[Disclaimer: Hyrule’s Worst Security Systems accepts no responsibility for any thefts, damage to property or break-ins that follow the publication of this document. Equally, Hyrule’s Most Wanted denies any claims that this document instructs or encourages the public in any such crime. Honest.]
So, in no particular order…
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What do you think of Wii Sports Resort? The most inevitable sequel ever arrived in the mail yesterday. I’ve had a bit of a go with it and I’m more impressed than I thought I would be. It was a purchase I made because I thought I should. Curiosity made me want to see what Nintendo would do with their new motion plus accessory.
The question I’ve been left wondering is what they’ll do with it next? Or what anyone else will do with it next. The sword fighting and archery beg to be involved in a Zelda game, or any adventure game. So far there’s Red Steel 2 and.. anything else? Surely there will be that lightsaber game the world of Star Wars obsessives has expected for almost three years.
Having played the jetski game and the free-flying round the island in a plane game I’ll be disappointed if there isn’t a Wave Race on the way. More than that, they need to have Pilotwings. Controlling both these games whetted my appetite for so much more. Flying had me wanting to duel in the skies over First World War France or have a crack at the Battle of Britain. Making the plane go where you want is instinctive and great fun. Curse you Red Baron! It was like Pilotwings lite. Bring us the real thing Nintendo!
You can also do a barrel roll. Enough said.
Both golf and bowling are subtly improved. Table tennis is good, you can put pleasing spin on the ball. The surprise for me was Frisbee Dog. First I want that dog for my pet. And second I can’t stop chucking that damned frisbee. The whole package has you smiling like an idiot.
It inspires that feeling of hope. A mix of excitement and pain. There is a whole world of possibilities available for games now. What way will they go? I like to think Nintendo will weigh in with all the games we want, all the games they’ve shown us they can make in this collection. I want High Voltage to put motion plus in Gladiator. What I don’t want is to be sat here in eighteen months waiting for Deca Sports 22 to come out and wondering why Nintendo showed me the jar of sweets only to put it in the cupboard before I got my hand in.
I’ve just spent two hours editing, and my editing program crashed. While I’ve not lost the entire episode, I have lost ALL of the time I have left this week to edit. Meaning 107 will either be very late, or yet another ****** lost episode.
You may be annoyed, dear listeners, but let me tell you, I’m ten times more annoyed than you. Editing is a long and laborious process, and I have less and less time for it each week. When I do edit, things go wrong. When things go wrong, I lose more of that time. When I do finally get the episodes done, someone always but Always points out that there’s something wrong with it: a swearword slipped through, two people are speaking over each other, a host is muffled or too loud, etc.
I know that we haven’t had an episode for almost three weeks. It’s not for want of trying. We had problems recording, problems getting all the audio feeds into one place, and now problems puttintg the damn thing together. You will hear from us when you hear from us. Beyond that, I suggest you sit patiently and wait. That’s what we’re doing at the mo.
[/rant]
I got home from work on Friday and found The Conduit had arrived in the mail. Sweet. I stuck the disc in the Wii (after doing my chores mind – what would Mrs. Dave say if she got home and I hadn’t folded my socks?). Then I had to decide how to play it.
You see, I’ve worked all week. At the moment work is a grind, the world could well end any time (so they tell me), orders are scarce, shoulders are looked over and rumours of lay-offs are rife. Its something we’re all familiar with. So at the end of a day what better way to forget than by kicking some alien ass (God Bless America)?
But how to do it? The game has five difficulty settings. Should I go hardcore and try number five? It would mean spending all night trying to get round the first corner. Or take the middle ground? Or go easy? I went easy in the end. I wanted to feel somewhat immortal and you know what, I did.
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A couple of weeks ago a contributor to the Inbox on Gamecentral (Channel 4 teletext page 805) stated that he’d checked one file-sharing website and counted around 200,000 downloads for GTA:Chinatown Wars. That’s just one site. And that’s a lot. The game has sold something over 500,000 copies, which is fine for a DS third party game. How much more would it be without piracy?
Not everyone who gets an illegal copy of a game would buy it otherwise. Illegal downloading is like being in a sweet shop with all the money in the world – you just get anything because you can. In spite of this the game will have lost a lot of sales from piracy. So what’s the deal with piracy? Its easy to say that by getting a copy without paying you’re not creating a problem. This is true because they still make games right? Yes and No. Plenty of people still buy games and that keeps things ticking over. But the people that make the games spend their time and money doing it. The logical conclusion of us all pirating games is that no money will be made so no games will be made, except those done for fun by people in their bedroom. Would we want that?
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Ok, first off sorry for the pun title.
The third generation of the DS (DSi) has been out for a few months now and usually this means the console is nearing the end of its life. However there are a few loose ends the DS needs to tie together before it leaves. So are the Internet speculators prematurely sentenced to death?
I was recently playing Professor Layton and the Curious Village again and remembered that there are still, at least, two more games from the series needing to grace the western shores. Professor Layton and Pandora’s Box is set for a Q4 release this year but the translation teams are only near starting on the Last Time Travel. That will take at least one more year and the Layton series is a big one for Nintendo so the chances are they won’t let it be left for backwards compatibility to take care of, because it won’t have the success.
Mario & Sonic at the Winter Olympic Games is set to be out for Q4 2009 but so was the original M&S at the Olympic Games but that only came out in Q1 2008. Other games set under TBA for 2009/2010 are Zelda: Spirit Tracks, De Blob, Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story, Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing and Golden Sun DS, to name just a few of the big names (Very big for that matter) so to let these be left for backwards compatibility would be a big mistake.
And so it seems that with some big titles on the way, the DS will not be stepping down within the next two years and will still be going very strong for a long time. And with a few Imagine titles there to keep the more casual players exited, the money will still be rolling in for Nintendo.
The DS is cleared of all charges for a while.
Comment | David@WiiDS | 
November 29, 2009 1:43 pm | 
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