dartmonkey

PEGI seems to have let slip Minecraft Wii U ahead of this evening. Never played Minecraft but the gamepad seems like a great fit. Could be good.

After playing The Last of Us, I have absolute zero interest in playing Uncharted. It's like Allan Quatermain & The Highly Polished Yet Clunky Game.

Thanks, found it. So, version 2.0 of 'EMERGENCY! Paging Dr Mario!' 154C-0000-00DE-F46D It's completable and everything!

I'm having trouble finding the new Halfway Point thing - anyone know where it's hiding? My super difficult Dr Mario course is 'no longer online'. Do courses get removed after a certain period if nobody completes them? I'm going to put a halfway point in, and some more mushrooms to make it do-able.

Holy moly. That's a list! You actually own all those? My 2 cents: Banjo, ICO, Shadow, Journey, Hotline Miami & Left4Dead are all strong'uns.

Just finished Super Mario World! Not a bad video game, that one. Probably wins 'Earwormiest Tune' too. Still think SMB3 will continue to be my favourite Mario Maker skin, but this will be a close second.

Strange - just finished Black Flag! It took some effort, and it was my first AC but, yeah. The objectives got monotonous but the feeling of running up behind some poor guards and shnikity-shnicking them never got old.I admire Red Dead so much for the scope and how every last nook looks like John Ford framed it. If the controls could match the atmosphere, it would be the greatest game ever made. But as with every GTA, it just doesn't click with me. I'm really interested to try MGS V - everybody says it plays like a dream. Black Flag wasn't perfect but I could work with it. Red Dead pissed me off one too many times. Edit. My tip for Black Flag would be to stick to the narrative for as long as possible. I added a good few hours to my playthrough by investigating diving sites and other things I couldn't actually access for ages.

It's time to say goodbye to Red Dead Redemption, I think. It's damn lovely - it still looks great, but GTA is so clunky. I went to buy the deed to a hut for some dude and when I returned there was a bird circling above then nearby rock. I aimed my gun and the guy went crazy, started shooting at me. I failed the mission, was told my outlaw status had changed or something. Nuts to this.

I've just read up on it and apparently if you've got one game you get the other free. Hack n Slash is in the bundle. Man, it seems like Double Fine's catalogue is now littered with kickstartered curios. Regardless of the pitfalls they've encountered, you can't fault them for lacking ideas. I should check out those docs.

Well that's pretty great. Free games?! What times we live in! Kids will never again know the way my generation would bleed EVERY last drop of pleasure from our two-ish games a year on Xmas and birthdays. It's a shame they don't get the joy of devouring instruction manuals in the car for 3 hours, but they've got it prit-tee good.

I just picked up the Double Finey Humble Weekly bundle (mainly for Grim, though I just spent 30 mins noodling with Massive Chalise). As I copy&pasted the codes into Steam Spacebase turned up in my inventory. Are free games a regular occurance?

L maybe? I know R does the spin jump too.

This is the first time I can remember using the d-pad on the 360 controller. Would I suddenly become a Downwell god with a pad that wasn't complete dump?

But in Japan the red O on the Playstation pad is historically the 'accept' button and X is cancel. The Xbox 'green for go, red for no' makes sense to me - although it's not 'natural' mapping, the significance of red/green has been thoroughly assimilated from childhood. Dreamcast button colours seem to have been chosen completely at random. I find this whole subject fascinating. The pad shape and position of the right stick can change which button the right thumb falls on most naturally. I find playing Super Mario Bros on a DS harder because my hand is generally at the wrong angle to comfortably hold on B to run and jump when needed. It's easier on a NES pad where your thumb is pretty much perpendicular on the pad. Which must be why the newer games map jump to B/A and run to Y/X (by default). What's the original jump/run assignment of Mario World on the SNES? I've just started working on an infographic that charts the evolution of the major pads since the NES. I'll post it whenever I finish.

I think this may have been discussed before but do you guys actually look at the face buttons on a pad or have you internalised it all enough to translate instantly between systems and layouts, letters and shapes? It occurred to me that I have now completely acclimatised/acclimated to Nintendo's ABYX set-up. After years with a 360, which aped the Dreamcast (which evolved from the Saturn and Mega Drive layouts) I'm now used to X up top and A on the right. I never had a SNES and the N64 and GC had their own layouts. I still can't memorise the colours though. I bought the New 3DS mainly for those sexy buttons but the Sega/Xbox colours (A=green, B=red, X=blue, Y=yellow) still seem more logical to me. Is there a story behind why Nintendo chose the colours they did on the SNES pad?

Is Crossy Road on android?

#homeheld

Ah, I forgot that they got involved with non-rectangular LCD tech, too. It's going to have an oval VMU screen. Or a doughnut dial. Also, I've been thinking about the Zelda Wii U. Nintendo cannot afford to be seen to be abandoning Wii U customers so soon, many of whom may have just jumped in with Mario Maker. Mario Maker itself seems to be one of those evergreen titles that will have legs for several years, so whatever NX's guise it'll be backwards compatible with Wii U. Then they can slap a big 'Playable on the new/upcoming NX' sticker on Zelda, and all the Wii U games. Maybe they'll add some Tingle Tuner-esque feature if you've got the new console, but I don't foresee a Twilight Princess two-version scenario.

So, we're thinking capacitive touchscreen for all this mobile, pinch-friendly malarky? A high end tablet, plus actual buttons and those rumoured scroll-wheel shoulders, analogue sticks and such - the costs begin piling up fast. Would they try splitting the pieces up as separate purchases, like the Nvidia Shield with its tablet/controller/TV components? I personally think they've gone too far down that confusing fragmented route already and they need one unified 'thing' in a box. But doing it for an attractive price sounds like a nightmare. After initially selling Wii U below cost and getting stung, do you think the new guard would gamble and do it again for a new system? Unless it's something truly revolutionary, even $400 will seem expensive.

I'd say get stuck in now. Even without the community stuff, you can follow individuals and sample specific things pretty easily. The codes are cumbersome but you only need one and then you can access everything that person's made. Also it's great making your own stages, and not just super intricate concept stuff. I'm essentially (and slowly) making my own Mario game starting from 1-1 and trying to make fun 'normal' levels with the kind of variety and pacing of a real Mario game. I wouldn't wait

I was looking for a dedicated retro thread but I'll just exhume this one. I just read a great interview with Ayano Koshiro about Streets of Rage 2. It's long and includes a bunch of design docs and sketches. The whole thing is fascinating. http://shmuplations.com/streetsofrage2/

There's a stigma attached to labelling something other than '(video) game'. If I asked a friend whether they'd heard about Dear Ester and then described it was an Interactive Video Poem i'd expect to be ridiculed, however more accurate the description may be. It reeks like 'interactive experience' or any other nebulous term. Linear participant-fuelled digital content. Bloody 'content'! Ergh. The term 'video game' is stigmatised but it feels 'honest', if inaccurate. Avoiding the bullshitometer would be a major factor in the success of any new terminology.

Edit. Double post

Sorry, I didn't put that well - I meant 'you weren't a fan but you still played through four Metal Gear games?!'

You'd played 4 and weren't a fan?!I haven't played any and keep eyeing 3 cheap on 3DS. Is it worth it or should I just wait for a few years until I've got a PS4 and can do the proper modern version with V? Alternatively I could get the PS3 version of V. Has anybody tried that? Edit. Just finished Sonic 2 on the 3DS. What a bloody sublime thing that is! I know the 'blue sky in games' thing is old hat but that game just makes you thank god for colour. Everything about it feels classy. Up there with SMB3 and SMW. Sonic 2 is supposedly the last game M2 are bringing to the 3DS, but I hope they sneak out a third wave, even if it's only a small one. They want to do Virtua Fighter and I'd love to see them polish off Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Streets of Rage 3. Related Sonic thought - why did they never make a Sonic Spinball using the Sonic 2 engine? I know internal politics were going on but Spinball still has a following despite its utter shiteness and a 'real' one with tight controls and proper sprites could've been special.