aspro said:

Nice to see Square keeping the tradition of poor DQ7 graphics going with the new 3DS remake.

LOL

I've already played through this game enough times that I can't image going through it again. Great class system, but jesus christ this game moved at a snail's pace. Looks like they're taking a cue from the more recent DQ games and getting rid of the random battles. That's a good thing and will hopefully help a bit.

aspro said:

I've never understood the problem people have with the level.  There is a much worse one in Halo 2, dunno what it is called, I've only beaten H2 twice, but it is in a high ceiling purple space place and you have what seems like endless identical rooms interlinked and flying enemies.

So both games are guilty of padding out areas with long stretches of identical scenary and repitition.

Yep, nothing to criticise there.

aspro said:

Nice to see Square keeping the tradition of poor DQ7 graphics going with the new 3DS remake.

It won't stop me from buying a 3DS to play it of course.  I hope they do a slime blue bundle for it in the west. (hey, I can dream).

I've never played and never will but it looked all right to me.

Edgie, you know the difference between the WW and MP2 Fetch quests? WW was padding because they ran out of time and cut 2 dungeons. MP2 is a pretty complete game and a complex and difficult one which is the main reason it's derided by some who couldn't hack it. The quest at the end of that feels more like an ultimate challenge of an already challenging game. Of course most people just wanted to finish it by then after all the work already put in. I had to faq a couple of them, mostly I did it myself but even using a faq it was still enjoyable.

**aka the new game from the World of Goo creators**

Nintendo insiders speak: How Microsoft and Sony were a handshake away from thwarting the Wii, and how its motion controller was born on an airplane

"Through my business connections, the first games person I got in touch with was Steve Ballmer," he says.

"I pitched this motion control device to him and he loved it. He set me up with the Xbox team in Redmond [Washington] for a second pitch and I remember how incredibly excited I was about it. Things were happening so fast.





"But the meeting went terribly. The attitude I got from them was that if they wanted to do motion control, they would do it themselves and make a better job of it. I mean, they were just rude. In fact, the meeting went so terribly that one of the executives came over to me afterwards and apologised on behalf of others. I remember him saying how this was not how Microsoft should be engaging with potential partners."





Despite Gates's prophetic warnings about garage innovators, and Ballmer's apparent endorsement of Quinn's patented tech, the Xbox team turned down an offer that would have effectively blocked Nintendo from using the very motion control technology that the Wii is built on.





Seven years later, when Nintendo was working around the clock to produce more than 1.8 million Wii consoles per month to meet unprecedented global demand, the Xbox team was put in front of an Israeli inventor who had a different kind of motion control technology patent. That time, the Xbox execs were all ears.





BACK IN 2001, on the long and downhearted journey home from Microsoft HQ in Redmond, Quinn and his business partners remained convinced they could still sell the idea of motion control to a games company. Attentions eventually turned to Japan, and it quickly became clear who was the priority target to pitch the tech to. Sony.





"At the time, Nintendo wasn't doing well at all," Quinn says. "It was rich, but it wasn't generating any good business. There were rumours about the chairman stepping down and other things, so we felt Sony would be a better potential partner for us."





Quinn's company was fortunate enough to have an investor by the name of Larry Yoshida - a Japanese businessman who had strong ties across the entertainment sectors. Yoshida was such a prolific networker that he even personally knew Akio Morita, the distinguished co-founder of Sony, before he passed away in 1999.





Ken Kutaragi at his penultimate E3, 2005

"Through his connections, Yoshida got me in touch with a Sony guy that looks after games. So I flew to their offices and was given a meeting with a man called Ken Kutaragi."






Quinn was unaware at the time that Kutaragi was the most influential person in the entire games business. The "father of PlayStation". The man who broke a thirty-year curse and produced two market-leading consoles in succession. A visionary whose self-belief reached a critical mass when creating the PS3; a problematically ambitious and comically expensive machine that many games developers loathed coding for.





But in 2001, before all the PS3 problems and resignations, it felt like Kutaragi had the entire industry in the palm of his hand.

"I'll never forget that meeting at Sony," Quinn says. "We were in a tiny little room with a big PC projector and Kutaragi comes in, introduces himself, sits down and - I swear this is true - he closed his eyes the moment I started showing my pitch. He never opened them until I had finished.




"Kutaragi comes in, introduces himself, sits down and - I swear this is true - he closed his eyes the moment I started showing my pitch"





"It was awkward, very awkward, but I still asked him for feedback and he said, 'well, can you produce this for 50 cents?' I laughed and explained that would be impossible, so again I left empty handed and, to be honest, that time it got to me. I felt pretty let down. You have to remember that Sony and Microsoft were by far the two biggest console manufacturers. Nintendo wasn't doing well and we hadn't thought much about them."





In the summer of 2001, Quinn was informed that Nintendo's chairman and president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, was preparing to resign after 53 years at the company. Ever since PlayStation entered the fray, Nintendo had failed to reproduce the kind of winning market share that it had become accustomed to. The N64 took second place in a two-man race and the GameCube did worse still, finishing third after the Xbox launched.

But Yamauchi's departure, officially announced a full year later, was not a straight swap. Internally, Nintendo was making radical changes to its management structure. A board of six executives was appointed to take mutual control of all operations.





Atsushi Asada stepped in as new chairman while a man named Satoru Iwata was appointed president. Shigeru Miyamoto was also named one of the six.





In 2002 both Shigeru Miyamoto and Satoru Iwata (background) officially joined the revised Nintendo board





This was more than a game of musical chairs; Command within Nintendo's Kyoto headquarters was no longer reserved for a single dictator but spread across a committee of its most senior staff. The biggest decisions would now be explored from six different perspectives, in theory allowing more radical ideas to be considered.






Quinn is one of the few people who has personally seen how this committee operates from the inside.





In another extraordinary spell of luck, his networking partner Yoshida happened to occasionally play golf with Asada before he became chairman. One final meeting was set up in early September 2001, this time with Quinn flying to Kyoto to pitch his motion controller to Nintendo.

"I'll never forget that week. I distinctly remember the company's beautiful board meeting room - a huge cherrywood table and flush carpeting and outstanding ornaments. Asada didn't speak much English, but he had an entourage of about eight executives, engineers and programmers. I didn't know who they were though.




"I was told that some Nintendo executives were resistant to the idea of motion control, while others were completely sold by it."




"About twenty minutes into my pitch, which was roughly the same one I gave to Microsoft and Sony, Asada stopped things and asked if he could have a moment to speak with his people. I was thinking, here we go again.





"They started talking and, right in front of me, it was growing into this really heated discussion. I was told by Yoshida, who was also in the room, that some executives were resistant to the idea of motion control, while others were completely sold by it.





"And then, in the middle of this debate that was getting louder and louder, Asada barked something and there was total silence. That was it. He decided to license our patents for motion control, as well as buy some of our company."

Hey Vader I just read 1up say about NG3

"The Wii U GamePad performs surprisingly well as a controller for such a fast-paced action game -- a genuine surprise given its size. Each corner of the rectangular touchscreen has a small, circular shortcut button to switching weapons, activating magic attacks, use Ninja Sense, or upgrade Ninja Skills. A player can also switch to the more traditional Pro Controller if they choose and adopt a more traditional style of menu system."

Hey GG thanks for that entertaining and informative  read about how the Wii came about! It was really good.

edgecrusher said:

Nintendo really is in a make or break situation with Wii UNintendo has put all it's chips in 1 basket

Hey...this sounds exactly like what people have said about every Nintendo console since 1996. AMAZING!

Yeah they manage to pull through just fine, I'm not too worried about them. I just thought it was an interesting read.

I haz internetz!!!!!

Ok I am back guys, yesterday sucked. Nice news today, nice reviews. Ken Kutaragi is so awesome, lol. I got a chuckle on the Beyonce story description, well done.

The Wii U is out there, a guy from Cheapassgamer picked his  Walmart Layaway up toinght. My Zombie  Shipped  from Walmart  Fed  Ex  but not my Pro or my system grrrr.  Funny because two days ago  I got email saying Zombie would not be here until the 29th Walmart  has no fucking clue what they are  doing. I just hope the system and controller ship tomorrow. I'm going sitting there on Tues  looking at the pretty Zombie box.

Yeah I won't soon forget that Sunday night bears debacle good news is my Zombie shipped from my bundle which means the rest is shipping soon, I have my Wii U secured and coming soon!