Brawl is great looking, but its looks were only skin deep.

In my previous three editorials I wrote about the GameCube, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 and my experiences with the systems as well as some choice examples of games I enjoyed. This week I wrap up what is (officially now) the previous console generation by writing about the Wii. Yes, the Wii, the console that “won” its generation if units sold is to be the determiner of victory. But how did it get in that position? Well, it was all thanks to the Wii’s front-loaded early successes mixed with a strong advertising campaign in foreign markets (i.e., outside Japan) as well as the novelty of motion controls. The motion control gimmick is commonly given most of the credit for the Wii’s success, and equally given the blame for most of its problems, but I think there was a more crucial factor in the Wii’s rolling success. Certainly its launch was wildly successful, the system was near impossible to obtain without a preorder during the Christmas season in which it released, but the continuing success of the Wii hinged upon something Nintendo seems to have forgotten: software that appealed to the core consumer, and plenty of it. And not just from Nintendo, core targeted games rolled out with some regularity from third parties all throughout the Wii’s early days, and beyond its launch period. This is what got the Wii truly off the ground. Dedicated core fans who adopted the system early and essentially played the roll of in-house tech demonstrators to all the moms, dads, grandmas and girlfriends who then later bought the system to play that bowling game they were shown when they drove down the aunt Sandy’s house for Christmas in 2006. And from there the system experienced continuing success, long after the initial boom of its launch. Compared to the competition, the Wii’s hardware simply did not measure up, its tech specs only being marginally more improved over the GameCube whereas Sony and Microsoft’s consoles were leaps ahead of their previous efforts. A lack of HD support or DVD playback (never mind Blu-ray) set the console apart from the other two of its generation, and yet the low production cost of the system likely meant that Nintendo was able to generate a small profit on the console from day one.

Despite those shortcomings, the Wii indeed came with the promise of amazing software and began delivering on that promise. One of my most anticipated games for the Wii was the much delayed Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Being a tremendous fan of this series previous iteration, Melee, I would look forward to Brawl like few other games before it. The daily drip feed of info from the official website, which revealed one thing about the game every weekday, kept my thoughts continually on the game. Even more appealing was the promise of full GameCube controller compatibility. By Brawl‘s early 2008 release, I had already grown a bit leery of the Wii’s motion controls with unflattering words like “gimmick” already being attributed to their addition to games despite the console’s then continued success, so the ability to stick with Melee‘s control scheme had me quite pleased. Upon playing the game I was very satisfied. The game was new, shiny, and played differently but not necessarily worse than its predecessor. Yet the more time my friends and I spent with Brawl the more those initial opinions shifted into doubt. It became clear, over time, that the game had very deliberately eschewed many of the things that made Melee the very fast and competitive game that it became. Various advanced mechanics once built into the game were removed, characters no longer suffered significant hit-stun from attacks which eliminated the potential for combos, nearly all were capable of recovering from off the screen, and I would be foolish to leave out “tripping”. Tripping was an inane idea to punish players for not jumping enough, which sounds about as dumb as it is. Players would, any time they took a step forward, potentially trip and leave themselves vulnerable to attack. This was a purely random event, and not predictable or controllable in any way. There are few ways to keep a game from being competitive than by adding elements of random chance. I believe Nintendo and the game’s director, Masahiro Sakurai, knew this full well. Their reasons for wanting the competitiveness of Smash toned down are never fully expressed, but I assume it is something to do with a misguided attempt at not scaring off less dedicated players. Be that as it may, I still find Brawl a fun game to play, and its additions of stage creators and an online mode make for good distractions, but has been deliberately hobbled and prevented from being something it could have been.

No wonder plumbers get paid so much.

Less sad, though maybe not less divisive, is another of my Wii favorites: Super Mario Galaxy. Unlike Brawl, Galaxy does require use of the Wii’s motion controls but thankfully they work fairly well here. There is minimal pointing required for most of the gameplay, and Mario responds quite readily to the simple shakes and waggles needed to get him to spin-jump or shoot through those little star warp points. The game is also among the most beautiful on the Wii. It truly showcases that, despite not being as beefy as the other guys, the Wii is still a console that can pack a visual punch (albeit in standard definition). The main dynamic, or gimmick for those who found it less compelling, of Galaxy is right in its name. The player shoots around outer space on small planetoids and other objects that are often fully traversable in 360 degrees. This makes for some clever world design and devious puzzles or bosses throughout the game. When making Galaxy it seems as if Nintendo took inspiration from the challenge worlds of the previous Mario game, Super Mario Sunshine, which featured straightforward jumping puzzles and environmental hazards without assistance from the water jet pack normally equipped to Mario throughout that game. Some of those levels even share an outer space aesthetic with Galaxy, though many of Sunshine‘s challenges were considerably more difficult that most of what is presented in Galaxy. As impressive as the game’s bright visuals (especially in a world of browns and brown-greys) is Galaxy‘s orchestrated soundtrack. Though I tend to find orchestral game soundtracks to be overblown and forgettable, I still hum some of the better tracks from Galaxy all these years later. In a way it seemed especially appropriate to have such a grand soundtrack for when Mario is exploring and shooting around literal galaxies in outer space. Some are wholly original pieces but there are other tracks inspired by more classic Mario tunes from his previous adventures, and hearing those scaled up to orchestrated-size is often stunning.

A classic reborn and given new life could almost be considered a theme for the Wii thanks to its mostly valiant efforts with the Virtual Console. It is as if Nintendo collectively looked behind them and remembered that they have a back catalog that absolutely no one else can rival. And so, stepping curiously early into a new and rising business model, Nintendo offered a continually increasing selection of games for download from all of their previous home consoles. And they did not stop at Nintendo consoles, but older competitor’s devices as well, like Sega’s Master System and Genesis. Though at times the release schedule for games made available on the service would leave something to be desired, the Virtual Console would be another integral part of Nintendo’s early push to appeal to core gamers with the Wii. And for me, that appeal held strong until about 2009 when the dearth of core targeted content, and the waning novelty of the Virtual Console, had made me migrate almost entirely to my PS3, 360 and eventually my newly built gaming PC in 2010. Many developers, as well as Nintendo, had by then figured out that it is cheaper and simpler to made content for the casual market than the core market. Shorter, simpler, less graphically intense games could be shot onto store shelves and easily make a quick buck thanks to the Wii’s insane market saturation. However, the short-term gain of the casual appeal would catch up the Nintendo, as they began reporting rare financial losses in the latter years of the Wii’s life cycle. By then, very few games anyone was interested were hitting the market (causal or no). And the stagnation seems to have bled into the following generation for Nintendo, as their successor to the Wii, the confusingly named WiiU, would sit on the market for nearly a year with little to draw in customers of any stripe. Thankfully things look to be turning a new leaf, if only slightly, for the WiiU’s second holiday season and of course I have not mentioned the very strong market presence of Nintendo’s 3DS. But for a time, at least, it seemed as if the Nintendo Drought that has famously afflicted their consoles since the Nintendo 64 had actually caught up to the company.

My apologies dearest readers, I let this one run long. There is just SO much to say about this tiny white waggle machine. And there is much more I could say. Doubtless most of you have owned a Wii at some point. I find it harder to find a household that did not own one at some point, than did. If so, what did you think of it? Have you, too, long since left it to collect dust? Maybe you keep it plugged in to play some old classics? Maybe you have been reading this on the toilet and your butt cheeks have fallen asleep? Add your experiences in the comments!

Strider Hiyru is Capcom’s most recent gaming reminiscence mascot.

Meet the New Capcom, Same as the Old Capcom

When Capcom was forced to cut their earnings expectations in half back in April, the move was partly blamed on the “decline in quality [of their franchise games] due to excessive outsourcing”. This comment was directed towards both Ninja Theory and Slant Six Games, the mediocre developers behind the underperforming DmC and Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, along with Spark Unlimited, the budget developer contracted to produce the presumably abysmal Lost Planet 3, which is to be released next month. In response to these poor results Capcom pledged to cut a slew of previously unannounced externally developed games, while moving the majority of their productions in-house in order to maximise quality – yet it would appear that old habits die hard.

Capcom has this week announced a reboot of the Strider series, simply called Strider [so as to engender the greatest possible confusion, while also whitewashing the Genesis and arcade classic from the annals of history]. This announcement caused a great amount of initial excitement up to the point where gamers discovered that this would not be an internal development undertaken by Capcom, but rather had been farmed out to Double Helix Games.

Double Helix are perhaps best known for two high profile game reboot flops in the form of Silent Hill: Homecoming and Front Mission Evolved, along with Microsoft’s poorly received forthcoming freemium reboot of Killer Instinct for the Xbone. The studio’s net historic output averages a mere 60% on Metacritic, and curious gamers would have to travel back in time to the year 2000 in order to find a single one of their games which [barely] averaged over 80% – which is not a particularly good strike-rate considering the fact that they have developed fourteen unique software titles subsequently. In short, this is business as usual for Capcom, as they contract out yet another one of their popular legacy franchises to one of the cheapest guns-for-hire in the industry. Perhaps this Strider reboot had simply spent too much time in development to cancel it off the back of Capcom’s less than stellar results, yet this is an exceedingly poor look for a company that is supposedly turning over an new leaf. At any rate, Strider deserved better.

One doubts MS is capable of redeeming themselves quite so readily as the Ancyent Marinere.

A Failure to Kinect

Sony have long stated that their PS4 would not initially cost them anywhere near as dearly to shoulder as the PS3, which led to a number of ill-informed plebs calling bullshit on such claims; afterall, how could Sony manage to produce a PS4 capable of completely blitzing the Xbone in terms of its technical specifications, while selling the console for one hundred dollars less, and yet keeping material costs down to the point where selling the hardware itself was almost cost neutral? If anything, this was the one remaining ray of light for Microsoft’s ardent defenders – “imagine how much money Sony must be losing, they’ll totally go out of business!”

Well, such thinking certainly did not take into account the fact that Microsoft priced their console to generate profit from day Bone, nor of course did Microsoft do themselves any favours by designing themselves a five billion transistor APU that was so big and hot that it led to manufacturing yield problems, but, as it turns out, perhaps the biggest anvil around the neck of the Xbone is the invasive and unwelcome Kinect which ships with every unit. In fact, according to an Xbone developer who recently hosted a verified Q&A on Reddit, the accompanying Kinect almost costs Microsoft as much to produce as the Xbone unit itself!

“The majority of the masses care only about the console, except that the success of the Kinect carries much more weight to us. The sensor costs almost as much as the console to make. The goal with having a Kinect ship with every Xbox is to guarantee to game developers if they implement Kinect features into their games, everyone who has an Xbox will be able to experience it. I often see people dismiss the Kinect instantly because they haven’t seen it work like I have. It is an integral part of the Xbox One experience.”

A five hundred dollar experience which most gamers do not want or need – but thank goodness that Microsoft have saddled themselves with this Albatross.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Microsoft land, Xbone chief product officer, Marc Whitten, this week bemoaned the poor job that his company has done in communicating to gamers what the Xbone console is all about [would one be mistaken in thinking it is about TV?].

“I think it’s pretty simple. We’ve got to just talk more, get people understanding what our system is. The thing that’s really gratifying is that people are excited about the types of features that are possible, and it’s sort of shame on us that we haven’t done as good of a job as we can to make people feel like that’s where we’re headed.”

Here is a crazy thought – perhaps Microsoft should have refrained from making a big show about how they just had to junk all of their console’s digital features when they pulled their Xbone 180! Corporate tantrums are all very amusing, but that was the very definition of cutting off their nose in order to spite their face.

Finally, just in case the profound laziness engendered by increased online integration needed any more evidence, Dan Greenawalt of Turn 10 Studios has this week revealed that Xbone release title, Forza Motorsport 5, will be shipping in a half-finished state, and that before Xboners can even play the game, they will have to download half a game’s worth of content. Three cheers for the digital future!

[BREAKING]: In light of Microsoft’s complicity in allowing the NSA and Obama to spy on American citizens via Skype, Outlook, and Hotmail, Microsoft has this week stated that they will not allow government agencies to peep at gamers via their Kinect spy device [unless the Obama regime is able to make doing so legally permissible]. Apparently gamers are supposed to trust Microsoft because of reasons…

“Absent a new law, we don’t believe the government has the legal authority to compel us or any other company that makes products with cameras and microphones to start collecting voice and video data, and we’d aggressively challenge in court any attempts to try and force us to do so.”

Microsoft may want to work on some more convincing weasel-words.

EarthBound: badly managed once, badly managed since.

Go Fuck Yourself with a Splintered Broom-Handle, Nintendo!

If Lusireaders needed any excuse to feel like utter pillocks for buying into Nintendo’s ailing Wii U console, then this is it. After an absolutely pathetic weekly update schedule regarding game releases on the Wii U’s Virtual Console, Nintendo has finally dropped Earthbound, a game that many Wii U owners have been looking forward to – but what the fuck is this? The game has been arbitrarily overpriced at ten American dollars and/or ten Euros depending on one’s area of residence, making it a full one dollar more expensive than Nintendo’s own stated maximum pricing for SNES games on the American Virtual Console, and a full two Euros more pricey than any other SNES game on the European Virtual Console – why the fuck is this?! Is it because it is overly arduous to wrap the Earthbound ROM in a simple emulation program? Is it because Nintendo has had to manufacture an extra large Earthbound cartridge to upload to their eshop? Is it because of Nintendo’s unparallelled largess in offering free access to the game’s original strategy guide in the form of a browser document that loads far too slowly to be of proper use to anyone? Is it due to the concerted effort that Nintendo has made in uglifying the game’s original graphics, so as to prevent spastics from throwing a fit every time the game’s flashier spell animations play out? Or is it because the bean-counting Nipponese-usury-whores at Nintendo cottoned-on to the brilliant notion that because Earthbound is a title that is highly desirable to a mid-size niche audience, it is now OK to charge more than the maximum Virtual Console price, because consumers are just going to buy it anyway?

Go fuck yourself, Nintendo!

Emulation is a better proposition than this horseshit, and ten dollars is better spent on a new indy title for one’s Vita. As for the Wii U, this is the sort of carry-on which makes one consider with great earnest the proposition of selling Nintendo’s dust-gathering nag and be done with it, as this opportunistic money-grab has exhausted any goodwill one may have harboured towards this greedy and cloistered pack of fools and incompetents.

One of the ‘endless possibilities’ is ‘a very unsatisfactory experience’.

Download: Produced 2013.06.30

Lusipurr, Imitanis, and SiliconNooB welcome renowned Minster of EA Fineness Chris ‘Sabin’ Privitere to rule upon the latest corporate double-speak put forth by the embattled software giant. Meanwhile, Microsoft solemnly swears that it is up to no good.

While the red ‘X’ from Monolith’s trailer looks almost exactly like the Xenogears logo, it almost certainly will not be a direct follow-on from that game.

Some Game Announcements For the Wii U, Finally

After months of stagnation on the Wii U front, Nintendo has at long last announced several future entries in the Wii U’s library through this week’s Nintendo Direct conference. A new game featuring Yoshi was announced, which is presented in the style of Kirby’s Epic Yarn, leading to the game media dubbing it as Yoshi’s Epic Yarn, which verily it probably is unless Nintendo decides to be contrary. A high definition re-release of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker was also revealed and later confirmed to be called The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker Reborn. While it has not been confirmed as such, the released media seems to indicate that it may be a full-blown remake as opposed to a HD port.

More surprising was the announcement of an Atlus led Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem crossover game, though it remains to be seen whether the issue of this union will prove equal to the sum of its parts. Finally, the next Monolith Soft game was showcased, the results of which look something approximating the world of Xenoblade being recreated in Square Enix’s Crystal Tools engine. The game is clearly the next installment in Monolith’s Xeno series, but what is currently unknown is the significance of the prominent red ‘X’ which was displayed at the end of the footage. It could simply denote the game’s connection to the Xeno series, or it could be the actual proper title of the project.

Content starved Wii U owners have understandably met these announcements with great enthusiasm, as did quality starved JRPG enthusiasts looking for novelty, yet this is not to say that these projects were not met with a certain measure of criticism. While The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker Reborn‘s re-imagining of the original environments is utterly delightful, the game’s characters look frankly disgusting. Gone are the whimsical cell-shaded stylings of the original game characters, and in their place are hideous waxy manikins, making the characters look like horrid little plastic goblins. Meanwhile Monolith Soft’s Xeno project has led to some fans reacting with dismay to the fact that the developers have seemingly drank deep of the current-gen Kool-aid, which dictates that current-gen graphics may only be presented in tones of muted brown, grey, and green, so that while the game looks quite similar to its critically-acclaimed Wii predecessor, it nevertheless looks much less vibrant. At any rate, graphical qualms aside, the titles themselves are all exciting developments for core Wii U fans, and constitute a bold and promising direction for the platform going forward.

Not one’s first choice of imagery, but then one does as he must when working along side Mr. Pierson Stone.

Nintendo Steals From Wii U Owners

Nintendo has this habit of withholding fervently demanded features for the longest time, until at last relenting only to implement them in the worst possible fashion, as if to say: “See? What’s so great about having the internet/digital distribution/high definition graphics anyway?!“, and this Wiik the company has struck again. Since the launch of the Wii U many have despaired at the console’s lack of native Virtual Console support, as users were forced to access Virtual Console games through Wii compatibility mode, which involves a clunky interface and lack of Wii U Gamepad support. That is why many were excited when Nintendo this week announced that a Spring Wii U update would see the launch of native Virtual Console support for the system – though this sweet announcement turned into ash in one’s mouth upon hearing the proposed pricing structure of the games.

People who already own a library of Virtual Console titles on their Wiis will be forced to buy their games again if they wish for them to be properly supported by the Wii U. While never justifiable, this practice would be at least understandable if it was down to Nintendo’s typical incompetence when it comes to the running of their digital infrastructure, because if the company claimed to be unable to transfer Virtual Console releases due to a lack of user accounts then there would be few who would disbelieve them. Where Nintendo comes unstuck however, is in their offer to allow owners of a Virtual Console title on the Wii to re-purchase that title at a discounted price on the Wii U. The fact that Nintendo will be able to determine whether a user already owns the content pretty much proves that they could simply allow Wii U owners to have access to their previously purchased Virtual Console titles, yet refuse to do so on account of their preference for making Wii U owners purchase their content all over again. The situation would be functionally similar to an alternate bizzaro history wherein Sony demanded a couple of dollars for each PS1 game that an individual intended to use on their PS2. This is basically petty theft, and is equally obnoxious to any repugnant scam that EA might attempt to push.

NES titles may be repurchased for $1.00 as opposed to $4.99, while SNES games may be repurchased for $1.50 as opposed to $7.99, because there is no profit in allowing people free access to the content that they already own. The situation becomes even worse for PAL owners, as the experimental Wii U release of the Balloon Fight Virtual Console title has confirmed that Nintendo have opted to release the technically inferior PAL versions of games. The PAL television standard offers one hundred lines of extra resolution to its NTSC counterpart, yet in terms of gaming all that amounts to is one hundred lines of black letterboxing at the top and bottom of the screen, coupled with the fact that PAL titles [of the era] only support a fifty frames-per-second update while NTSC supports sixty, meaning that many NTSC games are sixteen percent faster and more fluid than their PAL counterparts [in games where slowdown is not an issue].

Finally, in relation another [unconnected] fraudulent deceit on Nintendo’s part, they have been forced to pull a television advertisement for the Wii U that was being broadcast in the UK, on account of the fact that it was misleading towards consumers. While many Wii U games allow users to play their software using the inbuilt LCD screen of the Wii U’s Gamepad, there are also a seemingly equal number of games which do not allow for this functionality. This is why the Advertising Standards Authority, when confronted with a Nintendo advertisement contending that the Wii U solved familial television disputes through the provision of off-screen play, ruled against Nintendo for misleading the public.

The Glee approach to creating music.

The Telltale Quack

Lusireaders will likely best remember Jonathan Coulton as the songwriter behind Still Alive and Want You Gone from Valve’s Portal series, but with eight studio albums to his name he is a fairly prolific geekcentric comedy-rock musician in his own right. This week an incensed Coulton took to the internet in order to draw attention to the fact that he has been made the victim of some of the most shockingly incompetent corporate theft on record. The American cultural sinkhole cum television program known as Glee has gormlessly stolen [without offer of credit or compensation] his 2006 cover version of Sir Mix-a-lot’s 1992 hit song, Baby Got Back, and has not only used it in an episode of the dreadful show, but has then also decided to sell the track on iTunes.

Coulton’s Baby Got Back licensed Mix-a-lot’s lyrics, yet the accompanying music and interpretation was all of his own making. Moreover, Coulton had even personalised the lyrics somewhat by changing the line “Mix-a-lot’s in trouble” to “Johnny C’s in trouble“, a line which Glee sloppily failed to alter when stealing Coulton’s work. Despite all this, it does not seem likely that Fox would be in breach of copyright if they had merely used their in-house ‘musicians’ to copy Coulton’s arrangement of the song, and so a livid Coulton was left with little other recourse than to take to the internet and call out Glee for its creatively moribund theft of another person’s creative property – yet he still had the sneaking suspicion that the show had done more than to simply copy his work.

“Well, they aired it, seemingly unchanged. And it’s now for sale in the US iTunes store. They also got in touch with my peeps to basically say that they’re within their legal rights to do this, and that I should be happy for the exposure (even though they do not credit me, and have not even publically acknowledged that it’s my version – so you know, it’s kind of SECRET exposure). While they appear not to be legally obligated to do any of these things, they did not apologize, offer to credit me, or offer to pay me, and indicated that this was their general policy in regards to covers of covers. It does not appear that I have a copyright claim, but I’m still investigating the possibility (which I consider likely) that they have used some or all of my audio.”

As it turns out there was to be yet another twist in this tale. Coulton has previously made available two different versions of the song; a normal version and a karaoke version – yet there is a distinctive element which both tracks share, and that is the quacking of a duck used to censor the word ‘fuck’ in the lyrics. Here is where things get interesting, the duck’s quack was actually part of one of the musical tracks within the mix, which is why it is also featured in the karaoke version of the song, and thus it would only be possible to stifle it so much before any further efforts would begin to degrade the quality of the music. Thus, after reading of Coulton’s claims that he was half-convinced that he could still hear the duck quacking in the Glee version of the song, several audio technicians set about digging through the audio-mix in search of the elusive mallard. Sure enough with a bit of work it was discovered that the ghostly echo of the quacking duck was still present in the Glee version of the song, indicating that the program did not simply copy Coulton’s arrangement of the piece, but rather had used his actual recording of the track in their awful show.

While knowing something for a fact and being able to prove that fact in a court of law are often seen to be two different things, discovery of artifacts peculiar to Coulton’s recording of the track do at least put him on strong footing with respect to pursuing his claims. That said, he would still do well to ponder the extent to which he considers it worthwhile pursuing the matter, as taking on a well-financed corporate entity is apt to cast a shadow over an individual’s every waking moment for the years that it will take for the saga to play out in court, leaving them a broken, if substantially wealthier, shell of a human being in its wake.

Chrono Trigger SNES Box Art

On 4 October, 2011, the PlayStation port of Chrono Trigger was released on the PlayStation Network. The game, like all other PlayStation releases on the PSN, is playable on the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable.

In Chrono Trigger the player controls the silent protagonist, aptly named Crono, and his companions in there quest to save the very fabric of time itself from the evil mage Magus. Players will travel through time encountering many cities and dungeons that are effected by the choices Crono and his friends make during the course of the game. Chrono Trigger uses an active time battle system much like the system used in the Final Fantasy games of the time. Given the nickname “Active Time Battle 2.0″ by Hiroyuki Ito, battles take place on from a top down view which players can use to their advantage with attacks or spells that use an area of effect. Chrono Trigger also has a New Game + feature which, after beating the game at least once, players can replay the game and get a completely different ending then the one originally seen.

Chrono Trigger was originally released on the Super Nintendo in March 1995 and has been ported to the PlayStation, Nintendo DS, Mobile phones, and the Virtual Console. For those who missed this game and are fans of the Super Nintendo RPGs Chrono Trigger is considered a must have game in any collection.

A face only a mother could love.

After a night spent shouting “Oh! By Jingo!” until they were hoarse, the panelists find themselves facing a podcast in a week without news or releases. Exhausted, and in some cases hung-over, they decide to record themselves sleeping, instead.

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Special New Year’s Bonus: Participate in the yearly Christmas sing-along as if you were there in person even though you weren’t because you wouldn’t be allowed within a thousand feet of the property and that restraining order is still in effect, anyway! How can you do this? Easily! Simply click this link to the video and let yourself go with unrestrained vocal abandon!