Category Archives: General Articles

I Stand On My Soapbox: Expecting Too Much From Your Game

I Stand On My Soapbox is a series of editorials that cover more specific topics in the games industry and community. These articles are a little more extreme than normal editorials published here, and could just degenerate to outright ranting. Have fun and enjoy the show!

Take a look at the featured comments section of this article. Read the comments? Now I ask you, have you noticed a pattern here? A good chunk of the comments there mention Atlus and/or Catherine. The people here are reacting to a comment made by James Mielke of Q Entertainment, in which he states that Monster Hunter will never be as successful in the west as it has been in Japan. The first commentor, Taggart6, mentions that Monster Hunter Tri has sold over 470 thousand units in the US and questions how the hell that is not considered a success. Catherine sells 200,000 in its first week, and Atlus was thrilled to sell that much (and pretty much alluding to it being a success). Two companies, two games, both high sellers, and the lower selling one is a success. Why? Well, it’s all about expectation, and from the looks of how some games end up selling, some companies still have trouble understanding their audience and just how many units is expected to sell.

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Top 10 N64 Games I Wished I Played In My Youth (And Still Haven’t!)

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I’m not sure how many gamers there are like me, but I’ll come out and say it: I never owned an N64. Never had one, and not really planning to go out and own one. I grew up as a Playstation kid as the PS1 was the cheaper system when my mom went out and got me one. I think many gamers probably had the same predicament as me: we grew up poor or had parents that didn’t want to spend a lot of money on games (and instead give us lame Christmas socks and notebooks). But I don’t fault my family. I grew up on a console that was getting the RPGs and all the third party games. But still, there were quite a few things on the N64 that revolutionized the way we played videogames (like the joystick and Rumble Pak). I was able to play the N64 in my cousins’ house. But personally, as you already know, I never owned an N64. The only way I can “legally” play the games are on the Wii. But in hindsight, it’s still kinda sad knowing that I missed out on the happenings surrounding the system –in particular, the games. Before we begin, I have to set a criteria.

1) These are games that I have not touched, at all. To this day. As I type this. Never played, at all. Dead. Serious.

2) The “not owning” part is a given. But, if I did play them at all, they don’t count. And also, for other games games I mention “playing”, they don’t necessarily mean “owning.”

3) If I own the original games or enhanced port on the Virtual Console or any other system, they don’t count.

So without further ado, hit the jump button down there to see what games I missed out on.

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The Last Airbender: Legend of Korra Trailer Released

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For all you Avatar: The Last Airbender fans out there, San Diego Comic-Con has got you covered. A new trailer for the follow-up series, The Last Airbender: Legend of Korra, was just recently revealed at the convention.

Legend of Korra takes place 70 years after the end of the original series and follows the next Avatar, Korra, who has mastered all the elements except one: Airbending. The series will focus on Korra learning Airbending from Aang and Katara’s son, Tenzin, as well as an anti-bender uprising occuring in the United Republic.

The original Avatar was very well done and garnered a huge amount of fans. I remember how I shocked I was at how good it was when it first came to Nickelodeon. The show had good animation, great fight scenes and choreography, a likable cast, and an interesting plot with plenty of twists and turns. I have faith that the sequel will do the original justice. Besides, there were still some unanswered questions from the finale that I hope get resolved. Regardless, we’re all going to have to wait until next year before we can follow Korra on her adventure. At least we something to look at for now.

Also, does the guy at the end of the trailer remind anyone else of Sokka? I like this show already.

Is Capcom, and The Game Industry, Backing Itself Into a Catch 22 Situation?

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Super Version. Hyper Turbo. Ultimate. Game of the Year Edition. In the gaming community, these are identifiers of a game that has been updated. Super, back then, was really just something that was getting released on Super Nintendo. But now, Super is synonymous with an update that was unexpected after promises were made beforehand. You can probably see which game I’m indirectly referencing and probably understand where I’m coming from. Before the situation we’re facing now in the gaming industry, Capcom led the charge in making updates to their games. However, back then they had good reason to.

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Oh sweet, a gaming festival in my neck of the woods (sort of)!

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Here’s something I don’t hear every day!

“Game Play”, a performing arts festival, centered around video games is set to hit the NYC area for the majority of July (7th – 31st). Typically when I hear about cool events like these, they’re usually over toward the west coast.

Luckily, most of us at The Wired Fish are Bronx dwellers — one cramped subway ride from The Brick, a theater in Brooklyn where the festivities take place.

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Defending the Duke : A Journey Into Bad Taste

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It was about a year ago. As a person who hates going to the movies, the simultaneous showing of three films that had my interest was enough to get myself out the house and into the theater with a group of friends. Those three films were Inception, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and The Expendables, in that order.

While Inception was unanimously considered the best of the bunch, the bulk of the debating went toward the other two films. Most of the people in the group that I talked to found Scott Pilgrim the better film, a concept that still puzzles me. While I’ve yet to read the comic, the film had few and weak video game references (something that I was looking forward to from the testimony of friends who read the comic before the movie).

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5-Year-Old Boy Dead After Breaking TV with Wiimote

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In another case of “What the hell man!?”, On June 17, a Bronx mother’s son was found dead. Reports say that the mother hit her boy after he broke the TV while playing the Wii (assuming, with the Wiimote). When police came over, they found the boy unresponsive and declared dead due to internal bleeding.

Now, in all honesty, I really didn’t want to post an article like this since these articles tend to pop up quite often on other gaming sites and the responses are always the same. But why then? What drives someone apeshit to the point of abuse when it comes to gaming stuff? Seeing as how it may have been the TV that broke (others are sying that the Wii itself broke), there’s a good change the kid wasn’t wearing the wrist strap. Assuming this was the case, and being that the kid was 5 years old, he probably didn’t know any better to wear the wrist-strap. In this case, the mom was supposed to be there to put the thing on her kid and tell him how important it is to put the damn thing on. If he disobeys, don’t let him play the game. Parenting 1-0-fucking-1 people.

And another thing. The other reason why I don’t really post articles like these is because merely posting this fans the flames of the “Gamers are bad” idea that most religious pundits and politicians love to use when they get bored and want an easy target to use as Moral Panic punching bags. It becomes unfair to us level-minded gamers when the action of one is assumed to be done by many. Not all of us are like this. When something breaks, either by us or someone else, we fix it, send it in for repairs, or just get a new one. Nothing to kill someone over. From the looks of it, she is not a gamer (or at least, not by our definition). While we can hope this won’t be used as another bullet-point for anti-game lobbyists, you know someone *coughFOXcough* is gonna spin this into something against the gaming community.

Source: Gothamist

Vanillaware Announces Dragon’s Crown, Challenges Chun-Li’s Thighs

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During the trailer Sony showed of the PSVita (Will call PSV since I’m lazy), There was a barrage of games on display. At one point, there was one game that popped up that had made me do a double-take on the liveblog (you can see at 9:56). I was right in assuming that it was a Vanillaware game, but Grand Knights History it is not. The game is called Dragon’s Crown, and will be released around Spring 2012 for the PS3 and PSV. Judging from the title, it almost sounds like a sequel to the SEGA Saturn game Princess Crown, to which certain employees worked on before forming Vanillaware. But it seems to really be similar in name alone, as the tone for Dragon’s Crown is a vastly different than that of Princess Crown.

Vanillaware launched its official website for Dragon’s Crown. Hit the jump for the trailer and official website. And if you’re looking for the aforementioned thighs, here you go.

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The Wii: A Tale of Innovation, Apathy, and (Corporate) Stupidity ~ Part 3

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With the dawn of a new Nintendo E3 conference upon us, I thought this would be a good time as ever to round out this short series of articles. Now, in the other two parts I talked about the things that Nintendo and third parties did wrong. Well, now turn to the flip side of the coin and talk about what went right with the Wii. It goes without saying that as much as Nintendo and third parties frustrate me in certain aspects, I still like my Wii more than my PS3. With that said, let’s take a look at what the Wii did right. Continue reading →

The Wii: A Tale of Innovation, Apathy, and (Corporate) Stupidity ~ Part 2

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Note: anything regarding sales here refers to sales in the US.

What’s the basic idea of marketing? Do you show your product to people in hopes they buy it? Do you put neon signs and marching lights somewhere to get their attention? Do you dress it up in barely anything and question their marriage? Yes, yes, and… kinda, but yes. When you make something that you want people to see, you bet your ass you gotta whore it out like Grade A Booty. It’s deceptively simple, yet somewhat tricky to market your product. But in some ways, marketing a videogame is easier than the other mediums we have out there. With games, your audience will be either kids, adults, old people, “hardcore,” real hardcore, casual, or niche. Not much else to it. Next, it all comes down to what kind of product you’re selling. Hit the jump to see what went wrong with marketing on the Wii. Continue reading →

The Wii: A Tale of Innovation, Apathy, and (Corporate) Stupidity ~ Part 1

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Looking at my games library, I see more white cases (and a red one) than I see clear or green cases. There’s no mistaking it, my Wii has gotten the most attention this generation than my PS3 (which I got 2 years after the I got my Wii near launch). A Nintendo Customer Service rep (long story) even looked through my Wii account and said it was the largest account he’d ever seen. “Points redeemed, points redeemed, points redeemed…” is all I heard for about a minute. So yes, you can say that I’m a satisfied customer. I like the Wii, and thank god it came out when it did (the world would be a browner, grayer place if it didn’t). But still, there’s always this niggling feeling that I get; that the Wii is capable of something more. Maybe the Wii does have that “something more.” But with so many problems plaguing the Wii now, and with Project Cafe potentially being revealed at E3, the Wii may never reach that “something more.” And that’s a damn shame.

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Review in Progress Top Ten : Episode 1 (Reviews 1 – 10)

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Finally my Review in Progress series has reached double digits. About 2 – 3 games a month starting from February is not bad considering the amount of school work that went with it. A number of genres and platforms were covered, some familiar series’ and some entirely fresh games.

Of course, the impact of each game has yet to be quantified, so without further ado, I’m going to list the games I played in order from my least favorite to favorite, as a nice way to condense what games I recommend and in what order. Depending how well this goes, expect one summary/top 10 like this for every 10 Reviews in Progress.

The sandwich, a classic and easy to prepare meal and an almighty placeholder when no other image applies to the topic.

This one’s a quickie and more of a catalog of articles that might have been missed to newcomers of The Wired Fish, so more detailed information, pictures and video clips can be found in the respective articles.

#10 – Okamiden (Review in Progress #4)

No, I never went back to playing Okamiden from where I was at the time of review. As a fan of the original, some of the changes were actually cool, such as the inclusion of partners that you could use to solve various puzzles. Unfortunately, most of the time you walk them around by drawing a path, it’s a slow hike to an out of reach treasure chest, and another line to return. Going for all the treasure in the dungeons was more tedious than it should have been as a result.

In short, the additions are poorly executed and elements carried over from the original were nowhere close to keeping my interest.

A second opinion was given by Steven offering different, and a more positive look on the game, check it out!

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8-Bit Girls Dancing Gets A Song Stuck In My Head

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This song… I was shown this song several weeks ago by my sister. Upon seeing this, the bright colors were a bit of a turnoff. But at the same time, I could not dismiss the charm that both the video and the song had. The song, “Kodo no Himitsu” (or “Secret Heartbeat”), is sung by J-pop group Tokyo Girls Style. This particular song is actually a remix by YMCK, a group from Japan known for their 8-Bit music. I don’t know much about YMCK unfortunately (but they do sound familiar). The sprites used here do kinda remind me of the ones from the 16-bit Final Fantasy games, mostly with how their eyes are closer to their noses. Anyway, check the vid out.

Holy Shit! An Intellectual PSN Debate!

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From what I’ve read of the big PSN crisis, it usually comes from two angles. There’s the legal/economic side where people are looking to sue Sony, hunt down whoever hacked their PSN service, ensure their financial security. It’s either “Fuck you hackers!” or “Fuck you Sony” and people just going crazy pointing fingers. Then there’s the other side where people are taking advantage of the situation to remind us that competitive services are still alive and well.

I'm tired of looking at this damn ball logo all over the headlines.... why not join the fun?

I can’t deny that I’m a little worried myself, and others on TWF have expressed similar concern. Continue reading →

Miyamoto Hints at New Hardware, Pikmin Game and Zelda’s 25th Anniversary

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It was only a matter of time with all the rumors of a new console that we would hear an official statement from the folks over at Nintendo. Fan favorite, Shigeru Miyamoto confirmed that there is indeed a new console on the way, though not all the rumors may be true. Not much more was given in details, but that’s what E3 is for, right?

In the meantime, he was sure to bring up the 25th anniversary of the Zelda series, which hopefully leads into another awesome party over at Nintendo World that I can actually make it to.

Thankfully, Miyamoto has made a few more confirmations : a new Zelda, Mario, Mario Kart and Pikmin along with new AR games for the 3DS. I love the AR games we got, and Face Raiders so hopefully they start making games that use that system and have a lot of substance too.