WildPidgeyAppears

Hmmm...VC releases of the SNES games as well? Pleeeeease!

Pink makes him into Gender-Confused Sonic, who chats with Birdo.

@6: nor do they owe them that info.

@5: I just despise political interest groups in general, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum.

Prosody, are you practicing for your comedy tour again?

Also, games with a "theme park" style usually suck. See: Magic Kingdom and Tiny Toons 2, both on NES.

@Bulbasaurus: next is Metroid. SONIC THE FPS

@17: joke is lost on me. LOLWUT?

Thus we begin the Sonic Cycle anew.

Oh no, liberal eco-Nazis are mad at the big N. What ever will they do?

@BassXO: Goombas are cute. This is not.

What's that? Sony is jealous of Nintendo? Cry some moar and eat your giant enemy crabs with some Massive Damage sauce, and do realtime utensil change.

@24: Since I never played the original game, I wouldn't know. Still, I still haven't seen a reason to plunk the cash down for a DSi yet, unless they institute a VC for portable classics.

But since Shantae was a Capcom game, I'm sure it was good regardless.

Are you being sarcastic? The Wii is nowhere near dead!

Surprise hit of the year!

Why does DSiWare exist, again?

It would be funnier if a NASCAR driver said he used Mario Kart to practice for the track.

So has the super-secret character been revealed yet?

@114: Yeah, really, this has been the Year of the Awesome Wii Games. 2009 had some good ones near the end, and now they're really kicking it into high gear!

And what do we have to look forward to on the 360 front? More space marines and post-apocalypses. Joy...thank goodness for Nintendo!

@Mickeymac: blasphemy! Heresy! Sunday cannot come soon enough, and it's tomorrow! I cannot wait!

Also, @Corbie: how much did the ice cream factor into that score, eh?

@Vinsanity: yeah, I just looked that up and it sounds like it follows the recent JRPG trend of watching stuff happen by itself with occasional player input. That isn't fun, it's like watching someone play a game for you. FFXII was miserable for me for its battle system, and FFXIII is a step up but still feels automated. Japan seems to fail at experimenting with new design ideas; they seem to be out of touch with what the modern gamer would define as "fun". Automated fights are NOT "fun".

IMO, the real reason for the delay is probably to save face over the debacle with the leaked file of the game.

@Brutus: I'm optimistic. If you haven't played them, the Rush games on DS are some of the best retro-style Sonic games ever. It's the same team, and for that I pray it's a worthy successor to S3&K.

@irken: You mean where Nintendo bans the sale of controllers that IMPROVE on Nintendo's sometimes-unwieldy designs?

@Pegasus: the story in Castlevania is convoluted at best. It's ridiculous because Igarashi thinks his story is hot excrement...I'm glad he's not involved because he strikes me as being extremely arrogant, acting as though Castlevania is his "baby", even though he only signed on as a producer midway through the series' lifespan and didn't create it originally.

He probably doesn't want them muddling with his precious "timeline" which contradicts itself and makes no sense as-is. Not only that, he eliminated that GBC Legends game from the canon just because the main character was a girl...

Sorry, I love the guy's games but I do not like Igarashi himself. But I'm all for classic songs, the original soundtracks in the PS2 games were all right but few tracks were memorable.

Sorry for the ranting, I get very irate when it comes to Koji and his precious "story".

Awww...as long as they really polish it up though, the wait will be worth it.

At least Secret Level isn't making it.

This game sucks AND blows...in a good way. I highly, highly recommend anyone who hasn't played it to download this game NOW.

Yes, the God of Video Games, Nintendo, crafted it for our amusement.

I personally never got the obsession with bullet hell. As someone who swears by and was weaned on the greats like R-Type, I prefer strategic memorization to blind luck. Even Gradius, which is notorious for quickly becoming hard, is more fair to the gamer than most of these. They just seem as though they make you rely on pure chance and the way the games flood the screen with shots...I'll take my Star Soldier games over these any day. Still, if I had a DSi, I would get this, sounds much friendlier than most games of this type.

@bro2dragons (16): I fail to understand this trend. One reason (among a very long list) Final Fantasy IV is my favorite RPG to this day was FIVE-MEMBER PARTIES. You don't see that anymore, because near the end of the 16-bit era it was popularized and cemented during the 32-bit era. Honestly, having only 3-man parties limits you and reduces your options...especially when you realize that 3 members isn't enough to take on that giant optional mega boss and you wish you had that fourth one to bail your arse out.

I mean, the game looks amazing, but I have difficulty naming any recent games that used 4- or 5-member parties.

@1upsuper: tradition is fine in some cases, but I feel DQ sticks to its origins too much. No offense to fans; the sequels just don't have enough variety to set the games apart from one another. Guess that's why I'm an FF fanboy, even if they don't succeed, they at least try new things each time. I just found previous DQs incredibly dull and slow

There any news on what this game does differently than previous entries? As I said, never got into them for several reasons before.

@Corbie: How'd you get the ROM script onto a Japanese Super Fam cart?

@Mickeymac: Hopefully not with one battle for every 30 minutes of cinemas. But seriously, if this game turns out any good, I might be interested. I bet it won't reach US shores for a while, though.

Hmmm, I read this game won't be as cutscene-heavy as a certain PS2 Xeno series. Which is good; after hours of movies and ten minutes of gameplay in-between, I quit after Episode I. This game looks very cool, and Wii has little in the way of sci-fi games, so it could be fun!

Anyone else getting a Monster Hunter Tri vibe from the screens, or is that just me?

I might look into this one. Haven't been a fan of DQ in the past due to the stale and archaic gameplay, but if this one remedies issues like the snail pacing in previous games, it may be for me.

The main issue with DLC games is quality and value-for-money. Some are worth every cent, and others deserve to die in obscurity.

I want to know what paramedic dresses like the sexy green-eyed ethnic female with the cleavage and all. Never played the series but heard they are fun

@16 and @18, Sony is too busy thinking that one or two exclusives a year is enough to keep them rolling in cash and that their portable is a worthwhile investment...seriously, I wouldn't be surprised if their electronic entertainment division folds with the series of flops they've had, and that new motion controller will probably be yet another utter failure. At least Microsoft and Nintendo have class and composure, while Sony is still trying to appeal to the idiot jock crowd.

DSiWare the new dumping ground for shovelware that wouldn't sell at full retail in a million years confirmed?

I'm still happy with my DS Lite, and I couldn't bear to give up the GBA slot. I see no reason to upgrade until 3DS...

@StarBoy: even if those hints of a new full-blown Kirby don't bear fruit, I'd be happy with a WiiWare 1000-point sidescrolling installment...maybe if it combined Dreamland series elements with the more standard elements used now. I mean they're doing a retro-sequel to Bonk of all characters, so...

While the Dreamland series has its charms, I'm more a fan of the stylistic changes in KSS and Adventure/Nightmare in Dreamland. I like the faster-pace of the gameplay as opposed to the sometimes-plodding pace of the earlier Kirby games. I do feel Dreamland 3 is underrated; I've heard so much hating on that game and never understood why it got critically eviscerated.

@56 It worked for Metroid. Remember the whining and complaining until people PLAYED the damn game and realized it was awesome?

Even this close and they don't reveal many details. Nintendo...

Doesn't matter though, less than a week away!

...I feel unclean that the list was gathered by Neo Lose - I mean GAFers. Is that wrong?

We'll probably excrete in our pants when we find out the Water starter has a totally kick-butt final form, just like Blastoise and Feraligatr.

As long as it's not the lame Kevin Costner Waterworld setting as Wind Waker, I'm happy. Sure, I know a lot of people liked Wind Waker, but I DESPISED it (the sailing and the graphical style being chief among the reasons for my hatred). But when Miyamoto says there's something big in store, we should believe him. Guys, I don't think this one is going to be another lame edition of tacked-on waggle like TP Wii.

@brainofj: You must not have played very much of the series. While the games certainly are generally geared towards a younger audience than most Nintendo franchises, the games are incredibly fun and surprisingly challenging in parts. You really should play a few, they're fun regardless of how old you are.

Nintendo continues the time-honored tradition of wang-teasing us while being ultra vague. It's a bit grating that other companies will parade around epic trailers and gameplay footage (except Squeenix who only ever shows the CG in their commercials), and the game directors will tell us how the game plays and the controls...and Nintendo, of course, doesn't give away anything we could actually construe as useful information.

I understand wanting to protect ideas and concepts, but they don't have to be so paranoid about this. If it inspires copycats, so what? At least we'll have an inkling of how the control is going to be worth our while. SMG2 is close to release and they barely revealed anything big about it until recently...it just gets annoying.

Several observations:

1. I think it's awesome you guys used my Hamferno nickname! Who named the Grass one Smugleaf?

2. Is Japanese advertising ever NORMAL? I mean, geez, that was so...yeah. Compared to Japan, US advertising is TAME. And not hyperactive.

3. I LOVE the animations. As a Pokefan for the past two years, I've greatly enjoyed the series but man, staring at a static back sprite gets a bit boring after a while. The animations are fantastic, Game Freak. Now the games are a step above the original Final Fantasy games in that department, ha. Of course, the traditonalists will whine and complain, but I love them. Can't wait for this game!

An additional observation, also @Tsuchinoko: Squeenix has been pretty stingy with VC releases. They don't seem to put a lot of stuff on Nintendo's services. When the most they release for the systems in terms of mainstream Final Fantasy games is Crystal Chronicles and Tactics games, I doubt they're THAT serious about supporting Nintendo systems.

Nintendo managed to make up for the VC drought by releasing one of their best games for the service...still, I do have the DS version so I can hold off on getting this one. Also, @Digiki: I don't think I've heard anyone ever say that. Lots of people consider Super Star something of a pinnacle of Kirby awesomeness, and they also think Kirby 64 is pretty average. I'm inclined to agree; Kirby 64 is still fun and charming, but I'm baffled why they didn't include some of the elements that made Kirby's Adventure and Super Star so great.

@Tsuchinoko: You think there's a chance of the MSX games coming Stateside? Sadly, I don't think that's gonna happen, for two reasons:

1. They'd need to obtain a license to host MSX on the service, a console I guarantee you the majority of English speakers have not heard of.

2. The translation of the games, which was in that rerelease of Snake Eater, would have to be converted and formatted into a VC release, and as we know, with imports companies rarely take the extra time to do things like that.

With our luck we'd get the original in its "I FEEL ASLEEP!" glory.