What the news media are reporting is that the wrist straps are “faulty”, which, during play, caused them to break, which in turn made the wiimotes “fly out of the user’s hands”, breaking TVs and possibly simply injuring people.

In reality, this is not more than a bunch of dishonest idiots trying to get rich quickly without working, and taking advantage of the ease (and chances of working) of stupid lawsuits in America. If you can’t produce, steal from those who do.

Just a few facts:

- Nintendo warns users repeatedly not to let go of the wiimote while playing. Indeed, they might not have included the wrist strap at all. They did so as a courtesy, because they knew some people would get too excited while playing.

- Anyone who lets go of the wiimote is not following the usage instructions. In a sane world, this should cause the suit to be thrown out immediately.

- Nintendo has already offered to replace straps. Again, they didn’t need to do this; they could simply say that, if users follow the instructions, straps won’t even be needed. But they are being nice.

- This suit has as much merit as someone sticking a fork in their eye, and then suing the fork’s maker for not putting a “Do not stick in eye“ warning on it. Companies should make safe products, yes, but they aren’t responsible for stupidity. It’s revolting how people can be stupid idiots, and be rewarded for it.

- Finally… You’ve got to see this comic, and this one as well.

No related posts.

However, in one of the last posts, there’s so much ignorance that I’m not even sure it’s a joke or not. I believe it isn’t, however. The post is called Commodore 64 games to join the Virtual Console, and it includes this gem:

All in all quite underwhelming news. The Commodore 64 isn’t even a console! The games have dated too much for them to be worth downloading unless they were 50 or 100 Wii Points at the most. At least that way you could spend your change on a novelty bit of nostalgia and fill up yet another of the 48 channel slots!

I don’t even know where to begin.

Isn’t a console? So what? I’d see it as “the VC isn’t limited to console games! Cool!”. Besides, the C64 was turned into a console in 1990 (by then, it was admittedly too late, and it wasn’t successful), simply by removing the keyboard and disk interface.

Have dated too much? I can’t believe this one – either this is a joke, or the reviewer never had anything but consoles in his life. The C64 compares favorably to the NES! Better graphics, better sound, and more varied game genres. In fact, a lot of C64 games were converted to the NES, and the ports were usually much worse. The C64, meanwhile, could do a Super Mario Bros. perfectly well. If C64 games were to cost “50 or 100 Wii Points at the most”, then they’d have to give NES games for free.

Really, to suggest that the C64 is more “dated” than the NES… Ah, youngsters, these days…

Oh, and one more thing: unlike what the news (and I’ve seen it in other places, too) suggests, this is not “C64 games coming to the VC”. This is a company (System 3) releasing ports and remakes (of their own games, and Epyx’s) for the VC (and they’re releasing some for the DS and PSP, too). The Virtual Console isn’t just a means for playing old console games; new games will be released for it (much like the Xbox Live Arcade), and in this case some of them are remakes or ports of old games. It doesn’t mean that we’ll be regularly seeing new C64 games there, among NES games, SNES games, and so on.

Possibly related posts:

1. Nintendo Wii: first impressions
2. 20 years of the Nintendo Entertainment System
3. A portable GameCube?

I have it at home, since yesterday.

I’ve been playing with it for several hours, now. Unfortunately, my brother (who is the one who bought it for me; I wasn’t in the country on release day) was only able to buy the basic package: the console itself, Wii Sports, one wiimote and one nunchuk.

I haven’t been able to explore Wii Sports thoroughly, as my TV is in my bedroom, and the bed is in the way. I’m going to move the TV to the living room today or tomorrow, hopefully. I’ve won a couple of tennis games (which is much more fun than you’d imagine), but the “real thing” will be when I can play with more room, and with more people (which will require more wiimotes, and they’re completely sold out right now).

Besides disk-based games, the Wii supports several channels, and can go online. Connecting it to the Internet was extremely easy; there were no compatibility problems with my Linksys WRK54G router, which I already use for the Nintendo DS. The wireless range seems to be better than that of the DS, and it now supports WPA encryption (which I’m not using, though, because of the DS – only WEP there). As soon as you go online, the console updates its firmware, which takes a little while, but no effort at all.

News and weather channels are available on the channel selection screen, but they’re not working yet; according to Wikipedia, they’ll be up and running either this month, or in January. Same thing about the Opera browser, whose release date is apparently December 23.

One of the most interesting channels is, of course, the Virtual Console. Apparently, new games will be released every friday. I’ve already bought a few: Donkey Kong (NES) due to nostalgia (even though it’s a relatively poor version, quite inferior to the original arcade), F-Zero (SNES), Super Mario 64 (N64), Donkey Kong Country (SNES), Sonic the Hedgehog (Mega Drive), Super Star Soldier (PC Engine) and Dungeon Explorer (PC Engine). A special note about Mario 64: I never had an N64, and, though I had already played the game using emulators, and later on the DS, I had never played it using an analog controller (in this case, a GameCube one) until yesterday. And the game really needs one; it’s like I was playing a different game! Moves and tricks that I had to struggle with on the DS come up absolutely naturally here. The N64 version doesn’t include the DS extras (3 new characters, more stars, better graphics), but this game really requires an analog stick…

A couple of PC Engine games support 5 players at a time. Dungeon Explorer is a more complex Gauntlet clone, and Bomberman 93 probably needs no introduction. Since the Wii can only support 4 wiimotes or classic controllers at a time, and up to 4 GameCube controllers, you need to use a combination of both. I have 4 GC controllers, so I will, hopefully, be able to play 5-player Dungeon Explorer after the next lunch here.

One warning: some (not all) NES, SNES and Mega Drive games (not PC Engine, oddly enough) weren’t, originally, properly converted from NTSC (60 Hz) to PAL (50 Hz); they had black borders on the screen, and were about 13% slower than the original versions. Since they’re perfectly emulated here, and the European Wii uses emulated PAL versions, the problem persists. If you’ve played the original versions and were OK with them, you won’t see a difference here, but it’s a pity that Nintendo didn’t do the extra work of fixing this problem… after all, the Wii supports 60 Hz PAL, unlike the original consoles.

And that’s it for now. When they’re available again, I hope to buy Wii Play (which includes an extra wiimote), a second nunchuk, and a couple of classic controllers. As for games, I want Zelda, Red Steel, DBZ: Tenkaichi 2 and Call of Duty 3. It’s likely that I’ll only be able to get most of those next year, though…

Possibly related posts:

1. Current stuff: DS games, Wii
2. Nintendo Wii: "underpowered"?
3. RE4 for Wii: dreams come true?

I’ve been playing mostly Nintendo DS games, these days. My PC is too old to play any recent PC game (I’d love to play Medieval: Total War 2. ), so there’s nothing new there. If it wasn’t for the DS, life wouldn’t have meaning.

On my own, I’ve been playing Gyakuten Saiban 2, also known as Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney: Justice for All. I bought it from Play Asia, as the Japanese version includes a full English translation. I love these games, by the way, and couldn’t recommend them more, especially if you love adventure games with a great sense of humor. You shouldn’t be afraid of reading, though.

Multi-player-wise, I’ve been spending my time with Mario Kart DS, 42 All-Time Classics (called Clubhouse Games in the U.S.) and Big Brain Academy. All those are fantastic with 4 players or more.

I have to say that I’m quite enthusiastic about the Nintendo Wii. Everything I’ve seen about it has been great. I’m in Europe, so it won’t be released until December 8th… well, it’s just a couple of weeks. Hopefully, I’ll be able to buy it on launch day, because unfortunately I live in an ignorant, Playstation-obsessed country, and the Wii will probably be less successful that it’s been everywhere else.

If all goes well, I’ll get Zelda: Twilight Princess on day one as well. And, who knows, some Virtual Console games, too…

Possibly related posts:

1. Nintendo Wii: first impressions
2. RE4 for Wii: dreams come true?
3. Nintendo Wii: "underpowered"?

Well, I’ve had it for a couple of days now. As far as I know, it hasn’t yet been released in Portugal, but I ordered it from Amazon.co.uk.

If you’ve used Opera Mobile version 8.x, you have an idea of what to expect, as the browser (while it has the “Opera” brand, it’s referred to as “Nintendo DS Browser”) is mostly the same, with the necessary changes for the different hardware, naturally.

The biggest problem, in my opinion, is this: it’s a bit slow. Not unbearably so, but scrolling is far from smooth, especially on more complex pages. It also loads and renders them slower than you’re probably used to, even with a fast connection. It’s usable, sure, but it’s far from the experience of using Firefox on a PC, of course. In fact, Opera in my Nokia 6630 is faster than this one (but, then, modern cell phones are more powerful, hardware-wise, than a DS).

The browser has two vieweing modes: Small Screen Rendering mode (SSR), and Overview mode. The first works mostly like the mobile version: it ensures that you never have to scroll horizontally, by making every frame / column appear on top of each other. You can read pages perfectly, but you lose a lot of the formatting. One problem is that in sites with a menu on the left, the entire menu appears before the content, which means you have to scroll down a lot to start reading. Anyway, this mode is perfectly fine for reading blogs, for instance, but a forum (such as a phpBB one) is more complicated.

Overview mode shows the entire page with the original formatting. You see a “zoomed out” version on one of the screens, and a zoomed in section on the other. You can drag the zoomed in part with the stylus, of course. This way, you can see a site with its original look, but navigation becomes more difficult.

Personally, I stay in SSR mode most of the time, except when a site really requires its original formatting. One interesting example is GameKnot, an online chess server. With Overview mode and maximum zoom out, you can actually have the entire chess board on the clickable screen, and make your moves with the stylus! I’ve tried it and it works, which shows that Javascript support is acceptable.

You can write using a virtual keyboard, in the same way you write your name in a game, or use handwriting recognition. I didn’t like the latter; maybe it’s because I’m used to my old Palm, which recognizes characters differently. Many times, it didn’t recognize the letter I typed, and I’ve found no way to write accented characters. Anyway, the virtual keyboard works quite well, and you can certainly write faster than using T9 in a cell phone.

One problem, though: maybe it’s because this is the UK version, instead of a localized Portuguese one, but, as far as I can see, there is no way to write vowels like A and O with a tilde, like “ã” or “õ”. The browser shows them perfectly in pages, but they’re not available on the virtual keyboard. You can select which national keyboard you want (US, UK, SP, etc.), but there’s no Portuguese one. Maybe it’ll be available when (and if) they release the browser here. It’s not the end of the world, but it can be annoying if you want to use it for writing or commenting in Portuguese sites or blogs.

Personally, I use this browser mostly for reading in bed (blogs and other sites). It’s much more comfortable to use the small, light DS than a comparatively huge and heavy laptop. And I don’t currently have one of those, anyway.

No Java or Flash, but I don’t miss them.

It saves bookmarks and the browser configuration to the card, but not cookies or files. Cookies are lost when you turn the DS off, which means that you have to log in again in any site you access. A little annoying, but, as I said, you can write usernames and passwords quickly using the virtual keyboard.

So far, it hasn’t crashed once.

There are two versions, one for the old DS (“Phat”), and another for the DS Lite. The reason is that the browser comes with a memory expansion, which is inserted into the GBA port, and they include a smaller one for the DS Lite, which doesn’t stick out of the port (like GBA games do). The Phat version works on both DSs (sticking out of the GBA port on the Lite), but the Lite version is for the Lite only.

Curiously, this isn’t out in the US yet… one of the few times us Europeans got a better deal.

Possibly related posts:

1. New Nintendo DS?
2. Nintendo Wii: first impressions
3. Bad news reporting: The Virtual Console Archive

Rumors of a portable Nintendo GameCube console, or at least a portable which plays GC disks, have been seen on gaming news sites for the last few days. The cause is that, apparently, Nintendo has got IBM to shrink their Broadway chip recently.

Now, I doubt these rumors are true, for several reasons. First, it would steal the thunder from their October / November Wii launch. Second, they already have a portable console which is selling like hot cakes – in fact, it’s currently the best selling console world wide, by far. Third, I don’t know if current technology allows a console with optical disks to have a decent battery duration, and yet be low cost – just ask Sony. Fourth, while the GC sold as much as the Xbox world wide, and made money for Nintendo, a lot of people still associate the name “GameCube” with failure, and with lost market share.

On the other hand, a portable GC would be interesting:

• Big software library, with many more games than the PSP, including a lot of classics
• GC games have very short load times, unlike the PSP
• The GC is much more powerful, graphics-wise, than the PSP (or even the PS2)
• Most Nintendo fans (like me) already have a relatively big collection of games, and would love to play them on the go

In conclusion? I doubt it’ll happen, but it would be nice.

EDIT: of course, Nintendo wouldn’t call it “a portable GC”, since it would look old, and, as I said, the GC brand isn’t very popular. More like the “Game Boy Ultra”, which, whaddyaknow, is also compatible with GC games.

Possibly related posts:

1. New Nintendo DS?
2. Resident Evil 4 (GameCube, 2004)
3. More about the Nintendo Revolution

That image, however, is wrong – and it just shows that people are simply not thinking.

The Wii is said to be “2-3 times as powerful” as the GC. Right? On paper, that seems to be nothing compared to the multi-core, multi-gigahertz monsters that the 360 and the PS3 are.

That’s a way to look at it, sure. But think of it in another way. Do you think that the current generation of games – PS2, original Xbox, GameCube – are absolutely, downright ugly? Ugly in a way that they are unplayable? Do you find games like God of War, Gran Turismo 4, Halo 2, Metroid Prime or the better-looking GC version of Resident Evil 4 “ugly”?

I don’t think so (unless you are SO young that the 360 is your first console ever. ) Well then, the Wii will beat all of those in terms of graphics. Easily.

Possibly related posts:

1. More about the Nintendo Revolution
2. Nintendo Wii: first impressions
3. The Xbox 360

Possibly related posts:

1. New Nintendo DS?

(no Videopac controller? Heresy!)

No related posts.

The most amazing thing is that I can well believe it. In the 80s, they had the NES; later, with the GB, GBC, GBA and now the DS, they still sell more consoles than anyone else.

And they always make a profit, unlike Sony and MS, which usually sell their consoles below cost.

Possibly related posts:

1. 20 years of the Nintendo Entertainment System
2. Bad news reporting: The Virtual Console Archive
3. Nintendo Wii: first impressions

Source: Eurogamer

Possibly related posts:

1. Nintendo: first place in hardware for 20 years?!

I don’t know if the “this week” part is true or not, but I predict that it will eventually happen – much like the SP, it won’t have more powerful hardware or anything, but it will be smaller, less heavy, and look better. I don’t know if they’ll change the screens’ size or not. And it may have a couple of extra features, though, again, there won’t be any “DS SP only” games – every single one will run on the original DS.

A rumble pack? I doubt it, since Metroid Pinball already includes one, which uses the GBA port (that port can be used for many things, other than GBA games, did you know?).

A better battery? It’s possible, although the original one is already very, very good.

IGN suggests stuff like image viewing and MP3 playing, to compete with the PSP, but I doubt that. It’s simply not Nintendo’s way.

Possibly related posts:

1. Nintendo DS: First Impressions
2. IGN: Worst Controllers
3. More about the Nintendo Revolution

It’s still in the beginning, but I hope it’ll be successful – and I hope that I don’t own the only Nintendo DS in Portugal.

So, if you speak Portuguese, and have a Nintendo DS or are considering buying one, you’ll be welcome there.

Possibly related posts:

1. Nintendo DS Browser – my review
2. Nintendo Wii: first impressions
3. Second Impressions: Mario Kart DS

It’s about the only announced console that actually has me interested – because I’m too old to be swayed by “even more polygons than the generation before!!!”.

Go on, visit it.

Warning: that site is somewhat green.

Possibly related posts:

1. More about the Nintendo Revolution
2. Blog moved!
3. Too little gaming… :(

Bought the Mario Kart DS Pak, which includes that game, all for 150 euros. Also bought a Linksys WRK54G wireless router, because I had no wireless stuff at home, to allow the DS to use my internet connection to play Mario Kart DS (and future games, of course) online.

I didn’t have a lot of time to play with it, as I arrived home late, and today is a work day. Also, I spent more than an hour “fighting” with the wireless connection – more on that in my technology blog, if you’re interested.

So, a few random impressions about the hardware:

• It’s big – about the same size as a PSP, though the screens are smaller – there are two of them, though, and you can use a stylus with the bottom one, as everyone probably knows. It’s certainly too big to carry in a pocket, unless it’s a large one in a coat.
• It’s light – much lighter than you’d guess by looking at it. I’ve used heavier mobile phones.
• The screens actually feel “bigger” when you’re looking at them – much more “real estate” than in almost any portable stuff. Except a PSP, of course, but that one’s screen is huge.
• Most screenshots on the web look quite “blocky”, but when you’re using the “real thing”, they don’t look or “feel” blocky at all – they’re perfect for the screen size. Of course, static screenshots on the web look different.
• Mario Kart DS (more on that game later, in another post) is really fast and smooth – no matter what was on the screen, I never experienced the slightest slowdown or frame skipping. This is certainly not your dad’s Game Boy
• I haven’t had enough time to test how long a full battery lasts. The manual says it should last for more than 6 hours of constant playing.
• DS games come in a kind of memory cards, though they’re still referred to as “carts”. The DS also has a larger slot for GBA games.
• When you close the DS, it automatically pauses the game and goes into “sleep mode”, which uses less battery power. Opening it goes instantly to where you left it. Great if you’re leaving a bus, or something.

No photos yet, I hadn’t enough time yesterday.

Possibly related posts:

1. Nintendo Wii: first impressions
2. First impressions: Mario Kart DS
3. New Nintendo DS?

A curiosity: I went to two stores today in Lisbon (Vobis and Worten, in Vasco da Gama), and console availability was like this:

Both had lots of Gameboy Micros and PSPs.
One of them had GBA SPs, the other didn’t.
Neither had DSes (although they had DS games).

No related posts.

• The Revolution should be released around Thanksgiving 2006 – which, to non-Americans, means November.
• The “Revolution” name still isn’t final, though I personally love it.
• It will use 2 kinds of DVDs: single-layer (4.7 GB) and dual-layer (8.5 GB). It will also read GameCube mini-DVDs (1.5 GB), as it’s fully backward compatible.
• Specs-wise, it doesn’t look too impressive compared to the Xbox 360 and the PS3 – it’ll be basically a “Super GameCube”, with about 2-3 times the power as the GC. Still way ahead of the first Xbox, though – and, knowing Nintendo, they’ll be able to do more with less. Remember that the “tiny” ‘Cube had games, such as Metroid Prime and Resident Evil 4, which looked better than anything on the (better on paper) Xbox.
• It’s also rumored to be ridiculously cheap – $200, or even $150 – at launch. Wasn’t the PS3 going to cost $600?
• Nintendo has also stated that the ways in which people moved the controller in the demonstration video were exaggerated – instead of arms swinging wildly, it will be more like using a mouse (in 3D, of course). For most games, at least – in some, however, the point will be to do realistic movements, such as in a swordfighting game.
• Confirmed games include a new, seamlessly online Super Smash Bros., a new Hideo Kojima game, and Metroid Prime 3.

Possibly related posts:

1. Nintendo Wii: "underpowered"?
2. New Nintendo Revolution blog
3. A portable GameCube?

Not an especially innovative console, and the first batch of games are mostly from EA Sports (Fifa 2006, NHL 2006, etc.). Apparently, Project Gotham Racing 3 is awesome, though.

Most importantly, it includes an interactive music visualizer by Jeff Minter.

I don’t know if I’ll buy one – maybe when my finances improve. But I want a Nintendo DS first.

What about you, “gentle reader”? Do you plan on buying an Xbox 360?

Possibly related posts:

1. Nintendo Wii: "underpowered"?
2. More about the Nintendo Revolution
3. Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophecy (PC / PS2 / Xbox, 2005)