E3 2012 Nintendo

So it's been a few days since the Nintendo Conference on Tuesday (UK Night). The big talk was about Wii U and the presentation was a hit and miss most of the time.

What went well:

Pikmin 3: This game was in the talks since 2008 and Shigeru only said last year that Pikmin 3 seems to function much better on Nintendo's new console. This year we finally get to see gameplay footage and there are a good amount of features that makes it different enough from Pikmin 2 such as:

- The introduction of Rock Pikmin,
- Controlling up to 4 leaders
- New camera angles when using the Wii U Gamepad
- Runs at 60 frames per second.
- And many more.

Support from Ubisoft: Unlike the other 3rd Party developers releasing games already out on XBox 360/PS3 such as Batman: Arkham City & Mass Effect 3. Ubisoft had the courage to create new games to take advantage of Wii U's features and put them into good use.
The video below is Rayman Legends coming out on XBox 360, PS3 and Wii U.



New games (timed) exclusive to Wii U includes ZombiiU which also takes advantage of the Wii U Gamepad to simulate how players use survival kit to equip weapons and tools (looking at the Wii U Gamepad screen and not the main TV). Ubisoft's conference received much better reception than the big gaming developers.

Reggie mentions his infamous quote:It's a bit of an insider but back in Summer 2007 where Wii Fit was revealed the first time, he said "My body, my body is ready." which only took off by storm only sometime in June 2010. This year Wii Fit U was revealed (for Wii U of course) and Reggies teases the audience to remember back in 2007 and mentions "My body was ready". Also he mentioned "Speed Run" on New Super Mario Bros U which made the IRC chat on #SDA wild.

New Mario Game for launch:
In the past history when Nintendo launches a new console without Mario, sales figures are not as high during the first six months. 3DS was a famous example as the launch line-up was lacklustre that it had an official price cut in less than 6 months worldwide. So a new Mario game on day one could give Wii U a good start.
However I am not putting this game as high as Pikmin 3 mainly because:
* Nintendo will release 2 New Super Mario Bros games this year:
 New Super Mario Bros 2 for 3DS [August 19th]
 New Super Mario Bros U for Wii U [Nov/Dec 2012]
* NSMB 2 theme is collecting gold coins.... 1 million of them.
* NSMB U notable features involves Flying Squirrels, playable Miis, Boost mode and Miiverse Messages.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What went wrong:

Fitness, dancing and singing games:
Should be banned to be shown during an E3 conference, pointless, boring, filler material.

The lack of first party franchises not relying on the plumber:This year's conference had 4 games featuring Mario/Luigi including:
* New Super Mario Bros 2
* New Super Mario Bros U
* Paper Mario: Sticker Star
* Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon

The others includes:
* Pikmin 3
* Game & Wario
* Nintendo Land

Notice the lack of Star Fox, F-Zero and Metroid. F-Zero especially never had a chance to shine during Wii/DS days as its last (Worldwide) appearance was back in 2004. There was also a trend on Twitter saying "No Zelda". Shigeru said that Zelda on Wii U is still researching/experimenting and Skyward Sword took 5 years to develop and was one of Nintendo's biggest projects ever.

But sometimes bad things can lead to good things.... imagine these underused franchises getting a chance revive and shine in E3 2013 like Kid Icarus did back in E3 2010.

Nintendo Land presentation was weak:Nintendo Land is meant to be the 'Wii Sports of Wii U' showing off simple demonstration of the new technology. One mini-game involves 4 players (using Wiimotes) finding an invisible ghost (using Wii U gamepad). The players will win if they nab the ghost and drain the life points to 00 and the ghost will win if it manages to faint all of the human players. While it was a clever idea, the execution was slow paced which tends to bore the audience a bit. I remember the #SDA chat were spamming typical espeak negativity it managed to harden the blow as it was the last game to be shown during the Wii U conference. So basically, the E3 hype meter started off high with Pikmin 3 and it went lower and lower to rock bottom during Nintendo Land.

Death of Wii/DS:Not really a weak point but there was a lack of announcements for Wii/DS, it looks like they will be out of use by 2014, the end of two of the most important consoles in the early years of the 21st century.

Some good games wern't shown during the conference:
There was a few games missing that were shown after the conference where the fans/journalists gets to try out the 'work in progress' version of the newest games available in the booth. One of them was Project P-100 developed by Platinum Games, responsible for the amazing Bayonetta and decent Vanquish, the style seems to resemble Pikmin (controlling loads of mini players) but gameplay and objective is completely different!

Nintendo Meme Moments:
Even if this year was one of Nintendo weaker years it did have memorable moments.

After E3, there was a series of videos on Nintendo's E3 website where Iwata reveals the games in more detail. This is a simple clip that is shown right after Donkey Kong Crash Course minigame on Nintendo Land.



Non Specific Action Figure stole the show as it gained a huge fanbase since the Miiverse feature video was revealed on Monday. Even Iwata approves on Nintendo's Official Youtube page

That's all for now: Greenalink OUT.

Shadow Complex

Well I haven't been posting any new blog entries for a while but this week I haven't been recording any Phantom Hourglass segmented attempts at all... A month ago I was playing Shadow Complex casually as it all started off when a speed runner named TheEnglishMan asked me if it was possible to go through this specific shaft without the double jump for his Freshfile* any%** run. I gave it a go and it took a while to know (location wise) where it was because, back when I recorded a SDA Published run in 2009 I was playing nothing but New Game+*** Any% which only uses less than 20 percent of the entire map. I had no visual idea on the other 80 percent. So as I was live streaming my attempt, I managed to perform what TheEnglishMan thought was impossible (look at the first video player near the bottom of this post). So a few days later after nailing that trick consistently, I decided to record an attempt and I got a time of 50 something minutes, the attempt was rough but I got better and better, heck at one point I even found a new shortcut through some creative thinking, it enabled me to skip 2 more items, saving a whooping 7 minutes (look at the second video player near the bottom of this post). I finished that run in roughly 35 minutes!


Then in early may I was messing around to see if one of the Foam pickups could be obtained before rescuing Claire, there was one spot in particular that looked like it was possible. Unfortunately it wasn't but I did learn something in that session that changed the speed running meta of Shadow Complex completely.

The kind of exploit is unique that you don't get to see in other games, it wasn't a damage boost or corrupting a save file, it's pretty much unique for 2D gameplay with 3D graphics (aka 2.5D) I'll reveal more of it once I receive my HD recording equipment and break some new records of this game!

EDIT: The flash players were messed up (2 very similar videos) so I added a link for one of my videos. I'll update the text later when I have time.

Notes for readers not familiar with speed running terms:

*Fresh file means starting a run with absolutely 0 on every related stat as if you started a new file.

** Any% means completing the game as fast as possible with optional powerups (like the Jet Pack) to complete it even faster.

*** New Game + means starting an new run with your stats brought over from previous playthroughs, in this case having infinite ammo when the player acquire new weapons (Grenade, Foam & Missile) and a room that contain special golden guns to enable the player to use the most powerful weapon much earlier on in the game.



My creative time saver!
http://www.twitch.tv/greenalinksda/b/315004872

The shaft TheEnglishMan asked me to solve.

My very first Japanese import and other stuff.

I rarely buy products from Ebay because of the possible chance that the product ends up a cheap counterfeit.

However on Sunday I decided to have a look on Modded Consoles and imports and this is what I eventually bought in the end.



This product is a refurbished SNES that is modified to support not only 60HZ but also the ability to play American and Japanese games! It had a paint job too with a mixture of blue and golden brown colours. It features LED which happens when you turn on the system. Speaking of which I still need to order a power supply, controller and a SNES game!!




Now this is interesting. This is considered to be my first official Japanese import, the first official US import goes to Wario Ware Twisted on Gameboy Advance I got back in 2006. Now Bare Knuckle 3 is basically the Japanese version of Streets of Rage 3. Unlike the previous 2 entries of the series, this game has some notable differences including:
Extended cutscenes,
female thugs showing a lot more skin,
Easier difficulty overall (Japanese 'Hardest' is way less challenging than American 'Normal').

Click here to find out the full comparison between Japanese's Bare Knuckle 3 and Western's Streets of Rage 3

Now this product is pretty hard to find online and I got it at a reasonable price too, it also came with this product (look at the image below).



The Honeybee adapter, this nifty accessory enables me to play my Megadrive games from Japan (Bare Knuckle 3) to be played on my European Megadrive console. It came with Bare Knuckle 3 and buying both of them individually would cost me ~£20 more.

Awesome Games Done Quick 2012

What a marathon!

I've been following the Speed Demos Archive Charity Marathons since January 2010 and they have come a long way, if you don't believe me look below:
These major marathons took place during January each year.

Classic Games Done Quick
2010 Target: $5,000
2010 Final result : $10,000

Awesome Games Done Quick
2011 Target: $30,000
2011 Final result: $52,000

Awesome Games Done Quick 2012
2012 Target: $50,000
2012 Final result: $147,000

All of these marathons were raising charity for The Prevent Cancer Foundation, The overall earnings from these marathons alone is enough for nearly 10 years of cancer research.

I donated $8.55 this year, $3 was part of the Serious Time T-shirt I purchased online at theyetee.com and $5.55 was part of a chipin donation followed by a comment.

Here is a sample of a live speed run done by Cosmo, a very well known Zelda: Ocarina of Time player. This run had 12,000 viewers watching it live.



Expect another blog post soon.

Speed Runs of the Week 9

Yep after over a month hiatus it's back.

Tools Assisted Speed Run (TAS)

Mega Man and Bass (SNES) "100 CDs" parrot14green, woabclf, sparky in 38:07.6

Interestingly the SNES games were fading away after 1995 when Sony's Playstation finally came out, but this game was as out as late as 1998! But just because the game is 1998 doesn't mean the game is glitch free. This game is probably the most glitchy non-8Bit game for the entire Megaman Franchise. More interestingly the run collects all 100 CDs with only 1 character, which is impossible without the aid of Zip glitches.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Real Time Run (Not Tools Assisted)

Metroid Prime 2 100% Single Segment Speed Run in 1:56 (In-game time) by MilesSMB



This beats a ~5 year old run that was segmented by ~ 30 minutes which shows how much you can improve on games like this years later. The runner has some very high quality runs on the first 2 Metroid Prime games, he recently cleared a Segmented Any% on Prime 1 with the in-game time of 1:00. The first game came out in Nov 2002 so I am hoping he can produce a 0:59 on Prime 1 before Nov 2012.

DS Capture Device

A lot of people are asking me how my DS can directly capture footage now:

It uses a USB Connection via pass through and it's very easy to use:

* Not only you can make snapshots of the game but you can also record footage directly. This is a huge bonus as players can record touch screen based games without having a giant hand/stylus blocking in the way.

However you do need a pretty fast PC to be able to handle it.
For the best performance, you need at least 2 USB 3.0 slots, one for the capture device and one for a USB 3.0 External Hard drive. A usb 2.0 external hard drive into a USB 2.0 slot works ok but it does drop frames from 1-10 at unexpected times if you were recording at 60fps. Do not plug a USB 2.0 external hard drive into a USB 3.0, it 'overclocks' it in my opinion.

I would mention the name of who did this mod for me but the worse case scenario is that people would request this so badly to the point that not everyone can get the DS modded by the same guy. Also he is trying to get some more pieces sometime in mid-December so in the meantime he is looking up on modding the 3DS.

The playback from the flash player is heavily compressed, so some of the text on the top right might be hard to read.

Hype month

November is the month of hype, loads of triple A titles coming out this month.

The DS and PSP are a bit left out this month thanks to the successors of the 3DS and the PSVita (out February 22nd but over a month in Japan).

On the console branch, the Wii does have a few good exclusive titles including:
The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword,
Kirby's Adventure Wii &
Mario and Sonic at the London Olympic games

Xbox 360 Kinect has 2 notable games including:
Kinect Sports: Season 2 &
Dance Central 2
The console also has 1 remake coming out to celebrate 10 years of the franchise:
Halo Combat Evolved: Anniversary.

Not only the single player campaign is visually enhanced but it contains a DLC code to unlock the newest multiplayer map pack based on the early Halo maps but it also includes a new Firefight map to be played on Halo Reach.

There isn't a lot of exclusive PS3 games other than:
Uncharted 3 &
Little Big Planet Special edition.
Uncharted 3 is already out and is receiving critical acclaim.

The 3DS has some big games that are coming out and no, they are not 'cheap' remakes/ports from the HD/N64 console including:
Super Mario 3D Land,
Cave Story 3D (first retail appearance)
Shinobi &
Sonic Generations (different to the HD consoles)

I would also include Mario Kart 7 but that game isn't out until early December!

On the third party games, there is an impressive amount including:

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Will CoD reach 1 million in the UK in less than 24 hours for the 3rd time running? Very likely, especially the trade-in deal at GAME that if you trade in Battlefield 3 you can get CoD MW3 for only 99p

Not everyone loves First Person Shooters, some people think there are too many of them. Here are a bunch of good games that does not involve guns in a first person view that takes place in a military war.

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim,
Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3,
Rayman: Origins,
Metal Gear Solid HD collection &
Sonic Generations (Best Sonic game in a decade)

With the exception of Rayman: Origins, these games are out on HD consoles (Xbox 360 and PS3) and not on the Wii.