Games

Some of you may have noticed how I rant about Pokémon sometimes. It actually makes me wonder if I’m still secretly in love with the series… Probably not, but past games in the series have been enjoyable. After the recent release of Pokémon Heart Gold and Soul Silver you’d think the DS has seen more than enough Pokémon for at least another decade. The opposite however, holds true. Nintendo aren’t done yet. In fact, they’re far from done. Recently they announced… *drum roll please* …

Pokémon Black and White!!

I jokingly said how they must be running out of colors and noble metals once, but it seems like this is actually the case. Then again, black and white aren’t even colors. Personally I think this will be a very interesting addition to the Pokémon series. There is one thing I wonder about though… What will the differences be between the two different versions? Does the white version support more jobs than the black version? Will the black version support other benefits such as… positive discrimination? Will the black version support gang wars– I’m just going to stop here, but Nintendo, please!! The names just ask to be joked about. Couldn’t you have picked some other colors such as Pink and… Uh… Cyan? I don’t know, anything other than this. You could have even used the metals again! You could have used other things such as Shade and Light! You could even go as far and use random objects such as Microwave and Dishwasher!

To be honest, I don’t think Nintendo really cares. I think it’s sort of a wasted generation by releasing it in the DS. Couldn’t they at least have waited for the 3DS? They could have made use of the new technological advancements the new system offers, instead of sticking with a system that already had a generation and remakes. Even the graphics look extremely similar to Diamond, Pearl, or any other Pokémon DS game for that matter. You know what? I was… *gasp* Planning on buying Soul Silver, something I’m still planning on doing, but what’s the use of another generation at the moment? Nintendo wantz ur monies, that’s what. D:

Excuse the lack of a decent image. I don’t have Photoshop anymore and I had to use Paint to create the image above.   I know I haven’t been updating the blog all that often the past few months, but I hope to change that! … Again. I hope you’re all doing well out there, though! What’s your opinion about the new games? Do you think Nintendo should have waited?

Seriously, what happened to the poor guy? For those unfamiliar with the character, he’s the hero fom the N64 game Rocket: Robot on Wheels. It was one of the better N64 games released. Perhaps one of the first games that used physics in a proper way. The story was… odd. But that’s what made the game unique. It involves a theme park, a mascot walrus, and one f’d up raccoon. Compared to other platformers like Tonic Trouble, Rocket was a true gem. It’s a true shame it’s just so underrated.

Rocket had a weird gravity gun on his helmet that allowed him to pick up all sorts of items. The system worked awesome back with the crappy N64 controller, so imagine how it would work on the Wii! I’m hoping the developers might pick up the franchise one more time and make a sequel for the Wii. Or at least a Virtual Console version of the N64 version. The former will probably never happen, though. The developers of the game, Sucker Punch Productions, are only developing Playstation games nowadays. They made the popular Sly franchise on the Playstation 2, and they’re working on inFamous for the PS3 as well. Ah well. I’m pretty sure 99 percent of the N64 owners don’t even know this game exists.

If you want to know more, check out this wikipedia article: linky.

I’m sure most of us Nintendo fans grew up with the Super Nintendo. Do you still remember playing Super Mario World? Even though Miyamoto thought that the game felt rushed, it was still one of the best SNES games made. Much to our delight we even got a sequel: Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island.

But was Yoshi’s Island really a ‘true’ sequel? Back in the 16-bit era game companies like Atari and Sega were experimenting with CD based consoles. I’m pretty sure most of you have heard of the Sega CD; the CD add-on for the Sega Genesis.

Although the thing was far from perfect, Nintendo apparently felt the need to create a CD add-on for their own game console at the time; our beloved Super Nintendo. Two companies were contacted: Sony and Philips. In the end Nintendo thought that a CD-based console had more than a few limitations. Slow load times and the fact that CD’s can only be written to once were a few of them. Unfortunately this decision would turn out to be one of Nintendo’s biggest mistakes. Needless to say negotiations with both Philips and Sony failed. Sony went ahead and created the PlayStation. And we all know what happened later. Ohh boy…

There was another catch: Philips also created their own console, namely the Philips CD-I. However, Nintendo also licensed some of their most popular franchises to Philips back when they were still planning on making the add-on. This meant that there were actual games with Nintendo characters, not developed by Nintendo, for the CD-I.

Three Zelda games and two Mario games were planned. These games weren’t actually developed by Nintendo, as previously stated. And looking back, they were pretty horrible. Although the Hotel Mario and the Zelda games still provide some entertainment today.

But what happened to the other Mario game? Super Mario’s Wacky Worlds was supposed to be a direct sequel to Super Mario World, the game all love and adore. Now, why was the game never released? Apparently the game was cancelled early during its development due to technical limitations. However, several videos of the game are still available online.

So, should we be disappointed? I guess we didn’t miss much. The game still looked quite glitchy, it may have not been ready for release at all. The game was also not directed by Shigeru Miyamoto, nor was it developed by Nintendo. And looking at the quality of the other CD-I titles, it may indeed have been for the better that it got cancelled. Besides, if the game did get released, we’d have to buy an actual CD-I! Would you even consider such a thought?!