darklinkinfinite

I bought the physical dic and I've played it a little. My main issue are the horrible loading times between areas. On their own they're not TOO bad, but they add up quick and it's gotten to the point where I'm loathe to leave an area unless I absolutely have to.

@MJInnocent I dunno, NoA seemed content to let Club Nintendo wallow in mediocrity for years. I remember some of the physical rewards stagnating for years because they were crap no one wanted.

I don't know why anyone would expect My Nintendo to get better with the NX if the transition from Club Nintendo to My Nintendo only seemed to make things quite a bit worse.

@PlywoodStick I highly doubt the gameshark somehow affected your game disc as that would require actually altering the data on the disc, which couldn't have happened. The PSOne disc is not writable nor is the PSX cd-rom drive a cd writer.

The game shark would certainly affect the game code being read as that is its exact purpose, to alter code in the system's RAM to produce the desired effect. If you continued to see effects outside of the presence of the game shark itself then most likely what happened is the data that was saved to your memory card contained wonky data (like having Sephiroth in your party when the game wasn't programmed to have him available) which could affect play and performance afterward, that is why Game Sharks, Game Genies, and other such devices were always unlicensed because of the unforseeable effects they can have on gameplay.

Additionally, it could be scratches or imperfections on the disc itself causing the issues that your cd drive was able to compensate for the same way some scratched music cds can be ripped without the music skipping as it would when played in a cd player.

Either way, I can almost certainly assure you that your disc is unaffected.

I think grading serves a purpose in the collector's market but I've yet to see it's real purpose in video games. I'll be referring to comic books in the following as that's what I have the most experience with.

First off, it's incredibly easy to start a grading service. You basically need a bunch of plastic shells and a method to seal them. That said, it's INCREDIBLY difficult to start a respected grading service. Comic book grading has been around for 16 years for a hobby that's been around for 80 or so. And in that time there's really only 2 respected grading companies and maybe a dozen others that provide a similar service but lack any sort of reputation or authority in the collecting hobby. Comics have been bought and sold for decades and for a grader to come onto the scene with any sort of respect has to have some weight or history with the collecting hobby. They'd have to consult with well-known and respected dealers, collectors, authorities in the conservation of the materials, etc.

Which leads me to my next point. Comics certainly do have widely agreed upon standards for collecting. Grading is built on those standards. Many in the comic book hobby dislike grading because they're confident enough to evaluate their books by roughly the same standards as the grading companies. When it comes to reselling, especially high-priced books, graders offer an acceptable third opinion (after the buyer, and seller) as to the condition and thus the value of a book.

Which takes me to my next point. Graded goods, in theory, should not be more valuable than an ungraded book of the same condition. Grading is supposed to only offer an impartial opinion as to a book's condition and a book of a certain condition has a certain value, whether it's in a slab or a mylar bag. What grading does provide is a certain level of confidence that a book's condition is what it is. Each page is inspected, flaws are noted, and can be referenced. A seller can post a photo of the most beautiful book you've ever seen but the page quality may be bad or torn and that would be obscured by the beautiful cover. People are willing to pay extra for the confidence a fully inspected and graded book brings.

Video game grading, as far as I'm concerned have failed on all of these points. First off, they don't seem to come with any sort of backing from the wide and varies video game collecting community. I see no authority on the conservation of the products they're grading. Many plastics are acidic and slowly degrade any paper they are in contact with and the conservation of paper is a huge issue in collecting comics. A sealed video game is basically cardboard wrapped in the cheapest possible plastic the manufacturer can find. It may be acid-free, it might not. A sealed game's wrapper may slowly be degrading the box underneath. I don't feel this service accurately supports the interests of most game collectors and it's fine if it serves the biche that values the sharpest folds in a game's shrinkwrap but a niche like that will never represent the hobby of game collecting as a whole wheras

Second, it feels like other grading services are built to enforce the standards and values of the hobby they represent while these services seem to want to impose those standards. Did anybody really care about the sharpest creases in a shrinkwrapped game's wrapper before these services? Or even after?

Then comes the ridiculous prices people are asking for these games on ebay. We can all agree certain games are extremely rare and they may be great games and they may be in high demand and thus incredibly valuable. A complete copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga can fetch over $400! But the prices sellers (sometimes the graders themselves) are asking for any rubbish game just because it has a high grade is ridiculous. I've seen incredibly common games priced in the hundreds or thousands of dollars just because it has a high grade without any real regard for other factors Sure they may price a high graded Zelda may be a few hundred more than a high graded Streets of Rage but that's still more than you should be paying for either game.

And finally comes the fact that a sealed game cannot actually be fully inspected and thus you have no assurance as to the actual condition of the product, just the outer packaging. Other people have mentioned things like the memory on NES games naturally defrading over time, things inside the box can shift and become damaged without any real effect on the outer packaging. One of the benefits of having comics graded is that they will check for resoration and even counterfeits. They can do this because these things have been happening in the comics hobby for decades even before grading and as I said, a respected company will enforce the values of the hobby they represent and a respected company will have the confidence from those collectors (who often remove comics from their holders to re-inspect and thus support or criticize the company for how well the hobby's standards are supported).

A sealed game cannot possibly be inspected for things like degraded memory (I'd certainly pay more for a rare NES game that actually works over one that no longer functions but if they're both sealed they'd both receive the same grade and we wouldn't know. Thus, no confidence.). Heck some people have mentioned that vaccuum sealers and shrinkwrappers are readily available to consumers. What's to stop someone from taking a box for a valuable game and sticking a paperweight inside and sealing it? The grader can't open it because that'd be affecting the grade. It might not be the right game, if it's a game at all, or it could have no manuals, etc. Even in comics where sealed polybagged books happen often enough, no respected grader will grade it in the bag. Such books have to be removed because if the grader wants to maintain any sense of authority, they need to be able to examine the whole book.

As I said, I think there is a place for professional grading in many hobbies. As far as video game grading goes, these services fail on every level to provide a product/service that truly serves the needs and values of the video game collecting hobby.

So as bad as My Nintendo is, NoA still finds a way to make it worse. No Bravely Second theme and now no Cenoblade discounts. I'm not particularly interested in the latter but come on NoA!

@JoseAcosta Yeah looking at it, I think it's almost the exact same floor plan as last year, though the Occulus area is bigger.

@ThanosReXXX I agree that his past shouldn't define his entire career but his present seems to be a guy who's ready to blame others for his failure to get his game made. It's on him to rebuild his reputation and not for everyone to think "yes this guy was a jerk and ran his former studio to the ground; he sounds like the perfect guy to give my money to."

I don't think anyone here is saying he shouldn't be able to make his game but he has to give players a reason to trust him again if he wants to make it with their money. It may be tough but he'll probably have to make his next game or next few games without player funding in order to re-establish his reputation. Maybe his next project shouldn't be as big or as ambitious as Shadow of the Eternals.

could the issue be that Activision wants people to buy Infinite Warfare to play Modern Warfare?

I haven't been able to complete the transaction. The fine print for the theme says "*A European Nintendo 3DS system is required to use this reward."

@santaglause lol I know what you mean! I loathe mobile f2p games but I sink like $5 a week into this thing. I do try to use my badges though. I have folders dividing up my software by series (if there's many games) or by console (vor Virtual console stuff) and I like sticking appropriate badges on those folders. I'm hoping to see American NES and SNES badgeS so I can swap out my Famicom and Super Famicom badges

I can definitely understand why Nintendo would be looking for an alternative. Take the Xbox One for example. The discs are just a delivery method. When you pop in a game, the system copies the game to the hard drive and runs from there, not the disc, because the blu ray read speeds are too slow. Even with backwards compatible games, the console just downloads a digital copy and plays that.

I never thought I'd miss the mess that was Club Nintendo but here I am

Hell, I'm in for the 2 Fatal Frame Wii games as well!

Hopefully this doesn't become a cluster____ like the Fire Emblem one was

I'm mildly disappointed that the story isn't told entirely with muppets

I tried to keep my amiibo in their boxes but I have like 30 of them and those boxes are deceptively huge. I basically couldn't find space to keep them all but after I unboxes them I was able to cram them all onto one shelf and actually have space for my other stuff

I'm not digging the European box art. They took a clean, intriguing image and cluttered it up with a bunch of characters, making it feel like a teen's attempt to make something cool in photoshop.

The North American box art isn't much better but it does relegate the added characters to a background layer with nice separation from the foreground elements giving it a slightly cleaner look.

I still wish they had just gone with an original art piece for the cover.

I had to brave a mall packed for Christmas to get to the closest Gamestop with a copy. I used a $5 GS coupon for it but still think it should've launched at $40 i stead. Its definitely unremarkable but that doesn't equal bad, at least for me. Certainly not a 3/10 as I've far as seen. I'd probably give it like a 6/10. Mindless fun, though it does tey a bit too hard to make its main character seem badass. I haven't tried multiplayer yet but the consensus seems to be that its better than the single-player so I'm sure to give it a shot.

@DrkBndr to be fair, just because a game is available doesn't mean it deserves great sales. Pretty much all of EA's Wii U games were late ports that could have been purchased far cheaper on other platforms at the same time.

Mass Effect 3 is a game very much dependant on its predecessors in order to get the full experience, so EA decides to release just ME3 with a few token features for $60 within weeks of the other consoles getting the Mass Effect Trilogy release for the same price.

FIFA 13 was really just FIFA 12 with a few (admittedly interesting) Wii U features but lacking most of the improvements and features of FIFA 13 proper.

Madden 13 was a decent port but also missing some key features of Madden 13 on other platforms.

Need for Speed was a great game with a great port but it also arrived months late, cost a full $60 when it was getting discounted on other platforms and didn't receive any additional dlc other games got.

The pattern isn't much better from other developers. You so often see late releases for full price, lacking features, hell there were even a couple of cases where the Wii U version of a game is delayed so that the game can be released or re-released on other platforms with the same features.

The sad truth is that third parties want to release games late and/or lacking key features or dlc and still expect the reception of a blockbuster triple-A title from the Nintendo audience

Thank you!

Done and done!

I'd love to see more themes like Super Mario Bros 2 and Mario Land (complete with monochrome Game Boy filter).

@Whopper744 Do I? I don't even know anymore.

Does anyone what/if the discount is for upgrading the Wii VC version of Sin & Punishment to the Wii U VC version? I rarely upgrade but Sin and Punishment might be one of them if its like $1

Seems a bit much for a game that's been out a while. I picked up the game a couple of weeks ago when it was on sale for less than $5. I love physical releases and would probably consider buying this at $20, like the Duck Tales physical release, but $40 is a bit much. Fortunately I see this getting discounted rather quickly.

This is in no way out of touch with the with the current industry. I work at a small mobile game studio here in the states and I had to sign an NDA when I got hired. Basically I'm only allowed to repeat what's already publicly available on our company's LinkedIn page; ie not much.

I would imagine Nintendo's NDA is similar, if not much stricter so a breach such as his is most certainly grounds for dismissal. This kind of secrecy is at the heart of pretty much any developer and publisher in the industry.

The reason Iwata, Reggie, and, Bill Trinen do what they do is because they are spokespeople for the company. Its their job to talk about the company and I'd wager that what they say is curated. Pranger's job in no way involved speaking with the public. He recognizes it was his fault and I find it disappointing that so many news outlets play so ignorant of the fact that this is SOP for any company, not just gaming companies, in order to tell the sob story that this man was unfairly dismissed and that Nintendo is backwards and out of touch.

I actually got to meet him and speak to him at Comic Con. He's a really cool guy and seems very excited about his work and earnestly appreciates his fans. I had him sign the manuals for all my Suda51 games and got a photo with him.

I asked him about No More Heroes as well and he said, through his translator of course, that it will be a long time before we see another no more heroes (jokingly 10 years) so when he makes it people can have nostalgic feelings about the series.

@rjejr I would imagine that part of it is wanting to nuture an environment where indies (basically third parties) can succeed. Nintendo's long been accused of overshadowing other developers on their consoles and if Nintendo games went on sale too often, that'd be the only thing people wait for.

That said, Nintendo games do go on sale; they just had a big 30% off sale for E3. They're not exactly price cuts but they're certainly not excluding their own games from sales.

Meh, collectors in all fields complain when something is reprinted/reteleased. I understand the frustration but at the same time, that's the risk of collecting for profit; markets and interest shift and something could sell for hundreds one day and pennies the next. It certainly isn't the company's responsibility to maintain the value of someone's collection. I'm a big collector of many things but I collect them because I like them and I would love to think that I can sell some of it off in really tough times but I would be fine if it wasn't worth anything special because I bought them for me, not because I can resell.

Club Nintendo Europe outdoes North America once again!

I got Hyrule Warriors and I beat the main story in like two days but there's just masses of content left!

I would love to see a sequel that adds more battlefield command aspects using the gamepad. I'd love to be able to order groups of troops so vacate their keeps and attack or defend areas of the map, outposts, keeps, or key characters that I select. Maybe add more unit types like infantry, archers, cavalry, that are strong/weak against other types and maybe add some proper seige gameplay with catapaults (I know the current game kinda splashes some of that here and there), battering rams, etc.

I love Hyrule Warriors but I'd also love for Nintendo and Team Ninja to take it further and make a sequel that's the Melee to the original Smash Bros.

@Samurairu My guess is that NoA is trying to phase out physical rewards completely, except for limited, game specific stuff like the current Smash Bros poster. The fact that they made this year's Elite rewards just a selection of downloadable games instead of something worthwhile is a big indicator, I think.

NoA has a whopping total of 4 rewards. 3 being physical goods, 2 being greeting cards, and a poster set. I have a feeling NoA wants to exhaust its physical rewards and just go all-digital like they did with the year-end reward.

@yokokazuo thanks for the offer but its quite alright, I got the demo codes from Club Nintendo. I was just curious if there was a difference between the demos since it would've been neat if the Club Nintendo demos were special in some way, outside of being available a week early.

I wonder if the free Smash Bros demo is any different than the one given out earlier. The previous demo didn't have a limited number of plays like most of Nintendo's demos do.

@ZenTurtle It might've been. This is the deal I was referring to https://club.nintendo.com/rewards-details/a/38502.do I might've misrepresented it in my previous post

Man, I miss the days when Club Nintendo had cool stuff at different price levels. I still have the 2 exclusive Game and Watch collections for the DS and the replica Game and Watch Ball system. I wish that the glory days of the Nintendo Power catalog was relived on Club Nintendo. Soundtracks and cool merchandise but not it seems NoA is content to just throw unremarkable digital games at us and assume that's enough to get people excited. I've reached Platinum Status every year since the program started and my very first platinum reward was a digital game, Doc Louis' Punch-Out and even for a digital reward, it was interesting because it wasn't available elsewhere and still felt special. I sold this year's platinum reward on ebay and sent club nintendo an email saying how disappointing this year's rewards were.

I think its been said somewhere above but Club Nintendo's current physical goods aren't anything people are trying to get and instead are just leftovers that have been there for years that nobody wants. Everyone is reluctant to spend their earned coins on that crap so whenever something semi-interesting is available, people flock to it and whatever pitiful quantity was stocked is sold out in hours.

Club Nintendo's only saving grace are the game specific-promotions like the eShop credit for Fire Emblem, the soundtrack for OoT and upcoming Smash Bros, the bonus game for Mario Kart. Outside of that, Club Nintendo isn't worth it anymore.

While it had more than its fair share of problems (that opening car chase -__-) I really think Alone in the Dark did some amazing things. The dvd-like ability to skip ahead or jump back in the game was a nifty idea, and I really liked the weapons/item crafting and the music is one of my favorite soundtracks from last gen. I think one thing that really hampered it was its open-world nature as I think the linear-introductory building level was some inspired gameplay.

@AlexOlney Until they've at least shown the game running on the Wii U, I'll take any mention of a Wii U version with a huge heaping bowl of salt.

I'm guessing they upped it to 8 games since their physical rewards are practically non-existent and they show no signs of wanting to replenish them. I'm guessing the only physical rewards they'll add going forward are going to be limited stuff that sells out in half an hour because that's what people are gonna wait to spend coins on instead of digital games that they can get at any time without getting off the couch.

It would be amazing if this was localized in the West and included a localized copy of Fatal Frame 4 in the same way that Bayonetta 2 includes a port of the first game.

If they had released the NES Remix 1 + 2 physical disc as a Club Nintendo exclusive, I would've totally been all over that and praised them for a great reward. But offering up a bunch of games that I could whenever I want (if I didn't already have them) isn't much incentive to participate in their rewards program.

These rewards don't say, "Thank you for supporting us, here's something special!". instead it feels like:

I'm incredibly disappointed with the rewards this year. I'm not a fan of digital rewards in the first place and now they've made the entire year-end reward selection digital? I'm sorry Nintendo but this in no way encourages me to reach Platinum again next year and I've reached Platinum each year since the system started.

It wouldn't be so bad if the digital rewards were at least special in some way. I was perfectly happy with Doc Louis' Punch-Out but I don't have much interest in this selection of games that I could get at any time for a lot less effort and loyalty than it took to reach Platinum status.

Heck, Club Nintendo in general has been circling the drain for quite a while with its dwindling selection of rewards and incredibly limited availability of new items. Those Epic Yarn patches have been there for four years and I can't see many people caring to get greeting cards.

I'm sorry but this is a big fail. If anything, I'll get Game & Wario and sell the code on ebay to buy a retail copy (even if there will be a difference to cover).

@CaviarMeths I bring up the virtual console all the time on my surveys as well. I just hate Nintendo's short-sightedness in their handling of the Virtual Console. The fact that each and every game had to be updated specifically to work on the Wii and now again to work on the Wii U is asinine. I tend to cut Nintendo a lot of slack but given that the Wii U was starved for content and attention for a good long while, having the Wii's entire VC console library incorporated into the Wii U shop would've been quite the boon. Instead, we had Nintendo trying to make a big deal out of Wii VC titles being released on the Wii U. Super Mario Bros 3 should've been there at the Wii U VC's launch and all the time wasted on re-releasing the Wii's games could've been focused on getting new games on the system. Now Nintendo's focusing on GBA and DS games and I feel the updating of the existing back catalog will be lowered even further in priority.

The reason I'm so upset about the VC games being easily updatable and in the current shop as opposed to their availability in some legacy mode is in what that means when Nintendo releases their next system. Will it still have a Wii mode to allow access to the Wii's amazing library of VC games? Or will Nintendo spend another 6 years updating and rereleasing its VC library yet again?

@SetupDisk Rabbids Go Home was amazing and the Rabbids deserve another proper single player game.

I do agree that the party games were never quite as good as the first Raving Rabbids.

Holy cow! This is a blast from the past! If it ever actually does come out, I'll totally buy it just for its historical value. Like Duke Nukem Forever. If it turns out to be a good game, then all the better.

related: http://www.salon.com/2014/05/15/watch_colbert_skewer_amazons_ridiculous_patent_amazon_now_has_the_legal_ownership_of_displaying_a_thing/

@MadAdam81 Technically the Wii Remote contains an infrared camera not simply a sensor.

The Wii remote basically functions like the Move in reverse. Where the Move has a stationary camera tracking a moving reference (the colored ball), the Wii Remote uses a moving camera (the IR camera within the Wii remote) to track stationary reference (the IR emitters in the sensor bar).

@bennjerryuk As I understand it, you can patent ideas even if you lack the means or the intention to make use of them. This is what gives rise to cases where a patent for a very broad idea is patented and can later claim several products infringe upon it. Or they can be general and obscure enough that you can formulate a similar idea completely independant of the patent but still be considered infringing.

I've been told te system is different in other countries. My friend in australia tells me patents there are issued for products instead of just general ideas, meaning you have to have the idea and show some intention to make use of it.

I think this really shows why Nintendo won't be able to build any real momentum for the Wii U; they're basically banking on 2 games more than 6 months apart. The Wii U has a bunch of good games but its getting a worthwhile retail game months apart and you really should be seeing 2-3 worthwhile retail games a month. Those numbers can't possibly be reached without third-party support but Nintendo seems to be the only one making Wii U games.

The lowered sales projections make sense but I'm not hearing anything from Nintendo describing any plan to improve the Wii U's situation. This statement's basically saying "our two big guns should help us reach these incredibly reduced numbers.". That's fine but I would love to hear about Nintendo meeting and working with third parties to find a way to bring more games to the platform instead of Nintendo thinking it can do anything significant by itself.

I love my Wii U but I think the best Nintendo can hope to do with it now is get by. I can't see it becoming any sort of success. They said it themselves, momentum is hard to build up and they can't build it alone and they're really the only ones making any significant titles on the platform. They had Donkey Kong in February, then nothing really notable for 3 months until Mario Kart at the end of the month. After that we're waiting until winter until Smash Bros. They've announced Bayonetta 2, X, and Hyrule Warriors but even if they all happen to release in 2014, which I REALLY doubt, that's still less than one game a month. That's not how you build momentum. You build momentum by giving players multiple major releases each month. This way players don't have time to finish a game before another awesome game is showing up at stores and new ones are being announced. And you keep that going.

I just can't imagine the Wii U ever being in that kind of situation. Nintendo makes amazing games , the problem is that the ripples in the pond are long gone by the time they throw another stone. Especially now when the 3DS is their clear moneymaker, its even less likely that Nintendo will invest heavily in improving the Wii U, when any fruits of that investment is years away and instead invest further in the 3DS to ensure that it stays afloat.