December 29, 2011
I feel terribly embarrassed. I bought the wrong high-tech Christmas present for someone. Here’s how it happened:
2 years ago, I handed down my old Nintendo GameCube to some relatives and they have been enjoying it quite a lot. I got them Super Smash Bros. Melee as well as 4 GameCube controllers.
In the weeks before Christmas, these same relatives mentioned that they would enjoy having a Nintendo Wii along with Just Dance 3. Lo and behold, I happened to see exactly what they wanted in the store– a bundle that included the Wii and Just Dance 3, and it seemed fairly inexpensive (the whole bundle cost less than I had been seeing regular Wii consoles go for). Since they liked Melee, I also got them Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Since the Wii sports backward compatibility with the GameCube and has ports for 4 GC controllers, they’ll have all kinds of 4-player fun.
What Went Wrong?
All told, things went pretty well. They were surprised to see the Wii and associated games on Christmas morning and have been getting plenty of use out of them. However, when I visited a few days later to see how things were going, they reported that the Wii didn’t have ports for the old GameCube controllers.
Wait, what?
It turns out that what I purchased was not the original Wii but apparently a newer version called the Wii Family Edition. It looks like this:
It sacrifices GameCube backward compatibility, both in software as well as controller ports. It only has USB ports now.
Oh well, they can still enjoy the old GameCube and the new Wii separately. I was just disappointed that they won’t be able to play multiplayer Brawl until they get some more Wii controllers. Moreover, I felt terribly embarrassed that I am not up to date on current video game technology, particularly Nintendo’s offerings, after being a hardcore Nintendo nerd during my teenage years.
All in all, I can’t fault Nintendo for this move. This is a standard type of cost reduction method. The Wii is 5 years old now and has more than enough of its own software that it doesn’t need to draw from the pool of last generation games to expand on its offerings (it still has Virtual Console for the really old stuff, too). This also reminds me of the top-loading 8-bit NES (for which I paid US$99, used)– that had the interesting cost reduction measure of removing the composite A/V output meaning that you absolutely had to use RF to connect to a TV. Not great, but the console was rock-solid otherwise.
Curiously, the top Amazon search for Nintendo Wii (“Wii Black Console with New Super Mario Brothers Wii and Music CD”) is a new-style Wii yet the features still list GameCube compatibility. No, wait– on closer inspection, the “Product Features” bullet list states, “Nintendo GameCube software and accessories are not supported”, while further down, the same page has an outdated Amazon.com product description table comparing the current generation consoles. This table features the old Wii and the old capabilities.
Oops.
Posted by Multimedia Mike under The Big Picture | Comments (0)
May 22, 2011
Here’s a curious artifact from my archives– a large advertisement for the Neo Geo game system entitled “Neo Geo: Bigger Badder Better”. I have seen the cover image around the internet but I can’t find all the scans. So I guess it falls to make sure that the specimen is preserved for all time online. Here is the document in convenient PDF form:
Neo Geo: Bigger Better Badder advertisement in PDF format (~15MB)
This advertisement takes the form of a small magazine. I’m not sure how it was originally distributed. I remember receiving it from this weird kid at the local video arcade (PlayAmerica video arcade in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA; I know I have some readers who remember it). This would have been circa 1993-1994. The kid in question actually owned a Neo Geo. I was a real tech spec fiend back in those days, always quoting the MHz speed of the CPUs and the total palette each console was capable. This kid produced this Neo Geo ad which was right up my ally. He let me keep it and now here we are.
The advertising material is far more aggressive than anything Sega ever produced. But selling a $650 video game console (this was the early 1990s) was the toughest of sells. The magazine purports to be written by an entity known as The Game Lord who is here to school you on why all other consoles suck compared to the Neo Geo. Actually, I doubt that even the most ardent Sega or Nintendo fanboy from the period would even attempt to argue that their favorite consoles were technically superior to the Neo Geo. But there was the issue of initial capital investment for the console, plus $200 video games.
I did, however, like the copy’s tackling of the CD-ROM issue, citing that gamers should be worried about the time it takes to develop a game to fill a 650 MB optical disc when it already takes a long time to develop one that just fits on a few megabytes worth of ROM. It’s a curious assumption, to be sure, that development time is linearly proportional to the size of the end product deliverable. Of course, they were 100% correct about early CD-ROM games; see my interactive games category for more hard data on this matter.
Here are the individual page scans; click for larger images:
Front cover with the pit bull — I think this might have been the closest the Neo Geo came to having a mascot
Hardware overview Read more…
Posted by Multimedia Mike under Gaming Memories,The Big Picture | Comments (0)
December 31, 2010
I just picked up this piece of light reading before the holiday break: 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die. It’s quite thick:
Close to the origin of this blog, I learned of various efforts by dedicated (or bored) individuals to slog through all chapters in assorted long-running game franchises. These efforts included Dragon Quest series (blog is gone); Zelda series (he didn’t seem to get too far); and Ultima (hats off! this person made it through the series). Now I’m waiting to see if a new blog crops up to chronicle an effort to play through all 1001 of these games. I promise it won’t be this blog.
The games are listed chronologically, though there is an alphabetical index. Through this index, I was able to determine that I have played a paltry 12% of the video games I need to play before I die. That doesn’t seem like much, but it’s still 120 games. It’s important when reading through this book — as it is with any random “Top X of something” list — to not assign too much cosmic significance to the data, and certainly not to construe the contents as an affront to your own personal tastes. That means you’ll stay sane if you can keep yourself from constantly wondering “How could they have not included [my all-time favorite game in some genre]!!”
The list was compiled based on the opinions of a bunch of game critics. A number of franchises are well-represented, among them: Every Halo game, most Final Fantasy games, most Zelda games, every Metal Gear Solid game; every Resident Evil game except for #3, and most every game that has ever begun with the words “Super Mario”.
It’s also curious to note that the preface of the book is written by famed game designer Peter Molyneux. I mention this because, cross referencing with his MobyGames rap sheet, it seems that most of his games made the list.
For my own reference, here are the 12% of these very important 1001 games I have had the privilege of experiencing:
Read more…
Posted by Multimedia Mike under The Big Picture | Comments (17)
October 21, 2009
I know that it’s old hat to see such ludicrous, catch-all advertisements. But every now and then, one grabs you. Like when I was refreshing my memory recently regarding the T-virus of the Resident Evil series. Amazon promises to hook me up with a good deal.
To be fair, there seems to be a song by that name by an act named Atyss.
Posted by Multimedia Mike under The Big Picture | Comments (0)
October 11, 2009
As a big fan of the Resident Evil series of games, I was a tad befuddled when I encountered this out in the real world:
I pass by this gate on one of my regular workouts. Every time I pass the gate, I wonder… am I expected to take the jewel in the eye? Or am I supposed to look around and find a matching red jewel for the other eye? Shouldn’t there be a piece of paper somewhere nearby which explains this? What kind of hoops do I need to jump through in order to procure that piece of paper? And most importantly, what are the consequences of completing this puzzle? Can I expect zombies to spring up? From inside the gate or behind me outside the gate? I need to advance this story somehow.
As an aside, I have been meaning to bring my camera along to photograph this odd gate but keep forgetting. Then I recall that this exists in one of the most thoroughly photographed cities on the planet and a simple Google image search can reveal any square inch that you’re looking for.
See Also:
At MobyGames:
Posted by Multimedia Mike under The Big Picture | Comments (0)
June 26, 2009
I recently started maintaining a collaborative Google spreadsheet with several other MobyGames contributors in order to track games that are not yet listed in the MobyGames database. As part of the first pass, I made sure that all known Barbie games were either in the database or in the missing games spreadsheet by researching through Amazon.com.
Unfortunately, now I can’t go to Amazon without seeing stuff like this:
The things I’m willing to do for MobyGames.
Posted by Multimedia Mike under Barbie Games,The Big Picture | Comments (2)
