[02.02] Heart Containers VII - The Scene's Out of Sight
It's just the way Containers works -- in order to build anticipation for the next column, I have to first make sure we go on a three month hiatus. Be ready for another one following this column!
Kidding. A majority of the reason you didn't see a Containers since November 18th is two-fold:
A) we've been gearing up for launch around here and I sort of wanted to wait until we were all chill and superfresh and rockin' your mother with the new design before I went back to weekly updates. Not only am I not the only one rockin' your mother anymore, but we are all also now chill and superfresh. Anyway.
AND
B) I'm a lazy college boy with a penchant for buggery and an affinity for Old English cheese spread and whiskey. Lots of both. Together. With crackers.
BUT! We're back and better than our previous better-ness. Observe! the new avatar on the side. Witness! our outpouring of lovely new content! Marvel! at my apparent lack of grammar rules! But most of all... Love! the column and write in or I'll cut you. With! cheese spread.
Last week I asked you to write in with your Thanksgiving activities or traditions or whatever the hell you felt like writing. Good thing that wasn't a time-sensitive topic or anything.
| The Cranberry-Year Itch |
Brandon:
Dude, cranberry sauce gives me a rash... Anyway, my brother and I have a Thanksgiving tradition that involves video games. Every year since I could remember we've rented/bought a video game and played the heck out of it until it was time to eat. I fondly remember running around the Wrecked Ship and Maridia while playing Super Metroid years ago [sigh...] Now that my brother and I have jobs (ha) we've been able to purchase more games than ever before. Example: The GameCube is only two years old, and already I have more GameCube games now than I had N64 games during the entire lifetime of the system. So this Thanksgiving my brother and I will be furiously working on F-Zero GX, Viewtiful Joe, SSX3 along with a host of recently purchased GCN, PS1 and N64 games that I got at eBay/half.com with birthday cash. Keeping this tradition alive is going to take a lot of work, love and bandaged fingers.
Justin
Game Masta' of Crichton College
| Those Classic Days |
I know exactly what you mean about holidays being equal to video games. Last Christmas when I was back home for break and was rockin' away on Prime with a blanket wrapped around me, sitting on the floor with a Wavebird tucked into my hands on the Sunday morning it's cold outside it's warm inside it felt so sublimely like years ago that I thought it could have been.
For me, years ago consisted of Secret of Mana and Super Metroid on Sunday mornings when I should have been at church and Dad seemed to just "forget" and sleep in. I'll still never know how the hell I beat Turtle Rock on LttP without a book or anything.
...Now I have to dry my eyes. You guys need to give me a few letters before I'm adequately prepared to verbally abuse you!
| I Liked Nicholson in Little Shop |
Yeah, well, I signed up to dress up as 'Wag the Dog' this year at my church's fall festival partly because I hoped the cuddly-ness of my costume would be a hit with the ladies. Little did I realize how hard it was too see out of that thing. The only way to get a good view was to open the mouth and look around. As you could imagine, this frightened many of the smaller children. Eventually, the pastor asked for me to take the head off. This also, as you could imagine, frightend many of the smaller children.
I can understand, although, for I was scared out of my wits at the guy dressed as Batman during kids night at Golden Coral. Did costumed characters tickle your fancy, Mr. Daiker?
Alex Davis
| Feed Me |
You know, I've always gotten a kick out of costumed characters. Some of my favorite entertainment involves guys in costumes. I mean, let's just look here.
- Superman
- Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers
- Batman (Adam West 4 EVA)
- Obligatory Michael Jackson Joke
- Samus!
Though, in regards to the Samus, I did get her to take it off once. No, really.
No, really.
| Thanks For Your Submission |
I've gotta warn you, before you read on, that what follows is uber-cheesy. But the fact is that it's all so true that I couldn't cynic-it-up in any way. Awww....
Recently, it came to my attention a very important reason why I love Nintendo, something I had never really considered before. Nintendo brings people together. For example, I know for a fact that I would not be as close to my older sister as I am now if it weren't for Nintendo. Way back when, we spent an entire winter defeating Ganon in A Link to the Past. This remains one of the most memorable video game experiences of my life, and it is in no small part thanks to the fact that I could actually feel Nintendo bringing me closer to someone I had been living with for years. And how could that not bring us closer? I mean, thanks to Nintendo, we freakin' saved the world together. The tradition continues to this day, with me and my siblings continue spending hours together around "the Nintendo," hours that would certainly be spent alone in our respective rooms, were it not for a certain video game developer.
Another example: Last year, one of my teachers got a "secret TV" in his back room. Naturally, I brought in Dr. Mario and Mario Tennis. Looking back, I would not have wanted to spent the last few months of my senior year in any other way. People who never had not talked eachother for thirteen years were both teaming up and taking each other on. We were spewing out trash-talk to our teacher, all of which he returned in full. I found something I could beat jocks at. It was truly a thing of beauty. These days, I can't rev up either of those games without getting a little misty. Which is a strange reaction to have to a video game, of all things.
And the strange thing is, the theme of this entry is not "Video games bring people together." It's "Nintendo brings people together." In both cases mentioned above, we briefly tried some "other" consoles, but it was never the same. Nintendo is everyone's common ground. Nintendo is the one thing that got the slackers to hang out with the bookish folk to hang out with the cool kids. Or got siblings to spend more than fifteen minutes at a time together. And I'd really like to thank them for that.
NewYork5A
| Your Thanks Has Been Forwarded |
In sixth or seventh grade, my math teacher Mr. Hofmeister got the Internet on his computer for the first time. I remember thinking "all the information in the world is open to me!" and then wondering "what shall I seek out first?" The mental response was something like this: "Porn! No wait... I'm in school. Hmm. What else is there? Uh... Nintendo!" And that's how Brandon became a real man.
Well there's that and then that incident with the black helicopters and those guys in beige suits but we agreed that they didn't really know what they were doing, right? Yes, they couldn't help it. I mean, I was the one with beef jerky in his pocket.
| Super Final Fantasy Link Brothers |
Ok, so this is my first time writing here. I LOVE this column, and the letters everyone writes and such. So here is my question:
Now you've heard (and already know) about Kingdom Hearts: Chain Of Memories. From the screenshots the game looks like Mario & Luigi, cartoony and fun, so that had me thinking: "What would it be like if Square-Enix and Nintendo teamed up to make a Kingdom Hearts like game?", this is my dream game. Imagine Mario, Locke, Terra, Saber, Peach, Fox, Crono & the gang from CT, and many other characters like that team up? Oh yeah and Sora would be the main character, and the gameplay will be Final Fantasy-M&L: SSS like. Can you imagine the how great the game would be? A GCN and GBA version?
Would you like that?
From,
Matt
| Old English Cheese Spread |
Matt,
I am not sure if I would like that sort of game. First of all, I hated Kingdom Hearts, even though the visual style was kind of neat. Sora was lame and don't even get me started on the jumping. That aside, I'm not entirely sure that I'd enjoy seeing Locke and Terra fighting alongside Fox and Kirby. Final Fantasy VI was a pretty sweet-ass game and I think it might ruin some of that to have them boinking each other on the head with turtle shells or something.
But you know, I always hated reading letters columns where the writer was like a big Star Trek nerd and always picked out inconsistencies in everyone's letters and told them they weren't worthy of even reading the column and shot down all of their ideas and then went downstairs to tell their mothers they're thirty-one now, so I'm not going to do that. In fact, here! My wallet, for you. There's not a lot of cash but I hope you'll forgive me. The debit card still works, pin number's my old telephone. You don't have it? Here, let me write it in blood. Are you hungry? I just bought this turkey, but I'll skin it for you and cook it with noodles. Why don't we get those pants off als...
I'm sorry. Too fast? Let's take it slow then. I'm not in any hurry! I just bought The Animal on DVD a few days ago. We can watch it. Do you need a DVD player? You can have mine, I mean I never really use it anyway. Have you ever wanted to kick anyone in the face? Cause I'm ready to take that step with you. I think we could last. I think we're the stuff dreams are made of. I want to be your forever.
Too fast again, I apologize. I'll just be over here cooking that turkey if you need anything. Don't be afraid to ask.
| Well Isn't That Special |
It isn't a big secret that Nintendo has regressed every console generation in terms of market share. However, I don't think Miyamoto can be blamed for Nintendo's loss of market share, can you? Nintendo lost a significant amount of market share when they were competing vs the Sega Genesis. And Nintendo has made vitually no mistakes with the SNES. Good Competition is responsible for Nintendo's decline. Eventually Nintendo would lose much more market share because of flaws in the N64 hardware. Nevertheless, Miyamoto doesn't have the bureaucratic power to make corporate business decisions at Nintendo. Further reason why it is rediculous to point the finger at him for the sole reason why Nintendo's business has declined every console generation. But the reason why I wrote this thread was because of this rediculous article From the infamous Eric Mattei.
P.S.You don't have to publish the link if you don't want to since it is an an inferior website.
masasumia
| Next Church Chat: WTF |
"Miyamoto doesn't have the bureaucratic power to make corporate business decisions at Nintendo."
I might have to disagree with you a little bit there. Odds are good he's got more than a little pull around that old stomping ground of his.
I tried to come up with a good response to this but I don't even know what we're arguing. That Miyamoto isn't responsible for Nintendo's not measuring up to the level of market control they had twenty years ago when they were the sole proprietors of THE ONLY CONSOLE SYSTEM ON THE MARKET? And that it's not his fault that the Gamecube isn't selling millions more systems to compete actively with the previous generation's far and away market leader who has a one-year jump on the competition? Yeah I guess that's not his problem.
Also, what are you doing reading other webpages? You should have known everything you seek is right here at N-Sider. Now with tangerines!
| Do You Like Coffee? |
We Have Met the Enemy, and He is Us.
Nintendo fans seem to live in a world colored by Nintendo's past, instead of its present. This is both good and bad.
The good side effect is loyalty to a company which has brought us much joy in the past. We also overlook / make excuses for Nintendo's stupid design decisions such as no online play (yes, it will be a loss leader but you're investing for the future and creating a buzz), no DVD playback (I still know parents for which this is an issue), ect. We also benefit from first rate Nintendo created franchises which continue to set pace for the industry in terms of quality (Metroid Prime) and fun (Mario Sunshine).
The bad, however, seems to be unrealistically high set of expectations which no company can meet. Mario Kart Double Dash !! is a good example of this effect. The game is, by all reviewer's accounts a blast to play - which it is. The big N even adds a very innovative second rider to the mix to create a new level of teamwork and interactivity to Kart racing, only to have reviewers generally ignore this innovation to complaint about changes made from the SNES release of this game. Get over it people! This game, viewed without reference to its past, is great today, and a top tier quality title. The complaints against it are that it does not add anything new to the genre (ignoring the added rider). I really think this is the result of unrealistic expectations: people expect Mario 64 every time they open a Nintendo title, and hold it against the game when it is not. The fact is Mario Kart is a 100% improvement over the 9th generation Madden rip off which no one seems to complaint about.
Judge the company, both good and bad, on what it does today, not what happened five years ago.
JT
NOTE: PLEASE NO NOT RE-PUBLISH E-MAIL ADDRESS, I GET ENOUGH SPAM! Thank you.
| Champagneful. |
Thank you for writing in, snessuperfan783@hotmail.com. I appreciate it when you write into my column with the e-mail address snessuperfan783@hotmail.com.
Okay so first of all, for me to go along with this letter, I'd have to agree with you that Nintendo not including online support and DVD playback was silly. I do not. The GameCube has a network adapter, whether or not they're including support for it in their titles. And I already have a DVD player, which I use because it has coaxial audio out and a bitchin' remote. Most people have DVD players, actually. I'd bet the number of households with a GameCube and no DVD player is particularly small.
Your statement that the bad is "unrealistically high expectations" for some titles is curious. You say MK:DD is by all reviewer's accounts a blast to play, and it is also innovative. Why then were the expectations unrealistically high? I don't understand your point here. What's the drawback of high expectations if Nintendo meets them?
If I judged any company only on the present and not what they did years ago, I'd be flying Braniff Airlines to visit Enron or some damned convoluted thing. Sure, the present is important, but Nintendo has a rich history far and away more interesting than any other gaming company out there and arguably more interesting than any other company, period.
And I think that's your argument, snessuperfan783@hotmail.com.
Love,
Brandon
--- Closing Comments --- For next week I want you to write in with your sweet-ass gaming related dreams. Go trippin' in the Mushroom Kingdom with Mario and the others? Visit N-Sider's beachfront property for one jumpin' par-tay? Samus wants to take her suit off for some bumping and grinding? What's that? Sorry, I can't hear you because my ears are clogged with FUNK.
| Got a letter? Send it to Brandon! |