NEC's back...as a games publisher.

[A Black Falcon]

Remember that great console, the TurboGrafx 16 (or whatever it was called in Europe and Asia)? Well, NEC's back... as a publisher. For the first time in 8 years. Yay.

Oh... their first game is a new Gamecube racing game by the developers of F-Zero Maximum Velocity.

http://cube.ign.com/articles/384/384597p1.html

Its called Tube Slider, and IGN has screenshots and videos... for insiders only. But I want to see them... :(

[OB1]

Never fear! OB1 is here!!









It's like F-Zero... but only in tubes.

[OB1]

And some more:

















Make that a lot like F-Zero. But hey it's form the guys that made the GBA game so...

And why is NEC publishing a Nintendo game?

[Dark Jaguar]

Why not? Anyway, seems they like F-Zero and want to compete with it's GCN version. We'll see how that goes won't we?

[A Black Falcon]

Nice! The game looks good... not the best ever (F-Zero does look better), but good. And since its probably quite a ways off there is plenty of time for them to get even better... Nice! I love futuristic racers, and having another one upcoming for NGC is great... I'd been thinking for a while now that the NGC was sadly lacking in them... mostly because of the complete lack of Midway racing games. Its nice to see more from people other than Nintendo and Acclaim. And F-Zero Maximum Velocity was quite good, so that makes the chances of this one being good better... :)

Oh, I did forget to mention that the article said this game is Cube-exclusive. So far, at least...

Tubes? Tubes are cool. They were cool in F-Zero, cool in Rollcage, cool in Ballistics... tube tracks are cool. :)

[OB1]

Of course it's cube exclusive. Just because NEC is publishing doesn't mean that they can port it over to the PS2 or X-Box. NDCube (the developer of the game) is a Nintendo first-party. Nintendo is probably letting NEC publish it since it has so many GC games to publish this year (but does it?). Like what Sony did with Wipeout Fusion.

[A Black Falcon]

If its a first party, I just don't see why Nintendo wouldn't publish it... but yeah, Sony did do the same thing with Wipeout Fusion. Why? Did they think it would not sell or something?

[OB1]

They had too many big games to publish. But yes this is a first-party Nintendo gane. Nintendo made the developer NDCube specifically for Cube and GBA development. I guess Nintendo doesn't want to publish it because it's so similar to F-Zero...

I dunno. It doesn't make any sense.

[Laser Link]

Actually, the game is due out in February. Yes, this month. Supposedly it was a complete shock even to IGN. And you thought DKR was a big surprise!

[MgL]

I think it looks pretty damn ugly and generic. Maybe if they would add online gameplay I would be interested, but as of right now I rather not waste money on this. It looks like they ported Aero Gauge 64 from the n64 to the GC and enhanced the graphics a little bit.

[Great Rumbler]

Some people are just not to be pleased...

[Dark Jaguar]

Eh, don't worry about him. He doesn't actually think that. And if he responds saying "I do too think that", don't worry, because that's not true either.

[MgL]

Oh please.... Why do you have to defend every single crap looking game on the GC. F-Zero looks like it will kill this game and Im looking forward to that, as should anyone who enjoys good games. You guys will be dissapointed with this one, trust me...

FOREVER

[OB1]

It does resemble Aero Gauge, but it's from a (so far) talented developer, and since it's coming out so soon (what an awesome surprise!) I'm sure that it's been in development for a while. They probably started working on it after they finished the GBA F-Zero.

I still don't understand why Nintendo isn't publishing though, especially since they're not releasing any GC games in February.

[A Black Falcon]

AeroGauge wasn't all in tubes... it looks more like F-Zero meets Ballistic...

Anyone here played Ballistic? Its a PC and Arcade racing game... you race these vehicles in tubes. The tracks are all completely in tubes... and the graphics are REALLY good. Its a bit simple, being all in tubes, but you get going REALLY REALLY fast and have to dodge obsticles in the tube while going really fast... as well as hit corners at the right part of the tube or you slow down a lot.

[Nintendarse]

The problem I have with it is that NdCube decided to make a game in direct competition with F-Zero. This is probably the reason Nintendo isn't publishing it. However, I don't see it working out for NdCube. Reasons:

-It's not FZero
-It's not as pretty as FZero
-It won't get the commercial backing of FZero
-It's not as fast as FZero
-There less than 10 hovermobiles on the track at a time
-It has 10 tracks

[A Black Falcon]

A racing game doesn't have to be F-Zero to be a good, solid arcade racer... maybe its just the fact that I love arcadish racing games and feel that they are, so far, greatly underrepresented on the Cube, but I find this a welcome addition to the small library of futuristic Cube racers... Is it F-Zero? No... but neither is, say, Extreme-G 3, and that's a good, solid racing game...

[OB1]

The XG games suck, but this Tube Racer game does look pretty good. Check out the videos.

[A Black Falcon]

I really liked XG2 a lot... but I don't expect many other people (here or anywhere) to have, because to like it you have to play it with a decent framerate... and the PC version didn't seem to be very popular or available. Unlike the N64 one, which was killed by awful framerates.

Videos? I wish... stupid Insider!

[OB1]

The videos are really cool.

[OB1]

And Nintendarse, did you watch the videos? It's pretty fast.

[lazyfatbum]

Well, if there's more to it then just "tube" racing, it will be nice. Something like Track Jumping and interactive environments. Like being able to destroy a bridge making it a risky shortcut, krap like that.

In a racing game, all I care about is the FPS and the smoothness, the rest of the graphics hold no meaning to me if the game is choppy.

Hey about making the cars have polarity, some are positive and some are negative. So depending on the polarity, you need to stay on certain color tracks to 'stick'. If you go on the wrong color track, you get pushed away from the track. That would be cool in multiplayer. You could run diagonally across different tracks causing your vehicle to jump over obsticles and other cars. They could also give the cars a tractor beam kinda thing so you can shoot for your polarity color on a different track and find new areas and shortcuts. Or... they could make a cheap F-Zero "gaym" that will probably suck in comparison.

I think all futuristic racing games should have atleast one track that's like racing on one of those visual plug-ins for Winamp and have the course change depending on the music being played. Once those new Memory Cards come out that have like 4 Gigs of space we can save MP3's to it and play it in our games. Let us say woohoo and amen. Hopefully that new shooter will use the new memory cards as well. I hope they're not too expensive... under 40 bucks each at the most. *prays*

Buit yeah, as it stands now: I will rent this game and I will blindly buy F-Zero GC because I am a large whore.

[Dark Jaguar]

How will we get music ON those cards? You'd have to either download them from Nintendo or hope the games support saving their soundtracks to the cards. You see, the GCN can't play music CDs, even teh small ones that would actually fit in it.

[OB1]

The game runs at a constant 60 fps, lazy. And the videos look really good.

I bet what happened is that as soon as NDCube finished work on F-Zero MV they started work on a new GC F-Zero game, but then Nintendo decided to let Sega do the honors so instead of simply scrapping their F-Zero title they turned it into something else and tried to work on it as fast as possible so that it would come out at least five months before Sega's F-Zero game since that has the big franchise name to back it up and competing would be futile.

[lazyfatbum]

Could be. That's good news about the frame rate.

DJ/ It's flash rom, you can put whatever you want on it. A side from game uses you can store pictures off the net or your DCam, music files, recorded sound files, movies, etc. It's like a hard drive on a stick. Up to 4 gigs each in fact. Or was it 2... I forget. I think Panasonic is heading the technology which will also be used in PC's, so hooking up your memory card to the PC shouldn't be a problem.

[Dark Jaguar]

Oh I see, you're talking about the SD cards! I'm almost positive Nintendo is pleading ignorance and won't be releasing that ever at this point... I also heard about the hard drives, something ONLY GCN related, which you couldn't copy music to. Anyway, yeah that would be interesting, but guess what? I've tried some games on XBox with that feature. It really isn't that cool at all. The music sounds TOTALLY out of place no matter what I tried. I'd rather they just make a good soundtrack for the game then bother with that. Sure, should Nintendo release the SD cards it would be something nice to add, but I don't think it's something I care about.

[lazyfatbum]

Obviously not.

You also obviously wouldn't care about being able to save your state at any time. Hmm... save your state in Metroid Prime before every boss battle so you can play each boss when you want too? nah, that would suck.

And obviously (3 times!) the only reason you would want stored music on a video game system is so that it interacts with the game some how. But hell, even if it's just an MP3 player, i wouldn't mind. Oh and if Nintendo makes a HDD add on there's multiple ways to access it through a PC. So NYAH

[Dark Jaguar]

Hey now, I never said the massive storage space of the cards was a bad idea. Having gigs of space is something I've always been for. I was just attacking one thing and one thing only, putting outside music in a game. The visualizer thing sounds interesting, but I have Geiss already :D.

[lazyfatbum]

I dont know what that is, but when I heard about that shooter using visuals like the one on winamp that changes due to music (and sound effects? like boosting or firing large weapons?) my brain has been putting together all kinds of methods for it to be used. It doesn't have to be colors and effects, it can be models and gameplay!

[A Black Falcon]

You know there's a post here for that shooter... I should know, I started it. :)

Yeah, it would be kind of hard to implement any reacting to your own audio (or just including your own audio in a game) without either a CD player or a harddrive... SD cards COULD work, but they are so small they wouldn't hold much of anything... not enough for this anyway, I'd have to say.

[OB1]

Where can I get that shooter thing?

And DJ, I always use my custom soundtrack whenever I play any X-Box racing games.

[Dark Jaguar]

No no, SD cards can hold gigs of data, which is MORE than enough. It's the default GCN memory cards that can't hold SQUAT.

Hmm, well I generally have a lot of video game sound tracks. In their own games, they work fine, but hearing something like the Chocobo song in Amped (My bro's snowboarding game) didn't seem as good as the songs made for that game in the first place. Eh, maybe I am being too harsh on it. It was a good idea after all, I just haven't seen it really well implemented or maybe I just don't have the right songs. Don't suggest ANY currently popular band on the radio by the way, I already hate them all :D.

[Nintendarse]

In terms of music, I'm sure you could find SOMETHING on OC Remix.

But all the videos I've seen of Tube Sliders have been kind of slow. Like it's lacking the sense of speed that F-Zero has. I mean, the monitor may say "500 mph" but it seems like it's driving slower than my car. It may have something to do with the tube tracks, but it just doesn't seem fast.

[A Black Falcon]

How much SD cards won't matter because at this point I doubt very much that we will ever get that SD Card adaptor... its been something they haven't mentioned in so long I bet its now dead. Unfortunately... it would have been very nice for stuff like harddrive stuff as well as MP3s... but when its been not mentioned in so long, I have strong doubts.

I want to see the videos... :( Stupid IGN! Thats not nice...

[OB1]

Originally posted by Dark Jaguar
No no, SD cards can hold gigs of data, which is MORE than enough. It's the default GCN memory cards that can't hold SQUAT.

Hmm, well I generally have a lot of video game sound tracks. In their own games, they work fine, but hearing something like the Chocobo song in Amped (My bro's snowboarding game) didn't seem as good as the songs made for that game in the first place. Eh, maybe I am being too harsh on it. It was a good idea after all, I just haven't seen it really well implemented or maybe I just don't have the right songs. Don't suggest ANY currently popular band on the radio by the way, I already hate them all :D.

Is the Chocobo song the only one you have? Find something more appropriate, dummy.

[Dark Jaguar]

Well, I also have soundtracks with many mountain songs, well songs that were played when I was in a mountain in those games, but none of those seemed to fit.

[OB1]

Well then that's a problem with you, not the custom soundtrack feature.

[Dark Jaguar]

Yes indeed. I already said that. Yeesh I admitted I made a rush to judgement already, don't spend time rubbing it in my face here.

[OB1]

You are stuuupeeeed!

[Dark Jaguar]

Yeah? Well your body procudes fetted cheese!

[OB1]

So what are you doing up so late?

[A Black Falcon]

IGN has some new Tube Sliders movies... looks interesting.

http://mediaviewer.ign.com/ignMediaPage....der+Videos

I just wonder how it compares to Ballistics, the only other 'all in tubes' racer I know of... its a PC game.

Link to demo:
http://www.gamesdomain.com/demos/demo/1559.html

[Smoke]

Looks great. If it turns out as good as it looks it's a definite buy from me.

[A Black Falcon]

Well, the Insider review is here. Help, anyone? :)

[OB1]

6.something. Not good.

[A Black Falcon]

That's too bad... though if its repetitive or something (given how its all in tubes and it doesn't look like you've got obsticles in the tracks like in Ballistics) I could see it... but IGN is not trustworthy so I won't give it much weight. Rent first, certainly.

[OB1]

Well I don't think it will get a good review from gamespot since it's not Serious Sam.

But seriously, why do you call them untrustworthy? Which reviews do you disagree with so much?

[A Black Falcon]

Its just a general thing... I disagree with IGN so often (the Nintendo one especially) and they are so clearly fanboy reviews (note how no big-name titles get bad reviews... even if other places aren't as thrilled about them...), and other stuff... like that insane thing they have with framerate...

[OB1]

They're certainly a hellovalot better than gamespot who likes to give a bunch of great, big-name games bad reviews just to appear "real with it". Their Majora's Mask and Mario Sunshine scores show just how idiotic they are. And Serious Sam... I'll never get over how laughable that review was.

[A Black Falcon]

Oh come on.. they overrated it a little but it was a B-quality game at worst... maybe low A...

Sure I can pull out all kinds of games I dislike Gamespot's reviews on... like most anything from Midway that was released on the N64 (and isn't a sports game)-- Gauntlet Legends, Rush 1, 2, and 2049, and the Cruis'n games are all greatly underrated there (IGN incedentally has a very good review of rush 2049... and give it a score over 9, as opposed to Gamespot's which was a 7.something...)

Oh, and when Gamespot gives those big games lower scores its usually because they deserve it... not always (Mario Sunshine didn't deserve it that harsh) but sometimes.... like MM. Their review was very, very good for that game... right around what I'd give it...