This week’s edition has Jonah being really down on the Legendary Edition of the Mass Effect Trilogy, and it has nothing to do with any sort of bugs. TJ empathizes, recalling his frustration with the remaster of Demon’s Souls.
In other news:
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The past week has been rife with news about Pokemon GO! and all of the chaos the mobile game has caused around the world with people hunting creatures in museums and police stations. The podcast mostly avoids the craze.
The news this week includes:
We also announce the winner of the contest.
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At E3 Reggie Fils-Aime let the world know he wasn’t satisfied with the sales progress of the Wii or DS in 2007 and hopes Nintendo can do better this year. Perhaps Nintendo is playing the humble card? No doubt they bragged about their 10 million sales of the Wii and 20 million sales of the DS but quickly followed it by saying they’re not satisfied.
Or, is this a threat?
Nintendo has built some steep competition while both Sony and Microsoft scoff at their product and tell everyone its a novelty and it doesn’t really “count” in this next-generation console battle. It doesn’t count… really?
Perhaps Microsoft and Sony are right; maybe every Wii owner that wanted a PlayStation 3 and/or an Xbox 360 purchased their console too. There may be some truth to that as hardcore gamers may purchase a Wii for many reasons:
It seems they don’t feel a threat because Wii is a non-gamer console and thus attracts a different crowd… yet they’re both mimicking some of the motion sensing in their own controllers and playing nice towards “casual games” and non-gamers of late. Maybe their not threatened, but impressed?
Fils-Aime isn’t impressed with their sales figures, perhaps because he expected a higher degree of Wii sales by now, but the fact that people cannot purchase them two years into production has hurt sales figures. Although 10 million units sold is an impressive figure, knowing you had such higher potential if the product was actually on the shelves has to hurt a bit of your pride.
The DS sales were impressive considering the product has been in the market for awhile and is easier to find (minus the holiday rush). We’re not sure why he’s not satisfied with the figures, but inspiring a higher degree of DS sales will require some work. Perhaps this is why they’ve gone with the GTA Chinatown approach; using the GTA name to grow their DS sales figures?
It will be interesting to see how Wii does through the next few quarters and if sales slow down now that we’re a few years into the product. What was the last home console Nintendo owned to get this high of a demand?
Perhaps none.
I miss old SSI games and all the beauty and wonder they brought me as a child. Perhaps it’s more of the feeling of playing old MS-DOS games and that no worries feeling of playing games all summer long when your parents are out working; no cares in the world but that of the evil dragons and goblins of an RPG world. Secret of the Silver Blades arrived in May of 1990, developed and published by Strategic Simulations Inc (SSI), a company we covered in our gaming history back in TD Gaming Podcast Episode 9.
Secret of the Silver Blades is actually the third in a four-part game series which was eventually packaged in the Gold Box editing of the SSI games. It was a continuation of the game Curse of the Azure Bonds and the first in the series: Pool of Radiance. The cool part of the series was the leveling system where each would let you level to a certain limit just like most modules in D&D games, this game let you get to level seven which means a Mage could use the cool Delayed Blast Fireball spell which was one of my favorite magic spells in D&D (yeah, I’m a dork.)
The graphics were a whopping 16-colors, with slight graphical improvements over the other two prior games. This game didn’t have an overworld map like the others, going full first person for the length of the game. Another great enhancement was the ability to use the arrow keys to navigate menu’s without the need for “hot keys” like older SSI titles, given the game is very much menu-based for combat, equipment and inventory management it was very handy to have the use of those nice little arrow keys.
You create your party and start adventuring in a game engine very similar to all the games before it, so introduction to game mechanics was minimal, you could advance your characters further in level and, most importantly, import characters from previous games. The D&D world is really a character-driven game environment and you grow fond of your characters and understand the best ways to battle with them, importing is key and still, today, is a big part in well done RPG expansions (Guild Wars is a great example). Unfortunately, many games fall short of character import and it kind of blows away some of the magic of an RPG.
One of the frustrating issues with Secret of the Silver blade is the limitation on levels for the Cleric, because they can’t level up past 7 they can’t get the good ressurection spell, only allowed to use Raise Dead which lowers your characters constitution by 1 (much like the traditional D&D rules). However, given its a video game and not a paper-dice based game, the raise dead penalty is annoying, so it was easier to save often and re-load when you died to try again and avoid the penalty. I do recall their being some scrolls or something to get back your constitution penalty… but it’s been awhile I might be making that up.
Anyway, a well done series, classic RPG and helped build a foundation for games like Morrow Wind and Oblivion in my opinion.
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