Business:  Jonathan’s going to miss Gen Con this year, because employment trumps gaming.  Sam will be attending, though, so WotG will still have a presence.

Games Jonathan Played:

• The Walking Dead – an interesting, if cel-shaded, take on zombies and point-and-click adventures.
• Dragon’s Dogma – what Alex thought about Skyrim, Jonathan thinks about Dragon’s Dogma.
• New World Colony – Catan crossed with Risk, and Jonathan’s impressed.

Games Alex Played:

• Crusader Kings 2 – well worth the sale price, maybe not so good at full price.

Games Sam Played:

• Max Payne 3 – once you accept what Max is laying down, the game gets good.
• Ghost Recon: Future Soldier – hear what happens when your pitted against you buddies.

E3 Time: We discuss the good and bad of the Big 3 press conferences, throw in some publisher smack talk for good measure, and lay bare just how bad we are at making predictions.

Next week, we’ve got two, count ‘em! TWO! people on the show who actually attended E3, one of whom is pulling a Jack Kerouac and going on the road, but for games instead of drugs.

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Gonna keep the show notes light this week, so we don’t delay the podcast any more than necessary.

Our short news is actually short this week as we discuss a lawsuit directed at Ubisoft regarding infringement of the Animus idea.

Games were light this this week, so much so that we talk about non-game stuff for a bit.  Sam’s into the new Doctor Who, Alex has found anime and manga for his iPod, and Jonathan’s exploring further ways to play board games online with Game Table Online.  In actual games, Sam’s got his hands on Magna Carta 2, Alex has started up Castlevania: Lords of Shadow fresh again, and Jonathan has played the demo of Fez and an iOS word game called Dabble.

Wrapping up the show, we have a headline-inspired topic.  A study finds that a significant chunk of the recent games industry downturn can be attributed to weak sales from Nintendo.  Is our hobby reliant on Nintendo for survival, or can Sony and Microsoft fill in the gaps should Nintendo go south?

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Mario “SUPER IAM8BIT” Piece 2k11


The MK


I Thought I Came To Plumb

Mario Inspired Artwork

justinrampage:

Artist José Emroca Flores brought a brand new Mario Bros inspired piece from his arsenal to the 2011 “SUPER IAM8BIT” show. It starts tonight (8/11) at 7pm!

You can catch the show until Sept 10th. Check out more entries here.

Mario Inspired Artwork by José Emroca Flores (Blog) (Store)

rollingrabbit:

Super Mario Genderswaps! This was a super fun design challenge, and I’m pretty pleased with how they all turned out — especially Luigi. My favourite thing is how Waluigi just looks the usual design, but in drag.

Layton movie?

Layton movie.

From nineteenpointzerofour.

Sometimes you’ve gotta stop solving, and start shooting.

We Are Nintendo; You Cannot Beat Us

The Evolution of Nintendo’s Game Controllers

Love to see how the Wii U fits into this.

The GBA: Jesus and Piranhas Can’t Tear You Away

Page 2: Wii U’s Power Limited to Save Money:

I seriously worry now that Nintendo just doesn’t get it.  Developer rumors indicated that the Wii U was going to be about half again as powerful as the 360 and PS3, allowing it to run “modern” games and even push the boundaries a bit farther.  Now, though, Miyamoto has said in an interview that the Wii U will not be significantly more powerful than the competition, in order to keep costs down.

I’m all for making an affordable console, really I am.  However, is Nintendo paying attention to their competition at all?  Motion controls took off because they were new, innovative, and no one else was doing them.  The 360 was already out by the time Nintendo revealed the Wii, and Sony crammed a gyroscope into the PS3 controller at the last second to try and compete, but Nintendo pulled a major coup and profited from it.

That’s not going to happen with the Wii U.  Sony and Microsoft will not only have plenty of time to work on their own touch-screen control schemes, but they’ll also be able to see how it works out for Nintendo and adjust accordingly.  If the rumors that new M&S consoles are coming in 2014 are true, that’s far too soon for Nintendo to refresh the Wii U, and suddenly the machine is in the same position the Wii is in now.  

I’m not a graphics whore.  In fact, I think the constant push to improve visuals that are damn good already is detrimental to the industry.  At this point, we should be focusing on innovation and storytelling, but instead we’re trying to wring new cloth and sweat textures out of the hardware.

That said, the gulf between what the Wii could handle and what the 360 and PS3 are capable of was at the heart of the dearth of good third-party games on the Wii.  If we get new consoles in 2014, we’ll see another gulf between the Wii U and whatever the new machines are called, and another Nintendo console will fall by the wayside, just like the Wii, the GameCube, and the N64.

It’s our annual E3 wrap-up show, but this time we’ve got a dude who was actually there! Alex “Seraph” Wawro, of PC World fame, joins us as we discuss what happened at E3 2011.

We start off with a discussion about our general disappointment with this year’s E3 before moving into a discussion of Nintendo’s offerings.  The Wii U intrigues and confuses us.  The 3DS underwhelmed.  The Wii was forgotten.

Sony made a big splash with the PlayStation Vita.  Those of us that are still interested in portable consoles are very intrigued, and very pleased with the price.  Those of us who have allowed our smart phones to dominate our lives… well, we’re good.

Move and Kinect got a lot of lip service of support, but are they really all that vital to our gaming experience.  Three hosts bash the tech.  One defends it.  Can you guess who?  Also, “Lightsaber On!” is best explained via a comic.

Microsoft pretty much just kept on keeping on, with Halo 4 being the big announcement, which didn’t excite any of the hosts like Microsoft probably hoped it would.  We pick our “Winner” of the show (the first time we’ve been unanimous about a winner, by the way), and also name our “Game of Show” (with not so unanimous results).

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