Retro Gaming: Mega Man 9 Get’s Flicker and Bugs

Capcom isn’t fooling around, they know their market for Mega Man 9 on Xbox Live, WiiWare and PSN and its nostalgic gamers with a desire to be a kid again. Any retro gamer will tell you the old school experience must include some pixel flickers, slow down and 8-bit style bugs.

They have decided to include an optional feature to enable old school bugs on purpose. The limitations of early hardware like the NES caused situations where you would only see a limited number of creatures on the screen at any one time else things slowed down, flickered and got undesirable fast. What used to be undesired is now nostalgic!

“Yeah, there were some things, like you couldn’t have more than three enemies on the screen at once, so we had to make sure that that’s how it stayed in our game. In the part with the dragon with the flame, [there should be] flickering, and whatnot,” noted the game’s producer. “In the options of this game, you can adjust that, unlike the old games. We purposely put some of those old-school bugs into this game, so it does recreate that feel.” (joystiq)

Luckily these options are disabled and can be enabled to get a bit of old world feel if your little heart desires. For most of us, we should have moved on from the old times and are ready to play old school games on new school hardware to show off a bit more fluid 8-bit logic. Not so for everyone, which is why the feature was added as an optional one.

Staying true to old school computing in an emulator is extremely important when playing old ROM games because the game was coded with a certain speed and understanding of the hardware. Change the hardware without updating the game can lead to an unusable product. Mega Man 9, however, is a new game so it doesn’t have to adhere to old standards. But, it’s funny to see it try.

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PS3 and 360 Price Cuts, Before Holidays EndPS3 and 360 Price Cuts, Before Holidays End

A lot of people have purchased the Xbox 360 and a growing number have had new interests in the PlayStation 3. The summer time is winding to an end and fall will bring us a new host of video games and reasons to keep playing our current generation consoles. Many analysts and industry leaders believe the 360 and PlayStation 3 will undergo a USD $50.00 price cut before the Holidays begin.

With holiday madness comes momentum and sales, a USD $50.00 price cut would help bring new momentum to both consoles, especially with Nintendo lapping them in sales. Nobody has considered the direction of the Wii as it doesn’t need to be priced competitively given this is going to be the third year it’s impossible to find in stores.

Do the consoles really need a price cut? It’s hard to argue the PlayStation 3‘s dire need for cutting in price given its already outrageous costs for a console with the least amount of desired titles. The Xbox 360, for most, has the best lineup of titles with a strong fall series of games. The Wii… well, titles don’t really matter just yet because people still buy the console upon sight. The PlayStation 3 is showing off some impressive graphics for this fall and early next year, it may almost be time to invest in the product.

The fall games will keep hardcore gamers buying titles but it will do little to inspire new console sales. If GTA IV, Halo 3, Gears of War and Metal Gear Solid 4 couldn’t drag a gamer to buy, what fall titles will do so this year? Probably very few.

It’s time for the big console vendors to broaden their audience by opening the console to a demographic of gamers that just can’t afford the higher graphic consoles. No, USD $50.00 won’t bring in everyone but it may inspire those on the fringe of consideration to change their minds. With their new consoles in hand they can use their USD $50.00 savings to purchase a new holiday release title.

Wii Takes US Lead In Console WarWii Takes US Lead In Console War

Just in case people were actually thinking the Xbox 360 was going to hold out against a viral console, Nintendo is now the best selling console in the United States. Anyone really surprised?

This months sales figures for consoles broke down something like this:

  • Nintendo DS: 783,000
  • Wii: 666,700
  • PlayStation 3: 405,500
  • PSP: 337,400
  • Xbox 360: 219,800
  • PlayStation 2: 188,800

Barring the crazy hand held sales of the Nintendo DS, you can clearly see Nintendo holds top-spot yet again, but this month Sony’s PlayStation 3 followed right behind. Although there was a good 200,000 difference, Sony didn’t do so bad; imagine if Nintendo had an MGS4 killer app?

Metal Gear Solid 4 sold 871,300 copies, individually, and roughly 1-million if you include those bundled with the PlayStation 3. The question is clearly answered, MGS4 helped sell Sony’s consoles. The new question will be: Can Sony keep the 2nd place rank against Xbox 360?

Until Gears of War 2, there isn’t a killer game for the Xbox 360 and GoW2 probably won’t move any consoles, those that love the series bought their console when Gears of War arrived. The next big console mover may, in fact, be Final Fantasy XIII for the Xbox 360 as it’s no longer exclusive to Sony and the 360 is a more cost effective way to get into the game.

How does Nintendo continue to keep the pace? Perhaps because their games are still in top positions with Wii Fit in 4th place, Wii Play in 5th place and Wii Kart in 7th on the June 2008 software charts.

(Thanks, 1up)

Final Fantasy XIII – Xbox 360Final Fantasy XIII – Xbox 360

Yoichi Wada of Square Enix has let the cat out of the bag. The cat is Final Fantasy XIII for the Xbox 360 and it will be simultaneously released with the PlayStation 3 version. This may be an end to an exclusive era for Sony as all their big brands jump to non-exclusion.

This is probably a result of gamers slow adoption of the PlayStation 3 hardware for various issues, one being cost. Personally I think Sony’s move to say “no price cut” in our near future is a grand mistake. It is well understood that they want profitability over quantity but you’re losing your exclusives to a broader audience.

Each generation of consoles brings new industry trends and, for now, exclusive games from third party developers is too risky when you look at overall cost to produce a block buster title like Final Fantasy XIII. Consider the sales of GTA IV, although they were in the millions, imagine how low it would have been if they only released on the PS3. They’d might have actually lost money on the game.

Square Enix can see the writing on the wall, that writing says “ship on as many mediums as possible.” Gamers are split between consoles with a huge segment on Wii and Xbox 360, if you can at least ship on one of those consoles along with the PS3 you’ll do better financially.

(Thanks, Kotaku)