We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

Nobody seems willing to admit that Mario did not make a smooth transition to 3D. Mario 64 can only be evaluated based on how good it was when everyone was a kid and how influential it was, not on its own merits 15 years later. It's untouchable.

OBJECTION

I didn't play Mario 64 until it came out on the DS, and I still liked it. There are some differences in the DS version, but it's still the same basic game, and I still enjoyed it. Certainly some aspects of it haven't aged well, but it was fun enough to motivate me to beat it 100%, and that's a rare feat.

Sunshine is still superior in pretty much every way, though. Great game.

I loved Galaxy, too, but it felt... different. It was a lot more linear than the other Mario adventures, and a lot more cinematic, which isn't surprising given the trend of ever-increasing spectacle in AAA games. I miss the open-ended feel of the older Mario adventures.

That said, Galaxy still has some of my favorite art and music of just about any game ever.

Galaxy 2 was a bit disappointing - it didn't feel like it had as strong of a direction, I guess. Most of the stages in 2 felt like one-off challenge levels with no real personality. The first Galaxy, for all its railroading, at least let you return to the same stage several times to see different parts of it.

Also 2 reused a lot of content and didn't even bother with a plot and that's lame

It controls like a bag a grits on rollerskates. And it is ugly.

Ha! Fair on both counts. I'm just saying the nostalgia point you raised does not necessarily apply to everyone.

edit: and yeah the turning radius thing is the most frustrating part of 64's controls

And I definitely hear your criticisms of Galaxy but I like it anyway. The platforming sections (relatively few as they are) are fun, the gravity mechanic is interesting, and uuuuuuuuuuugh everything about the design is so good. I don't think any other game has made me feel the sense of childlike wonder I had playing through Galaxy for the first time.

It's a flawed game, and Sunshine is probably better overall, but I still consider Galaxy a classic.

Yeah, I guess it is kind of the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Game

edit: and I agree with Ed that Goldeneye is similarly lionized. That game does not hold up well. I'm sure it was fun to play when no other console FPSs existed, but it's just such a poorly designed and ugly game.

My point was more that the game is unassailably apotheosized due to extreme levels of nostalgia, like Ocarina Of Time, and criticizing it is tantamount to gamer treason. Not that everyone who likes it is incapable of forming a reasoned opinion.

Labels like "best game of all time" only serve to stifle any real critical analysis.

Honestly? OoT is a fun game and all but it in no way deserves "best game of all time"

no game deserves to simply be "BEST"

Except Tetris

2015: The Oculus Rift makes an unexpected commercial breakthrough. Virtual reality gaming soon becomes the norm.

2023: The Sensodyne™ Immerso-Tank™ is released, the first mass-market full sensory gaming experience.

2029: By jacking into the Omnimind, gamers can now experience a reality indistinguishable from their own.

20XX: Tetris

when you say "serious for adult" are we talking like pokemon manga levels of srs or what

More science-oriented pokemon themes, as opposed to WOO THE POKEMEN ARE OUR FRIENDS I LOVE YOU AND YOU LOVE ME LET'S PUT MORE SPIKES ON TOP OF THEM YEEIAH.

I really don't get the point of that spin-off, it's not even like PokeSpe. Speaking of PokeSpe, i don't think Blue/Green (the female trainer) would make a great protagonist, i'd rather have Yellow, now that'd be different. I mean i like Blue and all but in every recap she's just referred to as "Your favourite female trainer!" when everyone else has a proper title, she also tells Yellow to keep her gender a secret until she "learns" to take advantage of it

Sexist-ass writers.

PokeSpe isn't really that serious, it's just slightly more real.

so, deus ex: pokemon revolution

pokemon mystery dungeon tries to make sense of what pokemon society must be like, but it sorta gets confusing as to how it is okay for a pokemon to suddenly get ripped away from their family when they get caught (which would most likely result in ptsd and eventual death of that pokemon), or any number of other things, because the story does acknowledge human trainers

2015: The Oculus Rift makes an unexpected commercial breakthrough. Virtual reality gaming soon becomes the norm.

2023: The Sensodyne™ Immerso-Tank™ is released, the first mass-market full sensory gaming experience.

2029: By jacking into the Omnimind, gamers can now experience a reality indistinguishable from their own.

20XX: Tetris

2101: war was beginning

19XX: the war against destiny

I agree that it would be nice if pokemon did some srsbsns worldbuilding and actually fleshed out the consequences of things, or had more "hardcore gaming-style" gameplay (e.g. anything but jrpg mechanics combined with luck-based character acquisition), but both of those things would require Nintendo to market pokemon to adults, or at the very least older teenagers.
I'll admit that pokemon definitely has a young adult fandom, but realistically that's because they played the games when they were younger, not because Nintendo is attracting them now. I think it's pretty telling that the protagonist in all the pokemon games is all of 10, which is below even jrpg bildungsroman ridiculously-young-protagonist-age. Nintendo is clearly marketing towards kids, not older fans.

Oh, speaking of MMBN it turns out there's a marathon of the series going on for charity right now, right here.

It's already on MMBN5 but I assume they'll have the rest up poststream, if you want to compare the games.

Neat!

I would love to see a Final Fantasy Tactics-style Pokemon game. I like the collecting aspect of Pokemon and if they grafted that onto an actually fun battle system the results could be great.

I'm not sure about the serious plot thing, though... I think the whole conceit of Pokemon gets kind of ridiculous if you look at it closely.

The cartoonish aesthetics of the pokémon would clash really harshly with any sort of super realistic or overly mature take on the premise. You'd have to change the design enough that you might as well make a new, similar IP so that the stuff actually works better rather than having to be bent to it.

I'd love to see revamping of the gameplay of the games since it's stale and stuck largely in the early '90s, but I'm looking for something that still fits the childish and simplistic stylings of the IP.

Pokemon Conquest had potential, but I really didn't like the setting or being restricted to specific types based on my controlled regions. Maybe the original setting remade as a tactics game would work better? Also a "hack-n-slash" style game could make pokemon co-op a viable thing which would be exciting.

Also, for people looking at Pokémon Tactics, they actually made a game for that already: Pokémon Conquest. It's not exactly what's being asked about here and it's definitely flawed, but worth checking out I think.

I admit I didn't even see your stuff about it and was talking more to Stij :L

I too ignored your post and replied to stij since I wasn't grasping quite how you wanted pokemon to progress. Pokemon is already a strategy, and mildly open world unless you want bethesda levels of such. For some reason I get the feeling you want "Fallout With Pokemon?" Sounds cool in theory, but I bet that'd be a bitch to make.

I know a lot of adults who care about the singleplayer mode of Pokémon :P

Didn't Electric Tale have a much more heavily detailed and less cartoonish style to the art, or am I thinking of a different comic? Specifically I remember a very monstrous gyarados attacking in one scene.

I know you complained about the sexism in the writing of the Adventures comics, but is something as simplistic as that sufficient, or are you looking for complexity? The story of Red/Blue/Green/Yellow was definitely simple but I thought it was sufficient (though I admit, Mato's art style is most of the reason I love those comics and why I never read past the end of book 7).

I argue that a hack-n-slash would be an excellent style switch if you want a stronger story and potentially darker or more adult themes. Make it real time with clearly visible encounters, with more focus on tuning your unique team than catching them all. How about a darker story that doesn't involve becoming the best?

God dammit, close enough

The story of Red/Blue/Green/Yellow was definitely simple but I thought it was sufficient (though I admit, Mato's art style is most of the reason I love those comics and why I never read past the end of book 7).

I don't think complexity is the problem, is just that it's the same every game. It doesn't even have to be "darker" just different and a little bit more mature. Hell, even just different would be enough.

I agree about Mato's art being the only reason to read those comics though.

I’VE played Ace Attorney.

(I’ve also watched the live action film because “it’s the only good game adaptation EVARRRR” but I think it has nasty pacing issues)

The Ace Attorney wiki says Phoenix Wright's Japanese name (Ryuichi Naruhodo) is from Ryuichi Sakamoto, and that Shu Takumi apparently admires him. I did not know this.

also naruhodo means 'i see (but i don't really)' #stuffeveryoneknew

Surprisingly, PW:AA is available on the Wii. You'd think it'd be on the 3DS. But to present evidence you swing the wiimote forward as if physically shoving it in the witness' face, which is awesome. But then you can no longer shout OBJECTION unnecessarily loudly into the mic, so it's a tradeoff.

It's also available as an iOS port as well! #morestuffeveryoneknew

SpoilerShow

For years and years I have wanted to be able to do Genesis-style chiptunes, and only recently I discovered some Yamaha synths that would allow me to get a comfortable MIDI setup that will make composition much more manageable than slogging away in a tracker. In fact, they're perfect for my needs. I love FM metal, I love FM funk, and what better excuse could I have for making a bunch of it than a spooky game? It's a perfect fit. That's all gravy ... except I still can't draw, sprite or animate. And if I'm making a 16-bit style game ... I'm looking at years of prep on this project. I'm not the sort of person to give up on something that appears impossible, it's just that it seems so far away as to be almost unreachable.

The problem with those kind of projects is that it's almost impossible to stay motivated when there are no incentives other than having fun, which is a strong motivation, but it's hard to keep focus when you also have a life to live and things to work on for your future. It's not so much about time i think, but rather motivation and incentives.
On the other hand, i'm not sure if money would actually make it better; i can speak from experience that knowing you're gonna get paid in exchange for something creative isn't necessarily motivating, but i guess it's because it has never been my only source of income.

I'd say just go for it, i know it's kind of a bummer to never see your cool ideas become a reality, but the idea of game planning, character designing and all that cool and totally doable stuff it's too fun to pass up.

I don't know about making a dev. blog though, i've been working on and off on a project with a friend over the past... 6 months i think and while we haven't made much progress, i'd say we've definitely made a somewhat decent amount and we haven't hit a slope just yet, just technical difficulties. I like to think that not revealing everything right away has helped with that, it gives you a solid goal to look for, which for us has been "getting it to a proper beta stage" and then we can show it. But i 'unno maybe that's just us/me.

I made a gamedev blog and then promptly stopped making things

I did go through a whirlwind of real life though

But other than that, a huge part of my lack of motivation comes with the crippling reality that I have no artistic skills and so my code just languishes alone