TheMongrelCat

Something that nobody is mentioning (and that was likely cut out of that clip - or just assumed knowledge) is that graders will never grade your stuff as 'mint' if it's been signed. With cards, comic books, etc., the grading is about how good a condition, or how close to rolling off the press, the item is. If the card is autographed, it's not in its original condition and it can't get the 'mint' grade.

If you're investing (the topic of the video) that's important to know. You could always unslab a mint card and get Arita to sign it. But you could never unsign such a card. Morbidly, the value of a signed card might change after signer's death (which is hopefully due to extremely old age in the far distant future).

@sketchturner Good golly yes! All my favourite 2600 games were always Activision games. Even at the time I found Atari's first party games a bit humdrum. Every time they put out an Atari anthology for the next generation of hardware, I always find myself thinking "yeah, but I really wanted an Activision anthology..."

A couple of commenters hoping for WarioWare on the Switch...I don't know why I could never get into the console versions. Smooth Moves and Game'n'Wario were fun, but just preferred the, I dunno, immediacy(??) of the portable versions. Though if it is an issue of portability, could be that a Swich version could be the ultimate console WW game.

@NEStalgia No, in fairness, he was no Willy Wonka - last shogun indeed!

@NEStalgia Bwahaha - yeah, that's a really good point about putting devs in front of the cameras!

I guess I still see the CEO as marketing spokesperson thing to be a bit funny. I can easily see how choosing a spokesperson who the fans can like/sympathise with/etc. is important when you're trying to establish loyalty with the customer. That's critical in the IT and consumer tech worlds because those businesses are all about locking their customers to into their platform. And since Nintendo say that they're not a hardware company but an entertainment company maybe the truth of the "gotta lock 'em in" strategy (by playing with our emotions?!) could be a little hard for me to stomach.

I really believe in the Nintendo product and I think the games, when played, speak for themselves. It concerns me that to drum up interest they have to get their top brass to give an "I really shouldn't be telling you this, but..." speech followed by some rando-logo for some game that we won't see for another four years. The result, as I have observed on these comments boards, is unfair attacks on people who are just toeing the company line (obs. talking about Reggie here!) I get that Phil Spencer and the rest have the good comms going on, but as a kid, I wouldn't have even been able to pronounce YAMAUCHI but I still wanted the hell out of an NES. (I do accept that fav. line of CEOs everywhere that what got us here won't get us there, but you could say that today too.)

Having said that, I totally agree with you that the CEO of NCL has gotta be involved across the business - it's just the comms marketing thing I've never been comfortable with. And to invoke the Regginator again, he could be a perfectly good COO but his name is mud for 50% of fans because he dared to call Waluigi his main?

BTW: That's a really nice response you wrote. I'm particularly fond of the way you describe Yamauchi handing over the company to Iwata as if it were Willy Wonka giving his factory to Charlie Bucket. Until you explained it this way, I never really thought about this, but the Nintendo Direct is probably what Iwata would have wanted from the Commodore guys back when he was a borderline-VIC-20 otaku. Despite my blah-blah-Direct comments, I miss seeing Iwata around the internet.

@NEStalgia re: Furukawa doing a 'Direct - I dunno, eh? One of the things I liked about Kimishima was that he got on with his job. And the job of a CEO, really, is to please the shareholders. I think it was super nice that Iwata used to get involved in marketing but I think the video-games industry/fans have a warped cult-of-personality thing about the company presidents and CEOs and it confuses things. They should be reviewing spreadsheets and and presenting quarterly reports.

I reckon it would be cool if they re-designed Ninendo Direct to be presented by their developers to talk about what they're actually doing. But I know NCL are really protective of them so it probably wouldn't happen.

@Gold_Ranger @Kevember - I'd give Reggie the benefit of the doubt about liking the Nintendo product. I reckon he probably even played back in the day. He's probably in a weird position as the President of NOA. That's an operations role - not necessarily strategic. Nintendo usually have Japanese guys from home office calling the shots - Kimishima was the actual CEO of NOA from 2006 and I don't think many members of the public even knew. So Reggie's on the leash, probably can't say anything strategic in case it affects the share price. It's probably why his comments can sometimes sound so weasely. Plus, his background is in marketing and those guys talk in a special way anyway.

I reckon he's a genuine believer - but that's just my opinion!

@SmaMan Buhahaha...no I didn't but that video made my morning. KWON IS STRONG!

@SmaMan Whoops! Yeah, you're right - Cifaldi wrote it right there in his Tweet! Was curious though and I went poking around the Wikis and just read that U.S. Gold published SF1 in Europe for C64 and the other usual suspects. A) I had no idea and definitely hadn't seen it before, and B) There was a ZX Spectrum port...what must that have been like???

@Bunkerneath Yeah, I remember being amazed seeing a demo of the port on a cover tape on some C64 rag at the newsagents back in the day. The NES and the C64 shared (kinda) the same processor so I wondered if the NES and C64 ports were related. I had a look here though: https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Street_Fighter_II, the graphics look totally different!

Favourite game book I own is Zork Book II - The Malifestro Quest. I love how "literature" was brought to microcomputers as interactive-fiction, but then they tried to bring interactive-fiction to real-world print as this choose-your-own-adventure style Zork book. I find this round-trip meta thing super amusing. Bonus - actually written by Steve Meretzky who worked at Infocom on pretty cool games like A Mind Forever Voyaging and Hitch-Hikers...

Gotta say, though, I'm surprised that no-one gave a nod to John Szczepaniak's Untold History of Japanese Game Developers series. His commitment to tracking these developers down and getting what he does out of them sets such a high bar for video-game historians.

Bwahaha. If you're wondering why Willesee wanted a "computerised Aussie rules game" where the Swans always win, some context for you: At the time this report was aired, the last time the Sydney Swans had won a premiership was in 1933! They wouldn't win one until 2005.

@Kuhang @SLIGEACH_EIRE C'mon guys...Maria?? Pulease! Surely you're familiar with the already famous Giana Sisters?

It's probably worth remembering that Nintendo of America has only had a CEO since 2006 - it was Tatsumi Kimishima who had, until then, been serving as the president of NOA. The Regginator took Kimishima's place as president. Kimishima himself was replaced as CEO by Satoru Iwata in 2013. Remember that in business, generally, the CEO is in charge of strategic vision (what the company should do) and the President is in charge of operations (getting it done). In light of that, NOA has always had a tight strategic link to Japan. I would suggest that this "org list" will not affect the roles (or clout) of Reggie (and Shibata) at all.

As for these "outside directors", they all sit on the Audit Committee which has responsibility for ensuring corporate governance (ensuring that the company is meeting legal requirements for business and accounting practices, safety, etc. Do a search for J-SOX if you're at all interested or watch "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" if you want to know what happens to a corporation when this stuff goes unchecked!). These external directors are probably there to make the shareholders a little more confident the Audit Committee isn't lying when they say that everything is roses.

My main concern is preservation. Nintendo already had a downloads only platform - Satellaview, anyone? Now conservationists are trying to find Satellaview carts with old downloaded games still on them. I pretty much 100% download on the PC but I try to stick with DRM free/3rd party service free (GoG) because I am fairly confident that I can create a VM that I can reinstall the binaries onto. But the Nintendo platform(s) is such a walled garden. No installers, no virtualised environment. If you want to play the original games on the original hardware, and keep buying games after the platform is no longer supported...look it's just gotta be physical releases.

I don't think that the choice is overly surprising. The commentators were guessing that it was going to be someone inside the company. They were right. With no 3rd party support for the Wii U, it seems natural to leave Miyamoto where he is to rally the software troops. And with the NX on the horizon, Takeda is probably good where he is too. Not to forget that not that long ago, investor confidence in Iwata was a bit shaky. I'm sure the board was looking for a really safe choice so as not to spook the investors too much. Kimishima clearly has the experience. Can you imagine what world happen to investor confidence of they appointed some crazy wonder-kid?

Woke up this morning to this sad news and nobody to share it with... hello internet! I never imagined I would care so much.
Is anyone else worried about what this could mean for Nintendo? Iwata's obstinate refusal to licence Nintendo properties or to get out of the hardware game in the face of disproving shareholders and sceptical punters literally made Nintendo unique. What happens if they replace him with someone given the mandate to return Nintendo to Wii-era profits at any cost? I don't begrudge Iwata his eternal rest, but the guy had unfinished business here. He was supposed to show us that his way was the right way. Iwata, in every way possible, you were just gone too soon.

@DekersHekers That's a pretty awesome score. I guess the inconsistency of available stock at retailers around the word is the only consistent thing with Amiibos! Wish I didn't care so much - I should save my money for actual games. Heh heh heh.

Oh man. I fought the crowd at Target to get the SSB fat-box with the GC adapter on the morning of release. Staff had been pinching copies for themselves. When we all flooded the home-entertainment counter there were only two copies for sale! If this is any indication, I have a bad feeling about Gold Mario availability at Target...

Oh man. I remember the first time my best mate and I watched the Bayou Billy intro all the way through and heard the crudely synthesised voice actually say "THE ADVENTURES OF BAYOU BILLY!" We were both beside ourselves. "Holy ****, did you just heat that? It talks!!!"

Iwata's comments hint at the fact that so many of Nintendo's beautiful 1st party hits were really meant to showcase what was possible with their hardware. It's natural that something designed for a TV or a NDS or what have you wouldn't really be a good fit for a single screen touch device. But think: what would it look like if Nintendo tried to create a game that showcased the possibilities of a single screen touch device? I know they're not going down the mobile path for this reason but it's fun to imagine Nintendo challenging established game design for mobile platforms.

It all seems like Iwata's way to have his cake and eat it too. In the press conference, he makes a point of saying that the deal with DeNA doesn't contradict any comments he'd made publicly regarding Nintendo's strategic direction. Iwata keeps assuring that Nintendo is a hardware company but I think Nintendo's reaction to the market failure of the Wii U, that is produce a tonne of first party content, just obscures that message. The announcement of the NX of itself just isn't that interesting (to me). Nintendo are a 'hardware' company, of course they have a next console they're kicking ideas around for - it's what they do! With the announcement of the NX, Iwata can solidify his claim that Nintendo are in fact a hardware company and with the DeNA deal, finally give a decent response to all those investors who keep asking why Nintendo hasn't entered the smart device market yet.

Typical EB Australia. They've been taking pre-orders on Xenoblade X and Yoshi's Wooly World since their existence was teased back in January 2013! And the unnamed Zelda and Starfox games for the Wii U have been available to pre-order for ages as well.

Hmm, I wonder which is better: being remembered every day for a year like Luigi, or being remembered one day every year, like Mario?

The guys at M2 are doing such a lovely job with these. WANT!

I've kept my 3DSXL in a soft case in my bag. Not being able to see through the case, once or twice I've managed to pull it out of my bag and push down on where the cartridge is, popping it out! Still, I reckon I can survive without the push guard.

Just one man's opinion but you have to wonder about the position Nintendo are in to sell more 3DS models. Supposedly The N3DS release was staggered in EU/US because they hadn't quite reached market saturation for the last models. It's only been a couple of months since the AU release - what, suddenly now everybody in the US finally has an old 3DS? It just feels like Nintendo are holding back the smaller model. It's kinda sad/scary if they feel it wouldn't sell (true or not). Maybe the whole N3DS thing is before its time?