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Australian Takes Over EA
Look for a resurgence of Ty the Tasmanian Tiger games.
mercurynews.com news
aspro
Nomura discusses Final Fantasy XV
Explains the first numbered FF to be an Action RPG.
gematsu.com news
aspro
Miyamoto praises Retro
thinks they can handle multiple projects at once
nintendo-insider.com
gamingeek
PS4: Sony Earlier Thought About Slow GDDR5 + eDRAM
Cerny says eDRAM speeds can be 1000GB per second
gamechup.com
gamingeek
Wii U eDRAM Explained by Shin’en
At base, eDRAM is high density, very, very fast Random Access Memory that is actually embedded on to the chip that it services
hdwarriors.com
gamingeek
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Shinen on Wii U: It's not the hardwares fault
If devs have a hard time making great looking games on Wii U
hdwarriors.com
gamingeek
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*crickets*
I feel this with some games. Very annoying, this is why Metroid like scanners are the rage these days.
Aonuma
There’s a “Zelda cycle.”
Yes. Bill Trinen-san12 at Nintendo of America—who always plays a big role in preparing the overseas versions of The Legend of Zelda games—always talks about the Zelda cycle. 12. Bill Trinen: Product Marketing Director, Nintendo of America.
Basically, as time progresses, negative opinions about The Legend of Zelda turn into positive ones. At first, I wasn’t sure about that, but seeing the response to The Wind Waker HD, I think it may be right.
Takizawa
That’s right. We took the various versions of Link from the Zelda HD Experience, Sword and The Wind Waker and lined them up in the same setting. We used practically the same shader19 and brought out the same shading, and Link from The Wind Waker made an overwhelmingly strong impact. He exerted some kind of unnatural pressure. 19. Shader: A graphics program for depicting light and shadow.
He wasn’t doing anything. His appearance alone stood out.
Yeah! And it looked natural. We thought that was amazing, so we set up the sea and islands from The Wind Waker, put them on the Wii U and adjusted the images. That resulted in great images with vibrant sunlight and superb contrast.
Dohta
Yeah. Actually, designers in-house that could work on this were limited since it needed to be people who were familiar with the data and direction of the original designs. We knew we weren’t able to rely on a workflow that employed a lot of people. So this time we used a special method. We devised a way to convert Nintendo GameCube data for the Wii U and to make visuals look better, while hardly laying our hands on the 3D modeling data.
Did that exist from the start?
Not at first. We had been gathering the Wii U know-how at that point from a variety of places and had been adjusting old images so they would show up as cleanly rendered images for The Wind Waker HD.
But that new method wouldn’t make all the art look better than on the Nintendo GameCube, would it?
No. Some would require special, individual attention. We wrestled with a lot of data, speculating as to what the developers’ intentions were in the original designs, and reflecting that on the Wii U shader.
It was fucking funny because as I clicked on the review I thought "This HAS to be an 8.o!!! Then I LOLed when I actually saw the score. I must say, Gamespot don't seem like they are willing to give ANY Nintendo game a 9+ review nowadays....the days of Metroid Prime 9.7's over there are long gone. Even Prime 3 they gave an 8.5 I believe.
Though I agree more with them than I do IGN on this one....Wind Waker is always the weakest Zelda IMO so I slight update isn't going to suddenly make it a 9.8, 10 years later. All my old Gamespot reviews are gone, but I believe I gave Wind Waker an 8.3 back in the day, and Star Fox Adventures I gave an 8.9.....then I had Minda Cubed telling me he was in total agreement and even Pedro chimed in and said "Wow...I can't believe I agree with you two". Haha.
Apparently Gamespot gave NSMBU an 8.5 so according to them that is the U's best game. LOL
WW is really a mixed bag. In terms of Zelda like gameplay, it's the most underwhelming 3D entry in the series. But it oozes such joy de vivre and has such consistent artwork that it elevates the experience above itself. I can't say I enjoyed TP or SS as much as I did tWW, even when I acknowledge all that is wrong with the game.
The last Golf game I got heavily into was Hot Shots Golf 3 on the PS2. My brother and I used to play that regularly for awhile. Then the genre faded away like the Fighting genre for me.
I really don't think Nintendo has come close to matching the magic of the N64 Zelda games in any of them. Even though they are all technically "better" in terms of controls and level designs in some ways, the N64 games had the magic and the WOW factor. Ocarina set the bar for more open world style Adventure games, and then Majora was such an innovative take on it...much moreso than any since then.
Its kind of funny because for all Nintendo's talk of emphasizing gameplay over graphics I would argue they have done the opposite with Zelda. They clearly use drastic graphics changes as a way to differentiate each Zelda title, while the gameplay has remained firmly rooted in 1998.
I think it's unfair to compare games from the N64/PS era to their contemporary siblings. Really, how can todays games ever match the 'magic' of adding a whole dimension?
None of us can objectively judge which games are truely better, since we were gamers back in the day. It'd take a youngster to really assess the quality of OoT. I really love OoT, I really do. But when I revisited the GC version many years ago, I couldn't help but notice that everything was much smaller and less complex then I remembered it.
Also, the Zelda template is a relatively rigid one. Mario for instance can go in every direction. His template is little more then 'jump on stuff and interact'. It leaves both developers and gamers with a lot of freedom to explore and experiment. Zelda is a much more complicated affair, and thus harder to innovate within. What defines a Zelda title? You'll need a much longer definition to pin it down, leaving you with less blanks to fill in with fresh elements.
I know Wii Sports Club is a money grubbing exercise despite HD + online modes + motionplus.
But what happens if and when they start expanding it with new sports or characters, new arenas or modes?
This is an interesting article....the guy mentions something that I have thought about recently. That is, that maybe the only reason Nintendo decided on this HD port of Wind Waker is to test the waters and see if people are more willing to accept the graphic style nowadays, because they seem determined to use it.
http://www.gengame.net/wp-content/cache/supercache/gengame.net/2013/06/nintendo-is-obsessed-with-forcing-unpopular-art-styles-in-zelda/index.html.gz
GAF thinks WW HD is Nintendos' way of seeing if people wil buy old cube games at full price.
As for WW, we know that it was part of this graphical testing period to see what looks best on U. As the excepts I posted have stated, so it's likely the new Zelda will be toony. They're more toony than not these days, if you count the handheld games and SS.
I'll admit pricing is a little high for people who'd want all the games so hopefully they'll offer bundle pricing. And i assume the new games will just be rolled out as they're ready. If you want it you pay $10 or $2 to rent it or you pass it up and wait for what's next.
I know that WW was received badly on launch, but I think the opinion on the graphical style has matured enough over the years that there is no such thing as an aversion to it anymore. He goes on about how TP was so much better and all, but that's not my impression, and I don't know if it's the general concensus of the public. He completely lost me by the end of the article though, where he mentions Nintendo's 'vanity' being more offensive then MS's handling of the Xbone. Seriously, what? The whole article, to me, reeked of a persional bias of the author, more than of quality journalism.
I won't rule out that Nintendo is more intent on pushing more cartoony graphics than it is in chasing realism. I won't rule out that this is moslty a financial concern either. On the other hand, I do feel that the industry is in need more of cartoony games then yet more scifi/fantasy realism. It also seems as if Nintendo has that base covered as well with X.
It takes months to make Wii Sports HD and even then only two of them? Why is Nintendo so slow.
Very interesting idea though. ONLINE! In a Nintendo game not named kart or smash! Yay for features from 2003! Still a sweet idea, so now I can beat you guys at Wii Sports.
Sega bought Atlus, woah.
That Sonic trailer!!!!! Fuck Rayman and Mario. Sonic is the king once more!
Reviews of a 10 year old game with mostly just graphical improvements are so useless. That said GS still pisses me off.
I was hoping Gung Ho would purchase Atlus. But I'm okay with a 3rd party purchasing Atlus. Now Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem can release; If Sony or Microsoft purchased Atlus than that game wouldn't be able to release.
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