Here’s an interesting tidbit from a recent installment covering the legendary Atari 2600 in Gamasutra’s “History of Gaming Platforms” series :

Mogul Maniac was packed with the Joyboard, a joystick platform the player stood on and controlled by shifting bodyweight and staying balanced. These and the many other unusual devices produced for the VCS had varying degrees of usefulness and commercial success, but nevertheless enhanced the distinctiveness of Atari’s system.

Sound familiar …. ?? A board … that the player balances on … like, maybe a Balance Board ?

Everything old is new again (and maybe the Nintendo hardware designers aren’t as creative as a lot of people make out … they just have good memories ….)

It’s just a video, not a playable game … but what I love about this is how it shows despite the Wii version having better graphics, sound and even a smattering of motion and pointer controls, the core gameplay mechanic is still there in the hypothetical SNES version. It still feels like Super Mario Galaxy, even if it’s only 2D.

Adblock

Not coming to Virtual Console anytime soon (or ever).

Via WiiFanboy and TechEBlog.

So, this old news .. but not for me since I just got caught by it. In Bowsers Dark Matter Plant, during the boss battle at the end, there is a show-stopper glitch; sometimes Bowser can just float off into space … and nothing can be done except restart the level.

I ignored most news about Super Mario Galaxy when I was first released (except for the overall ratings), so as to avoid spoiling the surprise elements of the game … well,  this certainly is a surprise … a glitch in an otherwise pretty polished first-party Nintendo game. Don’t see that often.

There’s a video of the glitch here at NintendoWiiFanboy … I’m just hoping this doesn’t happen next time I work my way back though the level and meet Bowser …

Without wanting to sound too much like the Nintendo PR Department .. It’s great to see people having fun with the Wii. It’s been a year now, and yet the consumer demand and the general buzz is still alive and well … multiple family members have been requesting that I bring my Wii when I visit them over the Christmas period already … so much so I almost feel I could just lend them the Wii and not turn up, and they’d be happy .

A quick search on Flickr for ‘wii’ pulls up lots of smiling faces and flailing arms, reminding me of our last family gathering with the Wii. Here’s a few of my favorites (sorry, can’t embed Flickr photos here .. you’ll have to follow the links):

One happy kid opens the box ..

A kid with Cerebal Palsy plays baseball with his sister (which is impressive, disabled or not … I personally find Wii Sports Baseball is HARD)

… Age is no barrier … now we’ve just gotta get these guys into some ‘hardcore’ games and encourage third-party developers to release some titles to capture the ‘grey dollar’.

I don’t know what game requires a lunge like that …

There’s tons like this, and more at the Wii Motion Flickr pool … dedicated to photos of people having fun with their Wii. It’s like a peek into the living rooms of those lucky few who will unwrap a Wii come Christmas morning.

This isn’t really Wii or Nintendo related, but an important ‘gaming news’ issue anyway. Most readers who follow general gaming news have probably heard a lot about the Gamespot-Eidos-Gerstmann affair already .. the executive summary is this:

The “sometimes controversial” Jeff Gerstmann reviews the new Eidos game Kane and Lynch and gives it a mediocre score. Most other reviewers agree with his analysis.

Jeff Gerstmann is fired.

Accusations and speculation fly that Eidos put pressure on Gamespot to fire Gerstmann, since Gamespot also has some advertising deals with Eidos.

It looks like Eidos also might have put some fake or misrepresented review scores on the official Kane and Lynch site.

There are lots of interesting responses to these events, debating the state of ethics in game journalism and the state of game reviews in general.

So far there has been little comment of interest from the parties actually involved, but it will be certainly interesting to see how this all plays out. Gamespot has already lost a huge amount of credibility in my book, but lets see how they do the damage control …