So, since E3 is coming up fast yet again, already, the rumors are all over and might be fun to discuss.

For the NX, supposedly it'll be more powerful than the PS4 or X1, but since Sony and MS are both talking about releasing upgraded versions of their systems maybe as soon as this year, that may not mean much. Will Nintendo yet again release a new system quite a bit less powerful than the others' are, or will it be close? That'll be very interesting to see. On the positive side, if Sony and MS release only updated systems, it does make a Wii U-like situation where far more powerful systems release a year later much less likely... unless MS does exactly that instead of releasing a half-upgrade this year, but who knows; we'll have to wait until E3 to learn what all three are going to be doing. Even though a lot of third parties have pulled out of E3, for the big three hardware manufacturers this is shaping up to be a huge Ee!

Of course, whether Nintendo can do anything to start winning back third parties is the other huge question, though that will be very difficult, considering how bad things have gotten now. Or will they just give up on that, and focus on first-party-published games only, again? One rumor is that Nintendo is trying to get more games finished faster than they have recently, and that would help of course if it's true and actually happens. You still need third parties at some point, though, but due to Nintendo's choices in the past they have lost almost all of them. More first party output would help a lot though, with how slow it's been in recent years. I still say that Nintendo never got over their terrible decision to sell off Rare... too bad.

Beyond that, the big NX question is about how it'll integrate a screen-on-controller portion and a traditional console portion. I think there are conflicting rumors here though, so who knows. Nintendo has talked about trying to make their handheld and TV systems more similar in order to make development easier, so some kind of new system or set of systems that all run on similar (maybe ARM?) hardware seems likely... though ARM isn't the best choice for a TV console, I'd think, so we'll see. As for my opinion on this one, I can understand why they would want unified system architecture, but the differences between handhelds and consoles are as significant as ever, and you can't make one system that does both equally well. I know some people like to dream about it, but so far at least you can't make a handheld that is also a great TV console, it would not be powerful enough... but different but more similar platforms could work. It will be interesting to see what Nintendo's come up with though, and if it'll go over better than the Wii U did. Here's hoping, they need it!


As for Zelda, the top rumors are that the game will launch on both NX and Wii U, as with TP and the GC and Wii versions, and that there might be a female playable character as well as the regular male one. The former of those seems very likely, but for the latter, while it'd be great, I'll believe it when I see it. Oh, and third rumor, voice acting for everyone except Link. Sure, why not. http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1205846



As for Sony... that's another subject, but if they seriously are going to release a "PS 4.5" or PS4 Neo or whatever this year, that's only three years after the PS4! Yes, all games apparently will have to work on the older system, but still, you're asking a lot from your customers to get them to buy another expensive system AND games... oh and a VR headset too. MS is also talking about upgraded systems and a short life cycle, but not quite as much as Sony has been. I know people buy new phones all the time, and they need more power particularly for VR, but still, this could backfire... and the idea defnitely has gotten a lot of criticism online too. PS4 Neo potential info: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1209238

I see this everywhere these days. "Don't be a tattletale", "don't betray your superiors' trust", "don't backstab your partner on the force", "don't narc on me", "don't rat me out", "don't snitch", this incredibly poisonous attitude against "whistleblowing" runs at every single level of society, from public to private, from children to adults, from the privileged to the oppressed.

I'm sick of it. I've tried being understanding. I really have. I look at "stop snitching" for example and try to see the systemic prejudice and abuse of power the police have used against that group to understand that maybe the origin of the "no snitching" mindset is about making sure that police don't come in and make things worse for everyone. That's true, that's an issue, but when you see it at every level and notice that even in those poor and oppressed neighborhoods, the "no snitching" attitude often goes way beyond the police, it becomes a bigger symptom of society at large.

Nobody likes the whistleblower because bringing in outsiders to "interfere" is apparently worse than the original crime, even when that crime is murder. But, the primary benefits of this attitude are ALWAYS the sociopaths trying to get away with some shady dealings. Those people don't deserve our loyalty!

Now for me, I've ALWAYS had an issue with this "moral". As a kid if someone picked on me, I ran straight to someone in authority. Sometimes it was fine, sometimes they ignored me, and in one example some teacher decided I needed to be "punished" myself, forcing me to wear a "tattle tail" made of construction paper. Yes, I'm a bit bitter about all that after all this time, but not that much since it only happened when I was a kid, and well worse examples come to mind from later years, but it underscores my point. Reporting someone's crime is seen as worse than the actual crime far too often, and I'm sick of it.

I have no illusions about what's going on with Edward Snowden. Obama isn't just "trying to make sure justice is done". He's making an example of a dirty rat who told on the NSA to the world. That's what that is, and it's got to stop.

Nintendo's getting a lot of mileage out of that trip to Jim Henson Studios. They're using the Star Fox team muppets in the commercial for Zero:



I love these muppets. First thing is I hope they retool the current Muppet Show to more closely resemble the "variety" acts of the 70's show. I mean, at LEAST set those old guys up in the balcony again. (They also need to make the muppets a little less horrible to each other.) Secondly, let's get some sketches with the Star Fox team in there. It could be the new "Pigs in Spaaaaace"!

Well, it's released, anyway. I don't have a computer good enough to run the Rift or Vive, much less the money for one right now... but have been following it, of course. It's interesting stuff; I like the Virtual Boy (and Sega's 3d shutter-glasses for the Master System), and it's cool to see consoles finally try VR again but with much better technology. I haven't used either one of these headsets myself, unfortunately, but I'd like to try. Given how I don't have much negative effect from the VB, I imagine I wouldn't have much of an issue with nausea and such.

Of course, VR advancing to this point raises questions about the future -- sci-fi stories are full of horror stories of future tech gone bad, and VR like this is a step towards that. Does it allow good things too, of course, but also a lot of bad... like, hackable brain implants? People living only in VR worlds and not in reality? Etc etc. It's a step towards at least some of those (mostly bad) sci-fi scenarios becoming reality. And that's not even mentioning things like global warming, etc. But I'm a natural pessimist like usual of course, I'm sure others think of this much more positively.


But as for the actual hardware as it is now, while I may not have one I like watching game videos on Youtube, so I have watched all 11+ hours of Giant Bomb's Oculus Rift stream when it released, and then all of their similarly long HTC Vive stream when it released a few days back, so I think I have a decent sense of where the tech is right now. The Rift and Vive are very cool tech, but they are also quite expensive, too much so at the moment unless you have a lot of extra money lying around. And the games? Well, some look cool, but a lot look early, sometimes Early Access early. And many are overpriced as well, compared to regular Steam game prices. Giant Bomb's opinion so far seems to be to wait until more games that make good use of VR are released (and maybe also lower prices) before buying. Of course the Giant Bomb guys are very jaded and critical of many things in gaming, but still, some of those games... yeah.

The other issue is the thing which differentiates the Rift and Vive -- the Rift comes with a regular 2d controller and a head-tracking headset, while the Vive comes with a pair of motion controllers and cameras to track your physical location in a room, on top of their head-tracking headset. It's $200 more of course, but you get more... hand-tracked motion controllers clearly add a lot to the games, when you compare the two lineups, or those livestreams. The Vive looks more interesting to me than the Rift. The Rfit will get motion controllers of some kind, but not room-scale VR with cameras that track you moving around an actual physical space, apparently. The Vive has better hardware in the box, too, it seems -- slightly bigger field of view is reported. And the Oculus Rift is owned and released by Facebook, a somewhat evil company who wants all your personal information so they can sell it to advertisers. The HTC Vive is released in partnership with Valve, whose Steam isn't the best, but isn't quite as evil as Facebook.

So is the Vive better? Partially, it sounds, but there are two big issues with the Vive, though -- that that room-scale element requires you live somewhere with a LARGE square open space in a room with your most powerful computer in it, and warp-to-move isn't great for many genres. On the first point, most people aren't going to have enough space for the Vive to work as intended. Until people can have holodecks in their house or full-immersion brain implants (with all the serious concerns such a thing would cause), the space requirement (15x15 feet is ideal apparently, or more) is a huge issue. Room-scale is a neat idea, but you can't move around, really, just move around a few-foot rectangle. Jeff of Giant Bomb was saying how he sounds like he wishes he could get a Vive, but just doesn't have the space --particularly with this space needing to have your main PC in it. I wouldn't either, sadly. And how do you move around beyond that rectangle? Warping. You point one of the hand-controller cursors at the floor, hit a button, and it warps the square to that location. That's fine for an adventure game or dungeon-crawler RPG, but a platformer, fighting game, FPS, etc? Forget it, that wouldn't work at all! And you can make games that use regular controllers, that will be better for some kinds of games, but motion controls would be great for some kinds of things that they aren't due to the controls. There are issues here that room-scale VR causes and can't fix.

As for the games, some in each stream looked interesting, but I haven't tried any of course so I can't say too much. I will say, though, that despite their criticism, that tube racing game? It's in my Steam wishlist now, I'll get it for sure once it goes on sale.

But anyway, yeah, VR is here. What does anyone else think? Someone tried it yet?

Giant Bomb Oculus Stream: part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imlbNXF6gpM part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ODZstD2nLU (There's a ~15 minute gap between these that is covered in the shorter videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDsm1crphWE )

Giant Bomb HTC Vive stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OknS2wfHi9E

I mean, on the internet, not on this site. Was this last year sometime? They already had a name, why did they need a new one?

So, Nintendo just shut down DS card production, which means no more DS games will be manufactured from this point on. This comes on top of shutting down the DSiWare store a little while back, so you can't download games to a DSi either, only play card games or games already on the system. Of course 3DSes can play most DSiWare games and the games are still available in the 3DS eShop, but still, it's sad to see... and terrible for preservation of course, with how not all DSIWare games also run on the 3DS, apparently. When the 360, PS3, Wii, Vita, and 3DS online services get shut down that will be far worse, but this is a reminder that that happens eventually, as much as people like me who care about maintaining access to all games don't like that. I just hope that consoles never get so secure that they can't be hacked...

http://www.usgamer.net/articles/its-the-...intendo-ds

The Nintendo fired someone and it isn't entirely clear as of yet why she was. All that's known is she was recently being targeted as the source of recent "censorship controversy" and large numbers of people were demanding she be fired. Some suggested she was a pedophile, which seems the height of hypocrisy considering that all the recent censorship hangups have been DUE to Nintendo cutting out content that sexualized young girls.

http://kotaku.com/nintendo-employee-term...1768100368

I for one believe the majority of these people demanding a company sacrifice are probably on the younger side. I see a lot of people saying Nintendo USED to put much "edgier" content in their games (as though edginess is what's at issue here), and don't seem to realize just how much worse NOA used to be with their censorship policies. They're as open as they've ever been, but when games seem to explicitly be designed to sexualize underaged girls, that's a problem that needs to be dealt with. These people give me the creeps.

Batman v Superman is not a super hero movie. It's a disaster movie where the disasters have feelings, and that's the best one can say. You can't look up to these characters, you can only try to get out of their way.

It's not even trying to be uplifting. It's trying to be as grim and bleak as it possibly can. Watchmen did too, but that actually had a point, and human characters. This movie, with every single line, seems to scream at you that "morality is a lie and everyone is just as dark and twisted inside as me, Zack Snyder!". This culminates in a line from Superman, "No one stays good forever". What kind of ethos leads someone to write that? That's quite possibly the worst thing I've ever heard! What does that even MEAN? I've known PLENTY of people who "stayed good forever". I mean, it's not hard, you just don't frickin' hurt people until you die! I mean, I can imagine a line like that in some detective noir movie set in the slums of New York, but can you really imagine, say, a farmer wiping the sweat off his brow, looking out at a field after a hard day's work, waving his son over and telling him in a somber voice: "No one stays good forever."

Very cool to see a character from the best 2d Zelda game in the game... yes, she's been anime-ized, but still, it's cool to see.



Versus LA art:



Yup, a definite downgrade here versus the original LA artwork. Ah well.

Oh, and Hyrule Warriors Legends for 3DS just released, with Linkle and such. I have a New 3DS of course, so I will have to get this eventually, even if the gameplay is simplistic Musou button-mashing and nothing more... but which to get first, this or Triforce Heroes? I still don't have that one.

http://www.polygon.com/2016/3/25/1130369...oller-hoax

It looked futuristic, but also ridiculous. Nintendo has been pretty adamant about keeping physical buttons. I can't imagine they'd ditch them entirely unless they had figured out a way to get tactile feedback from a touch screen (I still think such a thing might be possible in the future, but not today). Fortunately, it's been revealed as a blatant hoax. Whatever the NX turns out to be, I'll wager it'll have physical buttons.