Is there a way you could follow up on strange things we've heard in

the past like Marionette or the Manebito Camera? Maybe these will be

coming out for Revolution instead?

Thanks,

Geminate

Marionette was likely a codename or tentative name for Stage Debut, which is not really a game at all but a constantly evolving demo that helps Nintendo experiment with new technologies and other ideas. The GBA camera shown one year at E3 has never been heard from since. My guess is that Nintendo saw the mass-market penetration of real digital cameras and decided the device wouldn't sell. They probably couldn't make a version that could take decent photos for less than $100, and you can almost buy a real digital camera for that much. Revolution may well have a camera accessory like the EyeToy, but it would more likely be for live video than still shots.

Hi PGC

I know there are several stylus available for the DS, is there a

particular one than you would recommend?

I am curious about something perhaps you can clarify for me.

Revolution will not support hi-res, but you will be able to connect it

to a computer monitor. How will this work, monitors have higher-res

than standard TVs and are I believe progressive scan. How will the

revolution accomadate monitor output? Is this even an issue, or has

the monitor hook up been canned? Thanks

The only other stylus I've personally tried is the Mario Kart one from E3, which is thick and pretty comfortable...if you take off the rubber figure at the top. But then it doesn't look as cool.

The old info about Revolution connecting to a computer monitor came from an Iwata interview a few years ago, and it may or may not still be accurate. PC monitors do use progressive scan, but Miyamoto recently stated in EGM that all Revolution games would support 480p, which is a progressive resolution.

Greetings Mailbag,

So is the Earthbound 1 and 2 GBA bundle dead, or what? Nintendo Power had a whole section about it, saying it'd come out sometime in 03'...

Also, I'd like to ask you what conceivable reason Sony might have to put seven controller ports/sensors in the PS3? I can't imagine a screen split seven ways, but I can't see any other possible reason, besides games like Gauntlet and Hunter: The Reckoning.

With love,

International House of Pancakes

The Earthbound compilation for GBA came out in Japan in 2003, but it's unlikely it will be released elsewhere at this point. As for all those PS3 controllers, I can see how it might be useful if you want one slot being held by a keyboard, another by a dance pad, etc. Or maybe you could have seven players on a game like Bomberman.

hey bag,

um i heard that metroid prime 2 didn't do that good sale wize. is this true?

o yeah um did you ever wonder why there wasn't a follow up to the yoshi story game for the n64?

And my last question is why didn't treasure put more work into wario world for the gamecube?

it was the shortest platformer i ever played on a nintendo console but, fun.

It's true, Metroid Prime 2 sold really poorly. To be fair, it was facing stiff competition from games like San Andreas and Halo 2, but I also don't think Nintendo did a good job of showing the game's appeal to many people. It also probably didn't help that the biggest new feature, multiplayer, wasn't a very big deal after all. Yoshi's Story was not a huge seller on N64, and many Mario fans downright hated the game for being so short and easy. Let's put it this way: Nintendo had the game running perfectly on early GBA hardware, but they didn't bother completing the game and releasing it because they didn't think it was worth the effort. As for Wario World, I don't know what happened at Treasure, but perhaps they were rushed by Nintendo. Treasure also has a reputation for not making very good 3D games.

I wanted to ask about the rumors from around janurary of 2005 that said

that Nintendo was liscensing the palmos. I suppose the rumor started

here: http://www.gamercentric.com/index.php?page=viewnews&id=3225. On

the other hand this site says that it isn't true:

http://www.bargainpda.com/default.asp?newsID=2414. Getting palmos would

be good for the ds, and would help to move past simple games. Is

Nintendo getting palmos or is it just a debunked rumour?

Nintendo made it clear at this year's E3 that they are focused on games for the DS. Since the Palm OS rumor revolved around the applications being shown at E3, I'd say the rumor has been debunked.

I have a question about Battalion Wars. Is it a new game concept of just Nintendo's and Kuju's own rendition of Battlefield 1942?

-Evan

Neither. It's basically a 3D, real-time version of Advance Wars.

First off I wanted to say that the mailbag is awesome! I love your website. I am really excited about Mario Kart Ds. I would like to know if the internet would cost anything if you don’t have DSL. We only have dial-up that is very sloooooow. Could I even play Ds online with dial-up?

PS Do you think Mario Kart Ds will be the best Mario Kart game to date?

Thanks JG233

No, you definitely cannot play DS games online with dial-up. You need to have a wireless internet connection set up in your home, which can only be done with broadband anyway. Or you can take your DS somewhere that does have WiFi access, such as a restaurant, coffee shop, even some train stations. Check around your local area to find some good WiFi hotspots. There are probably more than you think.

Mario Kart DS will have the best track selection yet, for sure. But will it be the best? It depends on whether you care about and have the ability to play it online. The game itself plays exactly like every other Mario Kart game since MK 64, but it lacks the two-man carts and cooperative play of Double Dash.

I want to start off saying I love the site. I have it as my homepage.

Anyways my question is how many copies does a game have to sell to become

players choice?

~John~

Good question. Until the end of the N64 era, Nintendo had a strict policy of only allowing games with one million units sold to become Player's Choice titles. But since GameCube launched, Nintendo has relaxed that policy to allow some games with as little as a couple hundred thousand units sold to become Player's Choice titles with the official logo and budget price. It's good that they changed that rule, or else there would be very, very few Player's Choice games on GameCube!

hey bagario,

i was wondering if it is worth importing giftpia,will i be able to enjoy it even if i dont understand japanese,btw could you recommend me some good japanese imports for the cube.

Before he retired from PGC, our old Japan correspondant Bakudan had Giftpia. He said that it was hard to tell what you should do even if you can read Japanese, and that the game would be next to impossible without some grasp of the language. As for other import recommendations, there are too many to mention here...check out our reviews section, which has many import reviews (though they are not clearly labeled, I'm afraid). Off the top of my head, the Donkey Konga games are good imports if you already have bongos, because there isn't much text and the Japanese versions have completely different songs.

Hi there great work with site and the daily updates. I was wondering if you

know or have a rough idea of the poly count for the Hyrule "overworld" in

the new Zelda game, it's a tricky one I know but I need to know for my

disatation. Any help would be great!

Thanks

Benji Dude

I doubt even the programmers at Nintendo could give you an estimate, because it depends entirely on what is being displayed in that part of the overworld! More characters and structures on the screen translate into more polygons.

first off, I'M LOVING THE CONSTANT UPDATES! pgc has once again moved

to the top of my bookmarks menu.

why doesn't nintendo realize that they NEED to incorporate the

play-yan's functionality into the gameboy micro. this whole, ooh i

have to buy more attachments to attach to my attachment to attach to

my attchments, it's getting OLD

put an sd slot right on the thing. they could probably save space by

putting the little SD prongs in the same port as the gba slot, or like

make it so you can stick the sd card in there and then lock it in by

putting in a gba game. the micro could even become an ipod killer if

these 2-4 gb SD cards become cheap enough.

it could really help keep the GBA afloat in the comming years as DS

games get better and better. i'm just so worried that my favorite

company has so much potential in their hardware but are just like,

trying to win while wearing a blindfold.

this generation i'm definetly waiting till all three consoles are out.

i have always been loyal to nintendo. but if they bunk it up. ps3 is

looking prettier and prettier.

There are a few good reasons for not including Play-Yan with the Micro. First and foremost, as you address, is space. The Micro is about the size of a deck of cards, so they're already cramming the hardware in. I'm sure you could open one up and find almost zero empty space. And it would be very difficult to find a way to use the same slot for GBA cartridges and SD cards that would still let you have in both types of media at once. Another reason not to build in the Play-Yan is cost; the Micro has to be priced low enough to appeal despite its old technology.

Hello PGC,

My question is more aimed at your personal opinion then anything else so lets go. This September Iwata is going to be giving a speech about his companys future and such. The question is if Iwata dosen't show off some Revolution specs, games, or even the controller before the Xbox 360 comes out a few months later do you think this could hurt them? I see it as if they don't show off at least something on the system that people are just going to forget about it and go off and purchase a Xbox 360. What do you think PGC?

Yeah, it could hurt them. When people go to the store this Christmas to pick up an Xbox 360, or at least ask about one, Nintendo needs there to be some discussion of Revolution at that store. It may not be possible to dissuade consumers from getting the 360, but Nintendo can go for being people's second system. And that hype just needs to be there, period. It's what fuels general interest in consoles: word of mouth. Right now, there's not much for people to talk about other than what little information we got at E3 and the many, often ridiculous rumors circulating both online and offline. Nintendo needs to replace the rumors with hard, compelling facts about the system so people can start to get excited about Revolution.

Hi there,

I recently upgraded to a Memory Card 1019, and I was pretty surprised to

discover that I could not transfer over some of my game files from my Memory

Card 251 (my Pokemon Colosseum and F-Zero GX game files, to be exact). Then

a few days later I glanced in the instruction manual for the 1019 (who reads

those things, anyway?) which stated that "There are a very small number of

games that cannot save information on the Memory Card 1019."

My question is: why, exactly, can't certain game information be saved on the

Memory Card 1019, while it can on the 251 and 59? Thanks for clearing this

up.

-Shadow Prime

I didn't even know about that limitation, but I'm sure it has to do with the 1019's expanded file allocation table (FAT). There's probably nothing you can do...just keep track of those old memory cards!

hey bag,

i wuz reading topics in other forums about what they thought the best

selling gamecube game to datewas. the topic got about 100 responses and the

most common answers were wind waker, metroid prime, and super smash bros

melee. this kinda suprised me because i thought luigi mansion would be

there since it was a lauch title. how much did luigi mansion sale and what

is the best selling gamecube game to date?

o and one more which is the best out of those three. even though completly

different games.

Luigi's Mansion did sell quite well thanks to it being available at launch. But Super Smash Bros. is by far the best selling GameCube title. Which game is "the best" depends on what you're looking for, but I would gladly recommend all three (Wind Waker, Metroid Prime, and SSBM) to all GameCube owners. These games are the cream of the crop.

hey bag,

my question is about donkey kong 64 and another question about donkey kong in general.

k first off when donkey kong 64 was released people always said it was the best game they played at the time and i saw some reviews some were good and some were bad but, why didn't they make a follow up?

second question is why dk wasn't bigger? i mean he had a game before mario but, what they like mario better at the time? o and do you think they'll make a another game for yoshi?

DK 64 sold quite well and probably would have gotten a sequel on GameCube if Nintendo had not sold the developer, Rare, to Microsoft. At the time, Rare was working on Donkey Kong Racing, so they were certainly still interested in the character. If by "bigger" you mean more popular, I think Mario is the more lovable character because he's human, and because he's been marketed more heavily. But Donkey Kong didn't come first...remember, Mario was the hero of the original Donkey Kong arcade game! So they debuted at exactly the same time. As for Yoshi, I think his popularity has waned since the SNES days, but we'll probably see him make a comeback one day.

I know when Billy left the Planet crew he took the cat with him, but I was wondering if we were ever going to see any more rumor rumblings anymore... Or are you guys just strictly news from now on?

-tomspug

The slowdown in rumor coverate at PGC has nothing to do with Billy taking the cat with him. We just haven't been able to agree on a good way to handle rumors lately. There are plenty of them out there, but it's often very difficult to debunk them even though we know, by common sense, that they're not true. I really like GameSpot's Rumor Control section, which runs about once a week. If we restart rumor coverage at PGC anytime soon, it might be similar to GameSpot's version, but with some signature PGC touches, of course! But we haven't decided on anything yet.

Hey, I'm 30. I play about two hours a day, either I wake up early before work or stay up after my two year old goes to bed. Its still the best way to go, 25 years and counting.

See now, there are indeed other older gamers. Or at least there's one more. (Just kidding. Please don't flood the bag with emails about your age.)

With the Revolution coming out next year and the hype of being able to

download all the great classics from Nintendo's past, and backwards

compatible with Gamecube Games, my question is: With Awesome Franchises like

Mario,Zelda,DonkeyKong,and continued Mario Party and Monkey Ball games (plus

many,many,many others not mentioned). Will Nintendo make these old and

fairly new games playable online with people from around the world. Like if

I wanted to play Super Mario World or even Street Fighter, could I play

those games online with someone from around the Country? I hope Nintendo

plans to do this when they Fully announce everything regarding the

Revolution, it's Controller and downloadable games? I've been a Loyal

Nintendo fan since the 8-bit (28 now), I own every system (except the

Virtual Boy) and still play the beloved classics now! I'm not worried about

Nintendo's future, Revolution will be in my home for sure!

Don't count on it. Enabling online play in those old games would require some serious reprogramming. Companies like Capcom have so far preferred to repackage old games with online play and sell them as full priced titles on PS2 and Xbox; I don't think they'd be very interested in offering the same thing for five bucks on Revolution.

Hey what gives? Before the launch of Wind Waker we saw updates on a weekly basis no matter how small the info tidbit. Now that The Twilight Princess is confirmed to be released for the holidays we're getting almost no info from you guys. I don't care how small and insignificant a peice of information might be about this game post it up, I'm dying here!

I feel your pain, but Nintendo has been on lock-down mode for Zelda info ever since E3. There hasn't been one single new screenshot in over two months. We're trying to verify interview quotes and such as reports of them come in, but as for hard new Zelda info...there ain't any.

And finally, I must have gotten half a dozen emails about the Earthbound Zero thing. Yes, I've heard the story of the prototype being sold on eBay and turned into an illegal ROM. I'm not going to tell anyone how to get the ROM, but here's an extremely in-depth article about the history of Earthbound Zero, including an interview with the guy who did the English localization that originally found its way online. Anyway, please stop emailing me about it! But do feel free to chime in on anything else.