Contra: Shattered Soldier - "Venus"

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - Song of Healing (orchestrated version)

Bionic Commando - "Heat Wave"



The original

Eh, I've never been able to forgive Ninty for ruining Dinosaur Planet, but DKR is a fantastic game! Rare's fallen off the map, but Grabbed by the Ghoulies and Viva Piñata are excellent games developed during the post-buyout era.

...I feel my introduction's been drawn out a bit by now.

I don't think Grabbed by the Ghoulies was excellent although I can see it's a guilty pleasure for most.

Technology company AMD (supplier of graphics hardware for the Xbox 360) is claiming that the Xbox 360's successor will be capable of producing the kind of visual detail seen in James Cameron's Avatar, as reported on examiner.com via the August issue of Official Xbox Magazine US.

Cramming the kind of technology it took to render every frame of the eyeball-searing Avatar into a console within the next year or so sounds impossible, but AMD is claiming the next Xbox will launch with this within reach.

AMD would not confirm it was actually working on the next Xbox but director of ISV relationships at AMD, Neal Robison, has said that gamers have a lot to be excited about. Beyond visual fidelity Robison claims that the AI and physics capabilities of the next generation will allow for every pedestrian in an open-world title like GTA or Saints Row to be an individual character with a unique personality. This would mean NPCs would react in a whole host of new and different ways to in-game actions.

Of course, this is far from the first time this sort of hyperbole has been tossed out into the public. Gamers have been teased with promises of Toy Story graphics for the PS2 and Toy Story 2 graphics for the original Xbox before.

IGN

While I agree that the 2003 and 2008 press conferences were worse, there was still no room for excuses for this year. It was time for Nintendo to truly unveil their new console and explain what it is, after waiting a full year since the initial reveal, but they failed to do so. The disappointing press conference has cast a dark cloud over the Wii U's prospects at the moment, and you can see it with the disappointed investors and the dozens of negative press. However, what happens at E3 is temporary and tends to be very chaotic. Once this rather benign edition of the event is over, I hope Nintendo manages clarify more and the press and investors are able to put the console more into perspective. The fact that Nintendo botched their conference really makes me doubt this, but I will be cautiously optimistic.

Wow.....the douce thing was a little too far but u know what I was using an over rated example of how a mature franchise from nintendo would turn out. Truthfully speaking nintendo will take the best advantage out of the wii u controller over it's third party developers. They will make real cool games that utilize the controller like noone else. But, it will all go over looked by the extremely violent HD games that third-party developers are going to make. Plus third-party companies will utilize the controller in crazy ways as well. So how can nintendo compete on their own machine if a let's say "battlefield 3" comes to it and utilize the wii u controller in some kind of unbelievable way. It will still shine from any Mario game they do on the wii u. They wouldn't be able to release them at the same time. Nintendo wouldn't risk the chance of putting the two out at the same time...delays and push backs until Nintedo eventually say "Wii it, pass Mario that Chopper."

Umm... the Mario franchise and Battlefield 3 are vastly different games, so they aren't competing with each other. This is like saying LIttleBigPlanet is competing with Call of Duty.

I do think Nintendo should lay a foundation of creating games that appeal specifically toward the 17+ gamers, giving third-party developers more conifdence in developing "mature" titles on their platforms. However, I think it's more productive for Nintendo to create different franchises (like they did with Rare) instead of "maturizing" their exisiting ones. Nintendo's franchises just can't convincingly transition to "mature" ones the same way Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia have. Remember how Shadow the Hedgehog turned out? Granted, it wasn't an M-rated game (hell, it wasn't even a T-rated one), but Sega attempted to give the Sonic franchise a darker edge by giving one of the characters, Shadow, a sub-machine gun, and it was considered to be one of the biggest failures in the franchise's history. Putting a gun in Mario's hand will shake the industry in pieces all right. It will be one giant step for the gaming industry to turn into a desperate joke.

Put I like this with people anticipating third party titles. Blockbuster titles. Games that never touched the wii system. Hypothetically, do you think that Nintedo can sale Mario if Modern Warfare was released on the same day. The Mario franchise will take a big hit. Not to mention if more third party companies relaease their blockbuster titles at the same time. Let's be honest this is why their making the wii u; for more mature gamers. If it were all about keeping it's base, they can just stick to the wii. But to but a next generation Mario on sale against all the third party blockbusters( which is what every one has been waiting on) they'll have to get a little violent don't you think. I love Mario, but if Battlefield was realeased the same day, I'm going with Battlefield. Plus I'm pretty sure alot of other gamers who are waiting more third party from nintendo are going to do the same thing. Therefore, Nintendo may see software sales lag behind third party blockbusters......eventually passing Mario a gun to shoot their way back into the competition....face it the are going to have to ramp up the gore a likely bit.

You may prefer Battlefield 3 over Mario on the Wii U, but there are millions of others who beg to differ. Even if a Mario game and Battlefield 3 (both of which have not yet been confirmed) were released on the same day, the Mario game would still sell more. Third-party titles tend to perform less on Nintendo's platforms (sadly), and Battlefield 3 will mostly likely be no different if it doesn't offer anything drastically new. A lot of gamers already own Battlefield 3 for other platforms, while the next Mario game is a whole new experience.

I did try and warn ye some 6 months that the Wii U would be similar to the current consoles. One of the few things that we did learn last year was that the CPU was going to be 45nm based chip which told me that Nintendo weren't going to be very aggressive with the hardware. Nearly everything we have heard, and now seen from games at the E3, has pointed towards that.

Perhaps you missed the entire conversation. The specs are based off of older dev kits which are similar to 360/PS3 in spec. The Wii U demos that were shown were most likely running on them based off of the fact that most of them still had the Wii U gamepad still tethered and no cables were connected to the console. It's not far-fetched that Nintendo would show Wii U games in its early form, as Microsoft did the same back in E3 2005 where the Xbox 360 games weren't running off of the hardware. They ran on Powermac G5's, and the console launched in November 2005.

For all the naive people (and thats alot!), i think its pretty much about image. I dont really think nintendo helps the wiiU by making it seem casual and childish (plastic white and still having wii in the name, WII LOOKING CONSOLE?), why cant it have an cool image? (stylish black and awesome name etc?, i mean if nintendo doesnt launch some cool commercials, everyone expect nintyfans will believe its just an upgraded wii (like the ds to 3ds, everyone believes its an dsi with 3d). And guess what? Its almost too late (i believe), many people already believes that the wiiu is just and expansion controller for the wii (i didnt see a console in the e3 video :-/ )

The plastic white design has a sleek and universal appeal, not "childish". The casual look helped the Wii shake off gamers' memories of the GameCube's "toyish" look, which made it easy for Nintendo market the console to a wide audience. Why abandon it with the Wii U? You seem to forget that Nintendo has always offered variety of colors with their consoles and handhelds, including the Wii. The Wii U will eventually have a black finish if the console stays throughout its lifespan.

As for the the Wii U, it has an all-new controller, and Nintendo plans to recapture the hardcore market that they have been criticized for abandoning throughout the Wii's lifespan. And, no, it's not too late! None of us know anything else beyond the controller. The console won't be released until after April 2012 (with Holidays being an ideal time), so Nintendo has plenty of time to market the console.

Given what we know about the Wii U, I don't know if I should be worried about the system or not. The E3 2011 unveiling basically offered a cursory idea of where Nintendo is taking the console. I doubt Batman: Arkham City, Darksiders II, Aliens: Colonial Marines, Ninja Gaiden III, and Metro: Last Light are the only titles in the pipeline. Keep in mind, Ubisoft is possibly creating an all-new Assassin's Creed title. As for Nintendo heavily relying on third-parties to carry the Wii U, they may have decided to contribute more input for the system after seeing how that strategy for the 3DS backfired. Nintendo has been very aware of their mistakes in the past few months, so I don't think it's a stretch to think they may have re-evaluated their strategy for the Wii U. After all, Pikmin 3 could very well spearhead the launch since Miyamoto stated it's been making a lot of progress. The Wii U will not launch until after April 2012, which means Nintendo has plenty of time to effectively market the console before the release date.

Nintendo has been modest about their hardware performance, so I can see where the author of this article is coming from. But I'm pretty frustrated that everyone is getting bit by the "Patcher Bug." There's nothing wrong with making speculations, but making them with so little credible information is just jarring to me.

All I'm saying is we have new hardware but they have to find a way to make things work. I'm still getting it day one but don't like the sounds of what I'm hearing.

You guys still aren't getting it. He isn't just saying it runs at a lower speed.he saying they have to find ways to make the game run efficiently trying to get around things the CPU "can't" do. Man just disappointing.

My problem isn't the low clock speed. Its his tone as if they are having to work harder making the game on the Wii U than current gen. This WILL become a problem just watch. This will be a excuse for devs to not port next gen

Wait. What other issues did Harada mention besides power consumption and time? The article didn't look that bad since Harada later said he didn't have a hard time getting Tekken Tag Tournament 2 to work on the Wii U. He admits that isn't far behind its 360/PS3 brethren, which doesn't lend much concerns about the Wii U's hardware if he can figure it out (as well as developers like Vigil Games, Rocksteady, and Gearbox). Otherwise, clockspeed still seems to be the issue because I didn't see Harada specify anything else.

I'm currently listening to "No Leaf Clover" by Metallica.

I'm currently enjoying Star Fox 64 3D.

My favorite is Pac-Man where they added "OM NOM NOM NOM."

If we're talking about live-action adaptations then none. Hollywood hasn't been doing very well with live-action adaptations of American cartoons, which leaves doubt if they should touch anime. There are talks of a live-action adaptation of Akira and they're picking Caucasian actors like Robert Pattinson or Zac Efron into the movie.

3DS XL...really. After Miyamoto said there wont be any redesign...come on now.

Miyamoto never totally denied it. He said he was "satisfied" with the older version of the handheld, and was more interested in the successor. The press spun his words to suggest Nintendo wasn't working on one.

If she's fake, how do you know she's a girl?
-Mind Freak-

I just got word that Emily is a demon, and that every time we access her blog, our souls get sucked.

This reminds me of the Phantom console. Does anybody remember that? Infinium Labs (now Phantom Entertainment) developed it back in 2003 and it was supposed to play PC games (both old and new) in the comfort of your living room, supported by an incredibly powerful architecture. Of course, the console never saw the light of day due to numerous delays, financial problems, and conflicts with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The gaming landscape has changed after all these years and Valve could potentially make the idea work.

i respect everyones opinion... but disagree. no smart company want their customer to have to go and spend money(that they could be spending in their product) on another company product to get a certain experience. so yes in regards to third party support and kinda getting away from that family friendly title nintendo does have work to do. as far as ces goes.... i just think its funny. the caption... "REGGIE HERE TO TELL US WHY 2012 IS THE YEAR OF THE WII U. reggie interview... oh you guys didnt hear what i said at E3 last year just go and watch that interview and save yourself some time. HA! loves nintendo but they can be so predictable.... shock me for once nintendo.

Yet, Sony and Microsoft haven't released any official information about their next-gen consoles, either, so why is Nintendo on the chopping block for releasing so little? The PlayStation 4 will most likely may not make an appearance at this year's E3, if we take Kaz Hirai's statements at face value.

The whole point of the CES showing was to keep the Wii U in the general gaming news circulation. Nintendo clarified from time and time again that they will fully unveil the console at this year's E3. I won't hold my breath for anything mind-blowing before that.

We should've been expected this because whenever the gaming industry is about to transition into the next generation, fanboy trolls will be crawling out of the woodworks. I've seen similar things happen after E3 2005 when all three companies unveiled what would be current gen consoles. However, I suspect most of the trolls that have invaded Nintendo-related forums and blogs are Sony fanboys. The reason why I came to this conclusion was because, during this generation, the flame wars were mostly between Sony and Xbox fanboys. Microsoft and Sony had similar strategies and fought for the core base. When Jack Tretton announced that the PS4 may be "weaker" and appeal to girls, I think the Sony fanboys felt that they have lost the "core war." Rumors of Xbox 720 being able to display Avatar-like graphics seems to nail this down. The Wii U and the PS4 are the only next-gen consoles that we have any actual information, and the unhinged Sony fanboys end up attacking the console that may be their level.

(WARNING: Contains excessive swearing, NSFW or school)