Celebrate one year of the NXpress Nintendo Podcast with this very special 50th episode! We open this show by taking some time to reminisce about our favorite moments from the past year (most of which involved heated debates over bets consoles or a certain Typoman), then launch into our main segment, a discussion on Virtual Reality and whether or not Nintendo should get in on this emerging gaming trend. Is VR a fad, or is it here to stay? Finally, each host has selected three games to induct into the NXpress Hall of Fame. Some interesting choices are made (some of which are debatable), but regardless they will now be forever enshrined as among the best games of all time. All this and more!
It’s been a fantastic year, and we’ve had a blast coming together to talk everything Nintendo. Thank you so much to all of our listeners. We appreciate your support, and to show that we’ve got a special treat: we’re giving away 5 free download codes for Squarehead Studios‘ new eShop space shooter Star Ghost! To be eligible send an email to us at [email protected] The first 5 listeners to do so will win!
Thanks again for listening, and we look forward to many more years of the NXpress to come!
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8 comments
The Virtual Boy was always a steaming pile of crap. As a young kid back in 1995 I knew it was going to fail. By some horrible miracle a friend of mine convinced his parents to buy one, and I played Wario Land on it for about 3 minutes before I set it aside with my assumptions fully confirmed. The tech wasn’t there in 1995, and everyone knew that. Even bringing up the Virtual Boy when talking about current tech is 100% nonsensical.
I find it funny that you guys look back at the Wii’s motion control with any positivity. Wii Sports was a horrible game by every standard. Boring, lackluster, and it the motion controls didn’t even work remotely well. Yes, it got played a ton, but by who? Non-gamers. Nintendo marketed the machine well, and more importantly, priced it well, and managed to sell it to people who thought it was THE FUTURE. Guess what? All motion games SUCK. Remember all those E3 press conferences where Sony and M$ showed off their motion games? Remember how no one cared about any of them? Well, Nintendo’s motion games sucked as well. Mario Galaxy would of been better with a standard controller, and maybe I would of been able to play more than 2 hours of Skyward Sword if the Wiimote wasn’t so damn atrocious. Gamers didn’t want motion controls. Yes, the idea of swinging a sword IRL and having that transition 1:1 in a game is a cool idea, but no game, not a single one, made motion control interesting. Practically every industry insider pretty much had the same things to say about the Wii: it was fun for a little while… great for casual games. Motion controls and motion games were aimed at non-gamers, VR on the other hand, is aimed at people who actually play games. No one expects or even wants VR to replace traditional gaming, but there are expectations that VR can provide unrivaled experiences. And it’s already happening. So many people are describing EVE: Valkyrie as the most immersive video game experience they’ve ever had. It’s not 1995 anymore, its 2016, the tech is here, and it’s still in its rough stages, but it has so much potential to actually change the gaming landscape, unlike the Virtual Boy, The Wiimote, or the Game Pad.
And a side note… it irks my beyond belief when any game journalists say “Game X is the Dark Souls of the franchise / Game X is Dark Souls-esq” when trying to say a game is difficult. Dark Souls is so much more than a difficult game. Dark Souls is (and unlike Rick, say this VERY sparingly) literally one of the top 10 games of all time for a plethora of reasons that Zelda 2 can’t even fathom. Stop sullying the great name of Dark Souls by comparing it to the boring mediocrity that is Zelda 2 😛
Yikes…As a huge fan of the souls series I hate to say this but Dark Souls doesn’t belong anywhere near the top 10 games of all time. I mean honestly it doesn’t even belong in the top 10 games of last generation. Off the top of my head in no real order:
1) Bioshock
2) Last of Us
3) Mario Galaxy 2
4) Uncharted 2
5) Tales Of Vesperia
6) Fallout 3
7) Any Mass effect game
8) Call of Duty 4
9) Halo 3
10) Portal
Honorable mentions
– MGS4
– Sykrim
– Gears of War
– Dead Space
– Batman AA
And these are just the games that I have personally played. Don’t get me wrong the Souls series is really great but their storytelling is absolute garbage. Once you master the combat the game loses a lot of the appeal. The game is only really difficult that first time through and the combat hasn’t really evolved much in the past three souls games. And while I personally find Zelda 2 to be an incredibly not fun game it at least has a great story for those that stick with it. Comparing the two is a little silly (oranges and apples), but it certainly isn’t an insult to either game. At least that is my opinion.
“Souls series is really great but their storytelling is absolute garbage”… not only do you have bad taste in video games, but this statement alone makes any thing you type simply irrelevant.
A) Dark Souls has great design and gameplay no doubt about that. It also has zero characterization and a very convoluted story. Sorry but it is true. Every character is incredibly one-dimensional.
B) I love Souls series and have 100% on Dark souls 1&2. If I have “Bad” taste in games that means by your own logic Dark Souls is bad.
C) It is perfectly fine to say Dark souls is your favorite, again I love this series! But favorite doesn’t equal best. Here is a fun little test: Metacritic!
Dark Souls – 89
Bioshock – 96
Last of Us – 95
Mario Galaxy – 97
Mario Galaxy 2 – 97
Uncharted 2 – 96
Uncharted 3 – 92
Fallout 3 – 91
Mass effect games:
1) 91
2) 96
3) 93
Call of Duty 4 – 94
Halo 3 – 94
Portal – 90
Portal 2- 95
MGS4 – 94
Skyrim – 96
Gears of War – 94
Dead Space – 89
Batman AA – 91
Look at that 18 games that critics all agree are better than Dark Souls!!! Let me guess they all have bad taste as well. You are entitled to your opinion but the numbers show that Dark Souls doesn’t belong in the top 10 of even last gen. Thanks for playing! Next time don’t be an ass just because someone disagrees with your fanboy obsession!
Just to comment on the whole non-gamer/gamer here. I’ve played many…many video games growing up. I’ve at leased owned every console worth owning and had at least access to the obscure ones thanks to my group of friends. By definition, that must make me a hardcore gamer…right? So why is it a person like myself can totally disagree about Wii Sports being a horrible game? Wii Sports is in every bit a video game, I’m not quite sure what did you expect out of it asides from making use of the Wii motion controls accurately. The game IS still fun to this day or you just don’t like bowling, baseball, golf, boxing or tennis…or you got it confused with Red Steel :p
Non-gamers played this? Maybe. Are the non-gamers the moms and dads who bought into these? Cause they are the moms and dads who are also playing a whole ton of candy crush and mobile games, I don’t consider them any less of a gamer than myself who plays stat-based rpgs. Non-gamers really wouldn’t be buying the Wii because they don’t play videogames. Wii was indeed successful at making videogames for the mass market. I surely did respect the games that appealed to me: No More Heroes, Madworld, Galaxy, Manhunt 2, Wii Sports…
To me gamer/non-gamer…is complete bullshit. Whoever plays videogames, plays videogames, whether mobile or console. Like someone who watches movies…why is it we don’t call someone a non-moviegoer just cause they don’t watch Lars Von Trier, David Fincher or Takashi Miike…internet society would label that as a hardcore cinephile but no one does. The internet doesn’t judge the person for not knowing these people, yet when it comes to videogames there’s a stigmatism. It boils down to preference…some like a deep, rich videogame, some like to stack blocks to achieve the highest score or even try to bowl a perfect game on Wii Sports.
A gamer is a gamer!
Oh, my bad, I guess my Grandmother who threw a couple of bowling balls in Wii sports is a gamer now. Her and the millions of other people who played Wii sports and never touched a video game again, aside from the occasional stint on Farmville and Candy Crush should be heavily factored into the marketing and business strategies of all big gaming publishers going forward.
The Wii was marketed heavily towards people who did not play video games at the time, meaning… you guessed it… NON-GAMERS. Its great that Nintendo succeeded in bringing these people into the fold for a few months, but theres a reason that motion control aren’t a core part of the PS4/Xbox One… its because despite how strong the Wii’s initial sales were, that audience didn’t stick around… they didn’t continue to purchase all these motion games… because they were only there for a fad.
Never was the point of my comment specifically about what makes a “gamer” or a “non-gamer”, and I couldn’t care less about who qualifies themselves as a gamer or not. My point is WHO VR IS TARGETING. The gaming community en-mass never asked for motion controls like the ones Nintendo presented… but gamers around the world have been clamoring for virtual reality since gamings inception. Thats the point of what I was trying to say, in-case you somehow missed it: VR has a much bigger chance of changing gaming forever, because its something that serious gamers (i.e.: people who consider gaming one of their main hobbies / people who invest a lot of time and money into gaming) actually want.
So gamers wanted VR since gaming’s inception…since Table for two in 1958…
Which definitely explains the Wiis success lol
My argument is your definition of a gamer, so agree to disagree. I know what VR means to the industry now so I have no disagreements.
Your grandma is L33t lol
The concept of putting some sort of headset over your eyes and being transported to a different world was conceived long before 1958, and once gaming became a thing, that concept was seen as a potential means to play games. The Wii has no connection there. And if the Wii was truly a success, then we’d be seeing Wii-esq motion control being incorporated into all gaming devices, but we clearly aren’t. Was the Wii a ‘financial success’? In the short term, yes. Was it any other type of success? No, as it failed to produce quality games, and actually hindered several Nintendo games.
I was speaking with a friend through text this morning, a friend who played a lot of Wii Sports and Rock Band years ago, but no other games. I asked him why he played those games, and he said “I played Wii Sports because I didn’t see it was a standard video game, it was more like a carnival game or something. It was fun for what it was. it was a fun social thing to do.” (He also said he liked playing Rock Band pretty much just because he likes playing real instruments). I asked him if he would qualify himself as a “hardcore gamer”, a “casual gamer”, or just a “gamer”, and he said “None of the above”.
Just because YOU want to qualify anyone who even looks at a game as a “gamer”, certainly doesn’t mean THEY want to qualify themselves as one. And while you may argue that “Well once someone picks up a controller they’re a gamer!” (and I disagree with that sentiment), you cannot argue that the Wii was targeted at NON-GAMERS. Look at the advertising campaign of the Wii vs. the PS4. Look at their commercials, their E3 press conferences, anything you want: Nintendo purposely tried to branch out and reach people that traditionally did not play games. I don’t know how or why that offends you, but its a fact.