And it begins.

:)  So so SO glad to see this happen.  Time to step up your game, Nintendo.  May want to go ahead and make mention of a new console with higher specs at E3 this year after all. ;)

UP PORTS!! UP PORTS!! UP PORTS!! UP PORTS!!

Move over Wii (c wut I did ther) there is a new player in town.

Considering this title is explicitly being made for kids, are there really that many children out there who own a PS3 and would be interested in this game?  The PS2, PSP, and DS versions make sense, though.

Kid who owns PS3 that is gonna convince their parent to Move so he can play this game on PS3 instead of Move.....?

For Wii - $50

For PS3 - $100(Move) + $30(SubCon) + $60(Game)

That's a big initial investment.

Good to know Headstrong isn't wasting their time with the up-ports.

I expected this game a lot sooner (last holiday, actually), which gives me hope that Headstrong has improved it a lot... though the new trailer on Nintendo Channel didn't look much better than the E3 demo. The art style is okay, but the color palette is so bland. Notice that the environments are all one color and maybe one other shade of that same color.

I am a lot more excited about whatever Headstrong is doing after this, or in parallel. Geometry Wars Galaxies 2, please!

If I recall correctly from some preview somewhere, they've changed it a lot since E3. I know in the co-op you used to play as an omnipresent Gandalf who wouldn't be on screen. Now, he's always around on screen.

It's a nothing title in my view but, hey, Sony just stole an exclusive from Nintendo.  And up-porting is way easier than down-porting.  With up-porting you just have to improve the graphic models.  But in down-porting all sorts of stuff you took for granted in the original design like the amount of characters on screen and the size of an open area might not work.

Bringing the NES Mario games to the SNES in Super Mario All-Stars was no problem but imagine trying to get Super Mario World to work on an NES.  All those rotating platforms, big sprite enemies like Bonzai Bill or Big Boo, Yoshi - you've have to axe those and that would change the game design tons.  This is why we get spin-offs instead of the real game.

You haven't played any of the real games that do exist, so hold your horses.

Ian, the Wii and the HD systems aren't that different.
The overall design of the game doesn't have the change, just the level of detail.
If devs weren't being so lazy they could do just about any game they've done on the HD systems on the Wii, it just wouldn't look as pretty(but it might control better).

Laziness = popularity

Busted popularity = hilarity + bankruptcy(?)

Oh noes, they stealed the excuse-ive.

I hope this acceptance of waggle leads to more games on the Wii. Watch me be disappointed.

Ian, it really depends on what engine your up-porting or down-porting. Its much easier to start from a high resolution model and simplify the geometry than it is to make low geometry and make it higher. At that point its easier to just make new higher geometry from scratch.

But the leap from the NES era to the SNES was bigger and more substantial than the leap from the last generation to the current one. Plus the Wii is still an improvement over last gen, so its not entirely a last gen system.

I think a better analogy would be taking a game like SM64 and then trying to downport it to the PS1. I think that more accurately represents the situation here. SM64 would have required significant retooling to work on the PS1, but it could have been done. Getting SM64 to run on the SNES would have been out of the question, however.

What is ironic is that SM64 did begin it's life on the SNES as a Super FX 2 game, but that was (thankfully) shit-canned.

Not just a significant amount, but a massive amount. Some of the best looking PS1 games (Brave Fencer Musashi being my favorite) suffer from pixelated graininess in their graphical engines. While the platforming would somehow work (post-Sony stealing analog from Nintendo hur hur), the graphical engine would not work for it.

PS1 polygons exhibit a strange behavior where they just CAN'T STAY STILL.

"Try the shakes."
--MJF

....

I'd say a Super FX 2.0 chip developed SM64 would be easier on the eyes than most PS1 games. Many 3D PS1 titles are simply unplayable for me because of the level of pixilated mess. It's one of the reasons I hate how DS RPGs try and insert FMV in them because the switch back to the in-game engine is nasty as can be.

On the matter of this game, I was always curious about how it would turn out and did consider buying it if it was a good enough zelda/gauntlet clone. I assumed the delays were a bad sign but if they really have been making it a better game then hopefully it makes it a better sell.

I'm still surprised nothing Geometry Wars related has released on WiiWare or even DSiWare. I loved Geometry Wars Galaxies and was probably one of the few people who liked playing with the WiiMote/IR control scheme.

Sounds like that animated show "Dr. Katz"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Katz

For some reason his pixels just can't keep still either.