StarDust4Ever

@Uberchu The SNES game contained within the GB ROM is region locked. It's not dumb. Well yes it is dumb Nintendo did this but not that it doesn't work by design. The E region GB ROM contains a PAL encoded SNES ROM which will fail to load on an NTSC system and visa versa. I loaded the European Space Invaders ROM on my GB Everdrive on my Super Game Boy. The SGB enhancements worked exactly as expected but the arcade mode, which injects the SNES ROM to run on the SNES somehow, will throw an error message if the SNES is the wrong region, ie PAL vs NTSC.

Early SNES games until about 1992 did not exhibit region protection outside of the lockout chip. Later SNES games detected the hardware timings and refused to boot if the console region didn't match. This locks most later PAL games from running on cloned hardware. Super Famicom is identical to NTSC SNES besides cartridge form factor, but PAL hardware has notable differences. The Space Invaders ROM is presumably so small it fits into the SNES 128 kbyte RAM and runs entirely from there.

Fun fact: Space Invaders GB is region locked. If you put the American GB cart in a PAL SNES/Super Game Boy, you will get an error screen, and likewise if you put the PAL GB cart in the American Super Game Boy. The rest of the SGB enhanced game will run however.

1st vid = hawt! Pedobear would be proud, sorry to say...

@Jimsbo Maybe region has a big role? I showed at 2:20pm and they had oodles left. Only 4 preorders before me. But my Gamestop is on the outskirts of town. They have two within a block of each other in a popular shopping district on the opposite side of town. Perhaps also major metropolitan areas have a higher population of scalpers. In any case, I showed up 4+ hours after open and secured mine. They were expecting a line outside the door but noone showed... Hmmm, maybe the scalpers gave up this time?

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm'kay?

@Alundra-1998 LOL!

I showed up at 2:20pm. My Gamestop had 32 preorders. They only sold 4 before I arrived. (breaks into happy dance)

Exclusive Amiibo announcement in 5... 4... 3... 2...

Thanks for the reminder. It's 5:20am and I got nothing better to do. I'll stroll down to that lonely gamestop on the outskirts of town that nobody bothers with. Prolly leave around 8 or so...

Dangit. Potentially awesome "Unicorn" Amiibo pack that most will likely never see. Do want!

Also do we really need a Pro Rewards card to get this? If so, that's bunk!

Shame we have to miss these...

I don't own an Xbone or a PS4, and if I were to get one, it would be a Sony console.

@Mikes All my replays are gone???

Update data is stacked anyway, on top of the main program. If Nintendo tried, they could run old replays with only the applicable update data active. For instance, the Mario Kart 7 & 8 patches didn't kill ghost data. Even my Maka Wuhu MK7 Ghost still worked. But they rather screw over their loyal fans and not be bothered by making replays backwards compatible or even giving users the chance to record them prior to applying the update.

Nice to know all my replays are borked now. Thanks Nintendo...

I know it will never happen, but a 128megabyte N64 cart of this game (biggest ever made) would be awesome sauce!

What? No week 1 discount on Wii soft? What gives???

Splatoon accounted for one third of Wii-U lifetime software sales? Did I hear that right?

@Monado_III I actually saw one of those at CVS once for $19.99. I felt bad for the kid who got that POS under their tree.

They should re-release the Wii in China. Wii was vastly more successful than Wii-U. Citizens there are too poor to afford the latest $400 consoles from MS and Sony. Market the Wii mini bundle for $79 USD equivalent and people will buy it in droves. When the NX comes out, they will already have market share and be in a position to dominate.

Creepy. I will never look at those mounds, and clouds with eyes, the same way again...

The author got his games confused. SMB3 was legit. SMB2 was all a dream, possibly as an excuse for why the game wierd and not playing like Mario (because it wasn't).

Be nice if we could actually get this in the US...

@BulbasaurusRex Nintendo put analog triggers in the original Classic controller, then nobody used them, and they were gone from the Classic Pro and Wii-U Pro. Really dumb Nintendo. I opened my PDP controller and the analog triggers are entirely fake. There's a huge spring in there and you have to depress it all the way down to actuate the button.

@Kirk No kidding. When I got hooked on Little Bit Planet GOTY, I did the whole campaign and several spinoff series like the Pirates Pack (water) etc...

I typed "Mario" and there were literally tons of fan made Mario themed stages, many of which I came back to months later, prooving they were never pulled by Sony.

People have been hacking Mario games since the late 90s and the grid based system still employed in 2D and 3D Mario games is perfect. Nintendo should have done this ten years ago on the Game Cube. To say there isn't demand for this is silly.

Also viral marketing is paramount. If Nintendo does not at least include a You Tube uploader, with full stage support instead of one minute like they did with MK8, they will have missed a huge opportunity.

Nothing for me this week...

A bunch of hot babes and one ugly dude. Maybe do a bit more gender balanced next time...

Should I be upset the video didn't match the thumbnail?

I wished they'd do a diamond pad. Gamecube buttons can be awkard for playing VC and other games designed with the diamond pad in mind. Y, B, A in totally wrong spots.

I just want to see VB Wario Land come to 3DS VC. And maybe 3D Tetris, but that ain't happening.

A fight stick Pro controller would be neat. Better if you can switch between Classic and Pro modes for Wii and Wii-U software. One issue with Smash is that it uses the analogs for movement and Dpad for taunts. This analog emulation wouldn't work out well with a stick.

I would mostly want the fight stick for VC games. I've built custom joysticks for Atari, NES, and SNES and once you get used to the control scheme, they work well for platformers and other games too, not just fighters or arcade sims.

Fight sticks use different muscle groups (wrist, forefingers) compared to gamepads (mostly thumbs).

With patent trolls, the more vague, the better...

Yup definitely got that same charm as the old Banjo games on N64. Proud backer of this. Microsoft didn't know what they had.

Gah! No two players? Blasphemous! As an adult gamer with no kids and a non-gaming fiance, very rarely I can get together with one friend. Three players is unheard of. I imagine this three player option is mostly wasted development and will be little used. Even among families with multiple kids, I imagine many share the console between members and may not have 3 3DS systems. I certainly hope this supports download play and does not require three game carts...

Sweet dude. The first game is killer fun, even if I never beat any of the levels. The 2600 pr0n stage is my favorite!

@liveswired If it's a hybrid portable, ARM is the only option.

@darth2d2 I have a strong suspicion that the NX and most 9th generation consoles will be mostly download or download only. Disc drives are expensive and wear out. With MS and Sony requiring mandatory installs, and flash storage on the brink of overtaking discs in capacity, I could see the NX not coming with a disc drive or using a modified 3DS cart slot for media. 3DS games have a tab on one side to prevent insertion on DS, so an added tab on the opposite side will prevent NX carts from being inserted in a 3DS. Disc drives are especially prone to breakage on portables and suck battery life. IF the NX is a portable, it will need to be downloads or cart based storage, so console version would also use this.

@darth2d2 good point. x86 is power hungry and a handheld form factor would require massive batteries. Think clunky laptop batteries.

ARM would be ideally suited for a hybrid platform. I'm thinking a slimmer form factor gamepad with Pro controller support and hdmi output to HDTV for multiplayer. ARM processors are beginning to approach mobile x86 CPU in terms of cores and clock speed, and with 64-bit extensions and larger caches could become a formidable contender to x86, so I think in a couple years time they could compete directly with PS4/Xbone using an ARM solution.

The NX could come in a variety of form factors for portable/home models. The smaller screen will have a lower native resolution than HDTV and require less graphics acceleration when operating off batteries. The NX could be docked as a home console and would run at maximum horsepower when displaying HD visuals.

ARM is a popular platform and most development envoronments have extensions for x86 as well as ARM. Android/iOS would be easy to port so expect a good number of indie devs, but unfortunately this also means more crapware, so mobile architecture can be a double edged sword. The NX touchscreen as well as buttons would be suitable for both mobile and classic play styles. Backwards compatability with 2DS could also be achieved. The 2DS uses a single screen to emulate dual screens and the NX would be no different.

Sadly whether Nintendo chooses to side with ARM or x86, PowerPC is dead and so backwards compatability with Wii/Wii-U software would be impossible, although I would like to see Pro controller support. Another possibility Nintendo will create a Pro2 for NX with touch interface like PS4 has. Keeping PowerPC to maintain backwards compatability would be corporate suicide as support for it in the 2010s is non-existent.

Wow. VC is literally a desert wastelamd now.

Paulutina is a beautiful figure...

So sudden...

I'll miss the way he always stated, "Please Understand..." Life is so uncertain like that...

You will be missed. I hope the next president is as good as you were...

Honestly, I like the cutesy stuff more than hardcore. I loathe FPS genre in general but love Kirby, Yoshi, and yes, Mario-anything. Fact of the matter, I like colorful, imaginative worlds over the gray/brown hyper-violent FPS crap that seems to be mainstream on PS/Xbox. On Nintendo, things are different. Heck, even Bayonetta is awesome. Yes, I'm a dude. My fiance thinks games are dumb, but I appreciate that people are different, and couldn't give a crap about the male/female ratios. Female gamers tend to liven up forums and game rooms though. But I have respect as well. I'm also the biggest Rosalina fan on the planet so take everything I say with a grain of salt. I would like to visit a girl gamer museum, but can't, because I'm male. Descrimination is still that, even in Japan.

Nintendo has shown it doesn't care about the USA market. Zero Suit Samus due to arrive in September in the US, and I already have my Japan import in hand...

Ice, Ice, baby...

"If you build it, they will xome..."

@theBluntKnight It's so funny though how Nintendo did a 180 and stuck with difficult to pirate cartridges for N64. The N64 really is fun to collect for because of the carts, even if it was a poor move in retrospect. Also I love the zero load times.

Not a fan of Pokemon, but I'll hand it to them, the Mewtwo character is one of the better designed Pokemon characters besides their poster child Pikachu. I would buy it if I sae it on a store rack, but IMO not going out of my way to procure one. It can stay of eBay...

J could care less about the Tshirt, but I DO WANT that pixel Mario Amiibo, both modern and retro color designs...

I'm curious if there's some adjustable strap for heads of different sizes, otherwise an inflexible "one size fits all" won't fit on a large adult and shake around on a child.

Brilliant epitaph about the rasoning behind underpowered. Battery life was abysmal on the Lynx and Game Gear since blue/white LED tech had not yet been invented, the screens require a cold cathode tube to illuminate, which was the primary source of battery drain. Even today, the primary source of battery drain in mobile devices (besides wireless) is backlit screens.

He brought another point about toys. His speech almost serves to forshadow Nintendo's recent foray in to Toys-to-life aka Amiibo.

Kamp Krusty. Good times! Always love a classic Simpsons reference. I've seen 'em all and own most on DVD.

@MitchVogel Yes, I'm tempted to track one down, unless it's expensive or region locked to Japanese DSi/3DS systems...

Too many of these IMO.