For anyone who hasn't heard, the issue is that Tomodachi Collection, a 3DS game releasing soon (watch the quite amusing Nintendo Direct!), doesn't allow for gay relationships or marriages -- it's heterosexual only. Naturally, while this wasn't too controversial in Japan where gay rights aren't nearly as far along, it's caused quite a problem here, even though the game isn't out yet. Here's a good summary of why this is an important issue:
This doesn't surprise me at all, of course. Nintendo has always been a conservative company, with backwards views on gender roles present in many of their games. I wouldn't have expected anything else on the issue of gay rights from them, unfortunately. I just hope that they change in the future, because greater equality is the future. They do seem to have been trying for the past year or so to have more female characters in some of their games; hopefully this is next.
Oh, for another issue that came up a while back, Animal Crossing (the newest one, for 3DS) was criticized for not having any darker skin colors available; it's light-skin only, unless a character gets tanned from the sun or something.
Seriously, Nintendo? Why? It was pretty bad for you last year that you didn't have one, and... they're doing the same thing again. Yeah, the Nintendo Directs are good, but they aren't a serious replacement for an E3 conference, and Nintendo needs the attention these days, with how badly the Wii U is doing.
Seriously, can't we just end the Cuba embargo already... it's beyond ridiculous. Yeah, they're an oppressive Communist regime, but it's not like we're not supporting far worse governments; there is no other nation the US treats anything remotely like what it does to Cuba. Maybe Castro will have to die before finally something can happen, but it should. Maybe it'll even help open up Cuba some, too.
Either that or we should be consistent and treat China just like we do Cuba. I can't see that getting anywhere.
This actually happened in early March, but I didn't notice... argh. :S
Interceptor made last year's decent but not amazing Rise of the Triad remake. 3DR has, of course, been in deep trouble and with almost no staff ever since they ran out of money near the end of Duke Nukem Forever's development, so I doubt that this cost much except for IP costs, but still... I know that it really happened some years back, but Apogee was a huge part of gaming for me for years. In the first half of the '90s, Apogee was, of course, my favorite shareware developer, and I played a lot of shareware games. You had to take sides of course, Apogee or Epic MegaGames... and I was very much on Apogee's side. Epic had some good games, but Apogee had more. Once Apogee became 3DR and moved over to FPSes I stopped caring as much since I don't love FPSes like I do platformers, but still, I kept following them even if I've barely gotten past the first couple of levels of any of their FPSes, honestly. Ididn't buy any for more than a few bucks, but now I have the Blake Stone games, Rise of the Triad, Duke 3D, Shadow Warrior, and DNF... all of Apogee/3DR's internally developed FPSes.
But even so, I definitely like the company a lot because of their shareware games from the late '80s to mid '90s. So yeah, them getting bought up by some random team who has made some ports of 3DR FPSes and that one okay but not great original title... well, we'll see. I know that right now Gearbox and Interceptor are suing eachother over who owns the rights to Duke Nukem. Who knows how that will turn out. Either way, it can't get much WORSE than it is now, for sure, given how 3DR is essentially dead. However, last year's other 3DR reboot, the new Shadow Warrior game, is supposed to be better than Rise of the Triad (2013), so I hope we get more stuff like that.
So, the Xbox is probably one of the easiest modern consoles to mod and put homebrew OS stuff on. I've read about the several methods to softmod and knew it was easy, but hadn't actually gotten around to modding my Xbox since I certainly don't need it for emulation (that's what actual old consoles are for), and I've never really looked into what else it could be for (no way could it handle modern media streaming either, HD video? yeah right, I'd think). But I'm interested in getting some import games, so I need a softmod since I don't want to buy a second console unless there's no other good choice (as with the PS2, where it's that, a mod chip I could never install myself, or the irritation of a slide-card and disc swapping every time).
So, the first major method is the hot-swap-the-HDD-into-a-PC method, which sounds like it would work but... hot-swapping IDE cables? I don't want to do that unless I have no other choice. Second there's the one where you get files onto your Xbox, usually through buying a cable to connect Xbox stuff to a PC, or maybe through manipulating a flash drive. That seemed easy, but I don't want to have to buy a cable if I don't have to (and buying memory cards with the files on them already is ludicrously overpriced). So the IDE-swap method sounded like the only choice...
But first, I decided to try and see if my Gamemon coverter, a GC/PS2/Xbox-to-PC converter I got for a few bucks used at a local store a while back (but apparently were sold in stores in the US for a while, so they're not too hard to find), would actually work with Xbox memory units, since I have one. I didn't expect this to work, since the thing has no options and ... questionable ... button layouts that you can't change [on the Xbox controller, for example, A is button 1, X is button 2, Y is button 3, and B is button 4. No other settings are possible. Annoying!]. But I plugged in my Xbox memory unit to the controller, and... the system detected something! It wasn't sure what, though; no drivers for it. But it actually could tell that SOMETHING was plugged in. Well, that was interesting.
Now, I looked at one of the guides I'd found, one for the memory card file-based softmod method about modding a USB memory stick to fool the PC Xbox Action Replay software into thinking it's an Xbox memory unit, and transferring the files that way. Link: http://www.mrdictionary.net/_xbox/guide_php.php I essentially followed this guide to get the Action Replay to recognize my Xbox Memory Unit plugged into my Xbox (superior larger original style) controller plugged into my Gamemon. The guide tells you to use this USB software to view two necessary IDs on the USB stick; instead I got those two numbers off of the unrecognized Memory Unit. The first one was the same as the default (for Xbox Memory Units attached to Action Replay's own memory unit-to-PC cable), but the other ID was different, which is why the default AR drivers couldn't recognize the memory unit in the Gamemon-attached controller. With that driver modified as in the guide, though, the system recognizes the Memory Unit, and it cost me nothing since I had the Gamemon already! Pretty awesome.
The Action Replay software DOES seem fairly flaky -- I couldn't format the card (which did have files on it) through the AR software because that failed, and had to plug and unplug the card frequently to see if file transfers I was making actually stuck (not all did). The last issue was that after one failed attempt to put the large (~5.6MB) homebrew-installer zip file on the card it wouldn't let me copy it again. I solved that problem by plugging the card back into my actual Xbox, and deleting the problematic file there (no issue there). Then I copied the file again, and this time it copied correctly, they copied over to the Xbox fine, and with my copy of MechAssault I can softmod it with no trouble or added costs. Pretty nice, I think. :)
Of course attaching the thing to my computer via a LAN to install more homebrew stuff would be an additional step, but hopefully just this basic one will get me able to run import games. I might do the network thing another time, but being able to play other-region discs is what I really want.
Did you see the latest Nintendo Direct? Behold all their majesties.
We got Yoshi back, we got Zero Suit Samus and Sheik. Charizard's in there, and so is newcomer Greninja.
So what else is new? They've officially ditched the concept of "multiple characters in one". The basic idea is to make things a bit less complicated than they were starting to get, with the need to switch between movesets and playstyles mid fight all the time. Zelda and Sheik have been split into two characters, as have Samus and Zero Suit Samus. This frees up their Down+B specials to be new moves.
As for Pokemon Trainer, it appears there's been a sacrifice. Charizard has gotten too rebellious and struck out on its own, leaving the trainer (and Squirtle and Ivysaur) behind (as opposed to make those two unique characters as well).
So, this is Amazon's new streaming box / low-end console, much like the Ouya but from a much bigger company, and more powerful. I doubt that I'm interested, but Amazon has done something different from the rest of the things in this category, like the Apple TV or Roku (two devices I know little about): they're putting focus into games. Amazon has actually bought up some developers, including the studio that made Killer Instinct (2013) and Strider (2014) and some other potentially good people, and will have first-party titles on the system, so this is a bit more serious effort than the other streaming boxes. It isn't a full current-gen console, but it's not just a streaming box either. Interesting; we'll see if it takes off. Amazon's size and marketing power should get this thing a lot more sales than the Ouya's getting, at least, for sure!
As for the controller, it's sold separately, which is kind of annoying for buyers -- the box is only $100, but then add $40 for each controller and $100/year for Amazon Prime, which they'll certainly try to push on you if you have one of these, and it gets pricier. The remote that comes with the box has a microphone built in, for instance, but not all third-party apps support voice search... if any do. Still though, voice search definitely could be handy, for a system without a keyboard, so that is a nice feature to have. As for the controller, it's basically another X306 knockoff design.
First-party game "sizzle reel" trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU_s3MI4onM The graphics aren't nearly as good as full consoles, but it does look better than Ouya graphics.
On the note of the Ouya, Game Informer's April issue's April Fools section had some funny stuff in it... including one kind of cruel article "by Ouya's CEO" trying to convince people to buy Ouyas, because no one wants one. Ouch... but kind of true, I think. But this should do better. How much better? We'll see. But it's Amazon, so it could do alright.
The big downside, of course, is that these streaming boxes are entirely designed for the Internet-based, "you don't really own anything anymore" future. That future may be coming, but it has so many huge downsides that there are at more bad things about that than good, I think!
