lobotomy42

That's a little harsh, guys. If you have an issue with a design choice, that's totally legitimate to bring up, but it's equally legitimate for "the fans," as you say, to bring them up. Assuming that any decision made with "fan" input is a bad one is frankly an obnoxious kind of elitism.

Well, as it turns out, the DLC maps were harder than the mission I was on anyway, so I abandoned those right quick and went back to the story mission. Some judicious use of "pair up" seems to have done the trick and gotten me through it. This is definitely a lot harder than I remember Fire Emblem being, though.

You are definitely giving Conan too much credit.

Perhaps the answer to my problems is to go buy some DLC maps and do those.

I'm 3437-3841-6045

So, I started this game on "Hard" + "Classic" mode and, about six missions in, I'm starting to regret it. Is it a good idea to give up on trying to level all my weaklings for now and start using Frederick in missions, or will that just make Maribelle, Donnell, etc, permanently unusable?

I did the exact same thing. Loved SS, hated PiT, and never played BIS. But I do like Luigi, so maybe I'll get this new one.

It doesn't sound particularly inspired, but if different characters still give different fully-written responses, then it could be good. Different NPC characters should know different things and be able to react to events differently - that's what I care about more than whether "my" dialogue is represented as sentences or keywords.

I think Obsidian's game is scheduled for next year.

This makes perfect sense! And it's actually good to know the reasoning behind it, since I have not read the comics. It also sounds like there was perhaps more coordination going on than those of us posting in this thread have been assuming. Thanks, and great job!

I'm torn. I kind of liked the over-the-top horror show that the episode was obviously becoming. It immediately read to me as "Oh, they're doing Texas Chainsaw Massacre now" and in retrospect, I'm not sure how intentional that was. On it's own, it was great, but it did feel out of joint with the rest of the series, which is why I think most people disliked it so strongly.

This is basically where I am. PS+ gives me new, free games each month, whereas Xbox Live gets me...access to Netflix, which is free everywhere else. I'm amazed that people even spend money on it.

Co-op is definitely the way to go. Stealing control of the other player's character is such fun! Wife and I have been playing Knight, Scientist, Monk. This does indeed appear to be the case.

In the stream, Iwata definitely mentioned NES, SNES and GBA.

The biggest disappointment with the virtual console is that it sounds like they're going to slowly trickle the same games out all over again. So it's likely that the final Wii U VC Library will actually be SMALLER than the Wii's.

From the post: Actually, a lot of the media, covering a lot of different news, works exactly like this.

Just because you need "retail" doesn't mean you need "GameStop." I'm sure Wal-Mart, Target and Amazon will be happy to sell the consoles that GameStop isn't, and they likely won't care about whether they get the games or not. (And Amazon has been trying really hard to be another place where you can buy digital things for your things, so it's not like they have a dog in this fight.) That said, I do think that especially for kids and family games, there is a value to be had in being able to go to the store and pick out the game you want, take it home, put it in the box and play it. Most gamers may not need this, but there is definitely a chunk of the market who will not (for now) go into that newfangled "Store" menu.

I got this for Wii U this morning, but I couldn't figure out how to set up local co-op. I only spent five or ten minutes playing around with it, though, so hopefully it's just something stupid I missed.

Okay, in the spirit of positivity, here are my predictions for 2013: Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft all make game consoles and games for them, and some of these turn out to be really quite good. Lots of games are released for iOS and Android, and although many are cheap crap, some are really quite good. The Kickstarter harvest comes in, and most of them produce games that are more or less what they promised, even if not what some fans dreamed they would be in their wildest fantasies. Also, one or two of them ARE what the fans dreamed they would be in their wildest fantasies. Having survived many of years of "PCs are dying!", the PC will continue to enjoy a few years of "PCs are the future!" Double Fine still alive and kickin' adventuregamers.com still, somehow, for some reason, alive and kickin' Idle Thumbs will do a redesign, drop some content, add some content, but still have these forums lobotomy42 will not change his user avatar Sounds good to me!

I finally bought this game, I should probably play it, since I do love me some Phoenix Wright.

Boy that Gamasutra article is mighty depressing: "Nintendo will fail" "Indies will fail" "Kickstarter will fail" "Android will fail" "Developers will fail"

Funny, I think that's how I feel about the next Xbox. I've gone full circle on the Xbox this generation: I was excited at first, as I thought it would make a decent complement to the Wii. XBLA got off to a great start, and it seemed like Microsoft was genuinely pushing to get exclusives for a wide spectrum of game types. But by the end of this generation, that was clearly false. The whole UI is covered with ads, it was constantly pushing you to join Xbox Live, the UI redesigns come way too frequently, and MS' attempts to shove Kinect into all sorts of games where it makes no sense...and on top of it all, the Xbox increasingly looks like "the shooter and sports console" in comparison to the PS3 and the Wii. By the last major overhaul, I was done. It's clear that Microsoft is more interested in making a "living room media device" and is just using games as a way to get people to buy the hardware, so unless they come up with something REALLY compelling, I'm happy to pass on whatever they do next.

Only in theory. In practice, running games more than ten years old usually requires either an emulator or some kind of patch. Which isn't much different than re-compiling old games into HD rereleases on consoles.

It's funny how the GameCube has become a critic's darling after death, while everyone trashes on the hugely successful Wii. I'm not saying it's wrong to do so, but I definitely recall the gaming press starting to write off the GCN circa 2004 as a joke, despite Nintendo's slow-and-steady stream of fantastic releases. I do agree that there is a weird contrast between the two. GCN was a me-too console with a library of crazy ideas seemingly haven sprung from Nintendo's desperate situation. Meanwhile, the Wii was an incredibly inventive console whose major releases were often just updated versions of Nintendo's past, for better or worse. For me, the console itself holds up better than the games. I've always loved the fuzzy Wii home screen with its elevator music and "channel" concepts. (You guys know you can press + or - to flip through the "channel" screens, right?) It's also, frankly, the first console with a web browser that was usable in a meaningful way. (Even now, the idea of pulling a website up on my PS3 or Xbox for everyone to look at on the TV seems laughable.) The hardware itself sacrifices fidelity for the sake of pick-up-and-play usability, which I still think is the right call for the Wii Tennis crowd. I also never seemed to mind the Wii Shop the way everyone else does. It's there, it works, you can buy stuff, what else do you care about? For casual friends of mine who hadn't owned a console since the NES, the Virtual Console was a surprisingly big selling point. I guess my main disapointment is that I feel like I'm still waiting for the game that the Wii was made for, some huge big idea that NEEDS motion control. Aside from Wii Sports and Wii Fit, most of the library - even Nintendo's - seems like it could have more-or-less worked on the GameCube. Even traditional PC point and click games, like adventures and RTSes, never really made a splash. All things considered, I still think highly of the Wii. My biggest complaint is that it never quite lived up to the promise of its early ambitions, which is essentially a compliment in disguise. (Typed on my Wii U tablet.)

I meant that my interest existed prior to the trailer.