Zelda On The DS, Sega on the Revolution

At the Nintendo Keynote today, Company President Iwata reiterated the same 'think differently' ideas that he espoused at last year's GDC. This time he had concrete data to back up his industry disruption message, detailing the millions in sales their 'Brain Training' line of games have racked up. Along with his message, he announced a new Zelda title on the DS, and the fact that Sega Genesis games will be on the Revolution, a part of the online library of games they're offering.

TurboGrafx!

[Nick of NSTime]

I'm actually in the .1% of people who owned a TurboGrafx (and later a TurboDuo). These systems are emulated wonderfully in Magic Engine. I'm excited about the Revolution's support of Turbo games, but I hope they add in the Konami games from Japan, as most of the American games were just crappy (with some notable exceptions).

Thats it?

[Anonymous Coward]

There have been three GDC writeups so far, including one from the Sony keynote, and all of them fairly lengthy.

Nintendo's keynote gets what, three sentences?

Re:Thats it?

[GweeDo]

Three senteces that were worth more than all the other combined :)

Re:Regardless of Budget?

[SydShamino]

All innovation takes is a new idea, fostered by a good imagination.

Budget is only somewhat related, in that you have to be able to pay people with good imaginations.

Budget is more involved with the cost of graphic designers, codes, etc. None of that is necessarily needed to implement an innovative idea.

Nerdgasm!

[RyoShin]

While lacking the details some of us were hoping for, such as an official name or any extra info on the Revolution itself, this is still some damned good news.

With all that Nintendo is bringing out this year, such as Metroid Prime: Hunters, The New Super Mario Bros, (supposedly) new Pokemon games, and now Phantom Hourglass, it makes me weep softly at my lack of funds. At least I have even more reason to wait until DS Lite hits the shores. Between all that, Twilight Princess, and the Revolution, Nintendo is most likely going to get all of my free income this year, and rightly so.

The announcement that Genesis games will be on the Revolution is completely awesome; even though Sega has put out the classic Sonic games 18 times over, it will still be fun to play them on the Rev. Plus, you have games like Echo the Dolphin, Road Rash, and more. Even better, this could pave the way for 32X, Sega CD, and Sega Saturn games. I doubt we'd ever see Dreamcast games; while the Revolution will certainly be more powerful than the Dreamcast, would it be able to emulate the Dreamcast?

So, while these might be more minor announcements in the face of other things coming from Nintendo, but it's Good News none the less.

Although, we still don't have a specific state side release date for the DS Lite, do we? Dammit.

Benefits of 'Virtual Console'

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people probably don't understand the benefits of the 'virtual console' and (probably) assume that it is some sort of gimick that won't help Nintendo. The truth is that in the past couple of christmas' those plug and play coleco/atari units (that have 4 or 5 games on them) have been some of the biggest selling videogames; even though they're not followed by the conventional gaming media. What this shows is there is a certain level of comercial viability in 2D games (in particular formerly popular 2D games) which isn't really being capatalized upon by anyone.

Re:Regardless of Budget?

[sehryan]

FYI - Dev kits for the Revolution are running about $2k, which, from what I understand, is dirt cheap compared to what N has charged in the past, and what Sony and MS are charging for theirs.

Hopefully, N will allow indie developers to distribute directly through the online system, thus lowering the barriers for publishing a game.

Re:Revolution?

[sehryan]

So it isn't innovation if they use the same characters, even if the gameplay is completely new and amazing?

Thinking about Mario 64. Pretty much considered a ground-breaking game in terms of 3D on a console. Yet, according to the way you put it, it is just another Mario game.

They can use Mario or any of the others as much as they want as long as they keep making the games fun.

Plus, as a side note, there has been talk of a new franchise being launched with the Rev.

Re:Nerdgasm!

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt we'd ever see Dreamcast games; while the Revolution will certainly be more powerful than the Dreamcast, would it be able to emulate the Dreamcast?

I would suspect that the Power difference between the Revolution and the Dreamcast is at least as large as the XBox 360 is to the XBox. what is probably holding back Sega CD, Saturn and Dreamcast games is that Nintendo is VERY careful when it comes to piracy; there is currently no information on what format the Revolution's discs are, meaning they could be a varation of a DVD or a non-standard HD format (remember the Gamecube's disc were a small version of a format [created by Panasonic] that was rejected that was then modified) and it is unlikely that Nintendo would allow the system to use a conventional DVD or CD format as a game disc. Sega CD, Saturn and Dreamcast discs could all be too similar to a existing format so Nintendo may have the drive reject these discs to prevent piracy.

I admit, I could be wrong and these formats may be included; Nintendo may not have announced it because they're not going to be delivered in a digital format.

Re:Zelda DS

[scarpa]

Actually I was totally stoked to see them using cel-shading again and it was one of the first things I noticed on the trailer.

Wind Waker's art was awesome and inspired. I can't say the same about Twilight Princess unfortunately.

Re:Nerdgasm!

[eqisow]

"Even better, this could pave the way for 32X, Sega CD, and Sega Saturn games. I doubt we'd ever see Dreamcast games; while the Revolution will certainly be more powerful than the Dreamcast, would it be able to emulate the Dreamcast?" Emulating the Dreamcast would not be a problem. The fact that the Revolution would comes with 512 megs of flash, however, would be a huge problem. Even if you expanded it with a 2GB SD card (expensive!), you could still only fit a couple games I would think.

ROM sites

[payndz]

I guess Nintendo (and Sega, and Hudson, and anyone else who gets involved) will now be setting their lawyers on all the 'abandonware' ROM sites for outdated consoles...

Re:Revolution?

[PitaBred]

Seriously, why does Disney insist on using Mickey as their mascot. They should like, get with the times.
Besides, the games are fun. That's all there really is to it. It's a somewhat familiar feel with the characters, but almost always with completely new gameplay (not just new levels, new things that happen, new stories, new interactions with the environment, all kinds of innovative things). Say what you want about the characters, but there's a REASON people tout Nintendo as being innovative. It's because they are.

Re:Cheaper than Microsofts? No...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, dude? Read what you just pasted.

the rumor is that Microsoft plans on announcing Wednesday a developers kit

Wednesday was yesterday. Unless you can find a news report about this actually having happened on wednesday, your rumor was wrong.

At any rate of course DirectX and XNA games will continue to be available to develop dirt cheap-- they're PC games!! You can develop them for free!! But just because the XBox 360 basically runs PC games does not make a PC development environment equal to an XBox 360 or Revolution development kit.

Erm...

[Vlad2.0]

While I agree that it's a very smart business move, I highly doubt that MS allowing homebrewed games would change the chances of their console being compromised.

Not only would making SDKs publicly available increase the amount of information about the system (and thus, increase the chances of someone "cracking" it), very, very, very few of their marketshare plays homebrew games. Just think about their XBox live service; I doubt homebrew would mesh well there - too much room for exploitation.

Of everyone I know with an xbox (about 10 people), 4 have modded theirs. None of them play any homebrew games (unless you count emulators, which I'd hardly call homebrewed). No one I know has expressed intrest of any homebrew games. Maybe homebrew games are the shit and I'm just living in totally ignorance of them, but I have a hard time imagining any homebrewers creating anything impressive enough to really catch peoples' eye. Feel free to disprove me on this count, though (if there's some great homebrew xbox games I'd like to give them a shot).

whoa!

[akhomerun]

holy crap, they gamecubed the DS and TurboGrafxed the revolution!

nintendo is pulling a whole lot of good shit out of their asses lately!

compared to the PS3 keynote...well there was just no contest!

Sony: "Uhh yeah the tech specs are awesome, 1080p, PSP is sweet, and there's another God of War game. Yeah. Buy Blu-Ray because it's the best LOL"

Nintendo: "Revolution is now SEVEN FUCKING CONSOLES IN ONE"

Re:whoa!

[akhomerun]

not to mention sony's "in game advertisement is an important part of the PS3's future"

haha screw that!

Re:Shot Selves In Foot A Little

[mouse_clicker]

No, that's not the same crowd Nintendo's targeting at all, not in the least- I don't see why so many people think the tech heads represent such a significant portion of the gaming community. They're marketing the virtual console to the same people they marketed the NES Classic series to, the nostalgic casual/non-gamers who perhaps played some games back in the NES/SNES days but not since.

And if the NES Classic series is any indication, the virtual console will probably turn Nintendo a profit on the Revolution alone.

-Moses

Re:Shot Selves In Foot A Little

[Knutsi]

Isn't the very fact that Nintendo will now make available it's SNES library for a charge the very same reason they where so "nazi" about people's downloading and running their stuff for free? The day SNES9x/ZSNES matured, Nintendo tried it and said "hell, our future consoles can also do this, and we can make a fortune off it!"

Apart from this, I must say the Revolution plan is brillian:
1. Make a controller that inspires radical game design for a wider audience
2. Make avilable for that audience games whichh they have fuzzy feelings for from childhood.
3. Tell the same crowd (now parents) the console is safe for kids

Of course they won't "win the console wars", but they will win a market previously sceptical and hard for Sony and Microsoft to gain grounds in. Nintendo were allways a smart company, they actually make money!

Re:Oh... my god...

[TheNoxx]

I know, they've been making games for lots of systems for a while but... to see all the old Genesis games come to Nintendo... it's like when the two arch-enemies team up to take on the new threat. Maybe, just maybe, it's a sign of things to come; first they bury the oldest rivalries, then team up to take on the evils of the video game industry.... (totally aware this won't happen, but it's been a dream of mine for goddamn forever.)

Re:Finally! Some Zelda

[Pxtl]

I agree - the stylus just doesn't work well as a joystick. I played through the whole thing, and it wasn't until the 50th star or so that I really felt comfortable, and I _still_ got nervous at anything that involved long-distance running.

Perhaps there could be future refinements of the "stylus as joystick" interface, but so far I think Nintendo has to accept that the DS does _not_ have an analog stick - it has a pointing device.

It's pretty much a combination of both styles

[technoextreme]

Looking at the trailer it seems that the view sometimes switches depending on the scenario. The one dungeon scene almost looks exactly like it would belong in A Link to the Past except it's been fleshed out. Then there are other parts of the video that look like Wind Waker.

buttons?

[carambola5]

What about the number of buttons? I presume that you would turn the controller on its side to play the old-style games, but there are only two buttons for the right hand. Maybe the other two buttons (A and B, as opposed to a and b) are easy enough to reach in the sideways position?

Seems like it would be an issue for SNES, N64 and GameCube games as well.

Re:Zelda DS

[MilenCent]

Don't worry about it. The thing that's made the N64 Zeldas and Wind Waker different from Link to the Past in feel isn't so much the graphics but the fact that it's a 3D-style game. The footage of Phantom Hourglass makes it obvious that while it uses 3D Wind Waker-style graphics, it's still definitely a 2D Zelda. Remember, Wind Waker's graphics were made cel-shaded not just to do something new, but because the style was the best way to have old style character designs and visuals in a 3D world.

Re:Zelda DS

[Justin205]

From what I've seen, Twilight Princess is more... Standard, but just as visually pleasing to me. Plus, in my mind, it's not the graphics that make a Zelda game great. It's mostly the gameplay, with a couple splashes of story in there.

Re:Nerdgasm!

[Mercano]

Grandparent was saying Sega would press new discs from the master copies in the vault.