While I wouldn’t normally condone the destruction of something as sacred as an NES, at least it’s being spliced with something worthy.
Some of Nintendo’s more recent designs (such as the upcoming ‘Revolution’ and DS lite) have been compared to Apple’s products. I’m not sure the NES is one of them, though.
For those who haven’t yet to experience the phenomenon that is Stick Cricket, go and play now!
For those familiar with the browser-sized sport, you’ll probably have had a go at the 10-over slog. This pits you against 5 bowlers for 2 overs each, and you have to amass the highest score possible. My best to date is 271-0.
This forms the basis of the leagues, which are user-managed invitation leagues. My league, Hove Actually, runs for 6 rounds of five days each, and is in its third season. Each round gives you five days to set the highest slog score possible, and points are awarded to everyone who sets a score. One point for each player in the league goes to first place, and each successive place scores one point less.
The current season features four teams, and as always has involved tight competition between myself and LHR drummer, Russell (aka. Pilfold). Last season I clinched a tied second place with five hours remaining, beating Russell by a gnat’s whisker. Dan Palmer (aka. iandisco), being the type of person who is good at everything, has a 100% winning record. You’ve gotta hate him.
So, what’s the controversy? Round 4 of the current season began Friday 4th, and Russell set his score of 271-0 over the weekend. That’s my best score, so I’d have to achieve my best result to beat him. I set about the task.
Then I discovered a significant change - they’d got a new set of bowlers! Some of the bowlers were easy to deal with, as they were similar in style to the previous ‘All-star’ team. However, other bowlers used a significantly different style, and will require plenty of practice to deal with appropriately. I limped to 232-2, nowhere near the target needed. Even Dan is at risk of losing his 100% record - he’s currently on 252-2.
They’ve skewed the playing field (kind of like Rottingdean’s cricket ground, which is quite slopey), and it looks like come Midnight tomorrow (the end of Round 4), Russell, who has a single-point lead over me in second place, will add two more points to that gap with two rounds left. My only chance is to beat Dan, a feat which no-one has achieved yet.
Grr! Still, there’s always next season…
May 2005 - at E3, the ‘big three’ games console manufacturers revealed the designs for their next consoles, to be released over 2005-6. While Sony and Microsoft provided technical specs for their machines, and showed running demos of forthcoming games (revealed later not to be running on the actual hardware after all), Nintendo were content (or able) just to unveil the design of their new box, codenamed ‘Revolution’, and also revealed details of it’s backward compatability and the, admittedly rather attractive, possibility to download their vast back-catalogue of games from consoles past. The World frowned cynically.
In September 2005, at the Tokyo Game Show, Nintendo revealed the real reasoning for the ‘Revolution’ codename - its new controller.
Nintendo has always led the way in controller design, which in turn affects what’s possible in the games themselves. They’ve pioneered many innovations in console control design - the D-pad, shoulder buttons, ‘analogue’-movement, and ‘rumble’ feedback. All of these devices have since become standard on any joypad. So, trust Nintendo to take the next step. But they haven’t added new buttons, sticks or screens to their pad. They believe that controllers and therefore games are becoming too complicated for the casual player to just pick up and play. What they did, no-one saw coming:
The first thing you think is “Er, it’s a remote control and it only has seven buttons and a D-pad. How on Earth am I going to play modern games on that?”
Well, the answer is this: it’s position and motion sensitive. The hardware calculates the position, direction and movement of the controller to translate the slightest physical actions in to ingame actions. I have to admit, at first it all sounds a little gimmicky and I was wondering how it would work in the context of a real game. However, on seeing the promotional video played at TGS, it all became clear.
The video is from the perspective of a TV set, showing people using the controller to play various games. While it doesn’t show any real software, it does get the viewer using their imagination and dreaming up what you can do with the new control. In each case, it’s easy to tell what type of game is being ‘played’ by the sound effects combined with what the gamer is doing. I can’t imagine that being possible with a joypad! The video shows people ‘playing’ shoot-’em-ups, adventure games, huddling together on the sofa with ‘Mario Party’ style games, and even drumming, fishing and chopping veg! The main advantage of the controller seems to be its flexibility - it could be used as a mouse-style pointing device, sword, gun, steering wheel, fishing-rod, fly-swat, or whatever the game designer can come up with.
It already has its critics, but most people with a bit of imagination are excited about the prospects that such a controller brings with it. It’s not clear how, or even if traditional games will translate to the ‘Revolution’, but do we really care? What we want is new and exciting ways to play, and Nintendo is looking forwards, not back.
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