...Nintendo Media Briefing Impressions:

There was a lot of good. There was some not-so-good. Join Mike Schneider and Andrew Weatherton as they discuss all that went through their mind while witnessing history in the making.

Luigi's Mansion:   So, Mike: The game seemed more like a graphical demo then anything else – kind of like the same thing that a lot of people said about Sonic when it launched for Dreamcast. There’s no doubt that it was a pretty game, but the gameplay looked like it might get boring quickly.

Andrew: I agree, Miyamoto talked this one up like it was going to be something really innovative and deep.  However, after watching Miyamoto play around with the game for about five minutes I realized that, perhaps, the game really isn’t all that it has been cracked up to be.  The gameplay seemed extremely limited, with only one level and only a few movements available to the player.  Mr. Miyamoto spent a majority of his time using some sort of vacuum cleaner to suck up ghosts, curtains, and other strange objects.  Other than sucking things up with a vacuum cleaner though, Luigi didn’t seem to do much.

Mike: Yeah, there was a definite lack of deepness to the gameplay, unless Nintendo simply didn’t show us much of it. Right now, it’s looking like the entire game takes place in the mansion (hence the title), and as we’ve both stated, would grow tedious quite quickly.

Andrew: I did notice one thing that I found really interesting though, the fact that Luigi’s Mansion seemed to be primarily a 2D game.  Sure, the graphics were completely rendered in 3D, but the gameplay seemed to be side-scroller based.

Mike:  Yeah, I liked that aspect of the game. I’d almost rather it be a 2 ½ D pseudo side-scroller ala Crash Bandicoot. Hopefully Nintendo can use this style of play to give the game more interesting action sequences, since they control the gamers’ experience more so than in a completely 3D world.

Andrew: I can see that being a positive thing in one aspect, I for one love side-scrolling games, but it can also be a very negative thing.  Gameplay, in this case, would be linear, and replay value would likely be lower.  Also, if Luigi’s movements and actions are not significantly more varied than what we saw today, it wouldn’t be fun for very long. 

Mike: You also have to assume though that in typical Nintendo tradition, there will be a variety of power ups and such available for Luigi. If they’ve given Mario wings or a metallic outfit, I’m sure Nintendo can create some nice goodies for the green plumber too, of which should help add a little more variety to Luigi’s mansion.

Andrew:  Perhaps, but it remains to be seen whether theses types of power-ups exist.  And even if they do, I’m not sure whether the game’s premise really lends to them.  The environments seemed to be without use for such power-ups.  Let’s just hope that we’ve only seen a very, very small portion of a much-larger game.


Super Smash Brothers Melee:

Andrew:  As a big fan of SSB for the Nintendo 64, I was very happy to finally see the game in it’s flesh.  It looked very impressive, with brilliant, crisp visuals and a plethora of classic Nintendo characters. 

Mike: Everything about the game looked great – I’m sure that anyone who loved the N64 Smash Brothers will eat up everything about SSB Melee. The game had a really polished feel to it and the environments were impressive. One of the levels took place on a track from F-Zero, complete with hovercrafts zooming by.

Andrew:  I was wondering whether SSB Melee would have any completely new level designs.  That F-Zero level looked like a lot of fun, and it’s something that we couldn’t have seen on the N64 because of the large number of polygonal models flying around.  Still, I think that SSB Melee will essentially be nothing more than a sequel to the N64 SSB with graphical improvements.

Mike:  Yeah, I agree. It definitely appeared to be nothing more than a sequel. But still, judging by the sales totals for SSB, and as seen by Nsports making it their number one sporting title (yeah, fighting is a sport), it being nothing more than a sequel is probably a good thing.


Metroid Prime:

Mike: Since we saw Metroid at SpaceWorld, I expected that we’d be able to see some sort of progress made on the title… However, that wasn’t the case – at least with the showing Nintendo offered us today. What was seen consisted of a few short clips, of which appeared to be almost entirely full-motion video sequences. It would have been really nice to have seen some actual in-game footage, or some sort of evidence at all that Metroid Prime is moving forward and not stalled.

Andrew:  I think that, perhaps, Nintendo regrets making such a big deal of Metroid at SpaceWorld.  The footage shown at SpaceWorld seemed to be only a teaser of things to come, but it has become nothing more than older versions of what we saw today.  By that I mean that we what shown today was more of the same, we’ve learned absolutely nothing more about our beloved Metroid game.  I only hope that this is not Nintendo’s attempt to slowly wean us from the idea that we may see Metroid Prime as a launch title – I don’t think that it’s plausible that the game will be ready for launch.

Mike:  Metroid Prime is definitely not a launch title, that’s for sure. In fact, I do know that on Nintendo’s release list Metroid Prime is listed as 2002. I’m itching to see some in game action so we can see just how much of a shooter this game is, and how much of an adventure it is. If, and when we see Metroid in action, I certainly hope there isn’t much jumping in the game - jumping in first person games is a task I’m not much into, as we saw in Turok: Dinosaur Hunter.

Andrew:  It isn’t very clear right now exactly what genre Metroid Prime is, or whether it’s even far enough in development to have a solid form of gameplay set in stone.  From the few seconds of (pre-rendered) game footage that was shown today, Metroid Prime appears to be a mixed bag of action/adventure and twitch shooting action.  *Yawn* 


Pikmin:

Andrew:  I was more than shocked to see that Nintendo’s “exciting new game” was some sort of strange SimAnt / Lemmings hybrid.  It’s premise is quite strange, as players seem to guide herds of vegetable-like creatures, commanding them to perform varios tasks.  Of course, Miyamoto is behind the strange game, so it has to be good; right? 

Mike:  Weird. Very weird. As they introduced the next game, “Miyamoto’s big big project,” I sat there in anticipation of the next installment of Zelda. Imagine my shock seeing a bunch of little creatures hopping across the screen. However, the more they talked about the game, the more I can see myself enjoying it a lot. “I think this is at least something that is kind of new,” Miyamoto told the audience. It totally is, and its premise of which you gradually influence the environment around sounds fun and different.

Andrew:  I’m actually strangely excited about this game, simply because I know that Miyamoto is behind it.  I can see my self becoming obsessed with conquering new environments using my army of pikmin.  We only saw one small area in which Pikmin were used to move large blocks and destroy a small wall.  The action may seem trivial, but I’m strangely intrigued.

Mike:  Me too. The question remains to be seen whether American audiences will buy into this whole Pikmin idea, it is perhaps more bizarre than Pokemon. Miyamoto seems to love his creation, so I’m pretty sure I likely will too. Also, as far as graphics go, the game isn’t overly pretty. The game doesn’t look all that much better than an N64 game, but it’s impressive how many Pikmin can be on the screen at once, doing their individual things, without any sort of slowdown at all. It really is a cool world.

Donkey Kong Racing:

Mike: In my opinion, Donkey Kong Racing appeared to be nothing more than a graphical upgrade of Diddy Kong Racing. With that said, the graphical upgrades look very impressive. Thinking about it, I guess it makes sense that Rare opted to first create an update to DKR over Perfect Dark, being that DKR sold much better than Perfect Dark did, although I must say I’m a little disappointed that this is one of Rare’s first projects.

Andrew:  I disagree, being an avid Diddy Kong Racing / Mario Kart 64 fan, I was extremely excited to see that Rare was working on a sequel.  The fact that the Rare characters now ride on various animals (such as Rambi and Engaurd from the Donkey Kong Country series) is very interesting.  It really shows off the GameCube’s ability to render a large number of characters with high polygon counts.  However, I’m not sure how this is going to affect the gameplay.

Mike:  I enjoyed both Diddy Kong Racing and Mario Kart 64, but I guess I’m sort of itching for something different. Granted, if the gameplay rocks, I’m sure I’ll make Donkey Kong Racing one of my first purchases. Also, as far as racing games go, this looks like it’ll probably be as good as racing gets for awhile on any console. Regardless though, for some reason I’m disappointed that this is one of the first from Rare. I would have much rather seen PD2, Blast Corps 2, or Jet Force Gemini 2.

Andrew:  I also eagerly await continuations of various other previous Rare franchises, but DKR remains one of my all-time favorite Rare games.  Thus, seeing that Rare is putting some genuine effort into a new cartoon-racer (with some adventure elements if it’s anything like DKR 64) gets me excited about not only DKR, but also the games like PD2 (which was just confirmed to be in development today by GameSpot).

Star Fox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet

Andrew:  I wasn’t too impressed with Dinosaur Planet at last year’s E3, it just felt like more of the same, uninspired 3D adventure that had been seen in so many other N64 games.  Now that the game has received the Star Fox makeover (thanks to Miyamoto’s comment in an interview last year) I have a little bit more optimism.  It appears that SFA will contain elements of gameplay from several genres; the graphics aren’t overly impressive though. 

Mike:  I agree, I definitely think that SFA: Dinosaur Planet looks improved over last year, though I liked Dinosaur Planet at E3 2000 much more than Andrew. The fact that there will be some third-person shooting levels on the ground with you moving around, as well as Star Foxish flight shooting action should appeal to a lot of people. The graphics weren’t anything to write home about, they were probably among the least impressive of the games we saw today. There was some improvement over the N64 version’s graphics, but they certainly weren’t drastic. With that said, I’m guessing we’ll see some pretty tight gamplay.


GameCube Controller:

Andrew:  At SpaceWorld last August, we were told that there was a secret aspect of the GCN controller that would not be unveiled until E3 2001.  Though many gaming sites threw around ideas of embedded microphone technology, and additional trigger buttons located on the back-side of the controller, Nintendo’s big “secret” was not nearly as exciting as they made it out to be.  Nintendo confirmed(as if they hadn’t already) that the GBA would, in fact, be able to be used a s a regular GameCube controller.  This is not only old news, but it is also somewhat confusing as the GBA has far fewer buttons than the GameCube’s controller.  Additionally, the GBA does not have an analog control stick.  Granted, having a high-resolution color TFT screen on your game controller will be great for implementing new sorts of game features into games, but it seems really limited.  I can’t see myself playing Perfect Dark 2 with a control pad, and I not every gamer is going to have a GameBoy Advance so GameCube games that offer GBA control features cannot require the player to use these features.


Nintendo's Online Plan; or lack-there-of:

Mike:  During the Q+A session, Nintendo was asked if they have any online plans in motion. To my shock, their response was that they’re in the researching stage to “determine whether online networking can be profitable for Nintendo.” Excuse me, but if Nintendo is still in fact determining whether they want to offer online play for the console, when does that mean we as game players will actually get to play something online? 2003? This is utterly ridiculous, and will set Nintendo back tremendously from the competition. One of the things I was most looking forward to was Perfect Dark 2 with online play. I guess not anymore. I really hope that Nintendo just doesn’t want to reveal more, and they are in fact further along in networking then they want us to believe.

We love Miyamoto.