You want Mario on your iPhone and I want a real life baby unicorn.

I don't always blog, but when I do, it's because of something stupid I saw on the Internet.

Listen, I've had it up to here with your stupid "Nintendo should start making IOS/Android games" posts. You're stupid and so is your mother's face. - me

Lately I've observed this disturbing trend were professional video game writers and so called analysts go on rambling about how Nintendo should pull a SEGA and start selling their games on smartphones and tablets.

I've commented on these posts whenever I see them, but haters just won't listen to reason. I think now I understand why. The key word here is "should". I can't call out the fallacy because of THAT word. Were they saying "Nintendo must", "it would be profitable to Nintendo if" or anything among those lines, my argument that Nintendo sells consoles at a loss and only starts making profit after a few games are sold for each would suffice.

Should (SHo͝od), Verb

• Used to indicate obligation, duty, or correctness, typically when criticizing someone's actions: "he should have been careful".

• Indicating a desirable or expected state: "by now students should be able to read".

By that logic. I could make a blog post about how the people of the world should unite and name me their new leader. I also think IOS and Android should make love and give birth to baby iDroids, which they would hand out for FREE, preloaded with each piece of software ever known to man. They would also have a Sega Genesis cartridge slot, and it would come packaged with Sonic 3 AND Sonic & Knuckles cartridges. Why should they? Because that's what I want, Isn't that a valid reason?

Listen, Mario is, right now, the most recognized character in video games, and the franchise is the top selling video game franchise of all time. OF ALL TIME! Hell, Mario is arguably more popular than Mickey Mouse! And that's on Nintendo systems alone (and the occasional odd PC licence). Would the franchise sell better if it were available on smartphones? Logic dictates YES, but it doesn't need to sell any better! Not only is it selling well, its selling best, and that's better enough.

Fact: People buy Nintendo consoles to play Nintendo games, and their oft-criticized lack of third party support aids my argument. Wii is the best selling console of this generation, matched only by XBOX 360, but the sales figures for those don't mention that avid fanboys repeatedly buy replacement consoles whenever their Xboxes die, and that the system has been repachaged a million times. The only reason Wii sales have dwindled recently is because of the Wii U.

Finally, always remember Nintendo is a hardware company, just like Apple is a hardware company. Apple makes all kinds of neat software and services to sell their hardware, to the point some of their hardware is actually popular because of the software. Apple is known because their software, especially the operating systems, are built from the ground up along the hardware, and you don't see people asking Apple to sell IOS on Samsung devices. So why should Nintendo allow their competition to use their software? Is it because their hardware is selling so poorly, kinda like what SEGA did? Well, kiddo, the difference between SEGA and Nintendo's (and I'm a SEGA fanboy before a Nintendo fanboy) is that their hardware actually sells a lot better than their competition, even though the loud minority composed of "hardcore" gamer wants you to think otherwise. Just look at the sales numbers.

So quit whining about how you want Mario on your iPhone or Pokemon on your Android, buy a goddamned Nintendo system or STFU and GTFO.

The Damsel In Distress

Just in time for international women's day, this video comes up, reminding us of a serious issue that is still rampant in the world of gaming, sexism.

Do you think this will turn into a PR disaster for Nintendo? I hope it doesn't, but this, together with turning their only good female character into a bootylicious blonde with daddy issues in Metroid Other M, should not go unnoticed. To be honest, I lost a bit of respect for Miyamoto after watching that video.

What are your thoughts? Please comment! In the meantime, here's a video of a hacked Donkey Kong game on which Pauline saves Mario.

Outdated Review: The "Denpa" Men: They Came By Wave

OK. There's a free demo out there for this game, so I won't waste my time telling you why you should get this game. Just play the demo.

I, however, want to tell you why you should get the demo. Denpa men is a JRPG in the classical sense, a dungeon-crawler if you will. But at the same time it's a very interesting experiment.

[insert flashback sound effect here]

Back in the day, when games were about gaming and not about story, RPG's (now known a JRPG's, before the gaijin ruined the genre) were the exception. These games were meant to be more of an interesting interactive story, inspired by classic western table-top RPG's (circle closed). Somehow one of the tropes of the genre was that battles had to be strategic, and turn based. Whenever a game broke away from the formula and added action, it was demoted to an "adventure" game.

The thing was, that the general impression was that if you wanted a really good story, you wanted an RPG, and usually that meant muscling through hours of tedious grind. You had to work HARD for your story (or you could just buy a book). Anyway, my point is, the 16-bit era was tough. WE had it tough. Kids nowadays get all kinds of cool stories even with the dumbest of first person shooters.

Curious thing, though, is that many of us eventually got used to the grind, and learned to appreciate it. Denpa Men is all about this. The turn-based combat. The strategic building of a team. The dungeon crawling. The story? Meh. You won't be buying this game for the story, sorry. But bear with me.

They took all the fun things about JRPG combat and streamlined it all the way. For example, when an enemy hits all your guys, you're just told how much damage they received in average (their individual gauges in the lower screen show HP in detail, still). When you set all your guys to attack, the animation shows them just rushing and ganging up on the enemy, then you're told the total damage made. Your party is made of 8 guys, so imagine having to wait for all of them to attack! If you've ever played a JRPG, you know most of the time you just set all of your party to attack! But you know what they did? They made an "everybody just attack" button! Oh, sweet, glorious grind! Sure, sometimes you need to do other stuff, and those get their own animations, but it's still pretty smooth. All commands are given at the beginning of the turn, Dragon Quest style, so you can use your touchscreen to give the specific orders, then when you're done, hit the "all attack" button to set everybody else on attack mode.

They even threw in an auto mode, so everybody attacks unless their "Antenna Power" is useful. You gotta approach this one with caution. It may make things a bit too easy. The AI for the auto is pretty meta, this means anybody with an attack or debuff power will use it unless the enemy is impervious to it and, healers will only heal when necessary. So it makes exploiting the enemies' weaknesses a bit to easy. Unless you do what I do and spend your day fine-tuning your powers and equipment into a deadly, fail-proof, auto-mode machine.

There's the added gimmick of HOW you find the Denpa Men. Somehow the game reads radio waves around you and generates Denpa men from them. The game's backstory is that Denpa (literally "radio waves" in Japanese) reside in radio waves, so basically they reside in actual locations. You will find specific Denpa men on your living room whenever you scan it, then some more at work. They each have a name, color, face,  personality and are attached to a real-life location, so you will find yourself recognizing them, even if you don't catch them. These personalities would be more amusing if they spoke throughout the game, but they only speak when you chose to talk to them. Yes, they totally acknowledge you as the player, and their strategist.

Anyways, the game is an interesting experiment in which they made a JRPG that's all about the grind and not really about the story. And it works. The monsters are adorable, dungeons are pretty neat, and music is super catchy, so you find yourself grinding for fun.  Buy it, it's only ten bucks. Get the demo if you don't believe me.

Cool story, bro

Ever since the creation of this blog, I've been talking about how gaming just sucks nowadays. I've written  about the "core" wars and the deep Nintendo hatred that has poisoned this generation of gamers, and other alarming facts. 'Tis true, my friends, gaming has taken an ugly turn ever since the PlayStation days. And I think I've figured out one of the main reasons.

"I only care about the story" - some jerk

Ever since the advent of the CD-rom, gaming somehow changed. I've talked before about how it destroyed video game music as we knew it, by making it linear instead of interactive. But, if you think about it, didn't it destroy everything else in the same way? Let's talk about cutscenes. In the 8 and 16-bit eras, games would have dramatic cutscenes every once in a while designed merely to add some depth to the in-game storytelling. These consisted of still images and scrolling text, or maybe some simplistic animation. Similar techniques were used for "attract mode" displays in arcade machines, again, to add a bit of "story telling" as well as some visual flare to an otherwise ugly-looking game.

But was the game ever about the cutscene? WAS IT?!?!

Cutscene in Pac-Man: Actual gameplay experience may vary.

Will someone explain to me, then, why games in the 21th century are all about the non-interactive parts? Crack open a video-game magazine, look up a gaming blog or one of those hideous TV shows about gaming, and look at how the review, even approach games. They will try to sell that shit to you like it's a fucking movie. I'm not making shit up. Open a new tab and go for it. It's disgusting.

ProTip: Don't let your hardcore buddies see you crying.

For comparison's sake, let's bring out Gamepro's classic rating scale. Remember that? Back in the day, video game magazines had their own rating scales, usually judging different aspects of the game separately, occasionally bringing up an average. These were usually:

• Graphics, covering how the game looked, not just the graphical power, but the general artistic direction. Keep in mind these magazines would rate games on different consoles with different processing power.
• Sound, focused on sound effects quality as well as music.
• Control, or how well the game reacted to your input, bad control can ruin the best games.
• Gameplay, or how much fun it actually is. Often labeled as the most important aspect.

Nope, I don't recall any specific situation in which "Story" was weighed in, but I guess it might be a factor in some publications. The main reason story was not a big deal, was because only certain genres were about the story.

OK, now back to contemporary game journalism. "It's a game about some characters who have to save something important from something bad."

That's it. That's all you get. A goddamned movie synopsis. Because now that games are fucking mainstream, somehow they thought it would be appropriate to treat them like movies, because that's what mainstream media understands.

They might throw you a "Great graphics!" bone every now and then, but who gives a damn when all games look the same? What they're rating is the console's graphic processor, not the game's "realist" (AKA non-existing) art direction. If they were rating the game's art direction, games like Skyward Sword and Monster Hunter Tri would be high above all the first person shooters. Naw, they just care about counting hairs and sweat drops. Then you have the average hypocritical gamer who says they only care about the story, but also evade the under-powered consoles like it's the damned plague.

Enough with the "graphics" tangent. My point is this: Games are not movies, and should not be judged as such. It's not about the story and the special effects. Sure, you want good graphics and a solid story, but games have a lot more to offer, because they're freaking GAMES. If you just want a good story with nice special effects and little interaction, go watch a movie and leave my video games alone!

Haters Gonna Hate

Hey kids! Today I’m going to cover a subject I have mentioned before, so to avoid repetition, please peruse the following links for context.

• Softcore
• Revenge of the (hardcore) Nerds
• My lawn, and why you should get off it

Based on recent events, and the links provided, if you have been following this blog (and by “you” I mean “nobody”) you might have seen this coming. I want to talk about the WiiU announcement on the 2012 Electronic Entertainment Expo.

Regarding the other brands, I saw many of the other presentations, and only a handful of games caught my eye, but in the end it’s all just sequels and software with very few innovations. Sure, the games look sweet, but that’s the standard nowadays. Oh and a handful of WiiU Gamepad imitations.

As an out-of-the closet Nintendo fanboy, I watched the pre-E3 presentation on Nintendo Direct and watched the actual presentation live on TV. What I saw blew my mind. I immediately went on to the Interwebs to discuss this with my peers. What I found made me not want to live in this planet anymore.

I tried to show the videos to my friends and most just flat out refused to watch. That’s right; many just rejected the concept before even knowing what it was. Kids on various social networks kept bitching that Nintendo stole Microsoft’s XBOX 360 controller design. Do you seriously think Microsoft made that from scratch?

Many criticized the Wii’s lack of third party support, probably the only true argument on the hater’s side. And while, sure, it’s a known fact that Nintendo did not play well with others, at the same time, no big budget game developer is going to waste time re-designing a game to make it playable on a system that is so different. With the new classic pro controller, developing games for the WiiU is going to be the same as the other systems, and you can tell because many developers have already brought their franchises to the WiiU. You see? They just wanted it easy, and it looks like this time around Nintendo is making it easy.

I’ve defended as well as criticized Nintendo’s decisions before, but you know what? I’ve decided I don’t need to anyway. Nintendo is a corporation, and what corporations do is make money. It is wiser to sell affordable entertainment to the masses than to sell expensive toys to a loud minority. That’s right, the “hardcore gamer” demographic is a puny, pathetic little niche in the market, just look at the sales figures.

As the meme goes, “Haters gonna hate”. I’m done defending Nintendo. The only way the “hardcore” crowd would have approved the WiiU is if Iwata had stood on the stage, pointed at a picture of a piece of hardware and said “It allows you to play Call of Duty on your Xbox360 while your mom gets you more pizza rolls”.

I know the WiiU will be successful and I will buy one as soon as I can. I know the gamepad will bring much innovation to game design, as well as practical ways to use the console on a daily basis. In know high sales figures paired with more familiar controls will bring more third party games. I know the MiiVerse will be the ultimate gaming social network. I know that by the time Sony and Microsoft announce new hardware, WiiU will already have dominated the market, and I now that developers will still continue to develop for the WiiU, 360 and PS3 long after this next generation launches (Did you know game stores still stock Playstation2 software?) It’s going to be an awesome experience, and it’s sad that I’ll have to share it with strangers
instead of my friends. But, oh well, haters gonna hate!