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Gaming Discussion / Re: Nintendo Admits Wii U Is A Flop? Interesting...

« on: May 07, 2014, 08:33:56 pm »

"which for most people is much more worthwhile."

Perhaps.

However-

It's a matter of bits and pieces, each one of which creates an incentive/disincentive to purchase the console. On my end, if I buy something that wants to replace the Wii, I want it to do EVERYTHING that my Wii does so I don't have to shove another unit into my gaming cabinet, and I have far more GameCube games than I do Wii games. Titles like Twin Snakes, Eternal Darkness, Second Sight, Smash Bros Melee, StarFox Assault, Crystal Chronicles,  REMake 0, ReMake 1, MegaMan AC, GC Twilight Princess, the Zelda AC and the original Wind Waker still look great to me and get regular play on my system.
By removing GameCube BC, it's a chip in a long list of cracks the Wii U possesses that create a disincentive for purchase.

Do I enjoy the few Wii-specific games I have? Of course. I own XenoBlade, Last Story, RE4: Wii Edition, Silent Hill Shattered Memories and the Prime Trilogy Collectors Edition.  But that small list of Wii titles pales in comparison to the full library of games existent in my gaming cabinet. The list of Wii U specific titles that are worth buying is so much smaller still, that to be perfectly honest buying the console would be in essence paying $300 for a less capable console than I have now.

You can say to yourself "Well, I don't use this, so it doesn't matter"- but if there's one example of someone who isn't buying the system for any particular reason, it stands to reason that there are many, many more.

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Gaming Discussion / Re: Nintendo Admits Wii U Is A Flop? Interesting...

« on: May 07, 2014, 09:53:21 am »

I can't be the only one who saw this coming.

I mean, seriously.

Nintendo releases a console a decade out of date, with no GameCube backwards compatibility, barely any first party titles, almost no third party support (or even an attempt at it) and then tries to charge an exorbitant price for it?

And their strategy, when consumers aren't biting, is to punish 3DS owners by putting GBA games (which logically should be on a handheld and NOT on a console) onto the Wii U Virtual Console.

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Gaming Discussion / Re: Game Boy game lets you screw around with IR signals

« on: May 06, 2014, 08:41:34 am »

Holy crap, how is that possible?

It was a Game Boy Color title, according to the website.

Which makes sense, because the GBC had a built in IR port. It was barely used- mostly for Pokémon, if I do recall.

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Gaming Discussion / Re: Nintendo to change focus and become... a fitness company?

« on: April 15, 2014, 02:21:52 am »

hint- Injecting yourself into a conversation simply to shout "I'm old! Pay attention to me!" has little to no relevance on the topic at hand.
I'm done here, since saying what deserves to be said about you would no doubt bring down NightCrawler's wrath and I don't feel like doing that at this point, and obviously neither you nor your friend here are prepared to actually listen to anything relevant.
Have fun.

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Gaming Discussion / Re: Nintendo to change focus and become... a fitness company?

« on: April 15, 2014, 01:56:09 am »

"I get angry reading page after page of posts written by random gamers "

I'm not a random gamer. I've been playing games for over two decades. I worked at Nintendo for a short period of time. I've seen the industry go through shifts and crumble.

And, despite your best optimism, I've seen that arrogance, hubris and the inability to change can destroy even the strongest company. While you want to believe they "know what they are doing"- decades of incompetence, backstabbing and three-handed controllers signal otherwise to me.

You talk about Nintendo's cash reserves- except that no company with a loss-leading single focus can continue to survive on simple cash reserves for long periods of time. With Nintendo's downward spiral, if things keep going downhill within half a decade those reserves will be completely gone.

That's how bad things are.

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Gaming Discussion / Re: Nintendo to change focus and become... a fitness company?

« on: April 14, 2014, 07:45:10 pm »

Why? They can still maintain the gaming business. Sony and Microsoft have other venues, so why can't Nintendo?

Because, to be quite frank about it, they just can't afford it. Sony and Microsoft have massive, multibillion dollar war chests from their external divisions that have, so far, shielded them financially from the fallout of venture losses. The abysmal Vita, for example, doesn't run the risk of bankrupting Sony.

Nintendo doesn't have that buffer. They went this year, as a company whole, from a net gain (and projected profit of 100 billion yen) all the way down to a net loss of over 35 billion. Even after accepting responsibility and slashing his salary in half, Saturo Iwata knows that he and his company are in deep trouble. The board is looking long and hard at his leadership and there has been talk of a change.

Nintendo feels that their traditional business model isn't working. Their game console is a ball and chain dragging them under and the company needs to change direction. That means not only a refocus, but cutting off dead weight and getting rid of what they view as unprofitable.

To put it simply, the Yamauchis aren't at the helm any more. Nintendo is at the behest of a board of directors that wants results. Despite the fact that consumers may think fondly of Nintendo's stock of classic IPs, the failure of the Wii U has shown the company that reliance on staples like Mario aren't going to win the day any longer. Pure game consoles- the business Nintendo's been in since the late 70s-have been bringing Nintendo less and less core profit, and they know it. The complete and utter failure of the Wii U may be the nail in the coffin.

If Samus and Zelda don't sell units- don't expect them to last. I don't expect Mario to die off, being that he is Nintendo's mascot and all, but Nintendo can't be blamed for not wanting to maintain an unprofitable group of intellectual properties.

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Gaming Discussion / Re: Nintendo to change focus and become... a fitness company?

« on: April 14, 2014, 09:20:43 am »

"But it is really quite useless to speculate "

No it's not.

Seems that you're angry about Nintendo's new focus, but them abandoning game consoles and focusing on something that can make them profit seems perhaps a smart idea.

That does mean no more installments of Zelda or Metroid... Probably they'll find a way to shoehorn Mario in there somehow.

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ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: I want to remove the save function in super Mario Land 2 Rom for Gameboy

« on: April 14, 2014, 08:31:34 am »

Not to be flippant-

But why not just get a better flash cart?

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Gaming Discussion / Nintendo to change focus and become... a fitness company?

« on: April 14, 2014, 08:24:56 am »

Words can't truly express the eyebrow raising.

http://readwrite.com/2014/01/31/nintendo-next-console-quality-of-life-platform-health#awesm=~oBpoIaOwDjzNQr

“What Nintendo will try to achieve in the next 10 years is a platform business that improves people’s quality of life in enjoyable ways,” Iwata said. “What I see as our first step into a new business area in our endeavor to improve QOL is the theme of ‘health.’ Of course, defining a new entertainment business that seeks to improve QOL creates various possibilities for the future such as ‘learning’ and ‘lifestyle,’ but it is our intention to take ‘health’ as our first step.”

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Gaming Discussion / Re: Nintendo Admits Wii U Is A Flop? Interesting...

« on: April 12, 2014, 01:20:31 pm »

Or just, you know-

Not take out the five cent voltage switch.

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Gaming Discussion / Re: Nintendo Admits Wii U Is A Flop? Interesting...

« on: April 12, 2014, 12:37:56 pm »

"Then Nintendo would have to write an emulator"

Except of course that Nintendo has already had a functioning GB/GBC/Z80 emulator since at least as early as 1999. They wouldn't need to make an entirely new one- reworking it for the DS would be a simple matter. Even just using the Z80 portion of it would suffice, since the system contains everything needed EXCEPT a Z80.

I guess it's a matter of arguing whether Nintendo might think paying a coder for a weeks worth of recompilation work would be worth it.

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Gaming Discussion / Re: Nintendo Admits Wii U Is A Flop? Interesting...

« on: April 10, 2014, 03:35:19 am »

" Nintendo would have at least needed to add GameCube controller ports"

I don't see why. It would be easy enough to allow the system to utilize the Classic Controller/Pro in order to support GameCube games.

Or for people that want it, just sell them this (at a tidy profit)-

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2013/06/you_can_now_use_your_gamecube_pad_on_your_wii_u

No need to add anything at all (especially not "mechanical complexity") to the Wii U itself.

"I'm not sure what those determined hackers are doing"

They've already cracked open the Wii U's system software and discovered that it contains a secret, locked-off GameCube mode in it. Which means the Wii U is perfectly able to play Cube games without any hardware modifications at all. You should look it up.

"Nintendo has never had a system with compatibility more than one generation back anyway"

Besides being a rather poor reason for doing anything, I should point out that until the DS, Nintendo's GB line was entirely capable of playing games from three generations (GB-GBC-GBA) of software. If Yokoi was still at the helm, I would imagine that the DS would have included the mode switch to enable GBC mode (and thus allow access to the entire line)

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Gaming Discussion / Re: Nintendo Admits Wii U Is A Flop? Interesting...

« on: April 09, 2014, 10:32:49 am »

He was crossing the street when he was hit by a car. There's a possibility he'd still be alive but I kinda doubt it.

No- he was rear ended and was inspecting the damage when he was sideswiped by another car and killed.

http://www.giantbomb.com/gunpei-yokoi/3040-45151/

Minor details of his death aside, I believe that if he had not been so unceremoniously dumped by Nintendo, he would have been in an entirely different place at that time, and thus would never have had the accident and thus never would have been sideswiped and thus would still be alive and well to this very day.

"Yeah Gamecube stuff doesn't work even though it shouldn't be too much of an issue "

Except that it does become an issue, because it means that you still have to have your Wii around, taking up space, in order to play your library of games, thus removing one of the main reasons for backwards compatibility in the first place- as well as cutting down the software library. And with such a small Wii U library in the first place, deliberately hobbling it is a very bad move.

Bear in mind that I'm not arguing that Nintendo had to have ADDED anything in order for GC Mode to work. I just believe that Nintendo shouldn't have walled it off. Determined hackers have discovered via certain means that the Wii U secretly has the means to play GameCube games- Nintendo just has disabled it.

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Gaming Discussion / Re: Nintendo Admits Wii U Is A Flop? Interesting...

« on: April 09, 2014, 10:03:56 am »

I don't think it's fair to compare the Virtual Boy and the Wii U.

The Virtual Boy was a prototype- Gunpei Yokoi intended for the final version to be much lighter and use color LEDs instead of the pure red ones. But Nintendo got impatient and shoved the thing out the door before it was ready- then blamed Yokoi when the thing failed miserably.
I honestly believe that if the Nintendo had displayed the slightest amount of patience and allowed Gunpei to perfect the device he had been working on, history would be much much different, and he might even perhaps not be dead right now.

The Wii U, on the other hand, I will assert is a failure on a conceptual level, not just on a practical level. Everything about it was a misstep, from virtually every angle. Gameplay-wise the tablet alienates the older market who were initially drawn to the Wii Remote's simplicity. From a gamer standpoint, the system has far too few games and is far too weak to compete on a fair level with the PS4 and the X1 (and that goes from a developer standpoint as well). From the general consumer standpoint, as a system that wants to be a media centerpiece it fails because Nintendo has purposefully removed BC and the ability to play bluray movies.
Add to that a price point that is wholly inappropriate for a system of that caliber in 2014 and you have as a result a system that has no chance of achieving a high level of success in the marketplace, no matter what Nintendo does with it.

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ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Post XP ROM hacking survival guide?

« on: April 09, 2014, 09:44:37 am »

If you really, absolutely must run a utility that only works in XP-

About the best thing you can do is run Windows XP in 7's Virtual Box. You can run your utility from within that.

It's included with 7 at no extra cost.

They took XP Mode out of 8... but nobody should be using Windows 8 anyway. Seriously, don't use 8 for anything.

Relatively speaking, 7 is elegant, doesn't use a lot of resources, secure and useful.

8 is none of those things. It's a piece of garbage- a worthless husk of an OS Microsoft vomited up in an effort to stay "trendy".

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Gaming Discussion / Re: Nintendo Admits Wii U Is A Flop? Interesting...

« on: February 04, 2014, 04:30:26 am »

It's a shame that the Wii U is a flop, but, in all honesty, it's really just a continuation of everything that Nintendo's been doing for the past THIRTY YEARS or so.

The company is absolutely hardwired into the mindset of "We Shall Do What We Do And Damn The World Around Us", unable to shift and change in a fluid and rapid manner. When they DO appear to be adjusting to shifting tides, they do it in such a Nintendian way that it leaves people scratching their heads in confusion.

When the world began to adjust to standardized optical media -and it was plainly obvious that the CD was the way things were going- Nintendo made a cartridge based system, and then a puzzling proprietary magneto-optical... thing... and promptly lost massive amounts of third party support.

When the DVD became the heir-apparent format, Nintendo had the option of "one upping" Sony's PS2... but instead chose that weird minidisc format, again isolating it from the third parties who LIKED having more than 1GB of storage space- and eliminating Nintendo's console as one that people just might choose as a DVD player (one reason many people believe the PS2 took off so quickly was that dual functionality).

And onward and upward- Nintendo does what it does, seemingly in a vacuous bubble away from the influence of the people that actually buy its products.

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ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Remove Translator intros/splash screens from SNES & NES roms

« on: October 04, 2013, 08:09:23 am »

I encountered one once that had a really obnoxious, close to 30 second unskippable intro; it featured the monkey from Link's Awakening spitting seeds while some sort of techno music played in the background. And there was a penis joke at the end of the intro.

I can see why people would want to remove that.

But simple, humble credit for well-done work doesn't cheapen the experience, in my opinion.

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ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Game Boy Colorizer!

« on: September 30, 2013, 06:43:34 pm »

Hello,

I was one of the people who was working with Thomas Blind on the GB Colorizer project... oh, that seems like... over a decade ago.

The problem is, to put it quite simply, for Tom life got in the way. He got a new job and we lost touch for years after that, and when I found him again he had no interest in continuing the project.

GBColorizer was a lovely concept that never truly saw its full potential.

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Gaming Discussion / Does anyone know how accurate the SNES emulator used in the Wii is?

« on: September 09, 2013, 07:18:01 am »

So I stumbled across an article written by byuu a while back that talked about the quest for perfect emulation, and all that, and it got me thinking to myself.

"To what extent does Nintendo itself care for accuracy in it's emulators?"

Has anyone ever looked in-depth at the ones used for the Virtual Console on the Wii, for instance?

How truly accurate is the emulator used in it? Does anyone know?

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Gaming Discussion / Re: New Nintendo 2DS release in October!

« on: August 29, 2013, 05:42:27 am »

Not so much.plus the Wii Mini removed major functionality

The 2DS does this, too. No more 3D at all (so say goodbye to 3D movies, the 3D effect in games or 3D photos/videos), plus the sound has been downgraded to mono.