BUTT

It just doesn't make any sense to me. I understand the need to draw new casual fans into the fold, but they aren't the entire games market. The goal should be to get those casual fans AND hardcore gamers. Nintendo doesn't seem to realize that "core gamers" doesn't just extend to "people who were Nintendo fans before Wii came out." They think that their Gamecube sequels like Animal Crossing and Mario Strikers Charged are enough to satisfy the "core" crowd. And I'm sure if you were a big Gamecube fan, you like Wii because they're the same system they have a lot of the same franchises. But Nintendo needs to reach out to that other, very large portion of the gaming audience: those who chose a PS2 or Xbox over Gamecube because they thought the games on the 'Cube looks "kiddy" and "lame." Nintendo has done NOTHING to cater to them. The upcoming Fatal Frame IV, which they are publishing themselves at least in Japan, and probably here, fits in that category but it wasn't shown or talked about at the conference at all. They haven't even done the traditional "upcoming games" montage at their E3 conference for two years. And as Andrew said, casual buyers don't buy many games. Nintendo only really needs 2 or 3 big Wii games for them per year, and maybe 4 or 5 for DS. They know the potential to sell these types of products for years and years, so they should try to knock one out of the park for each one. As I can gleam from what's been announced so far, here's Nintendo's first-party release list for the rest of the year, some of which will surely get bumped to '09 and some of which haven't been given release dates yet so they probably aren't even scheduled for '08: Wii: Mario Super Sluggers Wario Land: Shake It Wii Sports Resort (the cutest game that you have ever seen!) Wii Music Animal Crossing: City Folk Fatal Frame IV DS: Rhythm Heaven (AKA Rhythm Tengoku) Cooking Navi Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia Kirby Superstar Ultra Fire Emblem, maybe? Impressive list...if you're impressed by FAILURE! AHAHAHAHA oh crap all i have are ds and wii

Are we assuming everything else is equal here? Does RVD get injured early in the year? Does Awesome leave in April?

I still can't believe how bad Nintendo's conference was. OK, I was dumb with all those sequels I predicted earlier. REAL dumb. It was just wishful thinking. Except for Nintencats. I really thought that was coming. It's been three years since the first Nintendogs. It's high time for a spinoff, as a prelude to the inevitable Wii Nintendogs. As soon as they started with Cool Mom talking about snowboarding, I knew we were in trouble. If the first game you show is the multiplatform Shaun White Snowboarding, methinks you don't have the strongest hand to play. But as I was watching, I thought "OK, it's just like last year's conference, but I'm sure there will be at least ONE cool game announced." Nope. I liked Wii Music, but they showed that two years ago. The Wii Sports sequel is smart and it might be fun, but it's not like I'll run out and buy it the first day. Maybe not even the first year. And then I saw Reggie on G4 after the conference, telling Morgan and co., "How could a core gamer be disappointed? We announced Animal Crossing AND a new GTA!" I don't expect/want Nintendo to jump on the me-too bandwagon and make a Halo/Gears clone like so many companies are doing, but they can't even make ONE game that appeals to the audience that likes those games? Does every title they release have to be an evergreen blue ocean paradigm shifting market disruptor for the expanded audience?

Well, you got rid of the celebrity angles (Lauper backing Richter and Mr. T wrestling) that made Wrestlemania successful. Congrats ryankeast, YOU JUST KILLED THE WWF HOW DO YA FEEL ABOUT THAT?? But other than that, good work.

No man, Wii Music looks awesome. It was the only thing at the Nintendo conference that I liked.

Well, at least Wii Music looks cool.

Three new games? THREE? Clone Wars? I already knew about this! Same for Rayman!

12. Well, I guess 9 where you live.

This Nintendo conference is off to a bad start. Cool mom! Shaun White!

SERIOUS ENTRY:

So, I will make bold predictions for Nintendo's conference: (Note: none of these are especially bold) (Another note: I'm not including Animal Crossing, Kid Icarus or Punch-Out because those are the three games everyone expects) Wii: 1080 using Balance Board Mario Golf Zelda: Four Swords sequel for Wii Ware Puzzle League for Wii Ware New Duck Hunt and/or Hogan's Alley for Wii Ware Hard Drive Kirby Eternal Darkness 2 DS: New DS design Pikmin NintenCATS (this may be going out on a limb) Mother Trilogy Golden Sun 3 New 2D Metroid Donkey Kong Country 4 (but that's a wild guess) If I get 5 of these right, I'll consider it a success

Here in 'merica we call that game Super Buster Bros. Need I go into detail on how this game was a national obsession back in '94? How when I was nine I thought this was the coolest thing ever, how I looked forward to September 9th for months, how my brother told me in May of that year there was a kid in his 8th grade class who swore he had a copy of MK2 for SNES and that the game was already out in Florida? And how when it finally came out for home systems, unlike the first one, it wasn't a disappointment and everyone was happy that Acclaim got it right? Aww yeah.

I read Butterfinger BB's are coming back, and that makes me happy. I preferred those to Butterfinger bars.

Hey Bix, do you also think WarGames '97 is rad? You have Ric Flair, admitted past steroid user, alleged wife beater, accused road rage perpetrator, a man who continued to wrestle for until he was 59 despite breaking his back in his 20s, a man who allegedly twirled his dick around on a plane while naked except for a robe; Curt Hennig, a notorious prankster who once took a noxious shit under the ring, causing the Ultimate Warrior to vomit, and who died of acute cocaine intoxication at 44; Steve McMichael, a former NFL star once referred to by a reporter as "one of the least evolved members of the human species," who allegedly, according to a highly popular message board thread, wrestled under the influence of cocaine; and Chris Benoit, a deranged drug-abusing psychopath who killed his wife, then killed his son with his wrestling finisher, an incident which caused members of the wrestling community to express false shock, while in fact they always knew he was a family-killer waiting to happen (by the way I'm not going to talk about his first wife and kids because I'm too much of a nice guy to do that. Congratulate me.) against the team of Kevin Nash, a 7-foot-tall asshole who once missed the biggest wrestling show of the year because he was so messed up on weed brownies and muscle relaxers that he thought he was having a heart attack; Konnan, the Mexican superstar whose GHB and steroid use caused him to need a kidney replacement; Buff Bagwell, a grossly-inflated muscle freak who once had a 40-pill a day Soma habit; and Sean Waltman, whose drug and alcohol issues led to multiple stays in rehab and a suicide attempt. I bet your friend Matthew R. could have some fun writing about that one!

ridiculously

Oh man, Katy Perry is so hot, so saucy. But her music is terrible! Even Stephen Thomas Erlewine didn't like it, and he gives everything 4 stars.

My favorite shooter.

In my opinion, the best movie-based game for NES. It's the next best thing to Zelda on the system, and it's actually closer to Zelda III to Zelda I.

There's nothing to support "Rhiad" being "Oklahoma." The reason why it's been reported so is that when they first played the song in Vegas in 2001, the people writing the first reports on the show mistook something Axl sang in the song as "Oklahoma." That's where the confusion comes from.

I actually liked Simon's Quest. I think it gets a bad rap. But Castlevania III is everything that a Castlevania game should be. The multiple characters, the different paths you can choose? That was some heavy stuff back in the NES era. I probably should have picked this one earlier instead of CV4, but whatever. Also of note: the Japanese version has much better music than the American version. If they release this on the VC, I'd hope it would have the Japanese soundtrack. But there's no way it will.

Do you mean Chocobo's Dungeon? That's just an FF spinoff, but IGN gave in an 8.4.

They wanted Flair. He refused because he didn't want to be brought back just to job for Nash. The funny thing is, unbeknownst to Funk or WCW, Terry was still under contract to WWF, as they had let his deal run over. WWF could have sued WCW over it, but they chose not to.

Bret turns 51 tomorrow.

The black sheep of the Zelda series. Took everything people liked about the first Zelda and threw it out the window. That took a lot of balls. You don't see sequels that are nothing like their predecessors anymore. It's a shame.