E3 has become a staple in gaming culture, evolving from a small convention where the gaming industry shows off their stuff to the press to a big convention where the old American practice of showboating and shock and awe takes center stage. Anything but a shocking presentation is considered subpar. Yesterday Nintendo delivered a presentation at E3: the one everyone waits for. Nintendo-- yesterday-- announced Animal Crossing: City Folk with Wii Speak (which we need to do something on), Wii Music, and Wii Sports Resort while showing off the new Wii Motion Plus they announced the day prior to the presentation. This year the common consensus is that the presentation and what was presented for the most part was garbage, and I can say that I agree.
Did I get your attention? Yes? Good. I've just finished writing my will as a result of creating this most evil of header images. Since I'm done with that I thought I might as well write this post. Well, we've decid.ed on who to select out of the multitudes of applications we received for moderator status on N+. It was a most difficult quest to decide on who to torture grace with the status of Moderator, so we decided on FOUR, yes FOUR. They are as follows:
It was an extremely hard choice, but we all agree unanimously that these suckers people will make excellent additions to our moderator staff. The process isn't over, yet. We need each of the new moderators to submit their acceptance to one of us through a PM. After that we only need to wait for our fearless leader, DotEd, to flip the switch to give all the ones selected moderator status. He's on his way back as I write this from a glorious trip in sunny California.
We hope to see quicker response times from news and other things as a result of these moderator additions. Give the four a round of applause.
GLEEEEGYVIN! Nerd-alert! Khadgar just PMed me an awesome find... DS Styli that are OFFICIAL Ninty brand & are Lightsabers...
*breathe* *breathe* *breathe* ok...
There are two different packs to choose from (when they officially come out in stores): The 3-Pack that has three small styli modelled after Yoda's, Luke's, and Vader's sabers - OR you can get the 2-pack that has two big "lighty-uppy" stylus modeled after Yoda's and Vader's sabers.
2pack -via amazon / 3pack -via amazon Read more... for pictures of these bad boys!
Yesterday when Kotaku showed a blurry screenshot from Weekly Shonen Jump showing Chrono Trigger DS I was HIGHLY skeptical. These past few years have been plagued with thousands and thousands of people wasting their time and their crappy Photoshop skills to make fake screenshots of some form of a Chrono Trigger remake or a sequel. SquareEnix has expressed no interest as of late to revive the Chrono series despite the first game in the series’s status as one of the greatest games of all time. It does, however, look as if they are finally going to do something with the series, a remake of the timeless classic on the Nintendo DS as both the Japanese and North American websites for SquareEnix features Chrono Trigger DS, abeit rather vaguely.
Rumor sites have been ablaze since yesterday about this game with fans needing a dosage of ritalin to keep themselves calm. Why is this? Well, it’s because unlike SquareEnix’s other series this one hasn’t been beat to death with multitudes of inept sequels, just one. Since Chrono Cross’s release on the PlayStation in 1999 (Japan) and 2000 (North America) fans have been clamoring for a good Chrono game. My personal opinion of its sequel is that it was a complete failure of a game although it did have a good story if you were capable of playing through it. Its soundtrack, however, is one of the best from any game; it could be considered as good or better than its predecessor’s. A remake of this game would only be beneficial for them, bringing one of the best games ever made to a new audience; the last time a remake of Chrono Trigger was made was in 1999 (Japan) and 2001 (North America). A couple of the mods here were hardly out of diapers by then.
Once SquareEnix provides screenshots we’ll be back with more information.
UPDATE: It's true! Square Enix just sent out a press release confirming the game, which you can read after the break. CHRISTMAS 2008 BABY!
Believe it or not I actually began on this in MARCH after you guys wanted a Mario Kart header. I finally finish it a couple of days shy of JULY. Whew. Not so speedy is it?
Anyway, considering we missed the release of Mario Kart by a few months I decided it'd still be fitting to put us beating the snot out of each other racing on a fictional track modeled after the graphics used to advertise Opera 9.5. We might not be going so fast, though. We seem too occupied with destroying each other than actually racing... well maybe not Seaempty. Heck, Lutherjw can't even decide which way he wants to go! How fitting. Opera's released a great update to their browser, and we're all about Nintendo and Opera, so here's something to display our appreciation for Opera. Besides, without them we wouldn't even have this log here!
As usual, the header doesn't show all of the image. You can view a high res image in the N+ Design Album in the photos section of this site.
I just realized here we haven't said anything about Final Fantasy IV. There's a lot to report so here goes.
Final Fantasy IV was released in Japan this past December to quite a fanfare. Rumors spread that it wasn't going to get a US release, but without proof I didn't find it prudent to post about it. Rumors spread that the game was too packed to be translated into English as English does take up more space in a game than Japanese characters. Nintendo Power has stated that it is to be released in July in North America. As of right now I can't find any information about an European or Australian release.
Final Fantasy IV was a game first released in 1991 on the Super Nintendo as Final Fantasy II in the US. It is one of the most beloved of the series, a fan favorite of many a player of the RPG genre. In my own opinion it wasn't that great. The original release in the US had reduced difficulty along with the removal of the jobs system. Secret passages in the game were labeled blue, many character-specific special abilities were removed, and much of the game's story was removed due to space constraints due to the wordy translation. I still to this day cannot see how anyone could have loved the original release here, but I can see how people loved the game after fans properly translated the japanese version's ROM, playable only through emulation usually. This is not the first remake, and the previous remakes released outside of Japan haven't been much better. Thankfully that won't be the case with this remake. Lots of information about the game's development have been coming from the official blog.
Okay. You might say, "How in the heck can he read that?" Well it's true, I can't. But I have a friend that can read Japanese, so you guys can get some news only the Japanese have for a while. The game's original project lead is back on the remake adding more story and background information on the characters that was severely lacking in the original. It does sound odd that its sucessors on the Super Nintendo (only one was released stateside) were not devoid of story by any means, but Final Fantasy IV was released during the Super Nintendo's infancy and many of the components that were affordable later on in the SNES's lifespan were expensive. Super Nintendo games at the time were mostly Nintendo games with better graphics. That's the way things are with every console. Takes a few years for developers to get the hang of the system.
A reworked job system is being put into this remake, allowing characters to learn from other characters. This is similar to the freedom Final Fantasy X's sphere grid gave players where especially later in the game multiple characters might have the same abilities learned from one another's grid. It's unsure how this will work out in this DS remake, but I doubt it'd be as complex as the sphere grid. The DS cartridge can only hold so much. That brings me to a problem the developers are having.
This game will feature voice acting for much of the game along with acted pre-rendered CGI movies. Because of this the developers ran into problems with storage space, further bringing up the possibility when rumors spread of it's being only a Japanese release. This wouldn't be the first time a game never made it here because of English language storage space problems. Apparently the developers had to compress the japanese text quite a bit to make it fit. I hope they can do good with the English one as well. It looks like the better the compression they can get the better the translation can be.
I suggest to you enplussers that are interested in this game go perusing the blog (even if you cannot read it). There's much eyecandy to behold of new character design and artwork. It appears that different towns are being given different cultures and appearances despite the monoculture of the original. It looks to be a nice improvement.
I always wondered why Square Enix didn't start with Final Fantasy IV. Final Fantasy III was never released in the US and probably for a good reason. It was one of the weakest of the original series (pre VII). People are tired of remakes, but these old games are problematic for youngsters to play today as they are used to advanced graphics and such. It's nice to see a game that deserves a remake get a proper one finally, giving a great game a chance to be played by a new audience.
Many of you might have noticed a nice, calming blue light flicker on your Wii today. This is not the annoying Kmart blue light guy. It's another Blue Liight Special!
Joel made a post this past Thursday with a GDC trailer courtesy of Gametrailers.com, but it was hampered by the crowd's noises, and apparently it didn't even contain the entire trailer. So here's the entire trailer and without the annoying crowd noises.
Oh my God! Khadgar is doing a post! The world is over. Miyamoto is going to pass judgment... nevermind. Sorry I went off on a tangent there. Last week we wanted to know if you were happy with the Wii games that have been offered so far; the vast majority of y'all stated that you believed there were some duds, but quality games on the Wii are in abundance. I couldn't agree more. Five percent of you guys never played a Wii... I feel your pain.
This week we'd like to know what kind of accessories you all have for the Wii. Recently the awesome nerf zapper has come to light, and there's many more accessories out there already. Click on read more to find out more.
Instead of doing what everyone else does this time of year by creating a Christmas theme we decided to do something a bit different and do something humorous to liven the mood. Even how this header image came to be is a funny tale.
Everyone started bugging me long ago about doing a header image to commemorate Super Mario Galaxy, but during that time I was busy with work and playing the game itself which in my opinion is the best game ever made. Period. Last night I asked moderators G-Off and lutherjw if they had any ideas. Naturally being goofy as we normally are in the N+ chat they blurted out stupid ideas, but oddly enough their stupid idea of putting Ed as a planet with Mario suddenly made perfect sense. Ed asked me ages ago if I would do an illustration of him, so I thought why not? I could kill two birds with one stone... or planet. So, here it is. I had a bit of trouble working on this illustration because of my consistent giggling at the subject matter. Originally I had a mustache on Ed, but he wasn't instantly noticable, so I left it off and just put his head there looking surprised as heck to even be there.
Just like the previous one the new header image is just a cropping of a much larger image, and also like the previous one we've add.ed it to the photo gallery. I hope you have as much fun looking at it as I did making it. To tell you the truth at this present time Ed has absolutely no clue about this image. Boy would I love to be a fly on the wall when he sees this... hahahahahaha!
I love stories like this because I consider bull$#!+ to be my specialty. Anytime Greenpeace makes a PR statement it's most definitely bollocks as the British would say. In the past they've targeted recently booming companies such as Apple, so naturally with Nintendo's success they attempt a way to smear their reputation into the ground using an ecological point of view. More on this after the break.
This doesn't fall into the realm of gaming news, but perhaps it does? Ed has made a name for himself as one of the biggest Nintendo fanatics on the planet, so in my humble (ha!) opinion it does. Our founder, DotEd, has turned 27!
Ed started N+ from a humble small group of Nintendo fans just wanting a bit of camaraderie and it has grown into almost 1500 members. Man I can remember when getting 500 members was a huge ordeal. I first talked with Ed about a year ago, and I'm glad I met him. He's been a really good friend. In my opinion he's created the best group on My Opera and one of the best places to get truthful reviews and news on Nintendo games, win great prizes playing nifty games, and battle a friend or two on the other side of the globe in a nice Nintendo WFC game. He's created something special, especially special to myself.
Lately his boss has been working him like an ancient Egyptian slave, but he still finds time to devote to N+ at any chance he can get. Let's give Ed a round of applause. He deserves it. Here's to plenty more years, Ed !
This is a listing of all the known release dates for Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS games for the Australian continent/country. We will update this frequently so check here to find out when your favorite game is released.
If you're a regular here at N+ you've probably noticed that the site has slowly changed over the past month or so. That's been my doing. I don't do many news posts on here, and I spend most of my time with N+ changing the visuals. I was asked to become a moderator for N+ to do just that, and here's what's become of my efforts so far.
The page still remains the same width, but with the removal of the background gradient I was able to remove the outside padding and gain some content space in the process while simplifying the page. Now the focus is on the header imagery and the content itself, which is what it should be. In fact, that's all that's left.
It is my idea that from time to time I would create a header image to commemorate a particular part of Nintendo be it a person, character, game, etc. This time it's to commemorate the release of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. This took me quite a while to finish painting it, and I can say I'm relatively happy with the result. It's not the best work I've ever done, but it's gotten to a point I'm ready to stop work on it. I think overall it's an excellent start to what I hope will become a long series of artwork created for N+. You can view a rather large version of the header image in the photo gallery.
I felt that it was time to make it live rather than continue to tweak minor details. I will most likely make the tweaks gradually over time, so this is only the start. Enjoy the new design. I can't wait to do the next one!
Maybe now I can get the time to actually play the game...
This is a listing of all the known release dates for Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS games for Japan. We will update this frequently so check here to find out when your favorite game is released.
I+ is a group for those that are interested, developing and curious about discussing independent media such as games, music, movies, literature, and everything else in between.
- OR you can get the 2-pack that has two big "lighty-uppy" stylus modeled after Yoda's and Vader's sabers.
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