Tom Hall of course made Commander Keen and Anachronox, among others. He's working on this game with Brenda Brathwaite, who was a designer on Wizardry 8 and some other classic RPGs. It's going to be a first-person RPG with turn-based combat. It's at ~$180,000 now, so it's got a ways to go before it gets funded. It better be, Tom Hall should be making real games again! Commander Keen's one of my favorite games ever, of course... and while I'd rather see him make a platformer, honestly, an RPG from the designers of Wizardry 8 and Anachronox? Yes, I will be getting this. The only question is, which tier... it's hard to decide.
Obsidian needs no introduction, I think... Chris Avellone's studio, and makers of many RPGs now. This one will be more traditional than any of the ones they've made since founding Obsidian, even more so than NWN2 I expect. It's going to be isometric viewed and with pausable real-time combat, like that game or Torment/Icewind Dale. It's already got several million dollars, so the question here is just if you want it... but if it's anywhere near as good as it should be, it'll certainly be worth getting!
The upcoming Prof. Laton and Paper Mario Star Sticker are examples. Nintendo is really pushing people to download the games instead of getting the retail versions, so the only games this applies to are ones you can also get in retail, not download exclusives.
What do you get? Not the arcade game exactly, but instead a modified version of the NES port. This had also been released in PAL format in Europe on select Wiis and as a reward for downloading NSMB2. As you may already know, the NES port of the game lacks the conveyer belt level of the original arcade release, which was apparently due to initial NES games having extremely limited storage space even compared to later NES games (Donkey Kong Classics would later stuff all of DKJr in there but didn't code back in that missing level). Other than this, certain animations are missing like the classic DK bouncing up the girders and knocking them out of alignment and a number of missing sound effects. The core game is basically the same, though at an easier difficulty curve. So, this version codes the conveyer level back into play using that engine.
It's a fun reward, but their advertising is misleading. It's not actually "original edition" since it isn't a port of the arcade version. (Actually, they legally can't do that, because a different company is responsible for actually programming the original game, and Nintendo burned bridges with them by releasing the game boards themselves without paying them for it, so they can't get the license back now. http://gamasutra.com/view/feature/134790...hp?print=1 ) Further, they advertise it as "never before released in America". While strictly speaking, this IS true of this particular version (it had only been released in Europe as I had said), it isn't true of the conveyer belt level, which obviously had been released in America, both in the arcade and later on with Donkey Kong 64.
That brings me to my last point. How exactly was Rare able to get away with putting that port of DK Arcade in DK64 without getting Nintendo into trouble? Is it technically good because the game was actually rewritten and ported to the N64 hardware, or is it shady because it was actually the arcade game being emulated? I can't say because I don't know. In any case, one would think Nintendo could rewrite the code from scratch these days exactly matching the arcade original and go ahead and release THAT as the "original edition".
Well, either way it'll be fun to play something pretty close to the original version and it's not a bad little "extra" for downloading certain games. However, I may stick with DK64 when I'm at home for the genuine article. (Not as genuine as you might expect though. The DK64 version unlocks all 4 stages from the start. The original only had two stages in the first "loop", then the bouncing spring stage added in loop 2, and by loop 3 they add the conveyer belt stage to the loop. It doesn't quite end there though, as later loops add repeats of some of the stages to get even "higher" on the "how high can you go?" screen. Still, it's as close as any home version's ever been, short of actually buying an old DK arcade machine.)
The live video was supposed to have been on a delay to prevent something like that from airing... but apparently it wasn't, or at the very least someone wasn't paying attention and didn't cut the video off in time. Fail, Fox News. FAIL.
I think it's an old video that just came out now, but maybe someday we'll be able to play this game... it looks great, just like Rare's other N64 3d platformers, including of course the Conker game they did release (after a complete redo). I like the cute theme here, and the two playable characters. I can understand why they changed it, because they'd done three cute 3d platformers on the N64 already, but it's too bad we couldn't have gotten both somehow... anyway, it's a very cool video, watch it.
I was board this weekend so I invented a shrink ray, to bad it only shrinks things not enlarges them, I had a lot of trial runs and ended up with hundreds of tiny bowls! Anyone wan't a really tiny bowl? Actually it's a test of the new bullet physics branch in Blender it's getting more stable and better with new features everyday!
As the bowl shrinks the spoon gets pushed out, you may have to watch it HD full screen to see everything.
This kinda flies in the face of the SMB3 manual which states numerous times they ARE his kids, and again in both the All-Stars and Advance version's manuals.
I really don't care too much about Mario's "continuity" and tend to think of the Mario universe as in flux like the Looney Toons universe. If the old quartet of games has them as his children and the new set of games sets them as... um... a bunch of random koopas of no relation, then that's fine. I can just accept that most Mario games occur in their own isolated instances and the general personalities are all that get moved around from game to game. It just doesn't seem very fun or interesting to me though. Bowser Jr isn't all that interesting on his own.
Ya know what? Screw it, they're still his kids to me. Miyamoto's statements about continuity in interviews aren't really to be trusted anyway. Remember all those completely contradictory statements about Zelda's timeline before they officially released a timeline that, wouldn't you know it, ended up matching perfectly with what they originally said in the games themselves.
It's a great collection for those who missed out on some or all of the older Kirby games. While it doesn't have the "spinoff" titles, it has every main platformer Kirby game up to the N64, so excluding the Gameboy Advance on up.
So, it's got:
Kirby's Dreamland 1, 2 & 3
Kirby's Adventure
Kirby Super Star
Kirby 64
It also has some new "challenge mode" stages built with the engine from Return to Dreamland, a "history" of the franchise, and a few episodes of the cartoon.
The games aren't enhanced in any real way aside from adding "suspend" functionality. The games aren't ported either, rather they are emulated. The emulation is done well though, with one glaring exception. Each game has it's own border and is put into the proper aspect ratio from the start, notably unlike virtual console games downloaded from Nintendo's store. During each game, the "home" button also pulls up an option for a different manual for each game.
Kirby's Dreamland 2 is that exception I alluded to above. The game was a Gameboy game with Super Gameboy support. It was one of the few SGB games that actually did a really good job with the coloring. Stages had appropriate color schemes and stationary scenes like the opening, the little cartoons, and some boss fights had very good use of color. It also had a unique border and more notably had additional SNES quality sound effects added throughout the game.
Unfortunately, Nintendo made no attempt at all to emulate the Super Gameboy. I'm still rather surprised at this myself. The vast "history" both within the game and in the booklet packaged with the game bears no mention of this at all when talking about Dreamland 2. Further, all images on the box and in the booklets of the box art for Dreamland 2 seem to have the Super Gameboy logo edited out. Well, all except one glaring exception. The game's box art in the collection itself, that is within the game, still has the Super Gameboy logo. That's sure to confuse, but it's the sort of thing that's known to happen when manual makers and late comers putting finishing touches in the game itself like altering the Japanese box art to the US versions don't communicate.
So as it stands, I really don't get it. They know how to emulate SNES games and Gameboy games, so emulating SGB functionality should be feasible if they decided to put the effort into it. Most homebrew Gameboy emulators have SGB support too. Heck, I know they WERE able to emulate some SGB functionality in the N64 days because Pokemon Stadium was able to play Pokemon Red and Blue with their SGB color palettes and borders intact.
The thing is, it really does take away from the game. If you recall the Donkey Kong Country Gameboy Color port, imagine if all subsequent releases of that game only used THAT version. Yes, the gameplay is intact, and yes, it was an impressive feat when all they had was the power of the Gameboy Color, but it would take away from the experience knowing exactly what the game looked and sounded like on the SNES. Granted, it's not as drastic a difference as that, but it's notable especially to someone who primarily played those SGB supported games ON a SGB. To rub salt in the wound, the game takes place in the "Rainbow Islands" so the story itself refers to the SGB functionality and more notably color.
I wouldn't be running on and on about this except for the sheer strangeness of how Nintendo intends to whitewash the Super Gameboy out of existance on so many emulated SGB games rather than just put in the time and effort to properly emulate SGB functionality and go forward from there.
They still CAN do that work mind you. Ports of Kirby Star Stacker, Kirby Block Ball, and Mega Man V (GB) onto the 3DS could actually get the work done. In fact they could even go back and patch in the support for Donkey Kong (GB) and a handful of others (once the emulator's done, all that's left is testing and fine tuning to be sure it is working on other games). However, the Anniversary collection is stuck. It's on a static disk on a system that doesn't support patching (at least not easily) and nothing short of a reissue will fix the release of Dreamland 2. It's a sore missed opportunity to really show off how the game was meant to be played.
I put a lot of time into the SGB issue, but aside from this issue the rest of the collection really shines as brightly as they did when they first came out. Note "when they first came out", as it doesn't include the remade versions of Kirby's Adventure (Nightmare in Dreamland) or Kirby Super Star (Ultra), but it still is a FAR more substantial offering than Super Mario All-Stars was. As I said before, that particular game had no additional menu interface, simply launching directly into the emulated ROM, and didn't even use the best version of that ROM at that (the SNES later had Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World, which added Super Mario World to the list of games), and counts as one of the laziest cash grabs Nintendo has done in recent memory to me. This one is much better and has far more than just one game. I recommend it to Kirby fans and those who missed out on a lot of these gems.
