Survivors of the 3D Revolution
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/18/13 at 04:56 PM CT
We are the few, the proud, the old-school. We have been gaming since the third-generation or earlier. We have seen the evolution of videogames from crude and poorly-executed concepts into well-refined and polished genres. We have also lived through a time of great turmoil in order to see our closely-held beliefs vindicated: We are the Survivors of the 3D Revolution.
The term ‘3D Revolution’ has nothing to do with the trend of the past few years to return 3D glasses to movie theaters. Nor does it have anything to do with Nintendo’s latest handheld and its stereoscopic 3D gimmick. No, the term ‘3D Revolution’ refers to a generation-spanning phenomenon during which game developers became so enamored with their ability to push the graphics envelope with vector-based polygons rather than raster-based sprites that they transitioned as many games as possible into using the newer image-generation method, whether they needed it or not. The 3D Revolution began in the 5th …
Failure to Launch: What's Wrong with the 8th Generation?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/12/13 at 05:38 PM CT
The 8th Generation has been sitting on the launchpad for two years now, led boldly into the future by Nintendo’s 3DS in March 2011. Nearly a year later, in February 2012, Sony followed suit and released a successor to the failing PlayStation Portable in the form of the temporarily-pirate-proof PlayStation Vita. Nine months later in November 2012, a full year and eight months after the release of their 8th Generation handheld, Nintendo released with WiiU, the first actual console of the 8th Generation.
What all three of these 8th Generation pioneers have in common is that they have spectacularly failed to get off the ground in their early lives. Instead of streaking toward new heights in both profitability and the betterment of gaming culture, the 8th Generation has burned great quantities of fuel only to end up with a lot of smoke and no thrust. But unlike the catastrophes born from early rocketry research during the 1950s, videogame consoles are not rough prototypes, blazing …
The Official WiiU Funeral
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/05/13 at 02:18 PM CT
Friends, gamers, countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to bury WiiU, not to praise him. The evil that videogame companies do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their obsolete hardware. So let it be with WiiU… The noble 3DS hath told you WiiU was unambitious: If he were so, it was a grievous fault, and grievously hath WiiU answered it… Here under leave of 3DS, I come to speak at WiiU’s funeral, and to answer the unanwered question: What the Hell is Nintendo doing?
Instead of focusing on their struggling new console, Nintendo has been sinking all of their efforts into their until-recently-struggling new handheld, the 3DS. This seems like an enormous misstep on Nintendo’s part. Dedicated gaming handhelds are all but doomed. When done right, a dedicated gaming handheld provides nothing that a modern smartphone can’t provide. When done wrong, a dedicated gaming handheld provides gimmicky controls that are difficult to translate to other platforms and …
Backlog: The Embiggening - May, 2013
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/27/13 at 02:32 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. May is the traditional start of the Summer Game Drought… and boy is the drought coming on strong and fast! This month holds the smallest number of releases since I started covering upcoming games in the ‘Backlog: The Embiggening’ series of articles. With two new consoles on the horizon and the WiiU deserving a re-boxing, I can only hope that the even-more-drastic-than-usual drop-off in game releases this May is indicative of developers shifting focus to new hardware, and they just haven’t had the time to finish their 8th Generation inaugural projects.
The most frightening occurrence this month is that there are ZERO licensed games or shovelware on the docket. How is that even possible?! Sure, we all fantasize about a games industry that doesn’t make terrible tie-in games or super-casual shovelware… but now that we’re actually getting a month without them, the release schedule looks remarkably, impossible thin.
There …
Hindsight is 20/20 or Why I No Longer Own Any of My Original Nintendo Games
Chris Kavan - wrote on 04/25/13 at 08:53 PM CT
I have been a video game fan from pretty much day one - from playing Atari at my babysitters to happily opening my very own Nintendo one awesome Christmas morning. You have a lot going for you when you are young - boundless energy, an inquisitive mind and that feeling of invulnerability that only comes from not knowing any better. One thing you don't have: money. Unless you are amongst the 1% you have to rely on parents (and maybe an allowance) to get by. Unfortunately, it also means, as the Rolling Stones so eloquently put it: "You can't always get what you want."
I have made a great list detailing just how many games I not longer have. Other than the two PS2 games and Chrono Trigger, I can say that all the NES and SNES games were sold for the simple fact I needed money for the latest and greatest system. That's right, gems such as Monster Party (a more obscure title), Blaster Master, Maniac Mansion (R.I.P. LucasArts), Gauntlet, Shadowgate and many Mario Bros. and Teenage Mutant …
The Official WiiU Re-Boxing Ceremony
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/21/13 at 06:22 PM CT
It has been almost exactly 5 months since the MeltedJoystick crew went through the elaborate, Iwata-inspired ritual for unboxing my shiny, new WiiU (dead pixel and all). Since November, the MeltedJoystick crew enjoyed co-op playthroughs of “New Super Mario Bros U,” “Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed,” and “Nintendo Land” (maybe ‘enjoyed’ is too strong a word for that last one).
Our enjoyment of the WiiU lasted until the end of January… and it only lasted that long because we only gathered to play those games as a group once a week. Had those three games been single-player experiences, I think I would have blown through them alone by the middle of December.
While my first impressions of the WiiU were somewhat mixed, thanks in large part to the half-baked system software, slow load times, and the fact that the entire console seemed confused about whether it was a new console or a giant DS, my current impressions of the WiiU are much less flattering. It has …
Ouya! Oh No?
Chris Kavan - wrote on 04/17/13 at 02:40 PM CT
For those who have been keeping up with the blogs here on MeltedJoystick (and we thank those intrepid souls who have), you may remember that back in July of 2012, fellow blogger Nelson wrote about the recently-announced Ouya - an ambitious Android-based console. Well, flash forward to today and we know a lot more about the Ouya and things are off to a shaky start.
As reported by such sites as CNET, theverge and techradar everything from controller design to game selection has been questioned. Of course the Ouya team fired back quickly essentially saying this earlier copy was not supposed to be for review and that all issues would be addressed before the official June 06, 2012 debut.
But one has to wonder at even $99 whether the Ouya will be able to grab a piece of the market. More recently is was revealed the console is a bit slow when compared to modern Android devices ranging from cell phones to tablets. If your Android device is already better than Ouya, what's the point of …
PS3 Problem - Won't Play Blu-ray Movies
Nick - wrote on 04/15/13 at 08:37 PM CT
I first got my PS3 slim a few years ago through a packaged Sony deal including a LCD TV, a free movie and game. I thought the PS3 was the perfect solution for a blu-ray player. It could even access a media server on my network, as well as something that could play games. An all-win scenario for a low cost packaged price.
But as of late, the one thing I used my PS3 the most for started failing, playing blu-ray movies. At first it was just one or two blu-ray movies I had issues with, so I blamed it on the publisher for not following standards or putting too much copyright protection garbage on the disc. Even though that probably had some truth in it (as it makes those discs harder to read), I started having more issues. I got to the point where very few blu-ray movies would be recognized by the PS3 at all. But... the PS3 never had an issue with any game discs, not even once.
I started searching Google for hours on end trying to figure out what the problem was. Most …
One to Rule Them All: How Consolidation is Harming the Videogame Industry
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/12/13 at 03:48 PM CT
Gazing out upon the game publishing landscape, where once there existed a scenic vista dotted with dozens of small developer/publishers that stood along the skyline like a forest of exotic alien trees, there now stand instead a few hulking, farraginous monoliths, spewing toxicity and death into the air. On the Western horizon of this landscape stand behemoths like EA, Activision, Atari (delenda est), Disney, Hasbro, and Warner Bros. (the latter three aren’t even primarily game makers), while on the Easter horizon stand Square-Enix, Namco-Bandai, Sega-Sammy, Tecmo-Koei, Takara-Tomy, and Konami. While most Eastern companies have the decency to memorialize the victims of their cannibalism via hyphenated naming, in the West the many consumed to fuel the growth of the few are forgotten by all but dedicated historians.
Surely the growth of a few companies must be a good thing, at least to capitalist thinking? These dominant companies must be doing everything right while the …
A Fond Farewell to LucasArts
Chris Kavan - wrote on 04/09/13 at 08:54 PM CT
When Disney acquired Star Wars - I knew there were going to be some changes coming. But are all these changes good? Scrapping plans for 3D re-releases to focus on the new films? Good! Scrapping the Star Wars: Clone Wars Series? Bad (I'm still holding out hope it will return on one of the Disney Networks). But nothing is as big as the latest announcement to come out of camp Disney.
In no uncertain terms, LucasArts is dead. But I'm a realist here - LucasArts has been a shadow of its former glory for many years. I mean, this is the studio that gave us Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island and plenty of awesome Tie Fighter/X-Wing games. Super Star Wars was a great platformer and Shadows of the Empire is still one of my favorite N64 games. But lately things have been a bit... tepid. You can only crank out so many Rogue Squadron and LEGO games - and aside from Knights of the Old Republic, there has been a bit of a drought. Oh sure, The Force Unleashed tried - but even a new story couldn't save …
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