6th June 2013, 10:57 PM
Handheld rumble hasn't been completely abandoned. The most popular handheld in this generation has rumble all over the place. That handheld being smart phones. They all have "haptic feedback" which is the modern trendy way to say "rumble". The claim is "haptic feedback" is a good replacement for being able to feel where your fingers are by what they are touching. It isn't, because the feedback is delayed until after you actually send input, meaning it's a bit late to know what the heck you just pressed.
At any rate, it's not that mobile gaming lacks rumble, it's that Nintendo specifically has abandoned it (Sony never saw the point to begin with, though their XPeria line of phones have rumble, if that counts). Nintendo seems more than ready to abandon their old innovations all the time though. Remember pressure sensitive shoulder buttons? Well, okay Sega innovated those, but Nintendo did well with the Gamecube's pressure sensitive buttons. Nintendo actually did put pressure sensitive buttons on the Classic Controller for the Wii, but in a very bold and rather annoying move, they actually removed an existing controller feature already on that controller from a revised model, because the Classic Controller Pro had no pressure sensitivity. Rather annoying. Though, I don't believe any Wii games up to that point had bothered using the pressure sensitivity, so not a huge loss of much other than potential. On the Wii U, they added buttons to the analog sticks like both Sony and Microsoft's controllers have (adding two extra buttons), but they didn't put in analog switches for two of the shoulder buttons as just about everyone expects of a controller these days. It's a very odd move, especially considering those Wii U pads are rather expensive to replace, so "updating" one isn't very economical. Nintendo themselves know just how useful pressure sensitive controls can be. While the new Luigi's Mansion does an admirable job working around that deficit on the 3DS, I suspect a HD port of the original Luigi's Mansion or Super Mario Sunshine to Wii U would suffer for want of such fine control. It has been a while since I played Wind Waker, but did that game make use of the pressure sensitivity in any way? I don't recall that it did, so that game's HD port should go well enough at least.
Yes, I missed out on the previous Panel de Pon games. I just had no idea what I was missing out on. Nintendo picked some very strange ways to market the game in America that simply didn't appeal to me (and remember, I AM into pokemon, though not as much as I was back then). I'm sure I'd have picked up at least one before now had I realized there even was a series. As it was, I didn't even realize that Pokemon Puzzle League WAS Tetris Attack in a new skin.
As you say, Planet Puzzle League has an all too generic look and feel to it. It isn't as bad as Magnetica, in that the pieces music and background do change as the game goes on, but it does a rather sad impression of Lumines. Meteos is a good example of a game with a running theme, and it does a great job of having personality. Tetris and Dr. Mario also had solid personalities. (Everyone associates Tetris with russian folk music, even though for some stupid reason almost every release after the first ones has purposefully attempted to use weird techno tracks instead of what worked. Well, Tetris DS used classic Nintendo themes, and Tetris Axis does have some proper Russian music put into the mix, which is nice.) If you haven't played a Lumines game, I highly recommend it. That game puts the backgrounds, music, and alternate block colors and shapes to work in a way I've never seen before, and while other games attempted to duplicate the look, none ever really "got" it. The time and pacing of block falling and line clearing sync up with the music itself (matched blocks only disappear when a musical bar scrolls across them on the screen, so different tunes are going to "feel" very different in terms of gameplay). Lumines 2 is great, but the US version used a lot of... questionable music (Like "Hollaback Girl"), although the main theme is very addictive, at least I liked it. Lumines 1 is no slouch either though. The only problem is you'll need get a PSP to play it. I'm sure you can find an early model rather cheap these days, as well as a UMD of Lumines.
At any rate, it's not that mobile gaming lacks rumble, it's that Nintendo specifically has abandoned it (Sony never saw the point to begin with, though their XPeria line of phones have rumble, if that counts). Nintendo seems more than ready to abandon their old innovations all the time though. Remember pressure sensitive shoulder buttons? Well, okay Sega innovated those, but Nintendo did well with the Gamecube's pressure sensitive buttons. Nintendo actually did put pressure sensitive buttons on the Classic Controller for the Wii, but in a very bold and rather annoying move, they actually removed an existing controller feature already on that controller from a revised model, because the Classic Controller Pro had no pressure sensitivity. Rather annoying. Though, I don't believe any Wii games up to that point had bothered using the pressure sensitivity, so not a huge loss of much other than potential. On the Wii U, they added buttons to the analog sticks like both Sony and Microsoft's controllers have (adding two extra buttons), but they didn't put in analog switches for two of the shoulder buttons as just about everyone expects of a controller these days. It's a very odd move, especially considering those Wii U pads are rather expensive to replace, so "updating" one isn't very economical. Nintendo themselves know just how useful pressure sensitive controls can be. While the new Luigi's Mansion does an admirable job working around that deficit on the 3DS, I suspect a HD port of the original Luigi's Mansion or Super Mario Sunshine to Wii U would suffer for want of such fine control. It has been a while since I played Wind Waker, but did that game make use of the pressure sensitivity in any way? I don't recall that it did, so that game's HD port should go well enough at least.
Yes, I missed out on the previous Panel de Pon games. I just had no idea what I was missing out on. Nintendo picked some very strange ways to market the game in America that simply didn't appeal to me (and remember, I AM into pokemon, though not as much as I was back then). I'm sure I'd have picked up at least one before now had I realized there even was a series. As it was, I didn't even realize that Pokemon Puzzle League WAS Tetris Attack in a new skin.
As you say, Planet Puzzle League has an all too generic look and feel to it. It isn't as bad as Magnetica, in that the pieces music and background do change as the game goes on, but it does a rather sad impression of Lumines. Meteos is a good example of a game with a running theme, and it does a great job of having personality. Tetris and Dr. Mario also had solid personalities. (Everyone associates Tetris with russian folk music, even though for some stupid reason almost every release after the first ones has purposefully attempted to use weird techno tracks instead of what worked. Well, Tetris DS used classic Nintendo themes, and Tetris Axis does have some proper Russian music put into the mix, which is nice.) If you haven't played a Lumines game, I highly recommend it. That game puts the backgrounds, music, and alternate block colors and shapes to work in a way I've never seen before, and while other games attempted to duplicate the look, none ever really "got" it. The time and pacing of block falling and line clearing sync up with the music itself (matched blocks only disappear when a musical bar scrolls across them on the screen, so different tunes are going to "feel" very different in terms of gameplay). Lumines 2 is great, but the US version used a lot of... questionable music (Like "Hollaback Girl"), although the main theme is very addictive, at least I liked it. Lumines 1 is no slouch either though. The only problem is you'll need get a PSP to play it. I'm sure you can find an early model rather cheap these days, as well as a UMD of Lumines.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)