This week is shortened due to Thanksgiving and Black Friday, but there’s still some fun to be had, especially when the Gaming History is about The Legend of Zelda cartoon series.
The news:
The Question of the Week: “When do you start your holiday shopping?”
It’s been confirmed, in Nintendo Power at least, that Mega Man 9 is officially going to be something you can download on the Wii console. The game is being developed by Ini Creates, a company of ex-capcom folks who are also responsible for Mega Man Zero and Mega Man ZX series.
Of course, this is a Capcom published game and is said to also be ‘multi-platform’ with an appearance being made on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network.
At first, there was a fear the game would go “new school” and take advantage of all the Wii has to offer, but with the Virtual Console and all of its retro appeal they’ve decided to stick with an old school feel to the game. This is by far the best move we’ve heard, as a retro gamer at the target demographic age, I’m thrilled.
Mega Man 9 is going to reflect the older games, without an 8-bit graphical look of course, using the Wii remote sideways (presumably also using the retro classic controller) and is not said to use any of the motion sensing abilities of the Wii.
This will be the first title in the Mega Man series to offer a female robot opponent. Mega Man 9 will provide a new host of baddies, including:
The inclusion of a female robot may be playing to the casual game demographic which is popular with the Wii and casual games in general. Or, they’re just looking for variety. End result is still retro awesomeness.
(Thanks, 1up)
In a world of 3D worlds, dynamic lighting and intense shadows we see far too few old school retro style platformer titles. With the advent of Xbox Live Arcade, WiiWare and the PlayStation Network we’re seeing a few new indy developers getting into the game.
Castle Crashers, developed by The Behemoth, is an upcoming side scroller of cutely neat beat ’em up action on Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA). The game will be 1,200 Microsoft Points (USD $15) and will launch August 27th, very soon. This side scroller allows for 4-player action, local or over the Xbox Live system with your friends and there is another mode for battling each other known as Arena.
This is like an artistically rendered version of Golden Axe with Knights! There are many different knights, each with their own powers of attack, Blue Knights can attack with Ice while the Orange Knight attacks with Fire, the Ninja Knight fires shurikens and a host of other unique Knights do battle with their own methods of madness.
If you checkout The Behemoth‘s Castle Crasher Website you’ll see a host of images and their recent trailer showing off the action. It’s safe to say, this is going to be a fast paced slightly silly slightly retro beat ’em up game paying homage to Golden Axe, Double Dragon and TMNT (original arcade one at least) with the graphic style of Alien Hominid HD, their last title.
Stay tuned, we’ll be announcing a contest to win a copy of Castle Crashers in the very near future!
Apparently the war is in full force and Microsoft’s Don Mattrick is ready to poke the flag in the ground and call it a sure fire victory (in so many words). He said he’s “willing to declare here today that Xbox 360 will sell more consoles worldwide this generation than PS3” (eurogamer)
They’re either not seeing the Wii as a competitor or are trying to avoid that evil word considering the growth of the tiny little console in the market. After telling the audience the Xbox 360 has already outpaced the PlayStation 3 and Wii he failed to mention the one-year head start the 360 had over its competitors.
There are, of course, bonuses to talking figures when you were first out of the gate. The interesting facts, which won’t present themselves for years now, will be the end unit sales figures for Wii, 360 and PlayStation 3 when all boxes are end-of-life’d. We’re sure to hear each side declare victory when they’ve decided when the war actually ends. In Microsoft’s eyes, the console war will probably end when they release the next-generation box, barring the fact that they should wait at least one year before claiming the title.
You can’t argue with the facts, Xbox 360 is doing very well in the United States (if we ignore Japan). The Nintendo Wii has sold 8.8 million units to the Xbox 360‘s 10.3 million units. How many units did the Xbox 360 have sold around the same time Nintendo boasts 8.8 million? Probably a bit less.
Press can be a great thing when you have numbers to play with and figures to skew. Oddly enough, if some of us are any indication, we’ve purchased multiple Xbox 360’s because of dead systems. Sure, we’re stupid for actually doing it, but those figures will work into the total units sold for the Xbox 360 hardware sales. Imagine, their failing systems may have actually boosted sales figures a bit; probably not statistically significant but funny non-the-less.
We can’t wait to see what type of numbers Sony and Nintendo are going to fling out. If we ask each competitor, we’re sure they’ll say we’re going to win the console war. Nintendo may just ask, “what console war? We just make game hardware” and you can’t fault them there!
A great nostalgic episode, I do enjoy gaming flashbacks, keep them coming.
@Nintendo Game boy emulation: I do hope this means they will port more of their games to other platforms. I do remember the Bleem! Emulator for Sony games but that ended up getting sued for it. As for Nintendo I can only hope this will lead to more access of their games legally.
While we are on the subject of Nintendo I was thinking we could really have explored more of the Greco-roman games, not just Kid Icarus but also Battle of Olympus another side scrolling game from NES days. They seem afraid to try to push new IP’s and just stick with their tried and true ones. Which I think tends to make them feel stale. When Paul was discussing the end of the Zelda Cartoon and how Link and Zelda had to team up to find her father, I thought ‘Well that would have been a fine game right there!’
@EA: I guess they can’t be all that bad if they really are equal treatment. They HAVE had a long history of games with LGBT relationship options. I remember in Sims 2 there were apparently hidden stats you had to use an external program to see. One of these stats was a persons attractions tendencies, a score both for male and female, which ever ranked higher the character tended toward. I just thought it was neat that they went to this extent to make a character unique and even a little beyond your control.
@Sony Settles: I do remember those ads and I was tempted by them. Boy would I have been PISSED to find I would have to buy the game TWICE. I thought the whole point was that any game bought on the main PS3 could be transferred and played on the vita.
QotW: I started my shopping in November, but not on black friday or cyber monday.
First I want to apologize for not commenting much, but I tend to be too shy to comment much (and I didn’t get your podcast because I have been with my family doing a vacation-type thing for a few weeks). I feel like your commentaries on this, though have garnered my responses.
About Nintendo:I feel like they are trying to make a bit of a fuss over something that was not a very big fuss in the first place.
About EA: I have a number of friends that work for EA here in Orlando (mostly they worked on Tiger Woods games back in the day and now work with Madden games). I love that ya’ll commented on this and brought it to light to your followers. I really like that they truly care about their employees. I think you missed the nail when you say that you think Bioware was inclusive before EA was invloved.
On Sony Settling: Those ads were quite frustrating to understand as a consumer and, luckily, I was not willing to buy their pitch. Deutsch was quite poorly represented before they even posted those twitter comments. Barring them from repeating the exact point – I feel – doesn’t exactly prevent them from doing the same thing again: something I feel like they may do in order to make more money. You really do nail it when you say they only “got caught.”
On a side note: I think Jonah is incredibly insightful in general.