I'm sure the person inquiring about where to get a refurbished NES was probably trying to get ahold of one cheap, but if you have the money, you might want to look into the Generation NEX by playmessiah.com. It's still a grey-market NES clone, but these people seem like dedicated gaming fanatics instead of shady pirates. In addition they offer nifty wireless RF controllers for NES and SNES (also in collector's edition lunch boxes w/ goodies). The NEX has built in wireless controller support (sold seperately, of course), NES and Famicom cartridge slots, and A/V out (in stereo, no less, but I don't know if there were any stereo enabled NES/FC games).

--

--Carl Dungca

I've seen these things online, and they do look really cool. Seems like a good option if you want something new.

A company called Messiah Entertainment Inc. is making new NES

consoles. They're pretty spiffy and use wireless controllers. They're

going to be releasing them in September with a price of $59.99 with

free shipping. It sounds pretty cool you can read more at

http://www.playmessiah.com Also the Nintendo DS/Mario 64 bundle can be

found online from walmart at:

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?product_id=4003648

More support for the NEX. That DS bundle link should be useful for some people, too!

Hey i just had a couple of questions that i wanted to ask...

1. With the nintendo Wi-Fi connection not far off and the revolution being

equipped with wi-Fi capability right our off the box do you think we might

see a MMORPG with all the famous nintendo characters and lands on the

revolution?

2. I have Starcraft and Command and Conquer for the n64 and they both play

really great i was wondering if maybe there's a developer making an RTS (

Not a turn based one!, and not Advance Wars DS ) game for the ds, with its

touch screen i believe it would give it amazing control, match that with the

upper screen to show everything from the selected unit or buildings stats to

a radar to heed warning when enemies approach add to the bunch the impending

Wi-Fi internet connection and you've got yourself a killer app capable of

stomping the psp into its grave and more importantly letting the ds turn the

gaming world on its side!

Your's truly Jeremy. G

1. A Nintendo all-star MMORPG? Seems crazy, but so did Smash Bros. when it first came out. I guess it's possible.

2. I think there will be many RTS games over the lifespan of the DS. However, the only one I know of currently is Namco's Shogun Warriors, which is coming out pretty soon.

Hey PGC,

In your most recent mailbag, a reader asked what he could do with his GCN broadband adapter besides play LAN games. I was surprised you didnt mention Warp Pipe, a method of "tunneling" LAN games like Mario Kart:DD to play with others over the internet.

Zack Chartier

I'm surprised you didn't even read his question. He had already been playing Double Dash online but got tired of it. Warp Pipe is an impressive piece of work, but it is difficult to set up, and even then it can be hard to get good performance with the games or even to find many people to play against.

I remember seeing awhile back about someone redoing Ocarina of Time with

Link to the Past style graphics, I even downloaded the little demo the

person made. On a recent web search looking for it, I could not find

it. What's happened to it? Did Nintendo shut the person down or did

they just give up on it?

- Optimistic

Ben Kosmina knew something about this project:

"Yeah, Nintendo killed this one. If I remember correctly, the url for the

site was www.oot2d.com or something. May have had a hyphen."

I honestly think Nintendogs will have a hard time selling in America or Europe or even Australia and sadly have the same fate of the great Pikmin2 and be a great unique game that sells poorly because its to different. The other day I was in Curcuit City playing some new cube demos and I noticed a young girl and young boy went to play Nintendogs, neither one was impressed to play for more than a minute. They were more interested in eyetoy and Dance Dance revolution however, and playing Destroy All Humans. The other day at blockbuster I saw two kids walk by a big cardboard cut out of Nintendogs and they seemed very interested, to bad Blockbuster doesn’t have DS demo systems and to bad they seem barely able to read but thought the puppies looked cute. I honestly don’t think this game will sell well at all, today’s kids are way to interested in being cool and killing cops in Grand Theft Auto, or killing each other in Halo than playing unique games. Maybe I’m old but when I was a kid I would give any game a chance, not only games that looked cool. I just think Nintendogs will sell terribly the kids it might be interested but can’t read, and the girls that might think its interesting won’t buy systems because cloths and makeup are more important . You never know how a game will sale I’m very happy Animal Crossing sold a million copies but I don’t think Nintendogs has a chance at all because people are just to closed minded and rather kill hookers than “not look dumb talking to game” . That’s just my thoughts what about you?

It's no sure thing, but I think Nintendogs will do well in America if Nintendo shows it to the right audiences. I played an early copy recently, and my roommate immediately fell in love with the game. He's 22 years old and usually plays sports games. This is all anecdotal evidence, of course, but I think it says something about the game's appeal. By the way, you can dress up the dogs in bows and collars that you buy at the pet shop.

I work at GameStop and we actually had the free Mario 64 DS thing going on twice. Each time it lasted about a week or two. If you check on Nintendo.com I believe they tell you what stores are currently using the offer. They seem to switch around every once in a while.

Scum

This report is similar to others I've heard, that the program is just very inconsistent. According to Nintendo, the deal officially ended on July 31st, but who knows, you might find it still running some places.

Up until I was about five or six years old, I always watched my older

sister play video games on the NES. It wasn't until after many months

that she lost interest and I thought I should give it a try playing the

games myself. You would think that I would have completely grown out

of just watching games, but many years later when my sister bought the

first Silent Hill game, I went back to being a spectator. I swear I

must have sat and watched her play the entire game. It was just too

scary and the controls were too difficult for me to try myself, as I

wasn't used to the Playstation controller. I also watched her play

about half of Silent Hill 2 which unfortunately sucked (the guy killed

his wife - lame). After she moved away, she would come home with her

PS2 just to play Silent Hill 2. I know this all sounds silly in the

age of Resident Evil 4 which I played and completed by myself, as a

matter of fact.

So there are others!

Planet Gamecube is always the first site I check whenever I sign on, and I love all the mailbag questions you guys are doing. My question involves importing DS from Japan (Through Lik-Sang of course) and though I know I'll be able to play American games on the system, does the DS unit itself have the option of changing the language to English?

I'm 99% sure that it does. The U.S. system can be set to Japanese for the system menus, so the Japanese unit can probably do the reverse. Of course, that only goes for the firmware. It has nothing to do with the text in games.

hello bag

For the Revolution's launch (or early lifespan), do you think Nintendo will

try and make any 1st party game that appeals to an audience more like a

current PS2 or XBOX owner? I would think that it could only help Nintendo's

image and sales, and it may help N get ahead in the war.

-loniquet

Yes, I really do. Either they'll make sure that Metroid Prime 3 appeals to a wider audience than the Echoes did, or they'll have another big T- or M-rated game available. It makes a huge difference at launch time, when the system is mainly being bought and discussed by hardcore, 18-30 male gamers.

Dear bag,

In today's mailbag, you said you expected multiplatform games to cost

the same on every platform, but games designed for Revolution to cost

less due to lower development costs. Here's my prediction of how this

will work:

1. Third parties release a game on all the consoles at the same price.

2. Nobody buys the Revolution one because the people who only own

Revolution aren't willing to pay more than they have to spend on other

(likely better) Revolution games, and the people who own multiple

consoles will buy it on one of the other ones so they can get prettier

graphics.

3. Third parties blame Revolution for poor sales and drop their support for it.

4. Everyone whines.

What do you think, sirs?

Yours etc,

William Knickers

That's a scary prediction, but it's reasonable. I sure hope Nintendo has some strategy for avoiding such pitfalls, though.

Hey Jonathan-

Your answer in a recent mailbag gave me the impression that the WiFi

capabilities of the DS and/or Revolution did not allow for encryption.

I currently use Apple, so with the Airport Extreme setting up a

wireless connection in my home was simple. But considering how many

neighbors I have, I also use the WPA Personal encryption on my signal,

and I require the user to know the name of the network to join it

(pretty simple since we only have on computer). So will Nintendo

allow encrypted WiFi signals? I don't mind reverting to a WEP

encryption if needed. I just don't want to open the signal up and

suddenly have all my neighbors ciphoning off my broadband.

And speaking of Apple, when are they going to team up with Nintendo on

something? Two very similar companies that in some ways occupy the

same niche in their respective industries would seem to create the

perfect corporate partnership, in my mind at least. Thanks for the

great feature and keep up the awesome work.

Nintendo has not yet been very clear on how the WiFi Connection service will handle encryption. They've just said that they want people to be able to use the DS online without having to type in passwords and other such information...but how they plan to accomplish such ease of use is unknown. Rumors of Apple and Nintendo working together have been around since at least the late 90s, but absolutely nothing has ever come of it. For one thing, Nintendo does not consider itself a niche company, or at least they won't publicly admit it. And the market share data backs them up, as Nintendo owns a much larger piece of the gaming industry (thanks to handhelds) than Apple owns in the computer industry.

What is the deal with Nanostray? I was able to get my copy online, but I can not find a single retailer (even game stores like EB, Gamestop, etc) that have it in stock. A local EB rep even told me the game was cancelled??? I have it in my DS so I know that not to be true. Is this related somehow to Majesco's current financial issues or is it more to do with a smaller developer with a non-familiar title that stores don't want to take a chance on? Is Nanostray going to be the lost treasure for the DS that noone ever played? For all the PGC readers I just have to say it is a phenonemal (all be it short) shooter and I recommend it highly.

James Baxter

I've heard other stories of it being hard to find in stores. Game distribution can sometimes vary widely from publisher to publisher and from title to title. In this case, I doubt it has much to do with Majesco's financial troubles...they probably just didn't make very many copies of the game, thinking that its niche audience will seek it out anyway. I've heard that some people are already trying to buy extra copies, expecting it to become a collectible rarity in the future.

Hey,

First off, PGC Rocks! It is great to have a site dedicated to Nintendo

products! I was wondering what exactly happend to the 3d sonic game for the

ds they showed at E3 last year. Also, i was wondering what exactly is up

with all of the DS game delays. I reserved my copy of several games such as

Super Mario Brothers, Mario Kart, and Metroid Prime Hunters several months

ago and i have seen them delayed at least 3 times now. I understand that

they are in development but Nintendo needs some good games released for the

DS to keep up with the PSP. Thanks, keep up the great work!

Sonic Rush for DS will be out by the end of the year. Of those other games, I only know of Hunters being officially delayed. Mario Kart is still on track to come out this fall, as it always has been, and NEW Super Mario Bros. has never had a firm release date. That's one problem with reserving games...it warps your sense of time as you start to anticipate the game's release, and in many cases, reserving your copy is completely unnecessary. Games like Mario Kart will be shipped to stores in massive quantities, so you hardly need to worry about finding a copy on launch day. The only time I reserve games is for niche titles for which the store may not otherwise receive many copies or any at all.

I was wondering if you've heard of any steps Nintendo has taken or might

take in response to cheaters that I'm sure will eventually emerge with the

DS (and eventually the Revolution) going online. I've heard the Action

Replay has come out for DS now and that's what starting to get me worried.

Usually server-side services like most MMORPGs use solves many of these

problems but I don't know that something like that can be used effectively

for something like Mario Kart. I just hat cheaters so much is all....

--myDingling

That's a legitimate concern. Hopefully Nintendo will say something about cheating when they do finally tell us the rest of the details on the WiFi Connection service. (I'm starting to sound like a broken record, huh?)

Howdy! If I remember correctly, Nintendo was coming out with a Japanese-English dictionary for the DS where you could write a symbol on the touch screen and it would translate it for you. Do you know if this is still coming out? If so, has there been any public plan to bring it to the U.S.? If not, would there be any trouble with importing one?

Anything else you know of that would just make learning Japanese easier? (video game related of course)

Thanks!

Neal

Dan Bloodworth has you covered on that dictionary. I'm quite sure there will be no U.S. release for it, so you should import if it looks like it could be useful. Another good resource for help with Japanese games is Chris Kohler's chapter in Gaming Hacks, entitled "Play Japanese Games Without Speaking Japanese".

You probably can't answer this any better than I can.

I might have to throw off a question to NOA some other

time. But anyway, a friend of mine will be studying

abroad in Japan for a whole year, starting this

September. When Mario Kart and Animal Crossing are

released, what do we do? Will there be any way to

connect to him by wifi if he bought the Japanese

versions? Or do you suppose he'll have to import the

US versions of these games if he wants to play with

his friends back home? Barriers across countries and

languages have been broken in online gaming before,

but I somehow have a feeling that this isn't the type

of thing Nintendo would do. But hopefully if the

Japanese version won't work, he could still connect

all the way across the world with the US version.

-Try4ce

Good news: Animal Crossing DS can connect players across the world. In fact, Nintendo seems to intend all of their games to have that capability, since all of their online hyping so far has mentioned playing "across town or across the globe" or something to that effect.

Hey PGC,

Once again, great work on the daily mailbag.

You've been listing some places where gamers can sell/trade used

games. I have used http://gametz.com/ in the past, and they recently

opened up all of it's game trading services for free (they used to be

subscription only after the first month). You simply make a list of

the games you have, and the games you want, which they then

cross-check with other gamers lists, supplying you with matches and

possible trades. You can also offer money/DVDs/baseball cards/you name

it.

thanks,

tristan

Okay, that's the last game trading/selling site to get free hype in our mailbag. I think the various options in this field are a good argument for us not getting involved with all the possible legal issues by setting up our own trading forum.

I would like to say that there is nothing greater than beating mike tyson with an original nes controller in your hands. In response to your advice almost NES will work with a new 72 pin connector. My suggestion is to grab a nes from your local Goodwill or thrift store. Replace the 72 pin connector with a new one and VIOLA! Your NES works 100% of the time.

Froogle Link

You can also replace the batteries in the NES carts. I recently replaced the ones in my Final Fantasy and Baseball Stars Games.

http://www.the9thkey.com/games/Nesbatt.htm

Love the mailbag

Kevin

There's another option if you aren't afraid to crack open the system. Of course, the warranties on all NES systems expired long ago, so there's no reason not to try if your system isn't working...just make sure it isn't plugged up when you start taking it apart!

Nice mini-preview of Mario & Luigi 2. I noticed there

was no mention of touch screen capabilities. Are

there any as far as you've seen?

vudu

Not that I remember from the E3 demo. TYP didn't mention any in his impressions, either. Maybe some of the menus are touch sensitive, but it wouldn't hurt my feelings if there is no further support. This series is heavily dependent on quick and nimble use of the face buttons, so touch screen controls would just be distracting.

Hi PGC, love the site and the continually updating mailbag.

I don't have a question but I do have a reply for "Elders" whom asked

about the action button being implemented in any other games possibly

in the future. Well he really just has to look back if he wants some

more "action button" fun. I suggest he pick up a Dreamcast (or Xbox

@_@) and Shenmue 1 or 2 if he really liked that gameplay element.

The Shenmue series actually was the first game(s) to implement the

"action button" events and was a key component of the gameplay. I

will agree with him that it is a fun gameplay element and I hope more

games do use the "action buttons" or "RTE: real time events" (as they

called it in Shenmue).

- Rob

Shenmue brought back that kind of gameplay, but the series didn't invent it. Cut-scene button mashing goes back at least as far as Dragon's Lair, a famous old arcade game that was made up entirely of such events.

Dear Planetgamecube,

What will the Revolution controller look like?

Love,

Alan

That's entirely up to you.

Hello, first of all let me state I know very little about Anime and

Manga. Today I received my copy of Jump Superstars and I am loving it,

even though I don't know who 80% of the characters are. My question is

since here in the U.S. a company called Viz has brought over the Jump

manga, would there be a chance of a US release since the game is based

on the manga and not the anime. Or would the fact that in America the

different companies owning the rights to the anime's ruin the chance.

I believe that Jump Superstars will help the DS alot, because of how

popular manga and anime is becoming here.

I think there's a chance, but it's slim. JSS is going to be a huge seller in Japan, that's for sure. We'll have some import coverage of it very soon.

I was just wondering, do you think people will still be able to play

Mario Kart: Double Dash's LAN mode on the Revolution? The only time I

used it was when I used to play it over warp pipe. But it would be cool

if it still worked on the Revolution.

-Dan

That depends on how Revolution's backwards compatibility with GameCube is achieved. If the GameCube is being emulated (which would be an impressive feat), then Nintendo should be able to set up online multiplayer modes for GC games as easily as they can for earlier systems, which apparently they're already looking into. If the Revolution uses a hardware solution for GC support, I think any modification of how GC games play will be much more difficult to pull off. For instance, the PS2 uses a hardware solution to play PSone games. There are a few options to enhance the performance of those games, such as turning on faster load times and texture smoothing, but these are simple features compared to tunneling a LAN mode out to the Internet.

That's enough for today, I think. I'm starting to get a lot of redundant letters, by the way...half a dozen people must have linked me to that PlayMessiah website. So don't feel bad if you sent in a useful bit of information but someone else's version got printed instead. They probably said it more concisely, or more likely, I just got to their letter first.