Streamlined Wii with no GameCube support coming to UK

What the heck is with Sony & Nintendo messing around with their end-of-life consoles, stripping away features & offering a lower MSRP?? First the PSP E-1000 & now this?

Nintendo is apparently offering a "streamlined" version of the Wii in the U.K., it won't support Gamecube games or controllers. It will have a Wii controller with Motion Plus built in, and looks like it will be bundled with Wii Party & Wii Sports. They say that this Wii will be designed more to sit horizontally rather than upright vertically.... but um, the Wii can ALREADY be set up horizontally, ironically that's how Nintendo suggests it should be set up when Gamecube controllers are connected to it...


I guess this is more significant in Europe, where it seems like consoles cost a lot more than they do in Canada. So any price drop is a good thing.

I don't play Gamecube games on my Wii a lot, but I do appreciate the feature. I hate it when console makers take OUT features in consoles.


later
don

Star Wars Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron II

I bought Star Wars Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron II (GC) a long time ago, but I kept holding out for a GameCube controller that has rumble (my Wavebird doesn't)... but it's kinda dumb to not use the Wavebird just because it doesn't have rumble, so I've been playing it the last couple of days on my Wii....

Star Wars Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron II is one amazing looking game, especially for a GameCube game... between this & Resident Evil 4, they must be two of the best looking games for the system.

But...... Star Wars Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron II is one of the best looking games-- that is broken beyond hope. The look & feel of the game is so faithful to the Star Wars movies that it's an amazing achievement. Unfortunately, it comes at the expense of playability.

Let me put it plainly: space is really dark. TIE Fighters are really dark. So it's nearly impossible to see the enemies. You have a targeting computer that can highlight them as long as you constantly hold down the button. But the game *severely punishes you* for using the targeting computer at all. (game developer) Factor 5 is probably thinking, "Hey, Luke Skywalker never needed no targeting computer! And he managed to shoot down everything!" You know what? He managed to shoot down everything because it was IN THE F'N SCRIPT YOU DINGBATS! You can't just cripple gameplay to make it look "authentic". A game has to be playable, you know. And then there are obscure mission goals compounded by not being able to make anything out, so it's a lot of guesswork.

The production values of this game are so good that it's a crying shame that it's so ridiculously unfun. Factor 5 is infamous for their botching of the game Lair, while I haven't played that one I can imagine why they were so panned. Lair looks good but apparently plays like crap. I guess Factor 5 should just disappear & not come back. But there's so much talent there with the production values that something should be done with at least some portion of the company talent pool.

Factor 5 made a major mistake that a lot of companies make: it completely eludes them that a game needs to be playable by people who AREN'T part of its developer team, that a game needs to be playable by people who HAVEN'T played the game 8 hours a day for months during its coding & construction.

There are only about 10 missions, so maybe they're trying to extend the gameplay by making it super hard so as not to let players breeze through it too quick.

Such a beautiful looking game. What a waste.


later
don

Iwata interview on the origin of Wii

Nintendo put up this great text transcript of an interview conducted by Satoru Iwata - President and CEO, Nintendo Co., Ltd.

He interviews his Wii design team in quite a bit of detail. Kinda funny to have a bunch of people interviewed by their boss. I'm reading the first volume, there are 6 volumes, each volume 3-4 pages.... so this could be a lot of talkin'.

One of the most surprising bits the team reveals is that they started working on developing the Wii shortly after the GameCube came out!

But in this first volume, the team talks about how they were really focused on making the Wii small and energy efficient-- they wanted it to use as little power as possible, to keep it on "24 hours a day" ... I assume they are talking about Wii Connect 24.... they used advanced semi-conductor chips to achieve this.

The focus for such tech is usually to create better graphics & faster processors, but they talk about not wanting to go in that direction:

In the case of the GameCube, we discovered that the power consumption could be reduced to between one-third and one-quarter of the consumption of the GameCube's semiconductors. I was really impressed with these results. Of course, I was surprised by the data itself, but it was also the moment at which I was struck by the originality of Nintendo. Normally, when making new devices, companies compete with each other on the basis of “How much faster is the CPU, how much more memory is there, and how many more polygons can be displayed?” But Nintendo posed the question “How much can we decrease power consumption and maintain performance?"

Wii has gotten a lot of flak as being "2 GameCubes duct-taped together"; basically graphically "last-gen" opposed to the other superior power of the other consoles. I would have preferred that Nintendo made the Wii more powerful so as to not look dated this gen, but I do like the new direction that it clearly went for in gaming. There's tons of untapped potential to it. The problem is that a lot of third parties don't understand that potential or how to make proper use of it.

The interview is pretty interesting if you're curious about the little details of the origins of the Wii.

*read the full interview here*



later
don

Wii playing GameCube discs

Trying to get the bad gaming taste of Ultimate Spider-Man out of my mouth, last night I popped in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door into my Wii. It's a GameCube game, and it sort of baffles me that the fact that the Wii can play GameCube games is rarely ever mentioned, especially by Nintendo.

Out of the 3 "next gen" consoles, the Wii is the *most* backwards compatible of them... early on, the Xbox 360 was heavily criticized for only having backwards compatibility through software emulation-- they had to program it in for EACH GAME-- so there are many original Xbox games that aren't playable on an Xbox 360. And Sony's track record is even worse, though they were able to escape public stupidity notice by timing their backwards compatibility; at first the PS3 was backwards compatible through hardware... then they removed that hardware from subsequent PS3 models and used (the flawed method of) software emulation... and now, I think they have just removed backwards compatibility entirely from their latest PS3s?


The Wii needs a couple things to play GameCube games:

• A GameCube controller-- I use a Wavebird wireless GameCube controller. It's pretty good, but it doesn't have rumble. That bugs me, actually.
• The other thing the Wii needs is a GameCube memory card for game saves.

My Wii with Wavebird remote dongle and memory card sticking out the top. Sitting beside my Xbox. Because the cover's up, I cut a comic book cardboard backing board to cover up the exposed controller/memory card ports.

There's a real "separation between Church & State" when it comes to Wii and GameCube modes on the Wii. The Wii has enough memory for GameCube gamesaves, but you still need a seperate GameCube memory card for it. It's like the hardware for the 2 devices is completely autonomous. You put a GameCube disc in, start up the game from the Wii menu like normal, and once the Gamecube disc starts loading, the Wii thinks it is a GameCube. You can't go back to the Wii menu to end the game like you can with Wii games, even the Wii remote turns off. And if you eject the GameCube disc from the Wii, a "cover is open" message appears on the screen. The Wii thinks it has a GameCube disc cover. That's open. Which it isn't. 'Cause it doesn't have one.

So I'm never sure how to end a GameCube game. With my Xbox, I can safely eject a disc as long it's not loading/saving data. I put in another Xbox game, and it starts up again. But with the Wii playing GameCube discs, I eject and it thinks the cover is open and won't do anything. Am I supposed to turn it off and turn it back on every time I need to switch games? (which is what I do) Or do I hit the RESET button on the Wii? (I only use it for emergency freeze ups) I don't really know.



later
don