Nintendo's Gold Era?

Disclaimer: Yes I'm using Wikipedia, but check Wikipedia's footnotes for real sources. The pages used are here and here.

Since it's a current thing, I thought I'd present some facts. The games themselves are subjective in terms of how good the library was, the Wii didn't have the best library for core gamers but it certainly wasn't awful on the Nintendo game front, even if their franchises didn't innovate so much.

I think most would agree that NES and SNES were the best eras for Nintendo in terms of sheer sales and game quality correlating, I largely put this down to the fact that the western games industry was dead, western developers had no choice but to put their games on a Nintendo system or a SEGA system.. Nintendo's global relations were better than SEGA's, not amazing, but SEGA's were awful. Nintendo sales were better, so as a result Nintendo got lovely third party support, mostly because the choice was not rich.

Come along Sony and Microsoft, many western third parties understandably jumped the Nintendo ship because it was much easier to work with companies with way stronger western businesses. Let's look at sales.
Gen3:

Nintendo dominated..
Gen4:

SEGA did a lot better this time, presumably due to better understanding of what fans wanted, but Nintendo still won.

Gen5:

Oh man what happened? Sony happened, Nintendo lost so much third party support due to its refusal to use new technologies and also probably its pride in itself. Is this part of the "gold era"? Sure the N64 had some good games.. but this isn't the kind of success that made Nintendo a major player.

Gen6:

The one-sided domination here is almost laughable, and Nintendo has one of its worst showings ever. This is also the last of the "old" Nintendo that some perceive to be its golden era. The GC had great games.. a lot of which really evolved Nintendo franchises and also had some new ones, but sales wise it definitely wasn't successful enough.

Enter Satoru Iwata?

Gen7:

Holy shit! Its success may be temporary, and it may not have the best library ever, but that is success, the most successful Nintendo home-system and a massive burst of it that got the Nintendo brand back into households. Nintendo is now a widely known and respected entertainment mediator, it's regained its place on the map with an audience that was probably temporary, and it was hopefully worth it. If anything, this marks Nintendo's climb into its golden era, at least as a successful business. Whether the WiiU eventually makes it or falls flat on its face remains to be seen, but it's doubtful it'll do as badly as the GameCube.

And ok, slight deviation since we all know Nintendo handhelds have always been hugely successful, but look at this;

Hot damn, the DS dethrones the most successful console of all time (PS2) just one gen later? Not to mention this is the generation after Nintendo's weakest and least influential! Obviously, Iwata isn't the only factor in this and it's a huge aggregate of great games and new ideas from Nintendo that caused the DS' success, but..

My point all along is, why do people think Iwata is bad news for Nintendo? The numbers directly refute that argument in every possible way. Since Iwata's presidency, Nintendo has gone from strength to strength as a business, and without money a company can't do anything. Will the upcoming games reflect Nintendo's pleasantly huge acquisitions of the last half a decade? That remains to be seen. Maybe Iwata isn't the best for innovation in Nintendo games, that much is debatable, but;

• Poor third party relations are not the fault of Iwata, but the fault of poor global relations  and synergy within Nintendo that have existed since forever.
• Bad third party relations do not vanish overnight, Nintendo has a stigma of being a pain in the ass to work with that it's had since the SNES days (i.e. censorship-gate, and a time where devs clung to Nintendo rather than the other way around simply because Nintendo were successful). Only now is this showing signs of having changed.
• Needing to be rocketboosted back onto the map was (arguably) a necessity after 2 gens of having no industry respect.
  

Nintendo has seen massive success as a company since Iwata began heading, despite the ever changing face of video games. But heck, things change in the industry and so do presidents, obviously Iwata won't be one for forever, but he's certainly done good things for Nintendo in his time there. Nintendo's "gold era" was a fortunate side-effect of 3rd parties having no choice in where to put their games, and the N64/GC had great games but they certainly weren't part of that gold era.

Will we see those important games that allegedly will tell us that Nintendo still has what it takes to push their franchises forward too? Well.. the 3DS is kinda getting there already. I really hope the WiiU follows suite, but that's a completely different discussion. Nintendo made the necessary steps to get back into the face of gaming, big time, now they just need to follow it through.

PS. Transitionary periods hurt, and the games industry is currently going through one of the worst its ever had. We're in the face of another potential industry crash with companies going bankrupt left and right, and then there are people worried that Nintendo ain't as successful as it was when they made the N64, or that their games aren't good enough!

Give Nintendo a little credit where's it's due from time to time! They're kickin on and the 3DS is bloody successful lately.

How d'you do Let's Plays?

"Let's Play" being the umbrella term of choice for "recording myself playing video games".

While it seems easy enough with a PC, tons of people record themselves playing games you can't really play on a PC! Like how do you do that, I have a capture card but it's never worked with any of my tellys, am I just buying the wrong TVs or the wrong capture cards or what.

There has to be an easier way, man!

That's literally all this blog is, hello.
How are you all.

Time fer an update

Over the last few months I've.. played a lot of video games, and watched a lot of anime. At the moment I'm just stressing about preparing for disserations, and surprise surprise not really doing anything about it. I'd like to get it out the way and enjoy the rest of my holiday..

I've also been having all these conflicting feelings about being here on C3, maybe things won't ever feel the same here for me as they did some years ago, but I don't think I can ever really leave the place even if I'm not really around.
Plus my social life.. both online and offline, has become more important to me! Almost more important than anything, and that's one of the main reasons I don't want to leave C3, because I consider a lot of you guys to be some good friends to me.

My tastes definitely differ from a lot of C3, I can't say I'm a fan of FPS, or CoD, or things like that, and that's not because I think FPS is shitty, even if it's a bit stagnant, many genres are (especially JRPGs, which used to be my favourite genre apparently), clearly none the less people enjoy them, I just.. don't, so I don't get that hype at all.

Plus while I'm a gamer who thoroughly enjoys every console on the market (besides Vita which I'll get once some games come out on it), I can't deny I have a bit of Nintendo bias, I like talking about Nintendo, how they impress me, how they frustrate me, and how I always look forward to their next big games.

For me, C3 was a place to do that, but I haven't been around as much because it sometimes seems like this enthusiasm isn't that widespread around here anymore, hence I found myself floating around blogging sites and discovering that Nintendo wasn't disappointing people as much as I thought they were, maybe everyone just grew up and got different tastes
People who were kids during the GC days think of games like 'Tales of Symphonia' or 'Luigi's Mansion' in the way many of us look back on games like 'Super Mario 64' or 'Super Mario RPG', it's interesting, and it gives me faith that even in today's varied and competitive industry, Nintendo still very much has the power to make kids smile.

And, well, me, because Pokémon Conquest has definitely made me smile lately amongst other things.

So ever the optimist, I'd like to finish this blog on a positive note, by saying that assuming I manage to stick around and be active I'd like to do a little more for the C3 community as both a community of gamers and as Nintendo fans, whether that means spreading a bit of optimism, recommending some little gems here and there, or even just making more discussion threads (as my Pokémon BW2 one disappointingly hasn't gotten much in the way of hype, perhaps it will once the game releases?).

Being called a 'fanboy' is something very much derogatory, and so I'd like to insist that no I'm not a fanboy! I've just got a passion, and I'm perfectly capable of enjoying many things, whether I stick up for Nintendo or not I'll probably continue to enjoy their work as well as others'.

Even if I haven't been the most patriotic C3er the last couple of years, I'd like to be again.. I'd like to make people laugh, help people have fun and enjoy games, I want to start reviewing again even if just as a hobby, I'd like to be respected, I guess, and I don't feel like I can be respected if a word like fanboy is thrown in my (or anyone's) direction despite it not being true.

Most of all I hope my appearance in various threads gets a 'yay' rather than a 'aw not this guy again' from the C3 community.. that would be pretty awkward.
(I still have to work on the paranoia thing that's a problem of mine)

tl;dr Despite being multiconsole and proud, I'm a big Nintendo fan and I don't think this is something anyone should be ashamed of, plus I hope C3 misses me as much as I miss it

Anyway in an effort to try and stay a bit more in contact with the C3 and gaming community in general, I decided to make a Twitter.. that I will mostly use for talking about the games I'm currently playing and ofc talking to people.
https://twitter.com/SuperLink9

There ya go.

..The next blog will be something completely different, promise.
*ollies out*

Catching up is hard

Maybe it's just cause I've changed and become a much more emotional person, but I'm annoyed at myself for continuously disappearing from C3. It's not the only site I do it to, I have li'l communities of friends here and there and I worry that one day it's gonna be too hard to keep in contact with all of them - I feel like I'm growing distant from a lot of people lately, there are people on C3, Facebook and other sites that I used to talk to tons and would like to talk to more again.

But I guess life's just like that-

I'm still a pretty insecure person and I guess I keep a lot of my internet lives kind of separate from each other, maybe it's because I'm worried of being judged for what is and isn't going on in my life in various aspects.. idk.

I've been a pretty crappy mod and staff member too. I did get distracted with Uni and personal dramas.. but now I'm just plain lazy and I feel like there's so much catching up to do. I want to, and yet I also want to spend less time online in general to focus on making myself a stronger person; but I also want to write here. I've probably missed a lot of big opportunities as a C3 writer over the last year or so due to my general lack of attention and I feel kind of bad for it.

I have a different mindset to how I used to in many ways, I still have a bit of a Nintendo bias which is obvious, but sometimes I just wonder if I'm welcome around these parts anymore I guess. I'm so out of the loop I'm not really sure how to get back in.

But ahh, if anyone feels like catching up with ol' SL sometime feel free to add my new MSN since my old one got.. totally swamped with people I don't really know.
[email protected]

Friendly and awkward neighbourhood SuperLink signing out

On Sonic music and Sonic-ness

Please leave your opinions on Sonic games at the door - we get it, modern Sonic games are a mixed bag on a scale from awful to good. This blog is a look at the idea of 'Sonicness', most particularly in the series' music which a lot of people just don't think is right anymore.

I'll answer instantly, are they right? Is music still as Sonicy as it once was? Well the answer is equal parts yes and no; is it BAD? Hell no, at least not now.

I think I'll start out by getting the Adventure games out of the way.. especially Adventure 2 and Shadow The Hedgehog. So ok for those games we've ditched the melodic variety of memorable tunes for music befitting to each character. Cheesy rock for Sonic, ridiculous rap for Knuckles, kinda obnoxious but more melodic rock for Tails, girly spy stuff for Rouge, some frankly pretty cool drum'n'bass for Shadow, and more rock for Eggman. Shadow's own game ditches the drum'n'bass in favour of more heavy rock stuff.. it gets a bit ridiculous how seriously the game takes itself and the music doesn't help in that aspect.
http://youtu.be/VE2YY7ZHnhg
..some of the stage music is actually not bad despite the game's overall theme.
http://youtu.be/9qZLTYb7mvA
It helps to imagine the music in 16-bit.
..Either way I'm not really defending Senoue, it's obvious by Black Knight and Sonic 4 that he's not what he used to be - which brings me onto the most important thing, what IS Sonicy music?

People complain left and right about the cheesy music in Sonic games, and I'm gonna ask where the hell were you in the 90s? Cheesy music is nothing new to Sonic games, they've loved putting his name alongside ridiculously cheesy stuff since the beginning of time.

Sonic CD - http://youtu.be/JPC8W672mXc
and - http://youtu.be/o3PgxYA-5QE
Both of these are adored by many fans! Why? They contain cheesy generic lyrics and lots of electric guitar, not much has changed - methinks nostalgia plays a part! And that's not a bad thing, not at all! But you have to understand that nostalgia plays a bit part in those who personally love the cheesy rock saddled along with the Adventure games, you gonna judge the kids who really dig that stuff when they don't really get what's so special about "You Can Do Anything"? Let's move on a little-
Sonic 3D: http://youtu.be/UKYXOobaceQ
I personally don't like this, it's too cheesy, but this is from like 1995, it's from the same Sonic 3D soundtracks that a lot of people really liked, and THEN there's Sonic R, the whole game is full of it.

Ok so so what does this have to do with Sonicness?
Sonicness is pushing the musical capabilities of hardware, and doing what conventional games didn't. That was its original angle. They don't have the same passion they used to, but SEGA originally hired professional composer from Japanese band Dreams Come True, Masato Nakamura, to compose the music for Sonic 1 and 2.
http://info.sonicretro.org/Masato_Nakamura_interview_by_Sonic_City
Nakamura wasn't fond of 'game music' and so tried his best to push the hardware, trying to make the music sound more like it was orchestrated, played, with multiple layers rather than "game music".
This was repeated in Sonic 3 & Knuckles which Michael Jackson famously composed the music for, along with of course Senoue back in his glory days.

Soo when SEGA were working with medium other than cartridges (discs for instance..) what did they do with Sonic music? They pushed it, of course, they filled Sonic CD with an array of vocals and weird sounds to show off what they could do, they put in full vocal tracks alongside the anime sequence, in the Saturn/PC games Sonic 3D and Sonic R they put vocal music in it, cheesy.

Ok so what's my point? The point is that this has always been Sonic's angle, a lot of the cheese is admittedly acquired taste, I don't like a lot of it, but I like a lot of it, nostalgia plays a part, but I can't help but like some of the new stuff too while I personally hate that song from Sonic 3D.

Sonic's game music itself.. after getting more of a variety to it again (Sonic 2006, Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Colours) is brilliant! It uses a nice variety of music styles with a lot of great melodic tracks, in Unleashed the music really suits your environment, just like in Sonics 2 and 3. Sonic '06, despite being a fucking awful game, has some really great music.
http://youtu.be/4_eX4QzvuMI
That's a mix of all 3 versions of the Crisis City music, each version of the track has a recognisable mix of violin and a quick beat, a pretty orchestral feel overall. Isn't this what Sonic music has always been about? It's never been about simplicity, or about making fun little bouncy tunes.

And as if to perfectly illustrate this point, here's the 16-bit version of Sweet Sweet Sweet alongside the full original version-
http://youtu.be/zTcGIk-Pfnk
http://youtu.be/A1hB8jFRpDc
Yyep.

Last but not least!! Why does Sonic 4's music kinda suck? Well I've already answered that. Sonic 4 is a modern game running on modern hardware, and yet the sound direction is "try to sound old!". That's not Sonicy at all! The music lacks feeling, it goes for simplicity and a faux 16-bit era feel and totally falls on its face for it, there's very little layering of different instruments.
SO what's the best track in the Sonic 4 saga? I wonder.
http://youtu.be/_NglF07tfWc
Not only is the loop longer than most, you can hear the layers in the music and the track sounds pretty cool even even in the shitty soundfont they use - why? Because it's from Sonic CD, and Sonic CD pushed 1993 console game music.

Ok so I've made THE point, now what's MY point?
My point is that, to all you gamers out there who think Sonic's soundtracks aren't what they used to be, they're not, they've evolved - and they're by and large still pretty great. I like Sonic Boom, you like Sonic Boom, great, it fits Sonic, but so does this
http://youtu.be/2T0uIXLpQbQ
the fast pace and carefree optimistic lyrics are even more befitting of Sonic than that thing from Sonic 3D.

If the h8rs gave modern Sonic music more of a chance and appreciated it for what it is (modern Sonic music, not 90s Sonic music), you may discover some stuff you REALLY like! I know I'm enjoying it.
Maybe these tracks will help you out a bit-
http://youtu.be/BZy6VAr69qg
http://youtu.be/jEGro4NpgCg
http://youtu.be/7oU7Uvy5uik

I hope I've given you stuff to think about!
Aaand if you've liked Sonic music all this time, then I hope you enjoyed the blog and (most of) the music I posted in it!

Weird stigmas

This is more like a random thought/observation but

Every single gaming journalist ever makes smartass comments like "God Sonic's stupid friends who are they!!"

do you think they ever
like
take a look at the cast of Mario Kart Wii
realise that half the characters have practically exactly the same character designs
and there are like 6 baby versions of characters
and think

"hmm where did they come from
why are they even characters they've never even been in mainseries games
maybe Mario's cast isn't as fabulous as pop-culture-reference-#23820 after all"

I'm not saying "waah Mario's cast is awful"
I'm not even saying you're not allowed to make characters for the sake of party games

I'm saying where did this stigma come from
that Sonic Team can pull dumb characters out of their ass and get leapt on by every journalist in the history of the universe (even the journalist version of Socrates) for being so inherently evil for doing such an unheard of thing!!

and never stop to think for one second that Nintendo pull dumb Mario characters out of their ass and get away with it. Especially when the Mario series has a lot more characters in its party games than Sonic does... and some of those are yes kind of unimaginative believe it or not.

At least Sonic characters look different
(for the most part, red/black hedgehog and white marijuana hedgehog outstanding)
But you can give Sonic a couple of Hedgehog counterparts surely if Mario's got

- Luigi
- Wario
- Baby Luigi
- Baby Mario
- Baby Wario
- Waluigi
- Baby Waluigi
- Baby Goku in a plumber outfit

as his counterparts, right???

Especially if it's a party game come on
why do people complain about party games having characters in them.

Gaming journalism baffles me.
Stop complaining about stupid things hOLY SHIT.
(yes I realise the possible hilarious irony in saying that and I maintain it enjoy your laffs while they last.)

- A Novella By Joshua Jeffery (◡‿◡✿)
PS. This article is pretty good
http://kotaku.com/5905159/the-sorry-state-of-mario--sonic-gamings-worst-team+up
Apart from the "who the hell is ___" comments actually. But I almost didn't notice them since they're about as redundant as when articles mention how many ~casual games~ the Wii has as a criticism of the console.
PPS. this isn't really aimed at anyone on the C of 3 just putting that out there.
(but if you have consciously made comments like that then shame on you )

H I - me again

What's crackalackin' ladies.
I've been 'back again again' for a few days now but.. I'm kind of worried that once again I'll only be around for a week or something before I disappear again. Who knows?

Some of you probably remember I was kind of depressed last time I popped up- I can't say I'm depressed at all anymore. Buut I'm still a worrywart and I still procrastinate too much, but what else is new?

I've been playing games a lot more lately, and also watching a lot more anime. Hopefully once I get this week over and done with I can do even more of those things.. I have a presentation and an essay to do how fab.

Long story short I'm really happy with my life at the moment for various reasons, I feel like I've finally reached some level of calm. Probably not long before that gets thrown off again but oh well idrc. ~sparklesparkledesu~

I'm currently procrastinating that's pretty much the main reason I'm writing this.
So C3 how are you.

new laptop

I've had this laptop for yonks now and I'm hoping to get a new one before this year's Uni term begins.

So really I'd like some simple advice or maybe some suggestions from you guys because I'm hopeless with this stuff.

- I don't want to build it myself or anything
- PC not mac
- I'd like it to run smoothly and have an efficient fan
- I'd like to say it'll mostly be used to University work but aha nope it'll mostly be used for saving tons of anime and fanart and doujin games
- Yeah I don't want a ~gaming laptop~ or anything but I want something that runs simple games like Touhou really well/without exploding (because god when I try to play Grief Syndrome or Minecraft I can hear my laptop struggling for air).

ty

hi josh

hi

ok well obviously I haven't been active on C3 for a while/ages, in fact I believe it's been around a year since I was really active here. There are a number of extremely lame reasons for my absence.

- University, yep of course that's not a real reason so moving right along.
- Tumblr, extremely addictive website where I can post yuri all day and no one will judge me :'D
- C3 being full of negativity. Since I'm a bit more tolerant now (I hope) I'm going to try and spread positiveness. And that doesn't mean be a Nintendo fanboy, that means I'm going to be positive towards every "faction".

So I'm back. (I guess? - inb4 I forget all about this tomorrow and never come back again) Stuff has changed including myself, I'm a lot more into anime, I'm about to start my second year at Uni - I'm moving into a house in Falmouth with my brother Cam (who's about to start his first year) and two friends, one of which was a flatmate at the beginning of my first year. It's probably going to be awesome, the fact I'll be with Cam also means I won't be as shy because we're practically two halves of the same person by this point.

Since the ~last episode~ I've really gotten into the Madoka Magica series which my life seriously revolves around, so ah if no one on C3 has watched it I'll be REALLY SAD. I've also gotten into the Touhou Project in a big way it's so weird.

Oh yeah and I actually got a phone! Holy shit.

So yep hi.

Hi I'm panicking

I know it's been a while since I was really active here, but I feel like venting, and I know a lot of you are in Uni yourselves so you might know how this feels (or merely laugh at me for being so bloody irresponsible) but maybe you'll have gone through similar things.

I have 2 2500 word essays in for Friday morning, and I have no idea how to even start them. I have an introduction and a bare bones plan, but how am I supposed to articulate 2500 words worth of something I have a limited knowledge on? Go to the library, get out books, read.

Much easier said than done, especially considering how little time I have left (my own bloody fault) my concentration is awful when it comes to reading, I’ll spend half an hour reading the same sentence from one of these academic texts and nothing will go in. Either because I can’t concentrate, or because I don’t understand the unnecessarily complicated language these academics feel the need to use.

Basically I am panicking, I don’t know what to do, I feel like I’m too stupid to be on a course like this, but considering I topped all my classes (especially English) all the way through school, I don’t get why that would be the case.

Ugh what’s wrong with me. ><

PS. My Birthday on Tuesday is gonna be pretty shitty ;-;