Gaming Cafe Diem Baby: The Nintendo Wii U Discussion

In retrospect, merging Kirby, Rainbow Road and Lumas/Rosalina makes so much sense. I wonder if, being a double character, she's replacing Ice Climbers?

Here are some of the individual trailers:







And there's also the Yoshi-themed Sonic Lost World DLC (with a Zelda DLC hinted at in june)

Additionally, they announced Dr. Luigi for the eShop- has a clever L-shaped spin on pill dropping and multiplayer damage.

 

I have a feeling DKC is going to surprise a lot of people- while people are obviously positive on another DKC game, I think people's excitement has been muted by the perceived proximity to DKCR and the hopes that Retro was doing something more Metroid Prime-like or original.

Yet, it's still Retro and all the little details they keep leaking out about the game seem to keep making it feel very fresh ("Hey- you got Duck Tales in my Donkey Kong!" "No, you got Donkey Kong in my Duck Tales!").

 

I doubt that would ever happen without some kind of Rare acquisition.

But they have been teaming up a lot with other studios- Platinum and Team Ninja, for example.

 

I know people want Retro back on Metroid- but I'd rather they get a chance to do something of that caliber but either original IP or different IP. Though, I wouldn't complain if they did make another Metroid, but...

And yeah, that's what I meant when I mentioned Rare- when Microsoft bought Rare from Nintendo. Something similar would have to happen between Sony and Nintendo- and there's no way Sony is going to give up the primary reason to buy their platform (at least not with ND still producing quality hits seemingly at the top of their game, unlike Rare which had had a couple misfires before the sale).

 

At the time it was sold you basically had them on the downswing- DK64 & Starfox Adventures underwhelming people while Perfect Dark underperformed because of the late cycle release.

Then MS scooped them up and kinda ran them into the ground.

 

It appears that, following the somewhat disappointing Nov/Black Friday sales, holiday sales for the Wii U have actually exceeded Nintendo's expectations. Though obviously the final hard numbers aren't out yet for Dec, multiple retailers were reporting sell-outs of the system (particularly the Mario/Luigi bundle), with only Sears (which, apparently, still exists and still sells video games- good for them) reporting stock.

Of related interest, it's being reported that the Wii U actually outsold the XB1 in worldwide sales last week- albeit without the XB1 being available in Japan yet (however, neither is the PS4, which outsold both by a significant margin).

So, at the very least, it's nice to see that the system is on the upswing and continuing some of the momentum that started a few months ago.

Over the holiday I visited my sister and brother in law, whom I got AC4 & TWWHD (and helped him discover, to his complete surprise, that he actually has an unopened copy of SS from last year that, with their move into a new house, he didn't remember getting- so now he has two Zelda games to play, ha). With family over, mostly just had time to make Miis of everyone (which was pretty entertaining to all, it seems) and play a round or two of Mario Chase with them.

My brother in law also got Wipe Out 3, which I had never heard of before- but apparently they had the previous 2 and wanted this one as well. It makes sense, though- whenever I watch the TV show, I always think about it's basically a live-action platformer half of the time, so that there is an actual video game version isn't surprising.

The game itself is pretty simple and not terribly challenging, but a little bit of light, goofy fun. For 2 player matches it allows simultaneous runs with one player on the Gamepad and the other on the TV (3 players or more play 1 at a time).

However, there is an interesting looking mode for the game that I, sadly, didn't get a chance to play- one where the Gamepad user gets to control the traps while the other makes the course run. Since I didn't play it, I can't judge on the execution of the concept, but that seems like a very appealing use of the Gamepad.

 

Yeah, the Wii U's title selection compared to the others' launch lineup has been it's greatest asset this season. Both the XB1 & PS4 had very poor launch lineups as far as launch lineups go (the Wii U's was bad too- but it at least had upgraded ports and backwards compatibility). The delay of Watch Dogs really hurt all three systems, I think.

As far as the GamePad goes- the Wii U can support up to 2 GamePads. But, as no games currently support that function, there are no GamePads sold separately (and they didn;t want to offer them initially because for every GamePad they could sell separately it would mean one less Wii U system available for the launch and Nintendo wanted to avoid the eternal shortages the Wii had).

But, man, yeah- there are seriously crazy gaming setups that could happen if games started to take advantage of dual GamePads (and not just for multiplayer- imagine a port, of, say, Steel Battalion, with the two pads of screen real estate functioning in place of the original game's $200 controller; or putting one GamePad on the stand to use it's full screen as a display read-out/rearview/radar while the GamePad in your hand can use it's full screen real estate for additional controls).

Some games support 5 player functions w/ 4 Wiimotes/Pro Controllers & a GamePad- I wonder if a second GamePad would add a 6th player or have to replace one of the others?

 

That would limit things to a 2 player vs match. I would think it would be beneficial to at least involve additional players on that spectator screen via Wiimotes or Pro Controllers. Let it be a spectator screen but with something the other players can influence, either as a general 3rd party (controlling item drops, bot deployment patterns or otherwise manipulating the environment as a means to either support to defeat the FPS players on the GamePads) or as opposing teammates (Wiimote Player 1 would go after either GamePad Player 2 directly or Wiimote Player 2 in a way that would provide an advantage to GamePad Player 1 and vice versa).

 

That would be awesome, but I would assume the system can't handle that output- it would effectively have to render everything 4 times + the status screen and I would have to assume there would be a noticeable lag in video streaming which would be problematic for a twitch game.

 

I think we're still a generation behind that kind of power, though. Not even the PS4 could power through quintuple renders and streaming- it can barely stream to the Vita as it is.