10th January 2005, 3:28 PM
Quote:Do you think Sony would have gone through with marketing their Taiko Drum game in America if they hadn't watched Nintendo's success with Donkey Konga both here and in Japan?
Taiko Drum Master came out around the same time as Donkey Konga. Donkey Konga is actually based off of Taiko Drum Master and made by the same people.
Overall I agree with most of your post, lazy (though some of the things you listed were a bit odd, like mini-dvds and the failed gba connectivity). I've had a huge amount of fun with the GC and consider it to be a greater success than the N64. It's amazing how easily people can forget all of the bad and just remember the good. The N64 had some great games--no doubt about it--but they were very few and far between and the system lacked many key genre games. Barely any rpgs, no good regular racers, and just plain abysmal third-party support. Say what you will about the GC but the system has had a far more frequent stream of quality titles than the N64 ever had, even if a lot of them are multiconsole ports. And I think a lot of people here don't appreciate that because most of us own more than one console, unlike during the N64 era when a lot of us only had one current-gen system. So people just care about the exclusives, unfortunately. Though even then there are plenty of options. Eternal Darkness, Viewtiful Joe (for a whole year), Metroid Prime (my favorite Nintendo game since Super Metroid) & Echoes, Pikmin 1 & 2, Animal Crossing, the Rogue Leader games, F-Zero GX, Mario Tennis & Golf, Mario Sunshine, Wind Waker, Mario Kart DD, Paper Mario 2, Resident Evil 4, Smash Bros., Wave Race, etc.
I've also preferred most of the new franchise iterations over the N64 ones. F-Zero GX is so much better than F-Zero X, Mario Power Tennis is better than Mario Tennis 64, Paper Mario 2 is a nice improvement over the N64 game, Mario Kart, well... the single-player has better track design than MK 64's. Wind Waker, while being too easy, was an incredibly satisfying experience for me and I come back to it more often than I do with OoT. Mario Sunshine, which everyone complains about because it's a bit "un-Mario-like", is my favorite 3D platformer ever. True, Mario 64 has more diverse levels, but Mario Sunshine's level design destroys M64's, and the incredibly tight, fast, and acrobatic controls of Sunshine (thanks largely to the versatile water pack "gimmicks") make it far more fun to simply fool around with. Sunshine also features the coolest, most difficult, old-school styled mini-levels ever featured in a 3D platformer before, and I would instantly buy a Mario game filled with just more of those types of levels. Everyone likes to complain about the water packs because they're so different for a Mario game, but I can't think of any other Mario power-up that made controlling Mario so much fun. The water packs are there to give the player more stuff to do when they control Mario, and when you get good enough at controlling them the game reaches Tony Hawk-levels of confidence and freedom. Going back to Mario 64 after playing so much of Sunshine is like going from being an Olympic gymnast to a special olympics gymnast (slight exaggeration). But hey, that's just me. The rest of you can go back to complaining about the new games. :)
I'm extremely excited about the Revolution.