jbanes

If you had asked me back in 2006 when Plug and Play games were all the rage, I would have told you that the market is DEMANDING such a game console. I even specced out my own idea on how such a console might be constructed: http://jgcwiki.datadino.com http://jgcwiki.datadino.com/jgcwiki/index.php?title=FAQ I had the target market picked out, the developer market picked out, just about everything worked out for success. I was NOT going to make the type of boneheaded mistake that Mattel did with its Hyperscan. Nor was I going to create a market based on constantly selling new console units like Jakks did. I managed to price the components and work out what it could reasonably cost to build such a console in reasonable bulk. Everything *could* have worked out if I followed through on it. So what happened? I developed the concept because I realized that the next generation of games was going the wrong direction. It had become too hard to make games, and thus games were becoming big Hollywood productions in their own right. Well, no one likes to take risks with that sort of money on the line. As a result, no one did. This was the driving force behind my concept. Then the Wii came along. Nintendo did everything right. They provided a new interface to gaming, they focused on the raw "fun factor" of gameplay rather than the realism factor, they provided a direct line into their back catalog of awesome 8-bit and 16-bit games, and (as a final nail in the coffin) they announced an inexpensive service for selling games online. And just like that, there was no market anymore. When the value proposition of my console was, "Buy inexpensive games that will provide casual entertainment", I had no long-term competitors. The entire market was focused on a completely different arena of gaming. But with the Wii on the market, there would be some serious competition. Should a consumer spend $5-$15 on a classic-style game they have to purchase in Walmart, or should they spend $5-$15 on a Virtual Console or WiiWare title that is already a classic or provides all the advantages of a modern console and can be purchased from the comfort of their living room? The answer seems pretty obvious. That's not to say that an inexpensive console couldn't be competitive in the market. It's just that the Blue Ocean aspect of it is gone. A bigger player has entered and is quickly building high barriers to entry. If I had been able to launch the concept in, say, 2004, then it would possibly be Nintendo facing the competition. Alas, I didn't, so the rest is history.

I did find a solution to this. Apparently the leaderboard is published on the Japanese Star Soldier R website. (Though not on the US site... WTF?) They do combine all the regionals into one page (which kind of sucks), but at least you can see them. You can find my score (WIIRKS: 751,600) here: http://www.hudson.co.jp/wii/wiiware/starso...king_j2_03.html There's also a super-secret tips page here: http://www.hudson.co.jp/wii/wiiware/starso...sa/e/guide.html Pay attention to those and you'll take the high score in no time flat.

There is actually a small line that shoots from the archer tower. But you don't really see it until you have so many archers that they're going gangbuster to keep your castle defended. Umm... trying to remember here. I think it was something like 140, 80, and 100 respectively. Generally you want to depend on the enemy bombers. Using your own bombers just wastes a perfectly good unit that you could have assigned to one of your three towers. Rather than worrying about clearing the buttonheads, focus most of your attention on the giants and the catapults. (In particular, you should be blowing up the giants on the left side of the screen rather than waiting for them to approach your castle!) Both of those do a great deal of damage. The buttonheads really don't do that much damage unless they're in extreme numbers. So for the most part, the archers will be able to hold the line with occasional help from you. I have to say, I honestly can't remember the last time I got this much out of a new game for only $5. Even if we include used games in that figure (which DYC is definitely NOT), the good used titles tend to be more pricey than this. Bully for XGen! They did a damn good job on this.

That pretty much sums up my feelings as well. The game itself is not too bad, but the shortness of it is extremely jarring. You just start getting into the game before your clock runs out and you get kicked out. Honestly, if Hudson had sprung for 4 more levels, they could have really shook things up here. They could have added a campaign mode and made the later levels super-hard so that the game doesn't feel too short. Which is currently a problem, because there simply isn't enough here to truly satisfy. Even the levels that we were given are extremely short by shmup standards. The second boss is super-hard, but that's about it for redeeming features. I want to like this game. I really do. But it just leaves me confused. Oh well, I'll play it some more and see if I can beat the regional 45th place I'm in. Edit: 32nd in NE region! Yay! Almost good enough to see on the Records screen. Almost...

Eventually the horde contains so many bombers that your task becomes more one of blowing up the bombers and applying magic. The need to flip enemies is greatly reduced (though your arm will still get sore!). Just take regular breaks and you'll be fine.

From what I understand, there is both 2 minute and 5 minute modes. I'm not quite sure how they differ, though, as there are only two playable levels. :!: Honestly, this one has me a bit upset. I loved Blazing Lazers, and am generally a fan of shmups. I had been hoping that this would be a fully modern Star Soldier installation, with gameplay reminiscent of some of the best games of the series. Unfortunately, the 2-5 minute scheme has me extremely wary of this title. I would have bought it without question at 500 points, but 800 seems too rich for my tastes. Nintendo needs to learn from the unexpected success of Defend Your Castle. Consumers will find a lot more value in a title if it is priced right. Then they will go on to tell their friends, and the game will make up the difference in volume.

Here's a few obligatory links: KLOV entry Wikipedia Entry GameTap link (For those of you with subscriptions) Everything2 description Review on MobyGames GameFAQ entry As Tempest said, it's a bit hard at first. However, you do usually make progress on each play-through, so it doesn't get overly frustrating.

No one remembers SkyKid? For shame! It was a very popular arcade game at the time. I remember playing it at Showbiz Pizza quite a bit when I was a kid. In fact, I picked up the NES cart for it just last year! It's a good game, and a fun side-scrolling shmup with its own twists. I highly recommend it.

Even if you get a Perfect Shot, pick up a Zapper anyway. It ships with Link's Crossbow Training, which is more than worth the $20.

People often forget that the prototype of the Wii had no internal Flash memory. Instead, Wiis shipped with OS discs that contained the necessary software for the News/Photo/Mii channels. The Flash memory was a last-minute addition so that the Wii OS could be built-in to the Wii and updates. Though that raises the question of if the SD Card wasn't originally intended as the Wii's Save Game data slot, or if Nintendo planned to continue using the GCN slot...

You're going to need more than 20. (evil grin!) Like I said, these guys are easy to miss. Keep an eye out for bad guys who fall to the ground on their own. Giants are easiest to spot. Sometimes you'll be holding a guy and the archers will shoot him. None the less, the archers will remain hard to notice. If things are slow, you'll flip all the guys before the archers have a chance. If things are frantic, you won't even notice a guy or two falling among the horde. Trust me, though, they do work. And (super-secret tip alert!) if you get to 901 archers, your Castle will become self-defending. The only enemy who will be able to assail you will be the Catapults. (You see those on level 40.) Save your magic bombs (>100 wizards) and use erasers to take care of the Catapults.

Yep. The interface is exactly the same except that "Category" is split out into "Publisher" and "Genre". Right now, FF is #1, Defend Your Castle is #2 (up from #3 yesterday!), Lost Winds is #3 (down from #2), TV Show King is #4, Pop is #5, and V.I.P. Blackjack is #6.

Having gotten S-Class ratings with some regularity, I beg to differ. Nooo... the remote should be held horizontal. Incorrect. The horizontal position is the level truck position. Tilting back (towards you) gives you more air, tilting forward gives you less. Part of the game is learning to tilt it properly for the jump you want to make. There are times when you'll actually want to cut your jumps short for sake of speed. The Scotland levels come to mind as a series of rather crazy jumps that you'll want to navigate with shorter jumps in several areas. (Those swamps are some of the best levels in the game! ) Also, you get a turbo-boost when you land level. If you're not getting those turbo-boosts, it's because the controller is being held in the full-back position. It also eliminates a lot of the control in the game. If you want to win some of the more difficult tracks, you need to have precision control. Especially those landing turbo-boosts. The game may not be about getting first place, but it definitely helps! My point is that your position is incorrect, even if it appears to work. If you have the remote in the wheel, the correct way is to hold it horizontal "trucker style" then dip the steering wheel left and right rather than turning it. That is how Excite Truck is intended to be played. Now you may be playing it with the controller always held in the high-jump position, but that's your choice. I'm just trying to help.

The archers are automagic. You may occasionally hear a "schwip!" followed by an enemy falling to the ground. The archers aren't very useful in the beginning, but they become more active as you assign more bodies. Eventually, you'll be able to knock over the giants long enough for the archers to take 'em out. As you said with the bombers, click the flag and one comes out. Click the wheel they're pushing to blow 'em up. Super-easy. The masons just repair your castle. Keep this tower well-supplied with men! As the hordes get more challenging, the auto-repair feature the masons provide is the only thing that will hold your castle together. They're a particularly good investment of bodies as they often manage to repair enough damage for you to hold off on spending the repair fees. The magic tower assigns spells to the DPad as you add bodies. The first spell is an eraser that eliminates an enemy. (Perfect for the giants.) The next spell is a spray can that converts an enemy to your side. (Also a good way of eliminating giants.) There are more spells as you go along, but I haven't managed to get them yet. Magic takes time to recharge before you can use it again. I'm at ~level 40, and man are my arms tired! I just got back from telling the developer (XGen) that he owes me a bionic arm.

You're probably doing it wrong. Hold it up like a steering wheel on a car, not down like a wheel on a big-rig. You mentioned before that the Wheel is working well with Excite Truck. I find that somewhat doubtful as the two games have different control schemes. You may be doing that wrong as well. Here's how it works. Excite Truck: Hold Wii Remote with the buttons facing the ceiling. DO NOT turn it left and right like a steering wheel. This will work, but it will work poorly. Instead, rotate it up and down to steer. i.e. When you turn hard left, the buttons should be facing left and the IR window should be pointing at the floor. When you turn hard right, the buttons should be facing right and the IR sensor should be pointing toward the ceiling. Let me reiterate. If you are turning the remote left and right, YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG. It works only because you tend to dip one side lower than the other when turning. You need to be pushing the controller up and down instead. Once you get that down, your control will improve and the game will become even more fun. Mario Kart Wii: The primary difference in how this game steers is that the Wii Remote's buttons are facing the player rather than the ceiling. If the buttons are not facing you, YOU WILL FAIL. However, once the buttons face you, it controls the same way as Excite Truck. As you turn the wheel to the left, the IR sensor should move to face the floor. As you turn the wheel to the right, the IR sensor should move to face the ceiling. Let me reiterate. DO NOT LOWER THE WHEEL. It must be vertical at all times! Once you understand the control scheme of these games, it gets a lot easier. Oh, and in case you're not following why the wheel won't work for Excite Truck: In order to control Excite Truck properly, the Wheel needs to be horizontal like the wheel on a Big Rig. Except that if you were driving a big rig, you'd need to yank the wheel off the steering column and plaster it flat against the driver's side window (with the horn against the window!) to turn hard left, or plaster it flat against the passenger-side window to turn hard right. Obviously, steering wheels don't pivot like that. They rotate around a center-point. And that's why Excite Truck's control scheme is a little odd.

Well, Shawn does know how to summarize my thoughts...

Not being cutting edge is a far cry from being "7 year old tech". I understand your feelings on the issue. I honestly do. But just because the Wii reuses the Gamecube's design doesn't mean that the hardware components aren't the latest tech. Here's a few examples of the changes made: The GameCube's chips were manufactured with a 180nm process. The Wii's chips use a 90nm process. (Same as the XBox 360 prior to their recent move to 65nm.) This makes the Wii's chips faster AND more power efficient. 64mb GDDR3 RAM (same type of top-of-the-line stuff used in XBox 360) vs. PC100 SDRAM. Bluetooth processors/transceivers vs. nothing Secure Digital Card slot vs. nothing 802.11g WiFi transceiver vs. nothing Accelerometers vs. nothing Infrared cameras vs. nothing Case design using latest in high-impact plastic On top of that, the design of the Hollywood chip has received several upgrades over the Dolphin. Granted, it's pretty much just MORE processing capacity to fill available silicon, but it's an upgrade none the less. In short, the Wii is using fully modern components compared to the Gamecube. It's basic design is still that of the GCN, but that doesn't make the Wii the same technology as the GCN any more than a Core Duo PC is the same technology as a Pentium IV. In effect, you can think of the Wii vs. GCN like a PC upgrade. The basic components and design are similar, but the current components are major advancements over the old components. The Wii may not be as "bleeding edge" as the PS3, but it also didn't cost $600. (Sold at a significant loss, mind you.) It also doesn't have the shear quantity of technology as the XBox 360 (though the components are comparable). But the Wii also didn't cost $349.99. (Sold at a significant loss, mind you.) Oh, and one last point for you to keep in mind. If the Wii actually used antiquated technology, Nintendo would have a harder time manufacturing sufficient quantities. The reason? As parts age, they get replaced with newer parts. Manufacturers like Nintendo have to secure a steady supply of the older parts from one or two manufacturers to keep them supplied until they EOL the product. The fab that takes the contract for the older parts will usually only size enough production to keep their one or two customers supplied. Those parts will often have an expected date after which they will be completely retired. (Unless we're talking about microcontroller/embedded business where some parts can last much longer, albeit in fairly small quantities of a few hundred thousand pieces a year.) Thus it was in Nintendo's interest to upgrade to the latest parts and technology when they created the Wii. So that's exactly what they did. They just chose the equivalent of the reliable budget PC vs. the high-end Alienware "rig". Incorrect. The lull in the shortage was short-lived during early summer. The shortage reasserted itself before Nintendo held back any units. And as I mentioned before, the vast majority of their Christmas units came from diverting from other territories and flushing the January supply out early. Christmas is a period of higher-than-normal demand. Given that a company like Nintendo is heavily dependent on Christmas sales (more-so in terms of GAMES sold than consoles), they need to make sure that they have as many units available as possible so that consumers will purchase more games. Thus they try to have as many consoles available to shoppers as humanly possible. BUT, as I said, the vast majority of the excess came from other territories and a flush of the units that would have been slated for January. There was no significant reduction in the units shipped in months prior. Again, most of the units being stockpiled were diverted from other territories. (Something which the Japs were unhappy about, IIRC.) Think what you want. You're still wrong and sound silly for repeating it, but I can't force you to accept reality.

Nintendo actually said they held some systems for the holidays, though not as many as people believe. Part of the extra that showed up for Christmas were actually diverted systems from other regions and a full flush of the supply chain. The latter push to get every Wii in the store always leaves January as a rather barren month. Nintendo isn't manufacturing seven year old hardware, either. The Wii components ARE new components, even if they're based on the previous tech. Also, the Wii does have a few hard to come by components that have to be custom manufactured. (e.g. the completely non-standard "Hollywood" GPU) I'm actually surprised that no one has noticed that we had the exact same "lul" in sales about the same time last year. Going into summer seems to cause a reduction in console sales, which results in greater availability. Just like this year, everyone raised the question of if the shortage is over. Long story short? Nope. Come August, they'll be as hard to find as ever. Edit: For those of you not paying attention, if you're looking for a Wii, GET ONE NOW!!! If you wait till later, they'll be hard to find again.

I can't believe people still think Nintendo is staging the shortage. Per Wikipedia, it took Sony 5 years and 9 months to hit 100 million units. That's a production rate of 1.45 million units per month. Per Bloomberg, Nintendo is shipping 1.8 million units per month!!! Which means that the Wii is the fastest selling console in the history of video games. Nintendo has already increased production, and contracted new factories. They are at such a high level of production that they don't dare increase it any farther. (It costs a LOT of money to tool up new factories. Money that may not be recoverable unless the current demand exceeds production by 1.5x or more.) To put this in perspective for everyone, The Wii sold more units in a little more than one year than the Gamecube sold in its entire production run. Think about that. There are 21.74 million GameCubes out there right now. In comparison, there were 24.45 million Wiis sold as of March 2008. Another figure for you to chew on: A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the Wii will cross the 100 million units sold threshhold 44 months from March 2008. That will be 9 months faster than the PS2. If Nintendo manages to increase production further, that threshold could be much sooner. With that in mind, where exactly do you yahoos get off thinking that production levels higher than the PS2 means that Nintendo is intentionally creating a shortage? I mean, get a clue people. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to put 2 and 2 together. The Wii's sales are outstripping the highest production levels ever. It's that simple.

Not content to give Wii consumers the runaround on Downloadable content, Harmonix has announced a plan that harkens back the the Bad Old Days of spending $20 for a CD that contains two or three songs you actually want. Except now it costs $10 more. Here's the news clip: You can read the full press release at: http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/newsArt.cfm?artid=15905 Honestly, I hope people don't fall for this. It really is a way of extracting extra cash out of people for downloadable tracks that they might not want. Which raises the question: Were all the complaints about the Wii's storage just a smokescreen for this new business model?

It was known from day #1 that the browser would cost money. It was only free to the initial users who were effectively willing to Beta-test the application for Opera. (And trust me, it was rather unstable back then. ) Once the 1.0 release was out, it started costing money as-promised. So instead of looking at it as a "that sucks!", try looking at it as a, "that was nice of them!" Of course, I think Nintendo should just include the browser with the Wii and pay Opera royalties, but that might be because I want more WiiCade users.

Thankfully, you can put your savegame on an SDCard and take it with you to a friend's house. Not quite a GCN memory card, but close enough. One thing you can't do with a GCN card, though, is cheat like hell: http://www.wiimedia.com/saves/ Just copy your saved game to an SDCard, open it with the Save Game Manager, and get a free "upgrade" before copying it back. Disclaimer: WiiMedia is associated with WiiNode which is associated with WiiCade which I am associated with, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you like me, feel free to use the tool. If you don't like me, use it anyway. I have no stake in it.

The light-gun games come with calibration that allows you to configure the cursor to the gun's true location. Zelda has you adjust the position of the cursor while Ghost Squad has you shoot two corners by sight. Link's Crossbow Training has excellent precision, while Ghost Squad gives up a bit of precision for probably the absolute best "feel" of any Zapper game. (You won't miss the precision much. All the enemies are large and easy to hit.)

There's no reason why you can't do that. But purchasing Rock Band Wii will only encourage substandard products for the Wii. Then why are you wasting your time waiting for Rock Band Wii? Rock Band PS2 is the exact same game, but with an MSRP that's $10 cheaper. (And a street price that actually goes quite a bit lower.) What is your reason for waiting for the Wii version? Heck, the PS2 Guitar Hero guitar works with Rock Band PS2, so you'd actually be getting more features for less money on the PS2.

The Goat Store used to sell an arcade-quality joystick made by an Atari Age member. I don't remember his name, but he made some kick-ass controllers for nearly every classic system. The 7800 was one of them. They weighed a ton, too. Solid steel construction, cherry switches, the whole works. IIRC, his price was incredibly reasonable.