Nintendo + DeNA: What Might the Future Hold?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/22/15 at 03:22 PM CT
Earlier this week, Nintendo President, Satoru Iwata, gave an hour-long press conference in Japan announcing three major changes for the struggling Japanese game-maker.
1. Nintendo will partner with DeNA – one of Japans biggest and most popular mobile portal and e-commerce operators – for its online services. This partnership will result in a new membership service to replace the recently-discontinued Club Nintendo.
2. Through this partnership with DeNA, Nintendo will begin developing games for mobile phone (a.k.a., smart device) platforms. These mobile games will leverage Nintendo IPs, but will never be direct ports or emulations, since Nintendo understands the massive control scheme difference between controllers and touchscreens.
3. Nintendo is creating a hardware successor for the WiiU, codenamed “NX.”
These announcements come at a time when Nintendo is clearly running last in the console wars and has been struggling to remain relevant in the minds of most …
Nintendo and Checklist Gameplay: A Dangerous Affair
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/15/15 at 02:20 PM CT
There has been a disturbing trend in the games appearing on Nintendo’s struggling WiiU console. Where, in many cases, there were once cohesive story/campaign modes, engaging single-player content has now been replaced with a large number of disjointed little tasks. I like to call this newer style of game design “Checklist” gameplay because the games that employ it amount to little more than presenting the player with a list of discreet tasks and giving them a star/medal/badge/whatever for completing each task.
Checklist Gameplay also closely resembles one of the more insidious and banal trends of the 7th Generation: Achievements. It is surprising that Nintendo, despite expressing no interest in an overarching and all-inclusive Achievement/Trophy system like those employed by Live, Steam, and PSN, has decided to transform so many of its first-party franchises into little more than Achievement hunts.
Recently, I have been sorely disappointed with “Super Smash Bros. for …
Review Round-Up: Winter 2014
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/06/15 at 12:15 PM CT
Welcome back to another installment of the MeltedJoystick Review Round-Up. Here’s what our staff has reviewed since last time:
Nelson’s Reviews:
This long, cold, lonely Winter was good to me, as I was able to play through a sizeable portion of my backlog (yet it hasn’t really gotten any smaller…). I was quite pleased to be able to hand out two perfect scores and one almost-perfect score this quarter (along with a variety of other, lower numbers). Running into excellent titles like these is what keeps me gaming even when overwhelming amounts of crap are flooding the market.
“Hyrule Warriors” – 3/5
“Fallout 2” – 4/5
“BioShock Infinite” – 5/5
“Reus” – 2.5/5
“Shadowgate: 25th Anniversary Remaster” – 4.5/5
“Super Smash Bros. for WiiU” – 3.5/5
“Dust: An Elysian Tail” – 5/5
“Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams” – 2.5/5
“The Cave” – 4/5
“Millennium: A New Hope” – 4/5
“From Dust” – 2/5
“BioShock 2” – …
Playstation 4: The First 100 (Give or Take) Days
Chris Kavan - wrote on 03/05/15 at 08:17 PM CT
While I wasn't gung-ho about jumping into the new generation of gaming systems, I was presented with a deal I couldn't pass up and wound up with a brand new Playstation 4. The Nintendo WiiU has been fun, but nothing I was dying to get. The PS4 was likewise on my "somewhere down the road" list, but I was willing to give it time. That being said, after jumping in, have played (or am playing) two of the most highly-regarded games - Shadow of Mordor and Dragon Age: Inquisition. One will also note they are both cross-platform games.
There is nothing wrong with the PS4 - graphics-wise, it is certainly a beast. But I have never been one to hang my hat on how good graphics are (as seen my my less-than-stellar PC setup). However, at this time, it may be the most impressive thing about the system. Exclusives? Thus far they have been few and far between - Knack and Infamous: Second Son both launched with the system - though both were somewhat successful, neither were overwhelmingly good - …
Backlog: The Embiggening - March, 2015
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/28/15 at 04:06 PM CT
Winter is officially over, but it sure doesn’t feel like it when temperatures are still frigid and so much of the United States is still covered in a thick blanket of never-melting snow. What kind of games will Spring bring to warm us up? Probably a hot, steaming load of manure!
There is surprisingly little shovelware coming in March. There’s a new ‘LEGO Ninjago’ game hitting both handhelds (the Vita and 3DS for those not paying attention) and a new annual release for “MLB: The Show.”
There are a few more ports and remasters than there are bits of shovelware, serving only to pad out the release numbers without adding anything new. The PS3 and Xbox 360 are having two compilation bundles dropped on their moldering corpses: The “Ultimate Action Triple Pack,” which contains “Just Cause 2,” “Sleeping Dogs,” and the rebooted “Tomb Raider,” along with the “Ultimate Stealth Triple Pack,” which contains the rebooted “Thief,” “Hitman: Absolution,” …
Should Nintendo Do Like Sega? The Final Word.
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/22/15 at 02:53 PM CT
Nintendo, the developer/publisher/hardware maker that single-handedly saved gaming in North America during the 1980s has not been doing well lately. And by “lately” I mean “Since 1998.” With the exception of the Wii – the success of which now seems much more like a fluke, in the same manner as a viral video, than a repeatable formula for success – Nintendo has been struggling along since the N64, propelled primarily by their own first-party software and the legions of fanboys who think the company can do no wrong.
Unfortunately, it seems that everyone who isn’t a Nintendo fanboy is some sort of militant anti-Nintendo hater. The anti-Nintendo camp primarily relies on single-word arguments such as “kiddie,” “casual,” or “milking” to explain why Nintendo should just go out of business already instead of releasing consoles like the Gamecube or WiiU that don’t really have any third-party games. Of course, when the anti-Nintendo crowd talks about …
Nintendo’s Emulation Secret Revealed
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/15/15 at 02:11 PM CT
The friendly hackers of GBAtemp have, once again, laid bare the inner workings of a Nintendo gaming platform. Where Team Twiizers opened up the original Wii to homebrew and emulation via their fantastic Homebrew Channel, a homebrewer named Smealum is responsible for opening up the 3DS.
However, what is the most interesting about the news of the 3DS being hacked isn’t the fact that it is now possible to run homebrew on Nintendo’s latest handheld (provided one refrains from ever downloading official updates again). Instead it is the newfound knowledge that Nintendo has fully-functional emulators and has been holding out on us.
When the Virtual Console first launched on the Wii, many people assumed that instead of a garden variety emulator, such as the ones that have been floating around the Internet for over a decade, old games sold via the VC were encased in a custom wrapper that allowed them to work with new hardware. That illusion has been stripped away with the revelation …
Come Join the New MeltedJoystick Steam Group!
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/06/15 at 03:07 PM CT
With the massive disappointment of the nascent 8th Gen consoles and the massive improvements PC gaming has experienced over the course of the last 8 years, the MeltedJoystick crew has found ourselves moving from apathy or outright hostility toward PC gaming to picking Steam as our preferred platform for most things “AAA” and Indie. With the surge of PC game reviews coming from Chris and myself, it only makes sense for MeltedJoystick to jump on-board with Steam’s new game curation program.
Anyone with a MeltedJoystick profile can request to join the MeltedJoystick Crew Steam group and participate in discussions and heated banter (just send Chris a Private Message). Those without a profile can still follow MeltedJoystick as a Steam Curator in order to see our latest Steam recommendations as we review them. MeltedJoystick members who write Steam game reviews of a high enough quality to win the Featured User Review slot in our quarterly Review Roundups will also have the …
Backlog: The Embiggening - February, 2015
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/01/15 at 02:52 PM CT
Winter is almost over, and the money-spending rush of Holiday Season 2014 is long behind us. It’s February, and gamers who even bothered to make New Year’s Resolutions have probably abandoned them by now. What about the developers and publishers, though? Well, if they resolved to make more crap, then they’re doing a great job of keeping up!
The shovelware is beginning to creep back into production. Fortunately, it isn’t quite in deluge amounts, yet. February is bringing the world both “Spongebob Heropants” (to tie-in with the upcoming live-action/CG ‘Spongebob’ movie) and a new ‘Dragon Ball Z’ game (because ‘Dragon Ball’ fans just never get tired of it, apparently).
In the realm of ports, “Dynasty Warriors 8 Empires” for PS4 and XBONE has been delayed until this month (who knows, maybe it will get delayed again!), PC is getting “MX vs. ATV: Supercross,” and Nintendo is porting one of the worst ‘Zelda’ games to the 3DS.
Coincidentally, in …
Microsoft Impresses with Windows 10 Event; Not with Xbox
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/25/15 at 02:05 PM CT
On Wednesday, January 21, Microsoft played host to tech writers and enthusiasts at a special Windows 10 event in the company’s hometown of Redmond. While it is unsurprising that the Xbox console brand wouldn’t receive much attention at an event specifically focused on the launch of a new version of the operating system that runs 90% of the world’s computers, what is surprising is just how many amazing things MS revealed with regard to the new Windows.
The first shocker announced at the Windows 10 event is that the new OS will be a free upgrade for users of Windows 7 and Windows 8.x for the first year after launch. Giving away the new OS for free is huge, and an even bigger move in the direction of consumer friendliness than when MS sold Windows 8 for a hefty discount for a time after it was released. Plenty of paranoid folks have raised questions about whether or not this free upgrade period is just a way to draw customers into a trap and start charging them an Office …
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