This post over at kuro5hin describes the latest Wii peripheral driving Nintendo fanboys and fangirls wild in Japan … the WiiLove.

Of course, this is just a rip-off of an idea already released years ago with Rez on the Sega Dreamcast, but it’s nice to see this style of peripheral being introduced to a new audience.

No info on release dates in North America, Europe and Australia yet.

(ah, it’s a joke, Joyce).

I’ve noticed two interesting views on story in videogames recently:
Firstly, there Kevin Levine, in his GDC talk:

“The first big secret is, the bad news is for storytellers is that nobody cares about your stupid story… no matter how detailed or lovingly you craft it.” — Kevin Levine, creative director on BioShock.

Then there is Cory Barlog’s blog post from a few months back:

I mean, the freaking princess is abducted…again. I have to go after her captor, Bowser, again. [...] Oh wait…the game sells millions even with the vapid story. As it has been pointed out to me every time I say it, the game is not about the story. It is about the platforming and crazy new mechanics and worlds. — Cory Barlog, director on God of War and God of War 2

The Wired GameLife blog highlighted Cory’s comments, and before you know it, the Nintendo gaming press was plastered with the headlines “God of War Director calls Super Mario Galaxy’s story ‘vapid’”. Despite the minor fanboy-furor generated, Cory’s post indicates he still appreciated the level design, art and graphics and sound, and realizes that the game is not supposed to be about story … he just didn’t get hooked.

It’s pretty clear that many games benefit, and are even driven by, a rich, engaging storyline … but when it comes to the classic Mario platformers … nobody cares about the stupid story !!

Update: Turns out this is not the Pop I thought it was. See the bottom of this post:

---

I just noticed this new soo-to-be-released Wii game on the BigW online store. It’s Pop!, a game I’ve written about previously being produced by Nnooo. Strange thing is, this game is supposed to be released via the WiiWare download service.I’m not quite sure what’s going on here … is Pop! going to be a dual retail disc / Wiiware release ? Is it not going to hit Wiiware after all, or is there going to be some kind of staggered release with an (almost) full price retail disc, followed by a cheaper Wiiware release ?

Alternatively, has BigW just got it plain wrong ?

Watch this space … according to BigW the release date is Feb 14th, 2008

---

Update: A quick email exchange with Nic from Nnooo has clarified things … the Pop! in the BigW catalog is a different game, with the same name (apart from the “!“. Nnooo’s Pop has no exclamation mark). It’s actually the (much less cool) game known as Balloon Pop in North America. An unscrupulous company in the UK decided to rename Balloon Pop simply Pop! in PAL regions, creating a name clash. If this is trying to capitalize on the (pre-)success of Nnooo’s Pop, before it’s even been released, I think it’s a real indication of the anticipation for this WiiWare title. The “real” Pop, developed by Nnooo, will ONLY be released on WiiWare, will certainly be cheaper and by all indications will be a better game than Balloon Pop.

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 …

Disturbing news from a fairly repuatable source (Engadet) about the soon-to-be-released Photo Channel update.

If you update your Photo Channel you will lose MP3 support for background music during slideshows, and instead have it replaced with AAC format support. Sure, AAC sounds better, but most of my (and many other peoples) CD collection has been ripped to MP3 years ago … I don’t exactly want to have to go back and re-rip all that music again. Maybe this is because Nintendo doesn’t want to pay the 75 cents per device licensing fee for using MP3 … if so that is pretty tight. If they remove MP3 support, they may as well replace it with the royalty free OGG format, since if the Photo Channel won’t support MP3 most people are going to have to convert their music to some new format to use it on the Wii anyway ….

I certainly won’t be updating my Photo Channel if MP3 support is removed, unless there is some compelling must-have new feature that I feel really outweighs what is otherwise a serious backward step.

Read the rest of this entry »