Ponkotsu

Oh boy, it's time for another monster post! I'll break it down by genre categories, and as usual, there will be relevant YouTube links and so forth. Lots of industry commentary and context too. Most of this list probably has little to no shot at happening, but a man can dream, eh? It's all written from the perspective of an ideal industry that breaks away from its current dangerous lull in creativity and fixation on Sony and Microsoft where profits have largely vanished, getting back in touch with their roots and returning to Nintendo, where they're actually making an effort to create profitable platforms friendly to third parties as can be.

As an initial aside - way to stay on topic, me - Mega Man Legends 3 was just cancelled, as we know. Fans are already starting to campaign for it to have another shot, considering how far into development it was - I suspect their pleas will fall on deaf ears, and that they have much less of a chance than Operation Rainfall. Still, I can only wish them the best, since as someone who missed out on Mega Man Legends 1-2 (Only renting the first one ages ago) and The Misadventures of Tron Bonne, I really wanted to play 3 and for remakes of the original PSX/N64/PC games to hit the 3DS. Disappointing. But this leads to my next point.

Conservative development attitudes and a self-destructive tendency to cling to the platforms and brands killing them is wrecking the industry right now. We need bold, courageous, creative development like Nintendo's been trying to push and encourage since the DS and Wii, which the industry has by and large not been rising to the occasion of, and Nintendo themselves often aren't there enough either, though it's understandable that they can't just discard their main properties either - they're their bread and butter. They launched the 3DS intending for third parties to shine, and instead third parties dropped the ball and now we're seeing a bunch of them getting antsy about the 3DS when they SHOULD be pushing BIG, AMBITIOUS games on it and giving people more reasons to BUY the system. This is where they need to be as portables go - there aren't other viable options. Sony's self-destructing in portables and they know it. A competitive price point set to make Sony bleed billions like with the PS3 does not ensure it'll be a hit when the software lineup has no titles that indicate any kind of reaching out to a wider market, only shrinking like with the PS3 - and minimal third party support, reflecting third parties realizing they shouldn't be touching the Vita - and development costs are BEYOND merely unreasonable for a portable. Portables are SUPPOSED to cost significantly less than their console counterparts.

At any rate, enough industry rambling - there's a long list and tons of links ahead here. And some more industry lamentations at the bottom. Dig in! (And try not to choke on all the horrifying text.)

Action/Arcade
Sandlot games - We didn't get Zangeki no Reginleiv, sadly, or Chousouju Mecha MG (Though that had a little content featured in Brawl.), nor have we seen an Earth Defense Force game make it to a Nintendo platform yet. I'd love to see that changed. Sandlot's games are pretty much crazy arcade-style fun with a relatively low budget. Their only game to make it west this gen was the first EDF on the XBox 360 - which sold incredibly poorly and got a western-developed sequel recently, which is also predictably bombing - and then prior to that, Enix's last solo game released in the west before they bought the collapsing Squaresoft was Sandlot's R.A.D.: Robot Alchemic Drive, which was a ton of fun. I suspect their games would have luck finding at least something of a profitable cult audience on Nintendo platforms if given a little more backing, given their arcade-style nature and that arcade-style games do have a history of doing better on Nintendo platforms than the competition's. It's a shame Zangeki didn't get the shot it deserved. They're close with Nintendo, anyway, so more support from them is likely and welcome - their games just need more of a shot outside of Japan.

Koei's Musou games - Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors, DW: Gundam, Mystic Heroes, and so on. Koei needs to stop being conservative about building a new fanbase, and stop axing exclusives for PS3 ports in Japan - that's not courageous or bold development, that's falling back on a platform that's failing you. The Musou series isn't nearly as popular as it used to be - sales are down dramatically on the PS3 and 360 from the comfortably high sales they enjoyed on the PS2 - and while Koei's made some praiseworthy strides in releasing some serious and profitable Nintendo efforts with Samurai Warriors 3 and Samurai Warriors Chronicles to start building a new base for the series, they need to focus on that even more heavily. The sales numbers don't really back development costs on the PS3 or 360, and those have been anything but rosy - lowering dev costs by focusing on the 3DS and Wii U and working on building on this newer - and platform-switching - base on Nintendo platforms (Now that Nintendo's the market leader, where neither the PS3 nor 360 enjoys the kind of market the PS2 did, when the Musou series thrived most.) that can be profitable, as it's shown it can be, would be the wisest thing they could do. As it stands, Koei and Tecmo together have been growing closer to Nintendo lately. Some non-Musou Omega Force adventures from Koei would be welcome too. Crimson Sea 2 on the PS2 was a lot of fun.

Star Fox game in the vein of Assault - With online co-op campaign battles and competitive battle modes, epic flying/dog fights and ground combat a la EDF and Kid Icarus, which seems a spiritual successor. Assault was a blast, and I'm looking forward to Kid Icarus being in a similar vein. I'd love to see the concept evolved further to reach its true potential. The more battles - and larger scale battles - the better. Something we can't finish in a day or two, with some depth, and a focus on the fun of the arcade-style action.

Onechanbara - The Wii game was some simple, cheesy arcade-style fun. 3DS and Wii U installments would be welcome.

Sengoku Basara - I'd love to see more of this Musou-esque crazy action series with its RPG elements on the 3DS and Wii U, but after the original bombed on the PS2 as "Devil Kings" and Sengoku Basara 3 tanked on both the PS3 and Wii in the west as Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes, I suspect that if more games are made (A revamp of 3 is already in the works for the Wii/PS3 in Japan now), the series will never leave Japan again.

Action/Adventure
Monster Hunter - Doesn't need too much explanation. Monster Hunter Tri was the most successful console release Monster Hunter game in the series' history and the most successful game in the series outside of Japan. Wii U installments just seem like common sense. Likewise, they've wanted to take the series to the DS line for some time - it was only hardware power that held them back. They wanted to tap into the mass market the DS line offered, but since they couldn't make a reasonable one with the DS's hardware power limitations, they went to the PSP instead, the series going on to be one of the few major successes on that platform. There've been numerous hints at 3DS plans for the series, and it's undoubtedly something Nintendo wants too, after they directly backed Monster Hunter Tri in the west. Both Capcom and Nintendo would benefit tremendously from Wii U and 3DS Monster Hunter installments.

One Piece - More Ganbarion action-adventure games in general would be nice. (Hopefully Pandora's Tower will have a shot at hitting in North America too after signs that it may see European release now.) Namco Bandai oddly complained about Unlimited Adventure's sales on the Wii in North America after it completely sold out, and literally could not have sold better than it did. There's no question that they made money on it. Unlimited Cruise Episodes 1 & 2 saw European releases as separate budget titles and even a special 2-disc consolidated release, and now they're getting Unlimited Cruise SP on the 3DS. It would be nice for Namco to not thumb their nose at their North American One Piece fanbase with SP, at least. Operation Rainfall really should take them to task over Tales of Graces, considering that they have no excuse for not bringing that here too, and with F not hitting the PS3 here until next summer, there's plenty of time to hammer them in a campaign. Action adventures with some light RPG elements like this are always welcome.

Castlevania - Konami has severely dropped the ball as of late. After the embarrassing mess of a reboot that Lords of Shadow was, they sorely need to get Koji Igarashi back on this series. Trying to tap the PS3/360 was a poor call, especially after the rather mixed-at-best reception the 3D Castlevania games got on the PS2 and XBox last generation. Just as Mega Man's fanbase these days is largely on Nintendo portables, Castlevania's is as well, and the series is best as 2D platforming action RPGs. It stumbles in every other form. This would be more of a 3DS title, though - I'd welcome a carefully budgeted 3D Igarashi game on the Wii U, though, if it were an evolution on Curse of Darkness. Flawed as that game was, it was still pretty fun.

Jet Grind Radio/Jet Set Radio - This is a series that Sega should absolutely bring back. Samba de Amigo was very profitable for them in its definitive release on the Wii. Sega's games have a very visible track record of selling better on Nintendo platforms than anywhere else - that's where their base of old largely migrated post-Dreamcast. All things considered, the Wii U or 3DS would function as a very natural home for a new Jet Grind/Jet Set game and undoubtedly find a profitable audience.

Suda 51/Grasshopper games - Hopefully more than just No More Heroes 3, with more ambition. Shadows of the Damned was a mess and never should have been on anything but the Wii if made at all - its sales already collapsed on the PS3 and 360, while a Wii version was announced and then never made, the game ultimately suffering a similar fate to Child of Eden (Niche games die painful deaths on the PS3 and 360 consistently.) - wasting time on Kinect won't help them either. It's rather visible that little other than dance games sell on the peripheral as is, and Suda's games are incredibly niche to begin with. He already has an established fanbase on Nintendo platforms and outright admits to preferring to work on those. The sooner he can get cracking on Wii U and 3DS games - and Grasshopper hasn't confirmed or denied 3DS plans just yet, only teased a bit - the better. I'd love to see some new games on the same level of craziness and ambition as Killer7. That game is Suda's masterpiece so far. NMH is fun, but not Suda's best - those are easily among his more shallow games. Flower, Sun, and Rain's DS release years back made XSeed some money when it hit too, though the game's base is as small as it comes since the game actually makes a point of being difficult and painful to get through. I've always thought it'd be interesting to see Suda take on a sandbox game of some kind after driving around Santa Destroy in the first No More Heroes. An RPG from Grasshopper - aside from the brilliant Contact, which Audio Inc. actually made - could be interesting, too. And Suda's said he'd like to make a light, cute mascot game sometime too, just to do something totally unexpected after all of their punk-like ultra-violent games.

Metroid - Katsuya Eguchi has already said that it's likely coming for the Wii U. I'd love to see a true 2D 3DS Metroid happen, but ideally with less Sakamoto input. Gunpei Yokoi was the Metroid creator, and he's long deceased, sadly. Sakamoto was a sprite artist on the original, and often talks as though he has no idea what Metroid is supposed to be about. Other M was a mess and Nintendo knows it - they've openly acknowledged that and that the sales disappointed them greatly. Sakamoto should stick to WarioWare and ambitious Mii games like Tomodachi Collection - he's great at those, and new WarioWare would be welcome, as would be much more ambitious Mii games. (Hence my MiiTropolis thread.)

Deadly Premonition - The original game was a huge XBox 360 flop, and the director - SWERY at Access Games - has mentioned possibly porting it to the 3DS. A Nintendo crowd would likely be more receptive and less graphics obsessed. We don't get nearly as many games in this vein. At heart, it's a sandbox action/adventure game inspired by Twin Peaks. Original games in this vein would be cool too. The Resident Evil crowd would eat it up.

Mega Man Legends 1-2 / Tron Bonne Collection - Now that MML3 is cancelled, I have no hope for this, and my overall expectations of Capcom are very low. They're a mess, and I am worried about their future. Still, if there was any chance, I would love to see Mega Man Legends 3 resurface on the 3DS in the future and to someday have a collection of the first two games and the Misadventures of Tron Bonne, whether ported or completely remake - the latter being more ideal. I only rented the original on my Playstation ages ago and loved it, but missed out on owning these games, so Mega Man Legends 3's cancellation has seriously disappointed me. It's gonna take a lot for Capcom to get any confidence in them back from me.

Okami 3 - This may have a chance on the 3DS, but as much as I'd love to see a Wii U one, I'm not counting on it due to the much higher development costs than the 3DS and cult nature of Okami's popularity. I'd still love it, though.

Something appropriately fresh and fun but not necessarily dark or violent for the Halloween season - Ideally something in the atmospheric vein of Luigi's Mansion, Zombies Ate My Neighbors, Ghoul Patrol, Costume Quest, etc. A new sequel to ZAMN on the 3DS or Wii U - or even download services - with online co-op would be brilliant.

Gargoyle's Quest 4 - Whether they called it Gargoyle's Quest or Demon's Crest or made it more of a platforming action RPG like the first two games or a straight action platformer like Demon's Crest, I'd absolutely buy another of these. The music and creepy backgrounds and atmosphere gave me the chills in an amazing way as a kid. And Muramasa's amazing backgrounds made me think of how incredible a 3DS or Wii U revival for Gargoyle's Quest could be, as much of a long shot as that is.

NiGHTS 3 - This has been hinted at repeatedly, and after thoroughly enjoying NiGHTS 2 on the Wii and having fond memories of the original, I'd love for a third to hit the Wii U or 3DS, ideally smoothing out some of the kinks that 2 had and giving us more of that wonderful, magical atmosphere to immerse ourselves in while collecting and building things in the A-Life mode online. Bringing back more Saturn era franchises would be great too. Clockwork Knight, Bug, Burning Rangers, and more. A Virtua Fighter would be great, too. I'd love to see Saturn games hit the Virtual Console, along with Dreamcast ones.

PROPE games - The more genres and gameplay varieties, the better. Things as slick as Let's Tap - which had one of the slickest interfaces and some of the best music on the Wii - would be wonderful. Rodea the Sky Soldier looks like a blast on the Wii and 3DS and I can't wait to see which it's worth buying on more. Family Fishing is coming in a similar vein to Namco's Go Vacation, We Ski, and We Ski & Snowboard games too. I'd love to see PROPE do some more games with that kind of open environment on the 3DS and Wii U, and for them to make it west. This is the kind of stuff I can absolutely get behind.

Double Fine games - Psychonauts was very cult, Brutal Legend outright bombed on the PS3 and 360, and Costume Quest is the last kind of game the PS3/360 crowd buys. They need to change focus badly if they want to stick around in the long term. I'd love to see Costume Quest hit the Wii U download service, and for them to start giving Nintendo some love - I'm confident Nintendo fans would return that in kind.

Open world Naruto games - Like the Ninja Storm games from CyberConnect. Those would undoubtedly sell hardware and make money. Anime games have a better track record on Nintendo platforms these days. Naruto Wii games have a history of selling better and making more money than PS3/360 ones by quite a bit, yet the system still got the less ambitious and mostly fighting focused games. Time to up the respect. More CyberConnect Nintendo platform games on the Wii U and 3DS would be nice in general - Solatorobo looks like a fantastic first in far too long on the DS. I can't wait to play that.

Adventure/Platforming
Open World Mario - Just as a thought, in contrast to the increasingly linear 3D Mario games, a fully open world Mario adventure could make for something experimental and interesting. Not sure if it would happen, but I'd be down for it.

Sonic Adventure 3 - Open world aspects like the first and Unleashed would be great, with perhaps Sonic Colors style in-level 2D and 3D platforming. A little RPGish depth with sidequests and such like Unleashed had on the HD consoles would be welcome.

Banjo Kazooie/Tooie collection - Rare could at least port these to the 3DS, perhaps give them a little extra graphical shine. I wouldn't trust current Rare to do much more at this point, since all the talent of old that made the games we knew and loved in the past has left over the past five years. Rare today is not Rare of old, sadly.

Virtual Boy Wario Land - Perhaps a colorized 3DS download release or straight VC release on there, just a wish for that.

More N64/PS2/Gamecube style collectathon collection-based platformers - Ideally with big environments to explore and lots to pick up. I'd suggest something like maybe a Ty the Tasmanian Tiger trilogy release, but Krome is dead now too after releasing a PS3/360/PC download game the other day.

WayForward games - The more we get from them, the better. We've gotten some memorable gems from them this past gen as is, between Shantae: Risky's Revenge, A Boy and His Blob, the Mighty games on DSiWare (We've already got a first Mighty 3DS download game in the works.), Batman: The Brave and the Bold and more.

RPGs
Monolith games - More Baten Kaitos would be wonderful, but anything more in the vein of Xenoblade and even more ambitious would be welcome too. We know they're working on a Wii U game now, and they recently got a big new building near Nintendo's HQ in Kyoto. They're obviously being invested in, and Xenoblade was already a financial success that paid off - Nintendo's investing in them to make them an even bigger part of the JRPG picture in the future. We just need to see more of their games come west. I'm also curious to see what the game we've seen teased with art featuring a crashed UFO is - perhaps some kind of modern day set RPG. The more they bring to the Wii U and 3DS and the more of that makes it west, the better, anyway. Disaster was a bit of a mess, I'v heard, but I think it'd at least be interesting to see them take a crack at Zelda/Okami/Rune Factory/Yakuza style open world action RPGs or adventures, or even something in the vein of Shenmue. Baten Kaitos showed how good they are at gorgeous settings, Xenoblade showed how amazing they can make insanely content-heavy open worlds, and all those games showcased how polished their gameplay design is. It's heartening to see Nintendo making them a cornerstone of their JRPG future. As is, for all the complaints about the Operation Rainfall games, Nintendo's starting to acquire a massive portion of today's JRPG releases. One cannot honestly say that Nintendo hates RPGs or JRPGs - they're pretty much the biggest JRPG publisher these days and the only major company spearheading the genre aggressively in a big way these days, as even companies in Japan outside of Enix aren't pushing them too hard anymore.

Level-5 - Their non-Nintendo support and sales have both been shrinking in recent years. They peaked with Sony on the PS2 and have developed a pretty massive fanbase on Nintendo systems quite successfully. Professor Layton and Dragon Quest IX were smash hits, and Dragon Quest X should be too. Then there's the Inazuma Eleven games, not to be forgotten. And now they have Fantasy Life, Time Travelers, Girls RPG: Cinderella Life, and Layton x Gyakuten coming to the 3DS, in an aggressive expansion of their increasingly brilliant Nintendo platform support. While they've released few Wii games, I'd love to see them up their Wii U support and follow Fantasy Life and Time Travelers - which I can't wait for - with more strong 3DS titles in all sorts of adventure and RPG veins. I'd love to see them do an ambitious massive world action RPG like Rogue Galaxy on either platform. The more love Level-5 gives Nintendo platforms and fans, the better for all. They're well at home there.

Mistwalker - After breaking free of Microsoft after their two XBox 360 flops, they've gone on to make a good bit of money on all their Nintendo platform releases between the DS and Wii, though the Blue Dragon DS games and the sorely underrated AWAY: Shuffle Dungeon (Which is very Soul Blazer-esque) are the only ones to make it here so far, though hopefully The Last Story will make it to North America too yet. Sakaguchi was ecstatic to be working with Nintendo again and has been singing the praises of Nintendo's platforms for a while now, having left Microsoft and not looked back. It would make sense for the father of Final Fantasy to continue to up his Nintendo support on the Wii U and 3DS, given that the Wii and DS proved to be a very comfy home for the kinds of games he likes to make. More Blue Dragon would be welcome, but more completely new, fresh properties would be great too. Perhaps a Last Story sequel if he feels like making one.

Intelligent Systems games - More Fire Emblem, Paper Mario, Advance Wars, and the like. I'd be curious to see anything non-franchise new from them too, though I don't expect it.

Irem games - Ideally something in the vein of the PS2's brilliant, lovingly crafted open world RPG Steambot Chronicles. Sadly, as a company, Irem barely exists now thanks to their focus on the PS3 and PSP after last generation. If Irem wants to stick around much longer, it's pretty much Nintendo platform or bust - they're far too small for the dev costs on the PS3, and the PSP didn't provide much of an audience for their games. The 3DS is probably the safest shot they've got at this point.

ArtePiazza originals - Underrated as it is, Opoona is easily one of the very best, most imaginative and lovingly crafted JRPGs of this past generation. I would kill for a sequel on the Wii U or 3DS, or more games with this kind of love and ambition put into them from ArtePiazza. The game was basically the lovechild of Dragon Quest, EarthBound/Mother, and Phantasy Star with an absolutely amazing score by Hitoshi Sakimoto/Basiscape, which also worked on Muramasa. I'd kill for them to score more RPGs on the 3DS and Wii U too. But yes, EVERYBODY should play Opoona, and ArtePiazza should get to make more games like it.

Tri-Crescendo games - I'd love to see Nintendo buy them like they did Monolith. They're the other half of the team behind the brilliant Baten Kaitos games, and they made Fragile. That alone says it. Gaming needs more developers like them, and they're a perfect fit with Nintendo. Having them under Nintendo's wing as another JRPG team alongside Monolith and Camelot just makes sense.

Camelot - Speaking of! I'd love to see them reunite with Sega for some Shining Force/The Holy Ark/In the Darkness games or something similar. I'd really like to see them do more than Golden Sun and Mario Sports RPGs. Those games are great, for sure, but they don't match Camelot's Genesis and Saturn RPGs from back when they were Sonic Software Planning, and I'd love to see them branch out and give us more RPGs in that vein, with or without Sega. It'd make Shining fans of old so, so happy. First person combat like Shining the Holy Ark's would look amazing on the 3DS, too.

Sting RPGs - They've ported every Gameboy Advance and DS RPG they made to the PSP, while giving Nintendo fans no exclusive love in return despite making a ton of money there. I say it's time they ported the PSP's exclusive Hexyz Force - which Atlus could easily rerelease here - to the 3DS with a little new content, and started working on some new 3DS RPGs. They're too small to make Wii U games or anything on current consoles anymore. Their only console release this gen was the Wii port of Baroque, which was made on a low budget on the PS2 to begin with.

3D Mario RPG - Just for the sake of something different, a new take on a Mario RPG, whether a one-shot or new series could be interesting. We've got 2D aesthetics in a 3D world with Paper Mario and fully 2D gameplay and worlds with some minor 3D bits in the animation in the 3rd installment in Mario & Luigi. A fully 3D Mario RPG of some kind could be interesting, as a possibility.

Parasite Eve-esque urban RPG - As of The 3rd Birthday, Parasite Eve is effectively dead and a mess. But I'd still love to see some new urban-set JRPGs hit the Wii U and 3DS, since we don't see those often. The World Ends with You was a hit in an urban setting - the demand's certainly there. And Parasite Eve itself was a fantastic, very fresh game when it hit and is still a ton of fun with its fantastic creepy New York holiday atmosphere and very interesting combat system that mixed action and turn-based elements. Yoko Shimomura's score was amazing, too. It's a shame the sequels were steps backward. I'd love to see a new Parasite Eve or Parasite Eve-esque RPG in the vein of the original, though.

Suikoden - Probably not viable on anything but the 3DS, cost-wise. Rumor has it that one may have been in the works that was cancelled, though that may have been on the Wii - Konami did announce that they cancelled not one, but TWO unannounced Wii RPGs earlier this year. Absolute failure - Konami's a wreck right now, trying to rely entirely on MGS while everything else loses money on the HD consoles.

Rune Factory and Harvest Moon - Of course, but those are already coming to the 3DS, as is a Dragon Quest Rocket Slime game. I'd love to see carefully budgeted Wii U entries too, given that Nintendo's fanbase is pretty much the only one where these franchises sell too, and Marvelous and Natsume know this.

Space*Agency - Audio Inc. games like Contact and Sakura Note would be wonderful on the 3DS. They're too tiny to work on consoles even now, let alone the Wii U. Hopefully Space*Agency goes into full production yet after the concept trailers they put out. More Japanese sci-fi RPGs are always a good thing, and Contact was brilliant.

Breath of Fire - Probably won't have a shot, sadly, with today's Capcom. Still, I'd love to see the franchise finally revive, whether on Wii U or 3DS.

Sepas Channel on DSiWare - An EarthBound/Mother-esque DSiWare RPG that hit DSiWare and mobile phones from G-Mode in Japan late last year. I contacted Gamebridge about it on Twitter and they said that they couldn't get it, unfortunately. I'd love to see someone bring it here. Gamebridge also released another quirky RPG, Picdun, on DSiWare in the west just weeks ago.

PSO/PSU - Or even like Phantasy Star Portable. Some good Phantasy Star RPGs with an online home to build up and things to collect, 4-player online co-op, and tons of quests would be wonderful on either the Wii U or 3DS, or even both. The PSO creator said he thought the Wii was a prefect fit for the series, but never did bring it, in the end. With the Dreamcast-esque Wii U controller and stronger online, it makes even more sense now, and Phantasy Star Portable'd be right at home on the 3DS. I'd ask for old school Phantasy Star to return, having loved all of those games, but I doubt we'll ever see that in Phantasy Star again.

StarTropics - Either as an action RPG or a flat out RPG revival to fill Mother gap. Finally bring the franchise to Japan and fully reviving StarTropics could be perfect for filling the Mother series void. They could easily set it in a modern world with tropical, urban, and a variety of other surreal settings like the NES games and either do an action RPG or full-on more traditional RPG.

More Marvelous support - They're not off to a bad start on 3DS with Animal Resort/Zoo Resort, Harvest Moon, and Rune Factory, though Senran Kaugra's kinda embarrassing. The more they unveil for the 3DS, the better, and any Wii U support will be appreciated. Their games are ultra-niche and rarely sell well, so they have to be carefully budgeted - their PS3/360 ventures have been disastrous for them. But they've gotten by on the Wii, and the DS has been incredible for them. Nintendo portables are crucial for them, and I'm sure they'll make money on the 3DS and at least have a shot on the Wii U. One of my favorite Japanese publihers.

More Vanillaware RPGs/Action RPGs - I hope they survive the games coming after Muramasa. Considering how tiny they are and the deep financial risk, a PS3/Vita cross platform release is ill-advised from every angle given the massive development costs. I'd definitely love to see them survive to find a good home on the 3DS.

Tales Of RPGs - I expect nothing of Namco, they've sunk so low in regard to much of their treatment of Nintendo fans. They're deep in the red these days thanks to their yearly streams of PS3/360 bombs, which they only continue to reward, while punishing their Nintendo successes. If they collapse, they had it coming. I hope Operation Rainfall goes after them for Tales of Graces yet, though. That was our game, and Namco has no reason to keep rewarding the PS3 crowd after how awful they've been for them. Symphonia 2 made good money. I'd definitely support any other Tales releases on Nintendo systems yet - I missed out on Abyss on the PS2, so I'll definitely be grabbing it on the 3DS.

More fresh old school values-heavy RPGs from Imageepoch - The Luminous Arc games and Arc Rise Fantasia were great, so I'd absolutely support anything else from them. They're already working on a strategy RPG for the 3DS.

Overworks RPGs - The Skies of Arcadia/Valkyria team. The Valkyria Chronicles series has been on the wrong platforms. I'd love to see a Skies sequel on the 3DS or Wii U, and otherwise for their development focus to shift away from the PSP again as that's phased out - the Vita will be a completely different beast and just as unprofitable as the PS3 was for them after the big investment they made in pushing Valkyria. Most of its sales didn't come until after a huge price cut.

Square games - They're not off to a bad start with Heroes of Ruin, Chocobo Racing (Which they need to show more of.), Theatrhythm, and Kingdom Hearts for those into that. They could use more classic style RPGs like 4 Heroes of Light. A huge shame we missed out on the SaGa 2 and 3 DS remakes - Square's acknowledged they're currently suffering catastrophic losses. They need to get back to the strategies and game design focuses that made them big on the NES, SNES, and PSX. They've only gone downhill since - they got more conservative on the PS2 and DS, and they've gone fiercely downhill since. They released a few good, profitable Wii games this gen, but instead of rewarding that, they keep pumping out PS3/360 bomb after bomb.

A Harry Potter RPG or adventure of some kind - Following the whole story, with a huge ambitious world to explore, not unlike Order of the Phoenix's huge open world Hogwarts and Lord of the Rings's Aragorn's Quest and The Third Age. More new ambitious Lord of the Rings RPGs and adventures would be nice, too. Some of the early portable Harry Potter games were very fun RPGs, and it'd be nice to see that sort of thing returned to. The franchise has tons of potential, much like Lord of the Rings, and a fanbase that'd make pursuing these games very profitable, especially on Nintendo platforms, as proven repeatedly by sales numbers.

Brave Fencer Musashi - The original Zelda-esque PSX action-RPG was a blast with a fantastic soundtrack and great sense of humor. It had some definite similarities in terms of vibe to Mega Man Legends as well. The game had a lackluster PS2 sequel, but it'd be great to see a revival closer to the original, or for the 3DS and Wii U to see any similar sort of action/adventure/RPG type games. Threads of Fate was in a similar game. Light, cute action RPGs like this would play very well with the Nintendo crowd - much like Rune Factory has repeatedly, and Rocket Slime, both of which have 3DS games coming now. Outside of Nintendo platforms, there's not much of a base for games like these anymore, as much as Sony and Microsoft's audiences have rejected most Japanese style games these days, and most lighter hearted games in general. Square needs to branch out and get back to their roots again, badly. That would entail making more games like these and less western-style bombs like they're currently wrecking themselves with.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles - This series has a flavor sort of like what I'm referring to above. What little Square puts out true to their older ways tends to come with this franchise. I'd love to see both Wii U and 3DS installments in the series - entries in the vein of the Gamecube original and Echoes of Time with a big focus on online that get that right where Echoes of Time was a solid game, but extremely laggy online, and I'd kill for some Crystal Bearers style sandbox action-RPG sequels. That game was one of the most underrated Wii games this generation. I couldn't put it down last fall until I'd sunk an insane number of hours in and scored over 300 medals in my first run through the game alone. I'd love to see more games like that.

Final Fantasy - Excluding IX, as an old school Final Fantasy fan, the main series has largely depressed me from VII onward. I'd love to see more of a return to roots with some turn-based games and writing more inspired by the likes of Crystal Chronicles and Final Fantasy I-VI again, even something like IX again would be very welcome. 4 Heroes of Light on the DS was a step in the right direction, and more like it on the Wii U and 3DS would make me happy to purchase Final Fantasy again. I enjoyed IV: The After Years on WiiWare, and Chocobo's Dungeon was a lot of fun too. I'd be happy to see a mainline game come home to Nintendo and return to the franchise's roots, but I can settle for the mainline staying messy for those who enjoy it - no excuses for lack of Nintendo support given that JRPGs don't sell elsewhere these days, and XIII and XIV were catastrophic for Square - so long as we keep getting quality spinoffs and Dragon Quest games. I wish Square had brought the SaGa 2 and 3 DS remakes west too, but sadly, those were left behind in Japan.

Dragon Quest - Goes without saying. The more, the better.

Adventure
Shenmue - Budget-wise, these platforms are probably Sega's last real chance to make their base happy with these games. Let's hope they don't fudge this like Capcom has with Mega Man Legends 3. The Wii and DS, as innovation go, were basically the successors to the Dreamcast in spirit. In terms of power and VMU-like additional handheld screens, the Wii U and 3DS are as close to the Dreamcast as we've gotten since - it would be a dream come true for fans to see the original two games rereleased on either of these platforms and a final sequel to bring the story to a close. Yu Suzuki, now effectively retired, has said he'd still like to make the game and that he'd come out of retirement to do just that if Sega would greenlight it for him. The Wii would have been a nice place to do that, but the Wii U and 3DS are, in terms of reasonable budgeting to make ports of the original games profitable and a third game viable, Sega and Yu Suzuki's last real chance to bring Shenmue back and bring it to a close. After this generation, even with Nintendo, it's hard to say if we'll see any viable dedicated gaming devices again where smaller developers and more niche games will have any kind of shot at affordable game development and profitability. The ever-rising costs of modern game development are a problem the whole industry has to reckon with, and in Sony and Microsoft's cases, have led to near-insurmountable walls of costs, as multimillion dollar game budgets targeting smaller audiences fail time and time again to find the kind of massive audience they need - at their heightened cost to consumers, no less - to turn any kind of profit and the industry visibly ails for it. Here's hoping Sega will get things right with Shenmue while they still have a chance, where Capcom just wrecked Mega Man Legends fans' hopes and dreams and has seemingly retired their very own mascot in the Blue Bomber, with no planned games involving him anymore.

Spike games - After the Wii and PSP, as the tiny company they are, they really don't have anywhere else they can afford to go now. They're like a lot of companies I've mentioned here. Sony shut the door on them with the Vita's dev costs. That system has shut out the PSP's small name dev support, just as the PS3 shut out pretty much all non-major devs. At this point, Nintendo's the only major hardware producer putting out systems intended to be viable for tiny developers and publishers like Spike, Marvelous, D3, Sting, Paon, G-Mode, Atlus, and so on. I believe Escape from Bug Island was the only Spike game that made it west on the Wii, though they had another I'll mention and link to in a bit that I wish had made it west. They also put out a pretty cool series of PSP brawlers that would be perfect on the 3DS - I'll be talking about those in a bit too.

Shibuya/Urban Japan based adventures - More open world games in the vein of Yakuza, Shenmue, Time Travelers (Assuming some things here - it's going to be a huge, open world game, from what Level-5 has said. They're banking on it being a smash hit and selling over a million copies.), River City Ransom, Kenka Bancho, and so on are always welcome.

Skip games - We haven't seen any more from this Nintendo-owned remnant of Love-de-Lic (Another offshoot of which made Chulip on the PS2) since Snowpack Park, the Art Style series, and Chibi-Robo Park Patrol,. Captain Rainbow was a massive dud in Japan and understandably didn't come west. It'd be nice to see new Chibi-Robo games get made and come west, and Skip otherwise have a shot at getting some more ambitious non-download titles out and released in the west. They're a brilliant lot.

An open-world caveman adventure - Something like Artdink's long-forgotten Tail of the Sun on the PSX, or Spike's Jawa: Mammoth to Himitsu no Ishi (Jawa: The Mammoth and the Secret Rock) on the Wii, which I was referring to earlier. The game looks like a blast in motion, but sadly never had a shot at coming west. Games like this would be great projects for Spike on the 3DS.

More Warren Spector/Junction Point Disney RPGs and adventures - After the smash hit that was Epic Mickey, the more adventures and RPGs Spector can put out on both the 3DS and Wii U, the better. Ideally with a stronger camera system based on the improved one Nintendo made for when they published Epic Mickey in Japan not too long ago. More Mickey games would be fun, or perhaps the Ducktales game Spector has long wanted to make.

Mega Man Legends 3/Zelda/FFCC Crystal Bearers-esque resurgence of open world action/adventure games - Or "free-running RPGs" Capcom calls the Mega Man Legends games. That sort of genre can always use more love. And Solatorobo on the DS seems to be in that vein, fantastically.

Open Rabbids Adventure - Rabbids Go Home took the Rabbids series to a whole new level, and with its amazingly developed, personality-filled human world it took place in, loaded with humor at every turn, I can't help but feel like it would be amazing for Ubisoft and Michel Ancel to build an entire massive sandbox-style open world city for the Rabbids on the Wii U, as well as some more ambitious 3DS games. You could customize a Rabbid again and take on all kinds of unusual tasks to create chaos throughout the human world, and it'd make for an impressive evolution after the brilliance that was Rabbids Go Home. That game was easily one of the funniest of this generation.

Aquatic/undersea gaming from Arika - After the Endless Ocean games and their Everblue games on the PS2 - which were basically deep sea diving RPGs - this kind of explains itself. These games are wonderful, and everyone should play them. Hopefully more on the Wii U, at least, should be a lock, after how successful both Endless Ocean games were. I'd welcome Arika 3DS support too. They recently demoed a fighting game - based on a mobile fighter they've been working on - on the 3DS hardware as is, so they're definitely working with it.

Time Travelers - The more on this we get to see and hear, the better. I'd love to see more like it in urban Japanese settings on the Wii U from Level-5 too.

Acquire games - Tenchu perhaps, and maybe something in the vein of Akiba's Trip but less creepy that might have a shot at leaving Japan. They're a tiny dev with no real dev future on Sony systems anymore with the high costs as well. Some definite talent there, and a history of some Nintendo support too, but at this point, they're running out of options as development costs continue to balloon. The PS3 and 360 are already beyond them and the Wii U will be too, while the PSP's days are running out, much like the DS's. It's pretty much 3DS or bust, like Spike.

More light-hearted open world adventures and sandbox games like Lego City Stories - I'm really looking forward to both the Wii U and 3DS versions of that. The industry has needed this kind of response to the likes of GTA and Saint's Row, and Travelers Tales working with Nintendo like this on first party Lego projects is great to see. They've acknowledged for some time that they've wanted to go Nintendo exclusive - their platforms are the only ones the Lego games sell well on - as that's where their base is, and now they're getting to make their most ambitious Lego universe games yet with Nintendo themselves as flagship 3DS and Wii U titles. Fantastic. I can't wait to see how these games turn out and what lies ahead for the Nintendo-Travelers Tales partnership over these games as the Lego series gets much more ambitious.

Beat 'Em Up/Brawler (Sort of a sub-genre to action/arcade above)
Streets of Rage revival - We haven't seen a new Streets of Rage from Sega since the Genesis. The closest we got was Die Hard arcade/Dynamite Cop, which started as a new 3D sequel. Yakuza's sort of a partial spiritual successor, though also action RPG in many ways. The fanbase for that is pretty restricted too. I'd love to see Streets of Rage return as an open world 3D brawler or a Genesis-style download sequel with online modes, with a new Yuzo Koshiro soundtrack.

Urban Champion revival - Seeing groaning everywhere over Urban Champion's slightly enhanced (Newer touched up graphics, new grades/titles like achievements to earn) 3D Classics rendition coming for the 3DS has made me think it would be neat to see Nintendo turn that into a positive by making this a prelude to a new, fully reconceptualized sequel. An open world brawler in the vein of Yakuza or Kenka Bancho or even River City Ransom where you get to lay down some street justice, perhaps with some light RPG elements. That could bring a whole new meaning to Urban Champion and make for a great revival of a generally reviled classic IP. I doubt this would happen, but I'd love if it did.

Yakuza - Sega keeps bleeding money on it in the name of a Playstation fanbase they haven't made money on since the PS2. Toshiro Nagoshi has talked about a variety of plans for the 3DS in particular (But hasn't commented on the Wii U yet), but hasn't shown anything beyond Super Monkey Ball, which he's more or less run into the ground with release after release on Nintendo platforms. Sega needs to diversify, and Yazuka sorely needs to expand its fanbase. Porting the first two to the 3DS and bringing 3, 4, and Of The End to Wii U could certainly build a new audience. Or perhaps a new story with a new cast in Kamuro-cho, their Shibuya-inspired setting in Tokyo. Either way, Nagoshi needs to get away from his Sony fixation, as it's done him and Sega no good. It's all well and good to talk about a 'fanbase,' but not so much when you haven't made money on them in years. It's been extremely established by now that Sega's games tend to only sell well on Nintendo systems these days, much of the Sega base of old having moved to Nintendo platforms. And it was weird that Sega complained about their M-rated games' Wii sales this past gen, when they all actually sold well and made money, while their PS3/360 M-rated releases have rather consistently failed to turn a profit. Sega has a lot of fantastic properties, both past and present - they could stand to take their actual main fanbase more seriously. Getting closer with Nintendo and bringing a franchise like Yakuza on board could do them wonders. As the spiritual successor of sorts to both Streets of Rage and Shenmue, Yakuza deserves better than to keep bleeding lots of money for Sega on the PS3. Games like this are underrepresented on Nintendo platforms these days, and there's a lot to be gained from this excellent franchise - like actual enthusiasm, for one.

Kenka Bancho - More of a 3DS suggestion than Wii U. The other Spike franchise I've alluded to a few times. Spike can't really afford to go anywhere else but the 3DS now, and the 3DS can use more good beat 'em ups/brawlers, considering how few the DS got. So far, the 3DS just has Dynasty Warriors, a future Ninja Gaiden (Both of these games are more hack and slash anyway), and an announced Dynasty Warriors game. Only the third game made it west on the PSP, and there's been five of them altogether, along with similar titles like Gachitora and Shinjuku no Ookami. Where the Vita's high dev costs are pushing the smaller devs who mostly focused on the PSP this past gen away entirely, Spike could definitely thrive on the 3DS if they made an effort. A series like Kenka Bancho would be welcome, and would be wonderful to see more of come west, in its sort of action-RPG cross between Yakuza and River City Ransom spirit that it embodies, with lots of humor.

River City/Downtown Nekketsu/Kunio Series - Probably more viable on the 3DS and WiiWare. The series went 3D with a couple of River City games on the DS got barely got any attention when they were released in the west, and I've never even seen them on shelves here, personally. I'd be curious to see a 3D take on the series with perhaps PS2 level visuals on the 3DS. That might have a shot at reinvigorating interest, and could make for an interesting alternative to the similar Kenka Bancho as well, which took a lot of inspiration from the Kunio series.

Guardian Heroes style brawler/Treasure game - Pretty much speaks for itself. As Treasure reminded with Wario World on the Gamecube and Advance Guardian Heroes on the Gameboy Advance, they're brilliant at brawlers, just as we've seen with their arcade shooters like Sin & Punishment and Ikaruga. I'd love to see the upcoming PS3/360 download Guardian Heroes also make its way to Wii U download next year. Like Capcom's Dungeons & Dragons games - which I'd love to see hit the Virtual Console Arcade - Magic Sword, King of Dragons, and Knights of the Round (All of which should hit the VC at some point), Guardian Heroes is another reminder that old school arcade brawler plus RPG elements equals fantastic.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game - There's no reason for this to have not hit the Wii in the first place. They just had to compress the audio a bit - the game was even smaller on the HD consoles than Mega Man 10, which easily fit on WiiWare. Retro style sprite-based games have always done well on WiiWare. One has to hope that there's someone at Ubisoft with the wisdom to get this onto either the 3DS eShop or prepare a Wii U download port for launch next year, when it'd have the best shot at getting attention.

Sports
We Ski / Go Vacation open world fun - This 'casual' sleeper hit producing team is one of Namco's very best and most underrated. I played through We Ski just recently after picking it up on the cheap, and it made for a good eight days of incredibly addictive, immersive, relaxing virtual ski vacation that I really couldn't put down. The sequel and Go Vacation look to be just as brilliant. I would love to see this team tackle an adventure game with similar aesthetics and a big, warm, friendly open world where you could enter the buildings and explore inside. Or even something in the RPG vein from them in this style could be great. Like a modern EarthBound successor. The games are atmospheric mood pieces, beautiful to immerse yourself in and relax. Highly recommended. I really hope this team keeps this up on the 3DS and Wii U, and ideally gives us some online modes too - to meet up in a ski lodge with friends and then grab your gear and go skiing and snowboarding, or run around exploring a huge environment like in Go Vacation with all the activities to do together in the open world.

SSX3 style open world snowboarding - Also very addictive when I played SSX3 on the Gamecube. I'd be all for more SSX on the Wii U and 3DS with big open mountains to snowboard down with plenty of collectibles and online modes to snowboard freely with friends.

Simulation
MetropolisMania - This series is pure relaxation and addiction. There was a DS sequel that Natsume sadly never brought west. The series would undoubtedly find more of an audience on Nintendo platforms than any other, especially in the west, where sim type and city building games have a track record of selling. The aesthetics and easy to get into gameplay could make MetropolisMania into a sleeper hit for reasons not unlike We Ski and Go Vacation.

Seaman 3DS - A sequel to the Dreamcast classic has indeed been hinted at by Yoot Saito.

More Animal Crossing and such games go without saying. Again, the MiiTropolis channel idea from my other thread.

Fantasy Life - I can't wait to hear more on this 3DS game, period.

Magician's Quest - The original DS Animal Crossing-meets-Harry Potter title was incredibly addictive. The DS sequel doesn't seem to be western-bound, though I'm not sure if the original sold well enough for Konami to bring it. Still, I'd love to see a massively evolved 3DS entry in the series, and to see that make it west, considering how impressive Animal Crossing 3DS looks.

Party/Board Games
Dokapon series / Culdcept / Wii Party / Mario Party series - It'd be great to see these brought to the Wii U/3DS with online play in Nintendo's forthcoming new online system. They seem like they could make some great online multiplayer party and board games with the new online system, with some unlockables and rewards to collect and so on to link to your save file / Mii profile as encouragement to keep playing game after game like an RPG or anything else. That sort of thing could make it easy for families and friends to play digital board games across all distances and collect lots of little things in the process to keep players addicted and playing online together regularly. It seems like that's the kind of social experience Nintendo would want to promote.

Likewise, anything like Wii Sports and that series - packed in or otherwise - should also have online as so to give everyone an online game right out the door, and give the mass market some incentive to finally start getting online early on.

Hard to Categorize
Katamari Damacy - Nintendo fans have been asking for this insane, wonderful series since its inception. Namco actually announced a DS game at one point this generation and cancelled it, then promised a Wii release after Beautiful Katamari went 360 exclusive. Then the PS3 saw Katamari Forever, and the PSP saw Me & My Katamari, and the games went largely ignored and flopped. What did we get? Katamari music in We Ski, and a Japan only DSiWare Katamari puzzle game. And the Nintendo crowd was the only one vocally calling for Katamari this gen. Namco owes us big time on many fronts, and this is one of them. I'd love to see them finally get that right and bring us separate Katamari games for the 3DS and Wii U, perhaps with the ability to connect and unlock an extra level in each as an incentive to own both. Katamari's a fantastic, ridiculously fun series that would fit perfectly on any Nintendo platform. I'm hoping that for once, Namco might not let us down on this.

Elebits/Shingo Mukaitoge games - Elebits/Dewy's Adventure director Shingo Mukaitoge's apparently working on Beyond the Labyrinth on the 3DS with Tri-Ace for Konami now. Mukaitoge had some of the highest ambitions at Konami this generation, being their designated "Wii guy," when the company otherwise made every effort to shrug at the system and lost a lot of money on most of their PS3/360 releases. Mukaitoge delivered, Elebits being one of the freshest and best early Wii games, with a very similar vibe and addictiveness to Katamari, complete with the same kinds of nerdy fanservice references to other games and a massive collection of 1,000+ items to unlock as you played through the game. Then we got an awkward DS Zelda clone for the sequel, and Mukaitoge disappeared for years. I'd like to see him have a shot at returning to the spotlight on the Wii U or 3DS, and for Elebits to have a shot at a stronger sequel in the vein of the original, or at least something in a similar vein to Elebits from Mukaitoge. He was quoted on that he wanted to make a more ambitious RPG than Zelda in the past, too - I'd love to see him get that opportunity, whether or not Beyond the Labyrinth ends up being it. The industry is presently in desperate need of this kind of creativity as we continue to sink into a mire of shooters and game design lacking imagination and heart.

Given that Nintendo platforms have been the places for strange niche Japanese games as of late, I'd love to see that continue on the Wii U and 3DS too, with more obscure, quirky, unusual games being made and crossing the pond. The more that can keep Ignition, Atlus (Which hasn't focused on Nintendo platforms nearly enough in recent years, when they don't have a viable market anywhere else, sales numbers have shown time and time again.), XSeed, Aksys, Rising Star, Natsume, Gamebridge, and so on in business and thriving, the better. XSeed has already made their interest in the Wii U and 3DS clear, and Ignition has shown some interest in the 3DS so far too, while Aksys has already released their first 3DS game in BlazBlue Continuum Shift II, and Natsume has multiple titles on the way. I suspect they'll be bringing us Rune Factory 4 too, which looks great.

I also like the idea of what I call 'organic single player' games. Dragon Quest IX and Animal Crossing are examples of this: games you mostly play in single player, with a lot of focus on atmosphere, weather, day/night cycles, and so on, but in particular, the ability for players to influence one another's game experiences passively, like through canvassing in Dragon Quest IX and Bark Mode in Nintendogs - StreetPass on the 3DS as a whole. The idea of games where you get tons of quests to do and more to download, and special seasonal content based on the internal clock and online. But at heart, 'organic single player' is all about passive social interaction. You're playing Animal Crossing and an animal from a friend's town moves to your town and talks about their town and your friend all the time - passive contributions to game content from one friend to another. Organic growth and development of your gameplay experience in single-player in a passive, social manner. Imagine playing Yakuza and Kenka Bancho and running into your friend's character and fighting them and their gang, or playing Jet Grind Radio and seeing a friend's graffiti design turn up in your game world, exchanging things passively over StreetPass and SpotPass with people you pass on the street and friends on your friend list. 'Organic single player.' This kind of concept deserves to be explored more and get more focus in more games, I feel. It could do wonders for extending their life - kind of like the likes of the Farmville phenomenon, where people play a largely single player game, but can impact friends' farms and have friends impact their own. They passively, indirectly interact with each other to exchange and grow their content, adding to the depth of their experience. Something I can see Nintendo spearheading more.

And finally, FRESH NEW UNEXPECTED GAMES. We NEED these, both from Nintendo and the rest of the industry. The Rolling Western and Picture Lives on the 3DS look fun, at least. Both the Wii U and 3DS need lots of new, fresh, exclusive releases and franchises to set themselves apart from their predecessors. And obviously, while my own tastes are pretty well outlined above, the systems need plenty of mass appeal titles - more New Super Mario Bros. (Which I'm expecting for Wii U launch.), ideally a revival of old school 2D Zelda (New Legend of Zelda?) as that would undoubtedly be a huge hit with larger appeal than the current 3D Zelda focus, mass appeal Mii titles like Wii Sports that draw in a huge market, Mario Party, Mario Kart, and more. Both platforms need the broadest software libraries imaginable to truly succeed the Wii and DS, with something for everybody. With the Wii U concept video, seeming strong focus on mass appeal social online features for normal people to integrate into their lives - like video calling - and game demos shown like Chase Mii, they seem to be on the right track. The 3DS, unfortunately, has lacked software and a software focus like that so far - a 2D Mario game has been announced in the works, and really should be coming sooner than it is, Nintendogs should be getting much more promotion than it is, Professor Layton 5 won't be out in the west for a while, and Pilotwings still ended up being niche as ever.

Likewise, as third party games go, the likes of Marvelous's Zoo Resort 3D probably won't move too much hardware at this point either. As key as games like New Super Mario Bros., Mario Kart DS, and Brain Age were in making the DS explode, the 3DS needs more software in that vein for the wider audience too. All the talk of winning back the 'core' has led to some serious mass market neglect right out the door on the 3DS - I expect that to change significantly in the coming year for more of an appropriate balance, and for Nintendo to have more of a software balance for the Wii U right out the door. They need to get people excited again, like they did with the Wii. The 3DS has, as of far, been a repeat of the DS's early months, with very little focus on the mass market, and not enough to energize the 'core' after third parties opted not to deliver big titles when Nintendo made a point of giving them the focus at the 3DS's launch. Gotta be lots of games for all kinds of audiences, and a lot of effective marketing to reach every audience you can imagine. Nintendo's proven this past generation just how amazing they are at that, but their latest steps forward have flubbed that a bit in their efforts to win over the whole 'core' audience. They can pull off this strategy in time, but their mass market focus definitely shouldn't diminish - they should always be searching for the 'next Wii Sports/Brain Age/etc.' Still, Iwata and Nintendo as a whole have acknowledged mistakes repeatedly even just in recent weeks and are continuing to course correct. I suspect they'll bring the 3DS to better places sooner than later - the holiday lineup including the next big Mario Kart should certainly help - and handle the Wii U very carefully to balance the system's focus and turn the hype up to overdrive again. I'm fairly confident we'll see at least two of the three games that Operation Rainfall's campaigning for by sometime next year too, before Dragon Quest X brings the Wii to a close. It's a very different situation from the competition, where they tend to go back and forth between not seeming like they have any grasp of what they're really doing in video gaming and open arrogance in the face of incredible losses, acknowledging no mistakes and continually failing to course respect, often displaying contempt toward the same mass market they're cynically trying to woo with things like Move and Kinect.

Sadly, writing about this - as wishful thinking it all is - has really only made me reflect further on how bad of shape most of the video game industry really is right now. And that all comes down to increasingly conservative game design practices at a time when the industry needs to be BOLD, and an incredibly unwise tendency by many third parties to cling to Sony and Microsoft, even as their platforms are impossible for them to make money on, providing nearly no Japanese game audience to speak of, and otherwise having driven development costs too high for most companies and games to stand a fair shot at making a profit at all after they divided their audience too much over too many platforms this generation. The industry needs very much to get back to Nintendo platforms, which Nintendo has been consciously designing to keep development costs lower on than the competition as so to remain viable for Japanese and otherwise small development houses these days. Unfortunately, I have a feeling that most developers will continue on their current self destructive paths, and most of the industry - along with Sony and Microsoft's gaming presences - will collapse sooner than later. The Playstation brand has turned into a net loss in billions for Sony post-PS2, their PSX and PS2 profits having been eaten by the PS3, and the Vita looking to take them even lower with the massive loss they're selling every unit at. Microsoft has never made a net profit in gaming - the entire XBox line has been a financial disaster for the company, and considering that they axed the Zune not too long ago, I could see the XBox line going eventually too, and the company instead going third party and focusing on PC gaming too.

As it stands right now - and as this year's E3 lineups and shows outside of Nintendo's largely reflected - the video game industry isn't a healthy one. We're going to see a second crash sooner than we realize unless we see some significant changes in focus and management style for much of the industry, and third parties end their self-destructive love affair with the Playstation and XBox brands, now that it's eating them. Unfortunately, I can't say that I'm optimistic. Only that whatever happens, Nintendo's going to pull through and keep moving forward - they're in a tough spot right now, though, with the need to push the 3DS much harder and get major hardware-moving games out for both the 'core' and mass market audiences since they left the launch to third parties, and those third parties dropped the ball. All the while, we're only just finally starting to see third parties change their tune on Nintendo with the Wii U and 3DS after years of Nintendo bending over backward to appease them while Sony and MS platforms' poor sales for their games should have been significant encouragement to go back to Nintendo platforms and market games on them. Monster Hunter Tri's huge sales were a wake-up call to Japan on the Wii, as were Epic Mickey and GoldenEye's western release sales last year. A second crash may be necessary for the industry to be reborn from its ashes and forge a new path forward with Nintendo, but I'd like to think it could be avoided. In the end, one can only hope for the best, and if we see even a few of the above games, I'll be happy. That said, things like Ubisoft bailing on Assassin's Creed 3DS and Capcom dropping Mega Man Legends 3 after a good year-plus of rabid fan hype are the sorts of things that should not be happening.

While many are crediting Inafune's departure for MML3's cancellation - and that may very possibly be the case - I have to wonder about Inafune's future in the industry, too. He's done nothing in recent years but push the notion that Japanese developers should emulate western developers and publishers - something Mega Man Legends 3 thankfully ran counter to by design - when we've seen a very distinct trend this generation of Japanese developers struggling and failing with games designed to basically ignore the Japanese market and game design identity and focus on emulating major western titles, which these days are mostly extremely high budget shooters. The Japanese industry cannot and should not worry about competing with that, but continuing to set themselves apart. Japanese games have sold poorly on the whole on the PS3 and 360 this generation - this has signaled clearly where the Japanese market in the west isn't, where Japanese games released on the Wii have made money on average, and the same has been reliable on Nintendo's portables. The Japanese industry really doesn't have any reason to cling to Sony or Microsoft now, with the PS3 and 360 having been disastrous for them and the PSP on its way out now, after most releases on that didn't do well as well. Nintendo retook the market in a huge way this past generation, and the industry joined with Sony and Microsoft to fight back against this market shift. That backfired on them horribly. If they keep fighting this fight against Nintendo, we will see another crash, no question.

The times have changed significantly in the past five years and the industry has consciously resisted adaptation to the new state of the industry - arguments over 'casual' and 'hardcore' gaming have arisen as a ridiculous symptom of this - and all that one can really do is hope that the industry does stop resisting and adapt, just as they did when Sony took the mass market position from Nintendo back in the latter half of the '90s. A healthy industry with a future does not run itself conservatively or defensively - it needs to identify where the mass market audience is, respect that audience, bring bold, fresh, and well-designed games to them, and to market to them. The industry hasn't been doing that for quite a few years now. They can do better, and as gaming consumers, we all deserve better from them. They need to be smarter about the Nintendo audience instead of making excuses to sneer at them, to work with Nintendo to give us the best online experiences possible and create compelling reasons to get the mass market on board with online and more like never before, and they need to make strong gameplay fundamentals the core of their development focus, over the graphics that have rather unquestionably damaged gameplay design in recent years.

A troubled industry does not recover by contracting and turning as conservative in its practices as possible - particularly when that means clustering around the platforms on which most games cannot and do not turn a profit. Desperate, dark times call for bold leadership, as Nintendo is at least attempting to provide, and a real vision forward - which at this point, Nintendo only has out of the three major hardware players. The correct response to suffering sales is not to ignore where the mass market is and focus on flooding the market with extremely expensive realistic shooters and trying to appease a crowd that buys little else - especially in Japan's case, where they shouldn't be sprinting to discard their cultural identity in game development - nor to cluster around the non-mass-market platforms driving development costs through the roof and sneering at the mass market as 'inferior' like we saw over the course of this last gen. The industry needs to grow up and pay attention to both where the customers and actual industry leadership are, rather than focusing on the platforms that have actually shrunk the market, and even the Vita looks very poised to follow that exact same market-shrinking minimal-appeal model that turned the PS3 into the outright disaster it's ended up being for gaming. We do NOT need more E3s where barely any games are shown and those that are are mostly tired and derivative, like this year's.

Just as Operation Rainfall seeks to water Nintendo and encourage Nintendo to water their customers, it's up to the industry to water itself on fertile soil - they haven't been doing that, and that practice needs to stop. No question.

At any rate, that's my latest epic gaming ramble.

Charging for online would easily be one of the most effective methods of making sure the mass market doesn't get into online play or internet features on the system. Nintendo's stated in the past that their goal is to get as close to the entirety of their userbase as possible online. Obviously, their lacking internet features and clumsily designed friend code systems as of far have been very effective in preventing their mass market base from getting online. I suspect we'll never see Nintendo charging fees for online as they continue to improve it, but due to the open nature of the new service they're working on for the Wii U with third parties, I'm sure we'll see paid subscription services for specific games and series from the likes of Activision, Ubisoft, and EA. Activision already has plans in that vein for Call of Duty and EA has already talked about basically focusing on making their sports games - Madden especially - all about online subscription services. Whether they'll succeed or these franchises will be hindered by these subscription services remains to be seen. But I'd definitely count on Nintendo to keep the core of online play and features focused on being free. It'd just be sort of an inconvenient XBox Live type paid situation with subscription games, all that entirely up to third parties' discretion - this part of the freedom of the Wii U's online service is part of why they're so excited for Wii U online, I suspect - while otherwise services like Netflix still require that you already be a paying subscriber to get any actual use out of the Netflix Channel for video streaming.

Nintendo's online itself should only get better while remaining free and keeping their first party games' DLC and so forth free, everything else being up to third parties. Larger companies like Activision, Ubisoft, EA, and so on will probably use their own services, just as Valve would have the Wii U connect to Steam. Then Nintendo, smaller third parties, and those that elect not to use their own servers or separate service connected to your new Nintendo online account would use Nintendo's standard free service that they're currently working on crafting with third parties. And things like DLC would probably be left up to third parties' discretion on whether or not to charge for it. There'll be significantly more internal space on the Wii U, plus the option of using big SD cards (like with the Wii and 3DS), as well as external hard drives, but Nintendo seems to thankfully be avoiding the pitfalls of gigantic forced installed and things like that, after what a mess of things those were on the PS3 and 360. A major reason console gaming effectively beat out PC gaming was convenience - you just pop in a game and go. The storage issue having been largely resolved on the 3DS and Wii U - and Nintendo has invested in holographic storage as well, so we'll likely see that for an insane amount of internal space in future platforms once the medium is both viable and affordable to integrate - we shouldn't have to worry about not having enough space for save files and most downloadable games. As such, I expect we'll be seeing a lot more DLC on the Wii U than on the Wii, like we've already begun to with the 3DS, but hopefully nothing along the lines of installing huge multi-gig chunks of games onto internal space or an external hard drive or SD card. Console and portable gaming should always be more convenient than PC gaming.

Warning! Massive post incoming!

Been reading the boards here and there for a few weeks now, saw a sprinkling of interest - and not just here, but on other Nintendo forums too - in some kind of online virtual Mii world community for an interesting change in interface, and sometimes for Animal Crossing to be turned into the kind of new social platform I'm going to be discussing here instead. I've been gradually formulating some ideas on that sort of thing over the past several years, but haven't really posted them online in too much detail before, let alone where people would read them. So here I am, about to dump lots of text and example links on you - you've been warned. Read on if you're interested in this sort of thing, at any rate.

My goal here is to avoid slamming you with unreadable walls of texts, so I've done my best to break down my thoughts - as numerous and layered as these ideas have become as a result of years of overthinking - into categories and smaller paragraphs here for handy dandy easy reading and digestion.

Let's start with something, and talk about-

Standard Online Features
It's no secret that Nintendo's approach to online has needed a lot of work. As of E3 and beyond, it's been established that they're working with third parties to get together something that can rival their competitors for a while now and will be continuing to work on providing an optimal online experience on the Wii U, after a slower start on the 3DS. (Though granted, the 3DS is Nintendo's first system to have a game with online play at launch.) After the 3DS simplified the friend code system, friend codes are out entirely, and we saw them going as far as to include Skype-like video chat in the Wii U concept trailer at E3. For the first time, really, we're starting to see real third party excitement for Nintendo's online system, between the improved 3DS system (Which can obviously still use a lot more features and fleshing out, and with any luck, we'll see that in the future too.) and still-developing Wii U system. Let's take a moment to look at a few features that should be comfortable locks, given Nintendo's emboldened online ambitions, which third parties should help them achieve.

- Friend Lists/Communication: We've had friend lists since the DS and Wii, and a unified one for an entire platform for the first time since the 3DS. On the former platforms, we just had in-game communication in some cases, and otherwise Wiimail. So far on the 3DS, all we have are status messages: a welcome addition, but it shouldn't be any big deal to add at least text chat to the features - accessible while gaming, like the browser, game notes, and friend list - on there, and voice chat on at least a game-by-game basis, with perhaps a Wii Speak Channel-esque channel dedicated to voice chat calling. Pulling both text and audio chat off universally should be a piece of cake on the Wii U between the controller touchscreen and built-in microphone - along with any inevitable headset releases - and then there's the aforementioned Skype-style video calls in the Wii U concept video. Some notable strides, to be sure, though work still needs to be done on the 3DS.

- Profiles: The ideal is for a new centralized profile system on the Wii U to be something that could be extended to the 3DS through a firmware update and all future Nintendo platforms, ensuring ease of ability to transfer friend lists from platform to platform without having to deal with the hassle of rebuilding friend lists each time a new platform launches. Likewise, it should be easy to view friends' profiles along with your own, the profiles including - going on things spoken of so far - stat tracking, achievements, leaderboard positions, game progress, and so on. Pretty much anything and everything the profiles would track and allow you to display on the internet, Mario Kart trophies and license completion progress, Smash Bros. challenge/trophy collection progress, and so on, for example.

The importance of having a very simple, accessible image and text oriented alternative to the virtual world for those not interested in this sort of content at all, making it a big feature, but still optional for those not interested, like the ability to turn off achievement alerts and so forth. When the new Wii U online system gets going next year, the next for a big 3DS firmware update to let the 3DS connect with your profile for the new features and contribute too, perhaps patches for older games to add achievements and profile connectivity on an optional basis, expansion of the Activity Log to accommodate the new achievements and stats and directly connect with your online profile to upload stats, while giving you an in-system place to send these things so you don't have to be connected to the internet at all times for these things. Viewing friends' profiles with their game collections and, as Ubisoft has touched on with Wii U online talk already, achievements, game progress, and more. Already seeing achievement systems in-game in numerous Wii and DS games and now in 3DS games too, a unified profile to connect them to is pretty much inevitable.

- Accessibility: To get the mass market online where no other major platform in gaming has succeeded before, ease of accessibility cannot be emphasized enough. Online features and functionality have to be easy to get into, comfortable to use, and ideally possess some sort of addictive community quality to explore. This is a big part of the virtual social Mii world I'm going to be explaining here.

The idea here is to make one's username and Mii into Nintendo gamers' singular major online identity, ideally allowing for multiple user identities per platform, and a shared interconnected virtual social Mii world driven by the users on each console, further grown and developed by SpotPass/WiiConnect24-style received data and content over the internet.

Nintendo Gets Social / The Virtual Lives of Miis
To step back for just a moment again - a relevant detour, I promise - we should look at Nintendo's history of social development. Where the DS and Wii were largely underdeveloped on that front, with minimal real social content, online channels oddly free of any kind of friend list connection or much real use of the central Wii system address book, we still saw a few games - like Animal Crossing and Magician's Quest - with at least some meaningful social elements. Likewise, we saw the seeds that led to major 3DS innovation in the likes of Nintendogs' Bark Mode and Dragon Quest IX's canvassing, connecting with other players directly to share and exchange data. And now we have one of Nintendo's most oddly social elements yet as a cornerstone of the 3DS in StreetPass, with the StreetPass Mii Plaza that can hold hundreds of Miis and serves as a hub for some small social games and Mii customization item collection. This looks likely to expand in time as even Iwata has recently mentioned the likelihood of there being more StreetPass games due in part to calls for them directly within the Nintendo offices. As has been discussed on this forum too, it would make sense to have StreetPass connect to a larger Nintendo profile so that the Wii U and future Nintendo consoles could take advantage of StreetPass features through the latest portables, too. SpotPass has potential to serve as a great delivery system for the passive downloading of social online content as well, to passively upload updates to your own Nintendo profile and download friends' latest information as well, keeping a regular exchange of information going between friends' usernames and hardware in their networks of friend lists. This was something WiiConnect24 could have done, but its potential largely went untapped - something that will hopefully be resolved with the Wii U.

But as it stands, Nintendo has us building online friend lists with simplistic profile cards and collecting tags with shared basic information and game content with people on the street now. While not a whole lot can be done with either yet, it's a notable foray by Nintendo into the social realm. Iwata himself recently commented on the importance of social networking for their forthcoming new online system on the Wii U. Miis are at the center of all their social advances with the 3DS, and it seems obvious that they would be with the Wii U's leaps forward in online as well. Even Miyamoto has stated an interest in the possibility of an online virtual world of sorts for Miis in the past. It only seems like a natural evolution.

I can't be the only one who's enjoyed watching Miis wander around their plaza since the Wii launched, watching their varied behavior, minor interactions, and feeling like there was the potential for something amazing in that. Nintendo probably wouldn't have made the Mii Plaza such a lively little place - despite how disappointingly barren it was beyond the Miis themselves - if they didn't have ambitions to bring the Mii world fully to life, and we've seen plenty of evidence of that since. There's Wuhu Island, populated by Miis from our Mii Channels and the Check Mii Out Channel online in Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit Plus, with huge numbers of Miis simply wandering around and living their lives, adding tremendously to the atmosphere and overall aesthetic feel of the world in these games. Nintendo made a big deal out of Wuhu Island's debut, though we've never gotten to really freely fully explore it of our own volition. Then Personal Trainer: Walking took place in another part of the Mii world - a warm, friendly place to be - and as you used the application/game throughout the year, you'd watch your Mii go through the seasons as backgrounds and environments changed, as well as a little 3D city setting that you would gradually light up at night in the treadmill mode, converting your pedometer steps into watts. PT:W undoubtedly contributed significantly to the decision to include a pedometer in the 3DS - along with the success of the PokeWalkers, of course - and the system could certainly benefit from the introduction of more of its little health-promoting step-based metagames and features. And even Nintendogs + Cats has significantly stepped up its social and virtual Mii world elements by actually turning the game's setting into a pleasant little town populated by Miis and allowing you to exchange Miis and dog data with other players you StreetPass with, encountering them on the street walking their dog. And otherwise, as you go on walks, you'll see other Miis taking walks, socializing, and so forth as a little bit of background detail making the world feel more alive. And then there's the big ones that never left Japan.

The Wii no Ma channel was all about streaming videos for the Japanese audience, but on top of that, it was a bit of a relaxing, cozy, chilled out virtual home like we hadn't seen for the Miis before. You threw a group of Miis - family, friends, etc. - together into a virtual Japanese apartment living room, with real time day/night cycles and lots of relaxing music, which was especially nice and moody at night. When not interacting with any of the channel's features - video streaming, celebrity concierge Miis, coupons to send to your DS, sponsor interaction/marketing/surveys, and more - you could sit around and relax listening to the music and watching your Miis come in and out of the room, sitting around the table and leading their daily lives in this little virtual home. There was minimal customization at most, with a few things changing here and there like the advertisement poster on the wall by the door. You could completely pan around the living room and enjoy subtle atmospheric and visual elements like: changing weather when it rained and snowed outside, occasional holiday elements like visible koi no bori carp streamers appearing outside the windows, a seeming very subtle changing of the seasons outside the windows in the Mii city, and the lighting up of said far off cityscape outside the window as night fell.

You couldn't leave the living room to see the bedrooms your Miis went back and forth between, and only the celebrity concierge Miis came through the front door to visit. Still, you could watch throughout the day as Miis went about various little activities, from eating meals around the table to channel surfing to playing a little golf in the room with a cup and ball and even celebrating each others' birthdays with cake - all based on input birthday, personality, interests, and such information to define each Mii as more of an individual. This in itself stepped up the Miis' virtual life/world elements in ways they hadn't been before and added a whole new relaxing aquarium-like element to the channel as you watched your Miis live their cozy little lives in that room when you weren't interacting with any of the channel's content. Notably since its inception, the only Japanese video streaming channel on the Wii - the Minna no Theater Channel - has shut down, and Wii no Ma received updates to add a theater room you could visit to stream inexpensive paid on demand content while gathered around in there, as well as a little virtual shopping mall of sorts selling, among other things, personalized Mii stamps. There were some brief hints of plans to bring the channel west, followed by silence, and obviously the channel never leaving Japan. While it's hard to say how the video streaming service would have done all that well outside of Japan, particularly up against services like Netflix, I suspect that the channel would have caught on for its very warm, pleasant, appealing virtual life elements with the Miis, and can't help but feel that those elements would be best applied elsewhere - hence again, the point of this whole ridiculously large post -  more dedicated to an online social life with friends and family. Interestingly, Nintendo's first 3DS video streaming service launched last month in Japan as the Itsu no Ma ni Terebi application, which lacks any Mii virtual life element. This makes me think that as much as they've been exploring it lately as a concept, they have plans for that sort of thing elsewhere, out of place as it probably was in a video streaming channel. Of course, Nintendo Video is about to launch in both Japan and Europe and will undoubtedly arrive in North America soon too, and no one's seen the interface in that yet. Somehow, I suspect that won't have any Mii virtual life elements either, simply going on the name - 'Anytime Television' and 'Nintendo Video' don't quite evoke what 'Wii Room' did.

Finally, there's the most concentrated Mii virtual life software that Nintendo's released yet: Tomodachi Collection. For those unfamiliar, Tomodachi Collection is a virtual life game more akin to The Sims than Animal Crossing. The game's set around a huge apartment building that up to 100 Miis can live in, making for a very bustling, busy world. Though due to hardware limitations, you can only look into one Mii's apartment - and only really customize it with one set look rather than lots of individual furniture, though there's a lot of variety in the looks you can give Miis' apartments - and usually only a very few Miis hang out at any given time. Still, you set their personalities with a variety of information to make them into interesting individuals, watch them go about their lives, interact and play games with them, and give them food, clothing, and more to raise their fulfillment levels while they make friends, fall in love, possibly get married, and more. The game is mostly set around the interiors of the huge number of apartments and a few locations to play around with and purchase things at on the Miis' more urban island compared to the likes of Wuhu Island. In many ways, it's an incredible game-play oriented evolution of the virtual life elements of Wii no Ma, and the perfect basis for a much bigger online virtual world social setup, balancing single player and multiplayer.

You can exchange Miis with friends in Tomodachi Collection for more meaningful, substantive content to each Mii than what we otherwise get out of exchanging friend information and Miis for friend lists on the Wii and 3DS so far. Tomodachi Collection was a huge hit in Japan, and a game or service like it would undoubtedly be a smash hit in the west as well, considering the strong mainstream popularity of both the Miis and virtual life games like The Sims. Games and social networks built around concepts like this could pull off much more on the 3DS - and especially the Wii U - considering the massive leaps in power both have over the DS, while the game's an impressive higher-end DS game to begin with, with much more to do with 100 Miis than either the Wii or 3DS's respective Mii Channels. Incredibly impressive for what it does in the face of its ambitious concept and the DS's hardware limitations, Tomodachi Collection - 'Friend Collection' - has it in itself as a concept to become something so much bigger. A significant piece of software - the most substantive Mii-based game by miles - that takes a real leap toward the Miis beginning to reach for their true potential. And part of that potential lies in full Mii integration as a standard online avatar system and the exploration of a virtual Mii space and world for each player, growing and evolving through online interactions, optimized for online socialization.

Recently, Satoru Iwata himself has commented on social networking and the need for that in Nintendo platforms. Facebook connectivity of some sort seems likely and advised - the ability to upload gaming pictures, screenshots, and so forth from while hanging out with friends and tagging them seems like something that would catch on. The key to taking online not just to heights far above the clumsy place where Nintendo is now, but to reaching the mass market and getting them online when the majority don't tend to go online on consoles or portables, is all about the ease of accessibility, appealing features, and giving users reasons to stay hooked and keep coming back. Ultimately, to get the Farmville/social gaming crowd hooked on profile and virtual world building, create a system as easy to get addicted to and as accessible as Facebook, a universal profile that people have fun with and feel comfortable with. Something loaded with free activities, minigames, metagames, and rewards to keep them around. With an emphasis on friends/family connection and lots of affecting each other's experiences and social spheres.

At Last, Miitropolis
Finally we arrive at the central point of discussion I've been building to, a major online cornerstone concept I call "Miitropolis." Imagine a virtual world in the vein of Tomodachi Collection and Wii no Ma, but one in which you can enter and explore every building and area, and in which you can go outside, fully immerse yourself in the environment, and enjoy the scenery, the sounds, the atmosphere, and the hustle and bustle of daily life for the Miis populating the city. Clouds cross the sky, and weather varies. Sometimes it rains or storms, and Miis rush for indoors in cars and carry umbrellas. It snows at times during the winter, and the city's inevitably covered in snow for the duration of the season. The Miis bundle up for the season and stick to warmer places. Any outdoor pools are closed, but ice skating rinks and such become points of interest. Coffee houses are especially busy. This is your personal city for yourself and anyone else with an account playing on your Wii U. You build and personalize it yourselves, and populate it with family and friends, connecting with their data.

The concept is in part inspired by the MetropolisMania series, the first two games of which were brought west by Natsume on the PS2, while the DS incarnation sadly stayed in Japan and the PSP third official entry stayed there as well, due to how incredibly niche the series is. This series would probably have a good shot at finding an audience on Nintendo platforms in the west if they'd make more games for them and they'd get localized. They're sort of Sim City lite with a touch of Animal Crossing - you invite people to move to the city and build all kinds of homes, skyscrapers, businesses, restaurants, shops, and more to build a functioning, happy society. You wander the streets and get to watch all the families and people go about their daily lives, going to and from work and school, running errands, going out for meals, hanging out with friends, and more, while gradually building your friendship levels with them so you can eventually call on them on later maps to move into later towns and help solve problems there. There's a bunch of real Japanese licensed businesses in the second game and onward in Japan as well, some of which remained in the western release, like UNIQLO, MOS Burger, Yoshinoya, and others. Pizza Hut, KFC, Toys R Us, and some other western brands are in the Japanese games, but had to be turned into generic versions of their respective places for the western release. You feel like you're really connected to the cities you're building, and the world feels alive, while it's easy to get attached to the NPCs through your little Engrishy conversations with them, each person having their own name, appearance, and distinct characteristics. This kind of personalized world building would be perfect for social Mii experiences on the Wii U and beyond. And both the MetropolisMania series and its gameplay style/aesthetics are perfect for Nintendo platforms and Miis.

In your Wii U system's MiiTropolis - there would be some kind of similar function or connected offshoot on the 3DS - you would either live in an apartment building or hotel (Like in Wii no Ma) or have some kind of house with a certain amount of space to worth with and potentially increase. You could possibly opt to share space and live together with family members with profiles/accounts on the same system or live separately, but still designate your Miis' relationship when setting their personality and relationships info (Like in Tomodachi Collection) to family, so your Miis would visit each other more regularly and during the holidays. Similarly, family and friend designations could be given to Miis from such people with presences in your city via the passive internet connection (Such as WiiConnect24). You build up your personal space with a variety of furniture and items earned, found, and acquired through meta-games and minigames, through playing games (Unlocked through achievements or game completion), and otherwise purchased with a meta-currency like the 3DS's Play Coins, which would have some kind of Wii U variation to encourage further social interaction and interconnectedness with friends and family. Unlike Playstation Home, you wouldn't be spending real money on digital clothing and furniture. Likewise, you could spend Play Coins on new types of buildings and places to do activities alone and with friends, and for Miis to congregate, building parks, the aforementioned pools and skating rinks, statues of characters from games you've played or beaten, and all other sorts of things you could imagine to personalize your own city.

Your personal home building would be sent to friends online via WiiConnect24 passively, and likewise their living spaces with furniture layouts, profile info, and personality, etc. information for their Miis would be sent to your Wii U, and you'd get to choose to place where in your city they'd live. Their Miis would have daily lives and routines like yours does in their cities, controlled by the AI based on the personality and hobby information they input for their Miis. You'd find them running around town going to various buildings, hanging out at the park, perhaps dropping by the beach or arcade, stopping for lunch at a burger joint, and so forth. As their Miis' outfits and accessories change, as do their living spaces, you could see what games they were playing and the progress made reflected directly in them and have some minor interaction with their AI-controlled NPC Miis. But you could also connect with each other directly - like in Animal Crossing - to take over your respective Miis and visit each others' cities, see how your layouts and decorations and such differ, and do various little social activities together in parks and other places, like games of tag, squirt gun battles, snowball fights, laser tag, sledding, scavenger hunts, air hockey, and more, with up to a certain number of friends visiting each host's city at any given time. Text and voice chat would be natural inclusions here. There would be little rewards for each of the possible social activities, like collectible content, clothing, and additional decorations and furniture for your home living space or city as well. Like with the StreetPass games, lots of little forms of encouragement for social interaction between Nintendo gamers online.

The goal would be for, in contrast to Sony's Home, for Nintendo and the Miis to have a warm, friendly, pleasant, and all-around inviting place for Nintendo gamers of all sorts to hang out, from the more traditional and addicted to the more 'casual,' with a nice way for families and friends to potentially keep in touch and connected in a personal way over longer distances.

Various companies could have specialized buildings as well, which you could choose whether or not to invite into your Miitropolis. You could keep it smaller and cozier with just family and friends, or build it up to something with hundreds to thousands of Miis in time through a larger friend list full of people you only know online and various company buildings. Nintendo could have their own building with perhaps Reggie, Miyamoto, Iwata, Mario, Link, and so on Miis, the latest Nintendo news available there, and little activities and mini/metagames to do involving Nintendo characters, games, and worlds for little rewards for that, and other companies could do the same. All sorts of game developers and publishers could make buildings that you could choose to bring to your city to explore and interact with, marketing their games while giving you free content incentives in your town to bring their building in and check it out, and it could even possibly be an effective way for smaller developers and publishers to have a chance at reaching a wider player audience and speaking to them directly. Non-gaming companies could potentially pay Nintendo to set up their own spaces as well, like with their Wii no Ma parade of sponsors with their own small spaces set around tables that you could visit. A Burger King building could feature the King in Mii form and be an eating establishment the Miis in your city might visit daily to eat, Adult Swim would undoubtedly set up a cool building with posters and images advertising their current schedule and latest shows (Perhaps a big Meatwad on top of the building, posters along the sides for Childrens Hospital, Delocated, and so on.) with cool music playing inside and some neat things to do, Netflix could have a virtual theater of sorts to advertise the service, and the possibilities are practically endless. This sort of in-social-network marketing could be effective for the companies pursuing it and a great way for game developers and publishers to advertise upcoming games very directly to fans, but it would be entirely optional, as a user could choose not to bring any of these buildings in at all, or simply bring them in, earn any extra content there, then get rid of them again.

Iwata also recently talked about intellectually stimulating gaming with the example of their discussing letting you visit what sounds like virtual recreations of real world international museums, perhaps roaming through them with your Miis. Something like this could be a perfect addition to the Miitropolis concept - one or more museum buildings with access to one or all the international museums they'd offer, and you could have fun exploring these museums and checking out their exhibits either alone or with friends, maybe dropping by the museum gift shop and dropping a few play coins on some souvenirs like famous paintings (a la Animal Crossing) to hang on the wall or some other interesting things like a variety of knickknacks or paraphernalia to stash and collect in your apartment or home.

To build on the Wii no Ma shopping section, Nintendo could perhaps look into a partnership with Amazon so users could duck into a shopping mall or shopping arcade in-town and pop into a shopping area to potentially order real things online, or use a phone in the apartment or drop by the food court - where NPC Miis might also go for lunch at times - and set up a Delivery Channel frontend there after the Delivery Channel on the Wii never made it out of Japan, and perhaps make it possible to order pizza and other things from any local restaurants (Based on the channel knowing the region you live in) right from the comfort of the TV screen or controller screen from your couch.



If they wanted to take things even further, they could create a sort of Foursquare/digital Foursquare-esque metagame both within the virtual city, online spaces, and on the 3DS in an update when linking up to various locations' WiFi hotspots on SpotPass to encourage people to get out with their 3DS and link up to more hotspots and otherwise explore the virtual Mii city and online spaces as much as possible with rewards for that too.

New content would ideally be regularly available and unlockable from Nintendo and companies releasing their own buildings to add to your city with a few Miis and activities of their own, adding more 'real world' color and flavor without the sterile 'realism' of Playstation Home, better fitting into the inviting world of the Miis. When the holidays roll around, they could release all sorts of decorations and different buildings could have their own ways of celebrating, with plenty of things to spend Play Coins on to fully decorate your city for any holidays you celebrate or want to celebrate, putting up lights and more, with perhaps regional content for different holidays, as well as universal things like fireworks. Getting together with friends in the summer to shoot off digital fireworks while chatting could be a fun way to spend an evening.

Rain and snow would fall, seasons would pass, the options for activities would change as certain places were either available or unavailable at certain times of the year, and mood would be paramount. You could wander through the park - perhaps one with a design based on the 3DS's StreetPass Mii Plaza park - and watch the falling leaves. Or stroll through the lit up city at night during the dead of winter as snow falls and Miis' breath is visible, watching the Miis stroll down the sidewalks while putting up decorations. This would be a personal, cozy world to sink into and relax. Someplace to feel at home digitally. A real living, breathing social network world embodying fully the social nature and spirit of the 'Cafe' namesake for the Wii U project, and could at least in part be extended to the 3DS as well.

You'd go from a small neighborhood or city block populated by a few Miis and little service buildings to explore and interact with, where the Miis would live their lives and go for meals and recreation. In time, you'd have a bustling Mii metropolis with lots of towering skyscrapers that look beautiful lit up at night. Perhaps a hotel with celebrity concierge Miis like the Wii no Ma channel in Japan. And all ideally done within a reasonable amount of storage space, doable between the Wii U's powerful hardware and the building and world visual designs intended to fit the Miis more, rather than extremely realistic graphics with massive texture files. Something for the 'We'/'Wii' and 'You'/'U.' Everything connected - family, friends, and any companies chosen by the users. It just seems like a natural evolution for the StreetPass Mii Plaza and Mii Plazas in general. To finally give these Miis lives to live without trapping them in little plazas, while acting fully as user avatars. A concept like this could fully realize the full potential of both Miis and passive online connections in the vein of WiiConnect24 and SpotPass, none of these things having come close to their full potential just yet. And like Wii no Ma, a virtual Mii world - perhaps set to a mode where the camera randomly pans around the city to look at different scenes going on in their lives - there could be a sort of Fireplacing-esque appeal to something like this. The kind of software you could leave running on your TV the background as a source of relaxation. And as Nintendo has shown with their previous Vitality Sensor plans and 'Wii Relax' software, as well as games like Pilotwings, Endless Ocean, and the Wii no Ma channel itself, chilled out relaxation software is on their radar.

Mii dogs and cats have become more common in games featuring Miis too - allowing them to appear more often at the user's volition seems like it would be an appealing little addition too, for their Mii to have a little virtual Mii pet or two in their home and environment. They'd make a welcome addition to a Mii city too.

We've seen relaxing avatar-filled - and even Mii-compatible! - open world games on the Wii before too, in Namco Bandai's We Ski series and the same team's upcoming Go Vacation this fall. This sort of wonderful atmosphere is very doable on the Wii - at times a little reminiscent of the likes of Elebits, Shenmue, and NiGHTS in how welcoming and magical it can be - and should be even more so on the 3DS and Wii U. The sort of feel and atmosphere more games and virtual life software could use. These few games in particular are all set in very ambitious living, breathing avatar-based worlds that even outdo Nintendo's own open world Mii game efforts so far, with far more exploration. And even they're not full adventure games or anything like that, and you can't really explore inside all the buildings or anything like that. But games like this, as inviting and fun as they are, should be a challenge to Nintendo to step everything up with their Miis and outdo them in amazing ways. To fully seek out the full potential of the Miis. In the meantime, I can't wait to see what else this Namco Bandai team in particular ends up bringing to the 3DS and Wii U in the future.

No, my thoughts aren't done yet. There's just one last section to go, and then you're free!

Social Online Spaces
Finally, we've probably all heard about things like Google+'s online hangouts now, encouraging friends and family to casually get together in group webcam chats. It's hard to say whether something exactly like that would be viable on the Wii U, given that the video chat footage we've seen so far just had a single other person's webcam going to the tablet controller. That said, on top of being able to visit friends' cities and invite them to hang out in your own, in the 'Cafe' spirit of further openness, you could get buildings for your city that would take you to public moderated online spaces where people not on each others' friend lists could meet and chat. These spaces would naturally be parental control locked to keep children out, and there would be very specific social guidelines and report and ignore/mute functions to deal with inappropriate behavior and ultimately maintain more of a warm, friendly environment for older gamers to meet up and chat in.

I like to envision these as online virtual nightclubs, karaoke places, lodges with perhaps snowy scenery outside, and of course the obvious, virtual cafes. It's one of the first things that sprang to mind upon the official reveal of the Project Cafe codename earlier this year, and Nintendo could undoubtedly moderate such text and voice chat rooms well enough to keep them a clean, pleasant place to be. I can easily imagine friends meeting up in online virtual spaces and using various chat methods to converse, then using things like that and the system's internal mail system, IM, etc. to plan out gaming sessions and jump into games of all sorts together, along with a simpler menu-based alternative for those who don't want to get into the open virtual world and enjoy its atmosphere as much. That would keep these kinds of online social features accessible to everyone while creating a warm, friendly, inviting place that encourages you to get addicted and come back regularly and explore and do everything you can, with an addiction and ever growing and changing world to reflect a Facebook-like experience, while tapping into the kinds of appeals that made Wii no Ma and Tomodachi Collection huge hits in Japan and still makes The Sims absolutely massive here. A central online hub and cornerstone to our online experience and identity, more than just a text and icon loaded stat-covered profile.

They could tap into the kind of base that's made the likes of Farmville so insanely huge on Facebook through it, maybe let you share snapshots of your Miitropolis directly on Facebook (As Nintendo's getting into that kind of integration now too) and encourage people to really get into building their worlds together.

If Nintendo approached this right and fully evolved the world of the Miis into the central hub of our online experience on their platforms across the Wii U, 3DS, and future consoles and portables, they could legitimately revolutionize the online gaming and social experiences and fully bring to the mainstream the idea of a virtual avatar world and chat system around the whole 'Cafe' concept where others have failed. It'd make for a great marketing hook, too - to check out and build your city at your own leisure for fun, get hooked on socializing and keeping up with friends on it (Perhaps even directly linking it with Facebook via an app), then come in to the cafe and meet up with your friends, chat for a while, then maybe jump into a Wii U bowling game online together, take some digital photos with your 3DS camera or Wii U pad camera, post them online and remember the fun you had, etc. That kind of thing could be killer and key to getting the audience online like a gaming audience has never been online before.

Nintendo seems to at least be somewhat headed in a direction like this, as my examples have attested. Whether they'd ever fully do something as ambitious and amazing as this is hard to say, but knowing Nintendo, probably unlikely at this point. Still, with how serious they're getting about online now and the third party element in pushing them into modernity with their online and all the interest they've shown in things like this, the sky's the limit, and we could definitely be pleasantly surprised.

Alternatives to Please Everyone
As just a final note, obviously, not everyone wants to spend all their time running around on foot or playing around with virtual worlds like this. And for those people, there should still always be a very intuitive menu system much like the Wii's channels menu to ensure that all these features can be ignored by the Wii U player who can't stand virtual world content and doesn't like the Miis - though they still probably wouldn't be able to avoid a Mii being their overall online profile avatar. Simple, intuitive alternatives will keep things user-friendly for everybody.

But like Animal Crossing, in a sense, this whole concept is all about the growing, living organic world experience based on players connecting, which will only continue to undoubtedly grow and develop in time.

Anyway, that's it. This was insanely long. Good luck getting through it. If you survive, pat yourself on the back and feel free to respond. Perhaps in a less long-winded fashion manner. My internet message board posting quota has just been met for the next decade or so.