antonvaltaz

@GloverMist He's been saving up his pocket money and has decided to go for this, is this what you meant?

http://www.365games.co.uk/m/pokemon-trading-cards/pokemon-tcg-sun-and-moon-guardians-rising-theme-deck

My 7 year old son is obsessed with Pokemon and wants to start collecting cards. Is this a good way to start? Does it come with rules?

@Floof_Cat Sorry I edited my post! (Originally thought it was "Qwik". Anyway, definitely not "Quick").

It's "Quik the Thunder Rabbit".

And it wasn't very good on the Amiga.

@Rexx Depends if "less direct questions" and "less fleshed out details" refers to the number of questions/details, or to the extent of their directness/fleshed-out-ness.

If the latter, then "less" seems grammatically okay...

Given the 3DS got SNES VC and Wii U got DS and GBA VC, would have been great if Wii U had had Super Game Boy VC...

@Tsurii Um... it didn't start on the NES. It was an arcade game, with the NES receiving one of the many, many ports at the time (though, to be fair, one of the better ones).

LOVE this game, ever since owning it on the Master System back in the day.

@MitchVogel Incidentally, I'm not sure this would be so good for British kids because of the way reading is taught in schools nowadays, beginning with phonics rather than letters. The Biff / Chip / Kipper games on the 3DS might be a better alternative...

(Also I'm guessing 'Z' is 'zee' not 'zed'?)

@NotAUsernameHere Really? My youngest turns 4 next month and LOVES playing on the Wii U...

Loved Taito since the days of their conversions on the ZX Spectrum by Ocean Software. <sigh>...

I wonder if this means any of the other Square SNES RPGs will finally be coming over to western eShops?

@ToneDeath I must admit, I don't remember any of The Ramones games either...

Really wish they'd crack the Super FX emulation for the Wii U so they can release all the SNES Super FX classics on VC... but I guess there are too few for it to be cost effective, or they'd have done it by now...

Steve Snake - is that the same guy who programmed Kega Fusion?

The One was a great Amiga games magazine, but it was no Amiga Power...

Just come back from holiday to France (I live in the UK). Couldn't believe how much shelf space there was in a typical supermarket for Wii U - almost as much as for Sony or Microsoft's consoles - compared to a typical UK supermarket, where it's practically non-existent.

I wonder why Nintendo do so poorly here in particular?

@fortius54 "Plus, Star Wars has some strong female characters which Marvel was lacking."

Though, annoyingly, the one main Star Wars Rebels character they're not including with DI 3.0 is Hera - especially frustrating as she is my son's favourite character!

"The early Spectrum games - so ground-breaking at the time of release - have not aged well."

Sacrilege! Their inclusion on this is the main reason I want an XBox One! I can only surmise from this that you were an evil C64 owner back in the day...

@TheRealThanos Ah, someone after my own heart - a big Amiga and Team 17 fan here too!

My memory of F17 Challenge and Arcade Pool was that they were both developed by external developers - both Italian groups IIRC - but I may be mistaken... but I agree most of their best games were internal.

@TheRealThanos they were a developer first - although apart from Miami Chase for Codemasters, they also self-published all their own games.

But they also published lots of other developers' games for the Amiga - e.g. Assassin, Qwak, Super Stardust, Apidya (re-release), Cardiaxx, F17 Challenge, just off the top of my head...

Even the original Worms was already a working prototype before they got involved...

@Peach64 they published games by other developers even back in the Amiga days, though I think they've had a spell just as a developer till recently...

@Bass_X0 Like the idea. Only thing I don't like is it's so console-heavy...

I really like the way that the authors of this game don't whitewash the history of computer and video games in the UK (and other parts of Europe too), where home computers completely dominated the 1980s and were very popular well into the 1990s... my memory is that Sega AND Nintendo were pretty niche here really until the VERY end of the 1980s at least (and even then never had the dominance they seem to have had in the US).

@arronishere I actually emailed the developers and they confirmed that a UK release is on the way. Actually seems strange it launched in the US first given how few gamers there were into, say, the Amiga or the Master System, while I imagine that most won't have even heard of the Spectrum or the ZX81...

EDIT: Or the BBC Micro for that matter...

Wasn't Red Dwarf pretty much a rip-off of Hitchhiker's anyway?

@DarthNocturnal Are you sure EA have licensing rights for old LucasArts Star Wars games? I thought they just had an exclusivity for new Star Wars console games (which turns out not to be completely exclusive, cf. Disney Infinity 3.0).

@Peach64 that would be awesome - and GOG.com recently got lots of DOS Star Wars titles up as well (including Rogue Squadron) so it's certainly possible.

On the other hand they've still not put the SNES Super Star Wars trilogy up yet, even though they were on Wii VC..,

@Damo I thought Disney owned the Jim Henson Company too, but apparently not - Disney just owns the Muppets.

As far as I can work out, the article's author basically didn't like it because it was different to what he's used to, and the graphics aren't good enough for him.

Not sure how he's concluded from that, that either "Star Fox Zero is a game forced to exist in this half-baked state due to a thin cupboard of flagship Nintendo titles for E3", or "this game is actually headed down a poor path"?

@Fandabidozi Yup. Contra in US; Gryzor in European arcades and home computers, Probotector for European consoles and handhelds.

Dragon Quest VIII has already been localised in the West for Android and iOS devices though (which DQ VII hasn't, to my knowledge) so perhaps there's more hope for this one?

@unrandomsam Really? Did you ever have an Amiga, ST or any of the 8-bit micros? Most of the coin-op conversions for those were pretty dire...

This looks like the original A-Train on the Amiga - only with added anime! Wasn't that a Maxis game?

I only have one of these games (3D Land), and it is surprising how few of the rest I want. I actually bought both Pokémon Y and Animal Crossing - a first for me for either series - but sold them both on after not really 'getting' them (despite playing each for over 20 hours).

I have the original N64 Zelda games on my Wii VC, and have been a bot overloaded with Zelda of late so not interested in LBW right now. And for me, Mario Kart and Smash belong on my Wii U.

So that just leaves Fire Emblem and Luigi's Mansion, again I've not played any game in either series so don't know how much I'd like them?

Does no-one else think Iwata's comment is significannt?

"If we follow current games on smartphones and we just bring our current games into smart devices, it won't lead to the future."

He specifically said current games, as if to deliberately avoid ruling out virtual console games on tablets / smartphones. Interesting choice of words.

@Damo Slightly off-topic... but Life Force was known as Salamander here too, at least in the arcade and home computer conversions. Just like Gradius was Nemesis.

@xj0462 I find that difficult to believe...

The only version I've ever played was the ZX Spectrum conversion that I owned back in the day. Is this version even better?

@Quorthon That's a very US-centric perspective. Here in the UK, the ZX Spectrum (and the Commodore 64 for that matter) had much more impact than the NES.

@Asaki Oh, well that's a bit less exciting than the article sounded. Both Sega and Nintendo used other companies for distribution of their 8-bit consoles in the 1980s in the West (or at least in Europe, where Mattel distributed the NES and Virgin Mastertronic distributed the Master System).

@FritzFrapp I never knew Forster wrote anything along those lines, let alone that it influenced the game - will have to check it out!

I only actually tried out Deus Ex Machina a year or so, having wanted to since I heard about it as a kid - that link I posted has an MP3 rip of the audio cassette as well as the program tape image, so you can play it in an emulator!

Got this on Namco Museum Remix for the Wii (which of course I can play on my Wii U). Has both the original graphics / correct aspect ration AND no need for scrolling. So I think I'll pass!

@Damo "This could also be seen as the precursor to early CD-ROM technology like the Sega Mega CD, with the key benefit of using audio tapes being actual speech and music — a trick that CD-based add-ons would bring to other consoles of the same period."

Pah - Mel Croucher was doing this in the early 1980s with the ZX Spectrum!
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseek.cgi?regexp=^Deus+Ex+Machina$

@Kirk Interestingly, in the brochure you linked to, it makes it look like the keyboard is an optional extra, with the machine proper housed inside the console case. But in the photos from the CES exhibition, there is no separate console, suggesting it is a slightly different prototype where the CPU etc would be inside the keyboard unit, a la the Commodore 64 or Atari 800. Curious!

@ThomasBW84 "another being what would have happened had Nintendo and Atari done a deal to release a system together before the NES took shape." Wait, what? Was this a possibility at one point? I know nothing about this - please tell!

@Vin Unfortunately I think Damo is right, I don't think the offer is easily transferable... I need to be logged into my Club Nintendo account just to make the order.

@Damo Can I transfer my email to you somehow? For some reason I got the email offer but I won't be using it.

Shame they never released this on VC, given Treasure's Japan-only 'Sin and Punishment' got the VC treatment... I wonder why?

@ThomasBW84 "If you're short on Pro Controllers or GameCube pads"

Does that imply that you can't use Wii Classic Controllers on the Wii U version?

Mine are all gone now, just sent to first ones to provide email addresses.

Anyone want a European code?

@Artwark I actually had a look on iTunes after seeing this, to see if it was available on the iPad.

Turns out the books themselves are available for iPad, but they don't have all the interactive bits that this seems to have.

@sillygostly That's what I assumed about the 3D, but wanted to check first...

@NicolaHayden @ThomasBW84 Are there plans to review the other two volumes? I assume they are the same mechanics, just different content? Not sure what to get for my boy who has just started Reception and has done a bit of phonics in Pre-School...

Also, I'm guessing (hoping) the 3D mode isn't used on this title, given the target age?