Nintendo Wii Fanboy

This week's a little different for the Virtual Console, so it's a little different for Virtually Free as well. What's new? Well, for starters, we're not giving away a Virtual Console game. Instead, we're celebrating the release of WiiWare by giving away LostWinds (1000 Wii points/$10)!

So what do you have to do to win? First of all, you have to leave a comment (with a valid e-mail address) on this post telling us what you're looking forward to most of the announced WiiWare titles. Second, you must be a legal resident of the United States with an American Wii (sorry, Canadians, we have to leave you out of this one; blame the gifting system and not us!) and 18 years of age or older. You may enter once per day between now and Monday, May 19; the contest comes to a close that night at 11:59 PM Eastern time, and we'll select a winner in a random drawing the next day. Questions? Check out the official rules.

Like a child counting down the days until Christmas, I've been looking forward to Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King. I'm a sucker for Square Enix anyway, and the prospect of a $15 game (even if there is pricey DLC) was too much to resist. That's why it was so shocking to discover that my first few game days in Padarak were ... well, boring. Everything was very controlled and linear, and I couldn't run around and explore. Instead, I sat through cutscenes explaining more than I wanted to know at that point, when all I wanted to do was flex my new architek power. And then, once I was free, I had very little in the way of resources! Frustrating.

Several hours later, since I was still playing, I realized that maybe I wasn't so bored after all. The simple directive of get more stuff sucked me in as soon as I had a free hand with the game, and before I even had time to think, I was obsessed with building up my little kingdom. Without my even realizing it, My Life as a King had gone from boring to fun.

Now that a weekend (and a holiday weekend at that) has come to an end, we thought it might be a good time to ask: when was the last time you got together with friends and/or family for a little group Wii gaming? Do you get together on a regular basis for a little Mario Kart, Smash Bros., or Wii Sports? Do you rarely play together with folks? We're curious about how much multiplayer action you're getting.

We may be limited to sporadic updates from Red Fly Studio's Mushroom Men, but they're usually worth the wait. Today, we've got a little quality time with the developers, who sound just as excited about working on their project as we are about playing it. They also manage to work in a little humor, which we're also big fans of around here.

The game footage included looks as great as ever, and Q4 is looking further and further away. Though, honestly, we could just stare at the concept art all day long and probably be satisfied.

Another edition of Virtually Free has come to an end, and we've learned one thing: you guys really like Mario Kart Super Circuit and want to see handheld games on the Virtual Console. We're right there with you on that one! Considering this, however, it's no surprise that today's winner chose the GBA kart racer as his winning answer:

• Someguy: another vote for super circuit

And that vote won! Congratulations to Someguy (hilarious name in this situation), and for everyone else: check back next week for an all-new shot at free Virtual Console games.

Rock Band for Wii isn't even screwing you over out yet, and already the downloadable content problem has been solved! All you have to do is buy an additional disc with a whopping twenty tracks for $29.99! No, you don't get to choose which ones you want and spend only a little money. You want extras? Pony up, suckers!

It's one thing -- and an acceptable thing -- to milk customers for a few bucks at a time for additional songs they really want. It's another thing altogether to offer up a full expansion for thirty dollars less than a month after the game is released. That's right: Rock Band isn't scheduled for the Wii until June 22, and this Track Pack is due July 15. And it's labeled Volume 1, naturally ... expect another round not long after that. We're anticipating September.

The only logical explanation for this travesty is that Harmonix is upset that they missed the Wii boat and are now scrambling to scrape as much quick cash as possible. The question is: will Wii owners take the rather unattractive bait? Fume your way past the break to see the full track listing for Rock Band's Track Pack Volume 1.

Now that Iwata has said that folks at Nintendo might be considering doing something about the storage crisis, it's time to get our speculation on about what will happen. Will we hear an announcement at E3? Perhaps before, or -- gasp -- after? We would hate to wait! And what'll it be? A new model with a built-in hard drive? Considering the continuing difficulty some people have with simply laying hands on a Wii, that seems unlikely, but multiple SKUs have worked for the other systems. Still, that sort of solution seems far, far less likely than an upgrade allowing larger SD cards or additional plug-in flash memory. Do you think we'll see a solution by the end of the year, and do you care to guess just what it might be?

Don't forget to stop by and enter our latest Virtually Free contest, in which we offer up Virtual Console games for the mere price of a comment. If you're lucky enough to be chosen as next week's winner, you'll walk away with a copy of Mario Kart 64 delivered straight to your Wii. It's fun and convenient! Just head over to the original post and leave a comment between now and Monday if you want your shot at the prize.

So far on the Virtual Console in North America, we've got Castlevania, Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, and Super Castlevania IV. Now, these fancy-schmancy Roman numerals may confuse the issue a bit, but it looks like something just might be missing from that list. Upon checking and re-checking, only one conclusion can be reached: Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse is, in fact, missing.

Okay, it's understood that every classic game can't appear immediately, as that would disrupt Nintendo's releases-every-week mojo, and we're only just now getting excellent titles like River City Ransom. But it almost seems as though someone at Nintendo had all the early NA Castlevania titles pasted to a dartboard, and a few drunken tosses determined which would be released and when. Where's Castlevania III? It's a mystery! You might as well tell us the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, or answer the question of just what a man is.

So we hear that a lot of these newfangled Wii games are really just collections of mini-games. Some are good. Some are bad. And some are just completely, horrifically awful, and those are the ones we want to hear about today. Just how bad is the worst mini-game you've played inside a Wii game? What was it, and what made it is mind-blowingly terrible? From the controls to a simple lack of any sort of fun, the worst of the worst are usually serious offenders. Tell us all about the steaming piles of poop you've experienced while checking out games.

The VC Advantage is usually geared toward nostalgia -- specifically, evoking the memories of a time gone by, when we were denied resources such as GameFAQs, we had to look up codes in magazines, and we had to walk two miles uphill to school (both ways!). Help was available in other places besides magazines back then. Needed to know what to play and how to advance? You could turn to a book ... and we're not talking about glitzy Prima strategy guides packed with glossy photos, either.

Growing up, I didn't have much access to gaming magazines, and I'm not even sure why. I'm sure I was aware that Nintendo Power existed, and I know I read a few issues, but I wasn't a subscriber and rarely bought it (blasphemy!). I did, however, read many of Jeff Rovin's How to Win books cover to cover.

Mario Kart Wii may be out already, but that doesn't mean we have to stop celebrating it! This week, we're giving away a copy of Mario Kart 64 (1000 points/$10) on the Virtual Console to one lucky reader, to better enable you to compare and contract the past and present of the series. Or, you know, just to have fun. Whatever works for you.

So what do you have to do to win? First of all, you have to leave a comment (with a valid e-mail address) on this post suggesting one other Mario Kart title you'd like to see on the Virtual Console. Second, you must be a legal resident of the United States with an American Wii (sorry, Canadians, we have to leave you out of this one; blame the gifting system and not us!) and 18 years of age or older. You may enter once per day between now and Monday, May 5; the contest comes to a close that night at 11:59 PM Eastern time. Questions? Check out the official rules.

In 2005, when the then-Revolution was unveiled, the hearts of Nintendo fans everywhere swelled with hope, but it took a Ph.D. candidate at Carnegie Mellon to begin to actually fulfill some of the crazier dreams the console first inspired. Johnny Lee's Wii remote projects have widened our perceptions of what's possible with the technology sitting in our living rooms, and even broadened our ideas of what gaming could -- and maybe should -- be. Lee is a magician, and we're not the only ones who think so; he recently blew the lids off smarter brains than ours at the TED conference with his cost-effective Wiimote whiteboard and head tracking demos.

But if you ask him, Lee insists he's just this guy, you know? And we did ask; in fact, we recently sat down for a talk with the Wiimote genius, and he dished up some pretty interesting tidbits on everything from the future of head tracking to his own recent job search. Before you ask, no, he's not going to Nintendo, but he may be headed back to YouTube soon for a few more project videos.

NWF: Speaking of what the companies are doing and/or not doing, there was some discussion that EA was going to include your head tracking in BOOM BLOX, and then suddenly it was announced that head tracking was no longer going to be available as the discussed easter egg. We're pretty interested in what happened there, if you can discuss it at all.

JL: I was a little disappointed to hear about that. I have been in touch with Louis Castle, who was involved in that decision, and it's actually a pretty complicated decision, and I don't know if I'm at liberty to explain exactly why, but I understand why they decided to take it out. Rest assured that I know EA is still interested in including it, and so are several other companies, so even if it doesn't come out next month, it will probably be integrated into games within the next year.

NWF: So you do think we'll see it in this generation?

JL: I think so. If Nintendo doesn't do it, I'm fairly sure that Sony and Microsoft may be interested in doing something similar. It's simply ... the kind of visual experience that head tracking provides is simply an evolutionary step in display technology and interactive displays, and it would be foolish not to embrace that progress in technology. It's not so much a feature, it's just a technological step forward, similar to 3D TV, that will eventually come. Nintendo may or may not decide that this is an okay idea, but even if they don't, it will come in some other form from some other provider.

[NWF note: Sony, in fact, has a head tracking demo of their own]

NWF: You know, that's interesting, because there's a lot of discussion any time we see another of your projects. Nintendo fans just blow up with excitement, because what you're doing with the Wii remote is so much more interesting than what a lot of actual Wii games have done with the motion controls. Why do you think that is?

JL: Well, I don't have any rules to conform to. In truth, when choosing to make something for a game console, a developer has to sign a lot of agreements and play within a very well-defined space that determines what they can and cannot do. I have been talking to some Wii game developers and they've said that ... if a game requires too much motion or requires ... they had some word for it, but essentially, if it requires too much movement on the player's part, Nintendo asks them to pull it. There are all these internal guidelines they have to conform to that prevent them from doing anything too -- I hate using the term "outside the box," but this is a box that has been defined by Nintendo and they literally can't step out of it. The video game industry is also extremely market data driven, which is unfortunate. The investment levels keep going up and up, and the certainty of return keeps going down, and as a result, marketing has more control over development. And if marketing says something isn't going to sell, or if marketing has no data on it, so if something is too radical or if it's a new IP with a new story or new characters, and it's untested, marketing tags it as high risk. If there are safer, but more boring [laughs], the decision tends to be to make the more boring title, which is unfortunate. That's actually why I decided not to work at any game companies specifically, like Electronic Arts or Ubisoft, because my ideas would have likely been squashed quickly by marketing.

NWF: Do you think those same marketing people, or maybe anyone at these companies, is really paying attention to the reaction your projects are getting? Obviously somebody is listening, because they're contacting you, but do you think the reaction is enough to change some of those things you were just talking about?

JL: I think so, or at least, that's my impression. The wonderful thing about my videos is that they're widely available, and they've given marketing departments some data that they can work with. It's put something out into the world for very low cost -- because all I did was make a video in my house, so I didn't have to invest much money -- but marketing can now look at the numbers associated with the video, like the number of views, or they can send out a survey or poll games about these particular features, and then marketing can make an assessment about the risk of the feature. So, I think the main contribution these videos have had, at least to the gaming industry, is that they've given marketing some data that indicates this is a worthwhile feature. Getting it integrated into near-term titles is a little difficult, though, because it takes a few years to build a game. If they're going to retrofit an existing title with these features, it adds risk to the title. If they're going to build a new title around this feature, it's not going to hit the shelves for at least two years or so, or a year if they do a really simple title. It's sort of interesting ... I've gotten exposed to the business of video games recently. It's unfortunate that the business of the video game industry almost seems designed to squash innovation, or at least discourage it, because it's risky.

NWF: Well, that explains a lot of our Wii games!

JL: The Wii also has another complicated issue. Actually, I would say there are two. One is that the input control system is so radically different from the other two consoles that the only way to make a good game is to start from the ground up for the Wii. If you port an existing game, it's usually not going to be very good, because the control schemes don't map over very well. Cross-console game publishing has become a popular business model, simply because it's a more attractive return on investment for game developers. So, for the Wii, they have to take on the risk of making a game just for the Wii instead of doing that.


Another problem ... accelerometer data is actually very hard to work with, so most of the games have very simple shake recognition, sort of an analog shaking recognition, sort of like the Rayman games, where you make the person run faster by pumping faster. But really complicated gesture recognition is actually very hard to do. Some dancing games, for example, are very difficult to make trigger reliably, because you want to make sure you're getting positive movement. You want to correctly register movement, but you don't want to be too generous or too critical. If you're too generous, the game is too easy, it's not compelling, you can cheat at it .... If you're too critical, the game doesn't trigger properly and then you get frustration on the part of game players.

NWF: I'd also assume shaking speed and method is harder to translate in a game manual than something like "press A for action X."

JL: Right. And game developers just don't know how to use it yet, because it's pretty new. It's pretty radical, and it has a lot of its own technical issues, not only in coming up with interesting game content, but also in dealing with the control scheme. It may take another year or two before game developers are used to working with an accelerometer. They had a decade to get used to the joypad. The technology in the Wii remote is still new to developers and they aren't necessarily using it in the best way yet, so there are a couple reasons why Wii games have at times been less than stellar, and maybe haven't lived up to the hopes and dreams of Wii owners.