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• Shigeru Miyamoto and Blasphemy, A Match Made in Heaven

  Every time I think of the happy American families playing Wii Play and Wii Sports, I smile a little inside. I love it that everyone’s playing videogames. It means there will be more of them. I have to laugh a little too, particularly when USA Today or some other milquetoast news outlet does a write up on Nintendo’s family friendliness. Nintendogs! Well we can all enjoy that right? Sure we can. In another world, Nintendo wouldn’t have stayed in business in the United States past 1984. Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., and Mario Bros. would be their only legacy in the land of the free. One day that year, I imagine the following dialogue took place between Mr. Miyamoto and Nameless Nintendo of America Head: NNOAH: “"Hey Shigeru, I hear ya gots the latest follow up to Donkey Kong ready! Whatcha got to make us rich, kid?" Shigeru Miyamoto: “It’s a maze game! We’re going to make some of that proverbial Pac-man cash!” NNOAH: “Genius! Tell me more.” Read More... Posted Mar 23 2009, 09:30 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, nintendo, donkey kong, super mario bros, shigeru miyamoto, wii music, wii sports, wii play, donkey kong jr, mario bros, Nintendo of America, devil world

• Videogame, Non-Game, Old Game, New Game: The Miyamoto Rule

  To the internet-list aficionado, the end of the calendar year is the time of greatest bounty. You like lists, chances are you like pop culture, and nothing gets the pop junkie going like ranking all the crap that came out in the past twelve months. Top ten movies, top ten books, top ten celebrity nip-slips, top ten Billy Mays products, and, yeah, top ten games of the year. We are no stranger to the list here at 61FPS, as you well know from reading our scintillating, thought provoking top tens, and you can imagine how we’re gearing up to deliver all sorts of meaningless judgments on the year known broadly as 2008 (4706, 4705, or 4645 to the Chinese. They seem to be confused.) Over the past few weeks, Derrick and I have had a number of conversations about our mutual contenders, but these dialogues have always ended in a conundrum: what counts as a videogame? Derrick’s smitten with Wii Fit, but is it anything more than a Nintendo-upped Sweatin’ to the Oldies that comes with a snazzy scale? We’re both fans of the Korg DS-10, but, even though you play it on a videogame system, it is an actual musical instrument, not a new sequel-ready game franchise. Does an instrument go on a top ten games list? My personal definition of a videogame has been a work of interactive digital media wherein you follow a set of rules to achieve a goal. Wii Fit, Korg DS-10, and the many other games like them belong in the broader videogame discussion at this point and this is making me re-evaluate just what a game is. Leave it to Shigeru Miyamoto to lay down the single best definition of videogame I’ve heard to date. Read More... Posted Dec 01 2008, 07:45 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, wii fit, shigeru miyamoto, korg ds-10, wii music

• WTFriday: The Mario Paint Music Showcase

  Note to readers: WTFriday is a weekly feature where I find something stupid about video games and get you to laugh until it goes away. Please try to forget this is what I normally do every day of the week. With all the hardcore furor over the recently-released Wii Music, I think it's important to put things into perspective. Luckily for me, someone has already done this: namely, 1UP scribe Jeremy Parish, who made a remarkable amount of sense with a recent blog post.  And, on his personal site, he also made a great comparison that I'm going to monopolize for the remainder of my own post: Have self-proclaimed hardcore gamers always been this hysterical about "non-game" software? I feel like Wii Music is the latest in a long line of toys and apps that Nintendo has been churning out for years; nothing new in the least. Maybe it's because I wasn't lurking in the proper corners of USENET back then, but I really don't remember Mario Paint eliciting so much FUD back in the day; on the contrary, people seemed to love it, and it's still regarded fondly. Seems sensible enough. But where would we be on WTFriday without something strange and disconcerting? This, my friends, is where Mario Paint comes in. I goofed around with this "game" quite a bit as a child, but little did I know that people were still actively using Mario Paint's composer for both good and evil.  There's even a free program, aptly titled Mario Paint Composer, that emulates the game's basic music-making functions while adding a few new features that weren't exactly in demand back in 1992.  After all, I doubt Nintendo anticipated an eight year-old reproducing anything like Dragonforce's "Through the Fire and Flames:" More serious music discussion after the cut. Read More... Posted Oct 24 2008, 02:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: jeremy parish, wii, music, snes, wii music, mario paint, bob mackey, wtfriday

• Wii Music: A Rare Miss For Miyamoto?

  The reviews for Wii Music are trickling in and the verdict overall seems to be "Meh." Wii Music doesn't look like it's on course to become the holiday item worth garroting fellow shoppers over. Most damning is What They Play's test play, featuring real live children. The game apparently didn't go over much better than homework. I don't often feel bad when a hyped game flatlines, but I kind of feel sadface about Wii Music's lukewarm reception just because Shigeru Miyamoto is so excited about it. I know some gamers put their hands on their hips and say, "Well, it's about time he was taken down a peg" when one of Miyamoto's projects is a notch below stellar, but I still have mad respect for the guy. He is one of my heroes (Nadia Trivia Bonus: another hero is Terry Fox and another is the inventor of cookies). I haven't seen any Wii Music-related scorn directed towards Miyamoto yet, but I'm sure it's out there, or it will be. The Wii has opened up video games for a whole new audience; even though it's easy to get mad and decide that Nintendo has abandoned hardcore gamers, I can't fault Nintendo for thinking Wii Music will be a runaway hit with the Wii Sports/Wii Fit crowd. But if Wii Music fails to sell, what will it mean for Shigeru Miyamoto? Read More... Posted Oct 21 2008, 06:08 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: wii, wii fit, shigeru miyamoto, wii music, wii sports, nadia oxford, holiday, creative process

• Wii Are Not Amused

  We've witnessed the hardcore gaming community's dissapproval of Shigeru Miyamoto's latest creation, but what of the general public, the casual gaming families that Nintendo is apparently catering to these days? What do these average non-gamers think of Wii Music? Luck smiled upon my query as the Nintendo World Store decided to host a Wii Music launch event this past weekend. I've been to several of these events now and generally know what to expect: large crowds, territorial teenage gamers, rambunctious youth, a cacophony of noise, and a general sense of enthusiasm followed by fatigue. What I found this weekend was... different. Read More... Posted Oct 21 2008, 03:00 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: nintendo, derrick sanskrit, casual, wii music

• Gears of LittleBig Fable Music: Considering the First-Party Blitz

  October brought its true fury and grandeur to New York today. It took three days, but the nattering leftovers of summer finally drifted out to sea like so many dead leaves and left behind the lowlight and intent wind so particular to the month. Walking down the street, I could smell it, looming like bonfire smoke and Halloween parades: game season. I hold no love for the business structure that sees some ninety-percent of the year’s most ballyhooed games releasing all within a tight ten week window. It leads to sensory overload and, for the devoted gamer, it adds to already-big backlogs. But I’d be lying if I said it isn’t always exciting. All of the hype, all of the previews, leaked screens, developer showcases, and high, high hopes all lead here and it always begins in October. Holiday 2008, as it were, is going to be a particularly interesting season considering that it is gaming’s first to witness true third-party agnosticism. Nigh on every publisher from East and West is releasing their biggest games on any and all platforms available. (There are rare exceptions. See Sega’s Valkyria Chronicles, Valve’s Left4Dead, and a number of Wii titles.) This brings even closer scrutiny to the console holders' offerings; more than ever, first-party games need to be system sellers. They have to act as ambassadors, convincing casual and hardcore gamers alike that if they put money into such and such a system, there will be more where that came from. Read More... Posted Oct 03 2008, 05:30 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, little big planet, playstation 3, motorstorm, resistance, nintendo, microsoft, xbox 360, wii, sony, gran turismo, gears of war, animal crossing, halo, fable, wii music, lips, banjo kazooie, ridge racer

• Miyamoto Says, "It Would Be Great If Music Education Started With Wii Music."

  As if I didn't already have to listen to my father go on about "these goddamn kids today who don't want to learn real guitar 'cause of Guitar Hero," now we have Shigeru Miyamoto himself talking about how awesome the world would be if music education started with Wii Music. Iwata and Miyamoto discussed Wii Music on "Creator's Voice," a developer session hosted on Nintendo's web site. Iwata: Well, there, with Wii Music, there's a strong possibility of raising people's basic level of music education. Miyamoto: Yes. Thus, from now, I've even thought it would it would be great if kindergartens or elementary schools got Wii Music and began kid's music education with that... My first school-related music experience involved garbage bags stretched over tin cans and held in place with rubber bands. How can we even think of replacing real instruments with such false, plastic alternatives? Read More... Posted Sep 25 2008, 03:56 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: wii fit, super mario bros, shigeru miyamoto, wii music, nadia oxford, education

• Toys are "Better than Video Games"?

  "Who put this thing together? Me, that's who! Who do I trust? Me!" - Tony Montana That's what I thought of when I read the following: Since Wii Music has no discernible scoring system, no goals and little in the way of those squishy innards that makes a game a "game," isn't it just a "musical toy"? That was the question posed by one European journo. "Yes, that's right," Miyamoto curtly replied "And that's why it's better than a video game." OK, Miyamoto, you've used up your last "Get out of Jail Free" card with this one. I stuck with you through the turbulent N64/Gamecube years, and I was happy to see you take it to the top with the Wii. But the above quote is so screechingly wrong, so not what I wanted to hear from E3. Read More... Posted Jul 18 2008, 12:00 AM by Cole Stryker with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: kotaku, cole stryker, casual games, shigeru miyamoto, wii music

• E3 Day Two: Spin, Malaise, Sony’s New Clothes, and Nintendo’s True Disruption

  Despite their show-ending bombshell announcement, Microsoft’s E3 press conference was something of a non-event. The house of X showed off titles that had already been seen or leaked, announced a handful of downloadable titles that weren’t exactly setting folks’ brains on fire, and revealed an embarrassing attempt to cash-in on the Mii phenomenon with Xbox Live Avatars. It’s embarrassing enough that the Avatars look so similar to Nintendo’s Miis, but it’s even worse that they were designed by Rare, the less-than-profitable appendage Microsoft cut away from Nintendo in the first place. It wouldn’t have been difficult for Sony and Nintendo to one-up Microsoft’s event, but neither of the console makers did, both of them focusing more on sales data and business strategies than on software. Read More... Posted Jul 15 2008, 02:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, playstation 3, nintendo, nintendo ds, microsoft, rare, xbox 360, wii, sony, animal crossing, e3, mii, avatars, satoru iwata, wii music, wii sports, wii motionplus