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Buzz Out East Nintendo Announcements - 64DD Is Coming! Two separate Nintendo announcements, neither prominently trailed, form a significant amount of the news this week.
On balance, this looks like a decidedly weird move for Nintendo. On the positive side, in setting up an online network now, they're paving the way and getting a lot of the issues resolved for when the Dolphin comes out. So, if they can get the Dolphin out in time, a lot of the infrastructure already will already be in place and tested for the online parts of the console. But with most of the really big-name titles for the 64DD now eroded away, it's going to be much more difficult to persuade people to buy the add-on. And with the Playstation 2 likely to offer similar services, although it's uncertain whether in the shorter-term or the longer-term, there's another problem with people signing up. (Though, as mentioned before, Nintendos are sold much more in toy shops than game shops in Japan, so they are pitching it to a slightly different, more family-oriented market.) Nevertheless, Nintendo has done this weird online seemingly niche stuff in the past, notably with the Satellaview, a similar idea for the Super Nintendo which provided us with F-Zero 2, among others. Just because it's a relatively minority thing (and will only be released in Japan) doesn't mean it's bad, it just means it's been structured for the Japanese. This is a country that doesn't have a lot of PCs, isn't too connected on the Internet, and may welcome this opportunity to connect and play wholesome games online with good old wholesome Nintendo. Apologies for the implied sarcasm, but I'm serious! Though I've tried to put a positive spin on it, I don't think this will be the mainstream way of seeing the 64DD's release. It's horribly late, much reduced from what it was meant to be, and will not sell the millions worldwide that Nintendo intended it to. In that way, at least, it's looking to be a failure. A final hypothesis: This announcement underlines the fact that Nintendo's next-generation console isn't really likely to be ready for release when they indicated in their E3 announcement, if they're still willing to release the 64DD after such a delay. I still believe their E3 Dolphin announcement was more or less purely spoiling tactics — though I'm prepared to be proved wrong! Nintendo Announcements - GB and SNES Weirdness! Second, Nintendo has announced that it will release Game Boy games that will be downloaded through a cellular phone. This seems to be more of a plan that's leaked out in business details than an official announcement, but it's pretty intriguing nonetheless. And it will be compatible with the current Game Boy, despite another indication that a next-generation Game Boy is in development. There does seem to be a suggestion that this means you can compete online, but it's unsure whether the whole thing will be related to the 64DD announcements. However, it all ties into Nintendo's business plans of allowing upgradability and downloadability of games onto cartridge formats — won't cell phone tariffs be prohibitive for online play, though? Nintendo's whole game plan seems to have been partially spoiled by the vastly increased quality and storage of DVD formats, and the unfortunate fact that telecommunications networks have not been keeping up with this data increase. But one area where it can definitely work is on the Game Boy, where downloads would be small and upgrades could be easy and frequent — effectively a large-scale version of the Dreamcast VMS, maybe? We await more details.
An excellent final example of how Nintendo is pursuing this less conventional model, even on its older software, is the fact that it's going to release a new SNES RPG, Fire Emblem Trachea 776, in Japan in September. It's available on normal cartridge for ¥6000 (£30/$45), but also available via Nintendo Power copying service (you go down your local convenience store and get a copy of the game duplicated onto your special flashrom cartridge!) for ¥2500 (£12/$18). This was the model by which Miyamoto originally wanted the 64DD to run, with constant upgrades and enhancements via the writable part of the console, available at your local 7-11, but the Internet seems to have perverted that somewhat, with downloads from your home being a lot easier for most than popping down to the Kwik-E-Mart. I don't mean to say that the big N can't turn it to their advantage by applying this model to the Internet in a greater way than the others currently dare, though. After all, they're masters at getting great games into a relatively small amount of kilobytes, something that may still be necessary for a few years to come, until the world gets cable modems and super-fast Internet access. It all seems a little backwards, though, what with the duplicating costs of CD and DVD getting so cheap. We'll just have to see how Nintendo keeps "control" with their next console — after all, "control" is what all these moves reek of, isn't it? Namco Shows Newest Arcade Titles Namco showed off its latest arcade games in Tokyo last week, headed by the excellent Tekken Tag Tournament, which promised 20 characters playable right from the outset (with almost as many hidden, presumably by the time-release method, as on some earlier versions of the arcade title). It's also confirmed as playable with up to four people (although obviously there will only be two actually fighting at any one time, with the other two waiting to be tagged). The tag system seems fully integrated into the already nigh-perfect combat system, though, with changes of personnel even possible mid-combo.
As a side note, it's interesting to predict on which console, if any, the title will eventually land. Since the board the game runs on seems to be a System 12, loosely based on Playstation, I'd say a PSX conversion seems likely, maybe even in time for Christmas. One might argue that Namco would leave the title for PSX2, but as Tekken 4 is most probably appearing on Playstation 2-based arcade hardware ahead of a release on PSX2 itself.. maybe not! In any case, two of the other arcade titles Namco revealed are particularly smart: both shooting games, but as opposite ends of the spectrum. Ohbakyuun is an unofficial follow-on to the two Point Blank games (Gun Bullet in Japan) and seems like more of the super-cool stylized same, only set in a spooky haunted house. And Quick and Crash (Woohoo, Japanese English in full effect!) is a gun-game based on how fast you can draw a gun out of a holster and hit a target. Super sharp shooter shooting shots? An original idea has made for another quality shooting title.
Nintendo's Space World exhibition is confirmed for August 27-29, and they'll be showing off the Zelda expansion for N64, Kirby 64, and Pokemon Gold and Silver for the Game Boy, among other things. In related news, the two new Pokemon Game Boy games have slipped from "summer" to "early September" in Japan, partially to address issues with the connectivity to other games in the series — when it's released you'll be able to link to all other Game Boy Pokemon titles! Sega has announced their Model 4 board in Japan. Apparently the first game coming out for it will be a new version of Virtua Fighter, a traditional showcase for their new technology right from the original VF. Some details include a PowerPC750 processor running at 500MHz, a 128-bit Gigalize Hitachi graphics chip which does 32 million polygons per second, and a DVD-ROM, alongside 128MB of memory. This is quite curious, since it's markedly different from the Dreamcast specs, but I think it's quite likely that the same hardware guys who made Model 3 in Sega's arcade division have been working on this, and they're a completely different set of personnel from those who made the Naomi/Dreamcast — hence the problems in getting arcade titles converted onto Dreamcast by internal Sega teams. It'll be interesting to see what the AM teams do with this new hardware, though — another new benchmark for arcade graphics quality as Virtua Fighter 3 was? I think so. The Japanese Top Ten (for the week ending June 6)
Finally some major changes in this chart, as all sorts of new titles whiz into the Top 10. Stuck at #1 is the excellent arcade flying game from Namco, Ace Combat 3, which has been selling massively since its launch a couple of weeks back, and has already shipped over 300,000 copies. This seems to justify the high priority Namco gave it at the Tokyo Game Show, and is certainly sort of interesting - in the West it's not a squarely mainstream product, whereas it does seem to be in Japan. (Actually, Namco has just announced a two-CD add-on package for the title to be released at the end of August. It includes a music soundtrack CD and an extra data disc which allows you to access all the missions and play as the boss character, as well as more CG and previously unreleased in-game music. I believe Namco is pricing this relatively low at about $15, and as such it's an interesting product that can only capitalize on the interest in the original. However, I'm not so sure a product like this would work in the West, because the price point probably couldn't be that low, and the perceived value probably isn't quite as high — game soundtracks aren't half as mainstream here as they are in Japan, and this is basically a soundtrack with an added extras PSX disc.) Beatmania: Gottamix hangs around at No.2, and meanwhile, yet another append disc, Beatmania 4th Mix: The Beat Goes On has been announced by Konami for early September. Again, the price point on these (¥2800/£14/$18), coupled with the fact that so many people have the original and want new challenges and new tunes to play with makes them so much more saleable. This is an idea that really hasn't been tried so much in the West (with the possible exception of GTA: London, which seems to have done extraordinarily well on the back of being a non-stand-alone Playstation expansion pack). It's going to be interesting to see what Konami are going to do with the Western release of Beatmania, something they're keeping very quiet about at the moment. What information there's been seems to indicate they'll be completely changing the tunes (and possibly some of the presentation) to reflect Western artists — so let's hope you get to mess with Prodigy and Busta Rhymes tunes in the mix! Release will be around Christmas, apparently. Other things of interest: An Enix adventure game and a slot-machine sim make brief appearances in the Top Ten, Dance Dance Revolution has now sold three quarters of a million copies on Playstation (yikes!), Smash Brothers is rapidly approaching a million sales, and a Dreamcast game has snuck into the Top Ten in the form of Dynamite Deka 2 — a "Fighting Force" for the DC, if you like, classy but hardly everlasting. Until next time, keep it Mecha-Gama.... Simon Carless is a game designer/project director at a UK games developer. His game credits include design on PC and Playstation titles for (amongst others) Eidos and GT Interactive. He can be contacted at h0l@mono211.com. Simon would like to thank Magic Box, Re:Tokyo, Gamespot, FGNOnline, Core Magazine, and his other Japanese sources for the information that helps to write this column. |
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News
Analysis 
First,
the 64DD has been officially announced for a December release in Japan.
It's a co-production between Nintendo and an online-inclined company called
Recruit, and the 64DD has a built-in 28.8K modem. Looking quite similar
to a lot of the features of the Dreamcast online service, you'll be able
to play games online, shop online, get game data updates, news, and so
on, and Internet software will also be an option. Some of the launch titles
for the console include Mario Artist (finally!) and a newly announced
title called The Giant Doslin, which is vaguely Black and White-reminiscent
(!). There'll be a monthly (but fairly small) fee for using the network.
Other
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