Guys i'm been a fan of PG ever since planetN64 I love your site check it

daily and this is my homepage.

okay what i wanna ask is....Do you think we'll ever see a Killer Instinct

game on the DS? or a perfect dark game? now that Rare is onboard as a DS

developer , I just love the DS handles 3D it bring N64 nostalgia cause alot

games like splinter cell look like if the N64 would of had one this is how

it would look like..,isn't cool? well keep up the good work!!!

Yeah, I think we'll see some Rare series on DS. My vote goes to a Blast Corps sequel... (By the way, we have no affiliation with Planet N64. That was probably a division of GameSpy, but I'm not personally familiar with the name.)

The last bag mentioned Yamauchi, I loved this mans hard tactics even if I disagreed with them at least he stood his ground. What is he doing now besides trying to revitalize those Japanese poems? Maybe no one knows but if anyone does the bag will.

-hamby

I imagine Yamauchi is keeping busy by playing Go, watching his Mariners on TV, and secretly running Nintendo on the weekends.

Sim Tower was developed by a Japanese company and

published in the US by Maxis. The sequel to it, "Yoot

Tower", was released here by SEGA. I believe the

original developer might have moved there. Tower SP is

developed by Vivarium, which obviously has very strong

ties to SEGA already. It's not remotely surprising to

me that they'd get a new version in Japan as it

obviously wasn't American developed.

I got tons of letters about this game, but this guy seems to know the most about the series.

Hi Guys - great site. I'm interested in Chunsoft's

Homeland RPG game - but I don't know Japanese. Do you

know if the game has English subtitles or if it's

possible to comprehend w/o knowing Japanese?

Thanks!

As a general rule, it's hard to play any RPG without knowing the language. Homeland is no different, from what I've heard. No, there are no English subtitles.

Hello PGC,

I was wondering, if the Revolution is supposed to be able to download

and play old NES/SNES/N64 games, doesn't that mean that the controller

will have to include all the features of the old pads, (D-pad/3D

stick, triggers, plenty o' standard buttons,) and doesn't this put a

limit on how amazing and revolutionary it can be?

Paul

Maybe. Or maybe Nintendo will reissue all the old controllers in Revolution-compatible forms. Or maybe they'll just let you play the old games with the GameCube controller, which has plenty of buttons for the old systems and already plugs directly into the Revolution.

First off, let's get the obvious out of the way: Nintendo's standards at the moment are not what they used to be. They didn't believe in releasing shallow spin-offs and whoring out their franchises to other developers, and churning out as many cookie-cutter sequels as possible. I refer to games such as Star Fox Assault, Mario Sunshine, Yoshi Touch-and-Go, The Wind Waker, Mario Party, Four Swords and so on. Good games; but not nearly up to the standards of old. (In fact, I recall a quote from one of your articles about Mario Sunshine and the "SHINE GET!" translation to "SHINE!" and one of you specifically asking "Is Nintendo getting lazy?" )

With this trend, I had low hopes for Zelda: Twilight Princess. I assumed that it would be rushed, like TWW, and end up with about four dungeons and more game-extending filler that would leave a bad aftertaste.

So imagine my surprise when Zelda was DELAYED?? No, I thought; Nintendo doesn't bother delaying games anymore for the sake of making them good. So I wondered; and this is my actual question--do you think that Nintendo is aware of their new "lazy" image, and is working actively to fix it? I mean, I assumed that a Fall 2005 release date would have been plenty of time after starting the game production to have made a good one; but God knows what they can do with the game now that they have all this extra time!

So what do you think?

Well, I and many other people would disagree with your choices for examples of Nintendo getting lazy, and in fact many people would disagree that standards have dropped at all. I think they have, but not very much in general, partly because we have a tendency to gloss over the problems of our favorite old games and completely forget the occasional turds that Nintendo released over the years.

With that said, you and I do agree that the delay of Twilight Princess is a very strong reinforcement of Nintendo's commitment to quality. But the size of the delay, at least six months, makes me wonder if there's a larger issue than simply polishing up the graphics and gameplay.

When 3do went belly up a groupd of investors actually formed Four

Horsemen Entertainment LLC. in order to buy the project and all related

material. They are currently making the game for Next-Gen platforms.

They also plan on doing comics and such off of the property.

On a different note... Nintendo said that they wanted to have developers

on the Revolution who don't have the money but have big ideas... in

other words, indie developers. As one myself, working on an adventure

game for 4 years with a worldwide team (it takes a long time to make a

compelling world with cultures and religions and such), I'd like to know

if you think Nintendo will actually help smaller developers. Right now

they just keep throwing us and numerous other developers I know the

"proven developers only" bit, while MOST indie developers are not proven

really. If they want to attract more developers from the indie market,

they really need to relax their rules a bit. I'm just wondering if in

whatever crystal ball you use to look into Nintendo, you see them

becoming more welcoming to smaller devs.

~Greg Szemiot

I checked your story on Four Horsemen, and you're right. IGN reported in June 2004 that the game's creators had salvaged the property from 3DO and were continuing development. But I haven't found any reports since that time, nor any contact information for the company, so I can't verify that the project is still afloat. If anyone reading this knows how to contact the developers, I'd love to do a follow-up report on the game.

I share your skepticism of Nintendo's support for indie developers. Their supportive stance means little unless they back it up with cheap dev kits, low royalties, and an inexpensive distribution system. Whether any of that stuff is actually coming just remains to be seen.

Yo me again. I've been wondering. Do you think RE5's main mystery

character could be Billy from Resident Evil 0? If you played and beat

the game, you should know the ending. If not, visit the GameFAQs guides.

Some say its Chris Redfield, which may be true, but I think it's Billy.

What do you think?

-ZeroWil

Resident Evil Zero is probably the least popular game in the series, but Capcom might still utilize its story and characters for RE5. Fun trivia: I actually played RE Zero on the N64 back at E3 2000! It was one of several games shown that year that would eventually be moved over to the GameCube.

Hello Mailbag,

I've noticed a lot of people recently asking about remakes or updates to such classics as Kid Icarus, Star Tropics, and Earthbound. In the past, us fans were encouraged to send NOA an email with requests for such games. But don't you think that era is coming to an end? I mean, if a huge amount of people download/order Kid Icarus, do you think Nintendo will take notice and maybe look into resurrecting the franchise? My hope is that if enough people play the SNES version of Earthbound on their Revolutions, Nintendo will finally give us the GBA compilation that came out in Japan years ago. The download service seems like it could be an excellent market research tool for the big N. What are your thoughts? Thanks in advance!

Nintendo will have to be careful about extrapolating market predictions from download service usage unless a large and wide portion of the Revolution userbase actively downloads games. And your Earthbound example is suspect, since the GBA compilation would be 50% redundant with the downloadable SNES game hypothetically used to support the handheld release. How many of those people would buy the GBA version just for the older (and widely regarded to be inferior) "Earthbound Zero"? Probably only the most hardcore fans.

Bag,

I wrote a few weeks back about my Ds being sent through the wash..Well Im sorry to say it didn't make it..Nothing I did would bring the poor little guy back to life.....but,On a brighter note EB took it in trade and gave me 50.00 in store credit I told them the battery was dead and they looked at me a little odd when I grabbed me another Ds this time I got the one with metroid and I also bought a Safe to keep my DS away from my kids..Anways Here is a few questions for ya.

1)Does the gameshark work on the ds

2)If no for first question are there any plans on making a gameshark or code breaker for the Ds..not for cheating on-line but just to get that extra step in a game.

Thanks..

-Scot00

I'm sorry to hear about your DS...I hope you checked with Nintendo first, as they might have replaced it for free since it was under warranty!

1) The GBA GameShark probably works fine for GBA games on the DS, though I haven't tried it to be sure. I'm sure one of your fellow readers will write in to confirm.

2) There is probably a GameShark and/or Action Replay in development for the DS. Those devices seem to hit every system, so I'm sure it's just a matter of time.

Next year, Nintendo will be releasing a "USB-based wireless network adapter

for the pc."

It will be for people who do not have a wireless network available.

You see, what happens is the USB Adapter will basically be the wifi coming

from a computer rather than a wireless router. There is a downfall to this

idea though. Currently, when this type of connection is used (typically a

Bridge of sorts) you performance will now be dependant on the processing

load of the computer.

If you are downloading on the computer, then your connection will definatly

be slower than that over a standard wireless network. Of course nintendo

has been practicing with network play with titles like Mario Kart Double

Dash. In this title, it looks like Nintendo used a frame based engine for

the networking. This would ensure all frames are played and it also makes

sure that internet connections wouldn't work too well. With Nintendo

though, they are always about 100 percent quality for the consumer, so I am

sure they have a work around for the computer solution. (a more standard

information packet handling structure)

We still don't have any details on Nintendo's wireless USB device, including a release date or how it actually works. But I expect that your description is accurate. Nintendo is designing their first online games to elegantly handle multiple users even across the world, so I'm sure they have learned how to keep the games running as smoothly as possible even with lag on the connection. The frame-based network code in Double Dash is one of the main reasons that the Warp Pipe tunnelling service only works well over extremely fast broadband connections.

I hope this isn't to far off topic, but all the talk about Revolution's

backwards compatability with old games has spurred my interest in

classic gaming. So, two weeks ago, I went to the Classic Gaming Expo in

Burlingame, California, and this is what I found for sale:

http://www.playmessiah.com/onlinestore/gnex_faq.htm

Also, I recently read an article in a UK magazine called "Retro Gamer"

about the Famicom and it included short writeups on some very fun and

bizare games that I am dying to try ("Takeshi no Chousenjou" and

"Utsurun desu. Kawauso Hawaii e iku." sound hilarious). Now I'm

becomming extremely interested in Famicom and Famicom Disk system games.

My questions for you are:

1. Do you know of any other really good or strange Japan-only Famicom

games? Can you reccomend any?

2. ...and places where you can buy them? Physical locations (In the US)

or websites?

3. Last, do you know of any other classic game conventions happening in

the distant future? Preferrably in California? CGE was a blast, but the

next one isn't until 2007!

Thanks for all of the hard work on the mailbag! The frequent updates

really are appreciated!

--Scotty Hoag

The NEX looks awesome, eh? I'm looking into getting a review sample from Messiah so we can let all of our readers know whether it stacks up. Note that it plays Japanese Famicom cartridges (but not discs), so you can use it to satisfy your new hobby, too. There are tons of wacky Famicom games, and you can learn about many of them with a few searches online. One of the most famous Japan-only games from that era is Devil World, the only Miyamoto game never released in English. I've heard that it's basically a Pac-Man clone, but a very good one despite the completely bizarre religious elements. By far the best place to find such games is in the Akihabara electronics district of Tokyo. Your local import shop may have a small selection, but most of the large online importers concentrate on new releases rather than the classics. And eBay is always an option. I haven't heard of any other classic gaming expos, but I don't keep up with the scene since it's not explicitly related to Nintendo, and since I'm a half-hearted game collector at best.

Do you know if there will be a preorder bonus for x-men legends 2 ???

I just checked with an Activision PR guy, and he tells me that there is a special comic book for those who preorder the game. It's an original story that links the first and second X-Men Legends games. Check your local game store to make sure it's available before you put down that money.

Hi,

do you plan to make a Yu-Gi-Oh Nightmare Trobadour review?

Thanks.

Raúl

Yep, that's the plan! We don't cover every single Yu-Gi-Oh game since there are so many and they're all pretty much the same thing, but this is the first one for DS, so we'll try to get a copy and let you know if it's worth checking out.

See there, told you it wouldn't be a long wait for more hot mailbag action. I'm still working on the backlog, but please keep sending new letters and questions!