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So, another year, another SpaceWorld show. For me, it was a mixture of relief, confusion, disappointment, and joy all in one! Exactly how I experienced all these feelings will be unveiled as you read this post.
OK, let’s start at the beginning – the pre-show press conference and, more importantly, the unveiling of two VERY important games. Firstly, Mario Sunshine. When it was announced, about a month ago, that this particular Mario title would be developed by Camelot Software, rather than by one of Nintendo’s own dev teams, I immediately assumed the game would not be the sequel to Mario 64. However, Nintendo soon proved me wrong by finally providing the gaming public with in-game footage. Now, onto that actual footage. Firstly, although a graphical leap up from the N64 incarnation, I feel the team has yet to fully expose gamecube’s power. Sure it’s all running in high-res with impressive shadowing and lighting techniques. But the number of polygons from which the environment and character geometry was created is not as high as, say, found in Rogue Lead 2. Also, the quality of textures was not up to the high standards set by the aforementioned game. However, this is something I’m sure will be rectified before Mario’s next public appearance (just examine the difference between games at this year’s SW that were at E3 like Dinosaur Planet). Now, the one aspect of the game that NEEDS to be spot-on is gameplay. And by spot-on, I mean original and with plenty of fresh ideas that has never been witnessed before (just like Mario 64 achieved). The one thing that bothered me about the SpaceWorld video was the fact that it was so similar to the 64-bit version. However, after further examination and consideration, my worries have vanished. For you see, as is the nature of Nintendo and Shigeru Miyamoto, all the original ideas are not unveiled until as late as possible (eg. They couldn’t churn out games like Spyro until long after Mario 64’s release). So basically, all these brilliant ideas are in the game, it’s just that Nintendo aren’t showing them yet! However, there are clues. In the video, you can see some kind of meter in the top-right hand corner. The dial appears to show a level of water. I believe this is somehow linked to the contraption, which Mario is permanently carrying on his back. Does this machine need water to function? Must Mario regularly fill it up? Then there’s the theme of ‘sun’. Not only does the title (‘Mario Sunshine’ if you’ve forgotten) suggest the game has something to with the sun, but there’s also a mention of Mario collecting sun coins. Personally, the idea of a game centring around water and the sun sounds quite confusing and makes you wonder how it’ll work. Of course, if there’s one team that can pull it off…
Apart from what I’ve just described, there doesn’t appear to be anything else that sounds out at the moment. If I had to describe the environment shown in the video, I’d say it’s like the first level of Mario 64, except with a village being the main attraction instead of a big hill. Mario himself has changed little from his N64 incarnation and has retained all his old moves and jumps. One final point to note at this stage is that we see no enemy interaction (ie. Fighting) at this stage. This could mean that Camelot are working on an entirely new fighting system or simply haven’t got a system working yet. And, at this stage, that’s all I have to say on Mario Sunshine!
Now, onto ‘Legend of Zelda’ (as titled in the video). The aspect, which has attracted the most attention (just take a look at a few posts in this forum) is the game’s graphics and, more to the point, the use of toon-shading. Like the rest, I too was disappointed at first, expecting more of what we all saw at last year’s SpaceWorld. However, l am actually slightly angry with myself for being so. Shigeru Miyamoto is a natural game-making genius. He has proved this in the past many times and I feel it be dishonourable to doubt him now. You should all know that he doesn’t like to think of games like these as sequels and tries to make them as different as possible to anything he’s done before. By employing this graphical style, he will achieve this on the cosmetic side of things. Like with Mario Sunshine, Nintendo unveiled very little of Zelda’s game mechanics and what they did show was similar to the N64 incarnations. If you find this hard to believe, take a look at my evidence. After close examination of the video (thankfully provided by IGNcube), I’ve noticed a few similarities. Firstly, the HUD (heads-up display). You’ve still got the row of hearts in the top-left corner, suggesting a similar health system involving collecting hearts. Then, you’ve got the number of rupees collected (which, incidentally, goes above 99 this time) as well as the number of dungeon keys (well, keys anyway). The rupees suggest the same buying-of-items system and the keys tell me that a new progression system in some areas is non-existent (do you see?). Then, also in the top-right corner, you have the button layout, displaying which weapon is assigned to which key, which again employs the same technique. If you want to go into even more detail, the weapons I could make out were the sword, crossbow, bombs and slingshot. So, a conclusion of what we saw of Zelda- like Mario, don’t be fooled, there is so much more to come!
OK, so that’s Mario and Zelda. Now, there’s just one more game I want to cover – Metroid Prime. Being development by Retro Studios (known as the ‘Rare of America’), the game has quite an adventurous (and dangerous) development path so far. Firstly, Retro canned there other Gamecube title – ‘Raven Blade’, to concentrate their efforts on a title, which means a lot more to Nintendo. Then, several team members were sacked for reasons unknown and now, apparently, there are still team issues, which is seriously slowing Metroid’s development rate. There was even a rumour of canning it, but, after having seen the extend in-game footage from SpaceWorld (the 10 second version, not the 2 second one), I can safely say such an action would be a disaster for us gamers. For, you see, Metroid Prime is shaping up to be something pretty special. Unfortunately, Nintendo (who gets the final word as always) only showed footage at SpaceWorld and wouldn’t provide a playable demo because Mr. Miyamoto wasn’t happy with the quality of the sound effects as well as a few player-control issues. Nintendo have claimed that the team has only just completed the first level, which just shows how slow things are progressing at Retro, considering they’ve been working on the game since last year. Anyway, let’s talk about what Nintendo did show. There are only a few things that I can think to mention but it’s better than nothing! Firstly, the weapons are large and powerful. The video showed off about 3 different types including a gun which reminds me of Quake 3’s lightening gun (except prettier of course) and also a gun, which fired these yellow ‘things’ very quickly. However, an aspect which impressed me more is what these guns were aimed at – the alien scum. Those featured in the video consisted of a stupidly-high number of polygons and were superbly animated. As Metroid runs into an open area, a large 6-legged beast crawls out of a whole in the floor and spins around only receive a hammering from Metroid. The result is the alien gets shredded and bits fly everywhere (similar to an effect used in the film ‘Aliens’). And, at this point, I’m afraid that’s all I can say on the game. However, set this firm in your mind – Metroid Prime is gonna be big, as well as very, very scary.
As for the rest of the games at SpaceWorld, most were titles that we’ve already seen at E3 (eg. Dinosaur Planet, Super Monkey Ball, Wave Race: Blue Storm…). Thankfully, all (according to IGNcube), are now running smoother, with sharper textures and more advanced modelling/animation (especially in Dinosaur Planet’s case).
For me, there were 2 things that disappointed me about SpaceWorld 2001. Firstly, the lack of third-party titles unveiled at the show (hopefully this is due to the fact that publishers prefer to wait till the Tokyo games show in a few weeks) and also the absence on any more launch date announcements (I hope you realise that I’m talking about an official UK launch date). There has been no mention of us whatsoever for quite some time. The last time Nintendo acknowledged the existence of Europe was back at E3, when they simply threw a vague ‘Spring 2002’ and hoped we’d be quiet. It is quite concerning and shows a lack of respect for us European gamers. Does Special Reserve know any more than us, coz we want solid dates, and we want ‘em NOW! :)
OK, let’s start at the beginning – the pre-show press conference and, more importantly, the unveiling of two VERY important games. Firstly, Mario Sunshine. When it was announced, about a month ago, that this particular Mario title would be developed by Camelot Software, rather than by one of Nintendo’s own dev teams, I immediately assumed the game would not be the sequel to Mario 64. However, Nintendo soon proved me wrong by finally providing the gaming public with in-game footage. Now, onto that actual footage. Firstly, although a graphical leap up from the N64 incarnation, I feel the team has yet to fully expose gamecube’s power. Sure it’s all running in high-res with impressive shadowing and lighting techniques. But the number of polygons from which the environment and character geometry was created is not as high as, say, found in Rogue Lead 2. Also, the quality of textures was not up to the high standards set by the aforementioned game. However, this is something I’m sure will be rectified before Mario’s next public appearance (just examine the difference between games at this year’s SW that were at E3 like Dinosaur Planet). Now, the one aspect of the game that NEEDS to be spot-on is gameplay. And by spot-on, I mean original and with plenty of fresh ideas that has never been witnessed before (just like Mario 64 achieved). The one thing that bothered me about the SpaceWorld video was the fact that it was so similar to the 64-bit version. However, after further examination and consideration, my worries have vanished. For you see, as is the nature of Nintendo and Shigeru Miyamoto, all the original ideas are not unveiled until as late as possible (eg. They couldn’t churn out games like Spyro until long after Mario 64’s release). So basically, all these brilliant ideas are in the game, it’s just that Nintendo aren’t showing them yet! However, there are clues. In the video, you can see some kind of meter in the top-right hand corner. The dial appears to show a level of water. I believe this is somehow linked to the contraption, which Mario is permanently carrying on his back. Does this machine need water to function? Must Mario regularly fill it up? Then there’s the theme of ‘sun’. Not only does the title (‘Mario Sunshine’ if you’ve forgotten) suggest the game has something to with the sun, but there’s also a mention of Mario collecting sun coins. Personally, the idea of a game centring around water and the sun sounds quite confusing and makes you wonder how it’ll work. Of course, if there’s one team that can pull it off…
Apart from what I’ve just described, there doesn’t appear to be anything else that sounds out at the moment. If I had to describe the environment shown in the video, I’d say it’s like the first level of Mario 64, except with a village being the main attraction instead of a big hill. Mario himself has changed little from his N64 incarnation and has retained all his old moves and jumps. One final point to note at this stage is that we see no enemy interaction (ie. Fighting) at this stage. This could mean that Camelot are working on an entirely new fighting system or simply haven’t got a system working yet. And, at this stage, that’s all I have to say on Mario Sunshine!
Now, onto ‘Legend of Zelda’ (as titled in the video). The aspect, which has attracted the most attention (just take a look at a few posts in this forum) is the game’s graphics and, more to the point, the use of toon-shading. Like the rest, I too was disappointed at first, expecting more of what we all saw at last year’s SpaceWorld. However, l am actually slightly angry with myself for being so. Shigeru Miyamoto is a natural game-making genius. He has proved this in the past many times and I feel it be dishonourable to doubt him now. You should all know that he doesn’t like to think of games like these as sequels and tries to make them as different as possible to anything he’s done before. By employing this graphical style, he will achieve this on the cosmetic side of things. Like with Mario Sunshine, Nintendo unveiled very little of Zelda’s game mechanics and what they did show was similar to the N64 incarnations. If you find this hard to believe, take a look at my evidence. After close examination of the video (thankfully provided by IGNcube), I’ve noticed a few similarities. Firstly, the HUD (heads-up display). You’ve still got the row of hearts in the top-left corner, suggesting a similar health system involving collecting hearts. Then, you’ve got the number of rupees collected (which, incidentally, goes above 99 this time) as well as the number of dungeon keys (well, keys anyway). The rupees suggest the same buying-of-items system and the keys tell me that a new progression system in some areas is non-existent (do you see?). Then, also in the top-right corner, you have the button layout, displaying which weapon is assigned to which key, which again employs the same technique. If you want to go into even more detail, the weapons I could make out were the sword, crossbow, bombs and slingshot. So, a conclusion of what we saw of Zelda- like Mario, don’t be fooled, there is so much more to come!
OK, so that’s Mario and Zelda. Now, there’s just one more game I want to cover – Metroid Prime. Being development by Retro Studios (known as the ‘Rare of America’), the game has quite an adventurous (and dangerous) development path so far. Firstly, Retro canned there other Gamecube title – ‘Raven Blade’, to concentrate their efforts on a title, which means a lot more to Nintendo. Then, several team members were sacked for reasons unknown and now, apparently, there are still team issues, which is seriously slowing Metroid’s development rate. There was even a rumour of canning it, but, after having seen the extend in-game footage from SpaceWorld (the 10 second version, not the 2 second one), I can safely say such an action would be a disaster for us gamers. For, you see, Metroid Prime is shaping up to be something pretty special. Unfortunately, Nintendo (who gets the final word as always) only showed footage at SpaceWorld and wouldn’t provide a playable demo because Mr. Miyamoto wasn’t happy with the quality of the sound effects as well as a few player-control issues. Nintendo have claimed that the team has only just completed the first level, which just shows how slow things are progressing at Retro, considering they’ve been working on the game since last year. Anyway, let’s talk about what Nintendo did show. There are only a few things that I can think to mention but it’s better than nothing! Firstly, the weapons are large and powerful. The video showed off about 3 different types including a gun which reminds me of Quake 3’s lightening gun (except prettier of course) and also a gun, which fired these yellow ‘things’ very quickly. However, an aspect which impressed me more is what these guns were aimed at – the alien scum. Those featured in the video consisted of a stupidly-high number of polygons and were superbly animated. As Metroid runs into an open area, a large 6-legged beast crawls out of a whole in the floor and spins around only receive a hammering from Metroid. The result is the alien gets shredded and bits fly everywhere (similar to an effect used in the film ‘Aliens’). And, at this point, I’m afraid that’s all I can say on the game. However, set this firm in your mind – Metroid Prime is gonna be big, as well as very, very scary.
As for the rest of the games at SpaceWorld, most were titles that we’ve already seen at E3 (eg. Dinosaur Planet, Super Monkey Ball, Wave Race: Blue Storm…). Thankfully, all (according to IGNcube), are now running smoother, with sharper textures and more advanced modelling/animation (especially in Dinosaur Planet’s case).
For me, there were 2 things that disappointed me about SpaceWorld 2001. Firstly, the lack of third-party titles unveiled at the show (hopefully this is due to the fact that publishers prefer to wait till the Tokyo games show in a few weeks) and also the absence on any more launch date announcements (I hope you realise that I’m talking about an official UK launch date). There has been no mention of us whatsoever for quite some time. The last time Nintendo acknowledged the existence of Europe was back at E3, when they simply threw a vague ‘Spring 2002’ and hoped we’d be quiet. It is quite concerning and shows a lack of respect for us European gamers. Does Special Reserve know any more than us, coz we want solid dates, and we want ‘em NOW! :)
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Tell me SR, was I even close to winning?
Waaaaaaaaaaaa! Man, I had my hopes set high on this one! I can't believe some crappy story about robbing SR is better than this! I didn't even find it particularly funny AND I bet I put more effort into this. Grrrrrrrr.
>Sigh<
Back to the drawing board I guess... :(
>Sigh<
Back to the drawing board I guess... :(
You don't have to put Gameaday at the top of your post.
Otherwise everyone would do it :-D
Otherwise everyone would do it :-D
i agree, an intriging report but if you want to win gameaday don't you have to put "gameaday" at the top? anyway that's not the point, it's an excellent report from kingklik, nice one!
slik ~_~
slik ~_~
Thanks for the advice and support Strafex; I'll take that into serious consideration when I write my next one.
Good report.
Break it up into paragraphs a bit more next time.
If I didn't know you better then I'd have had one look at that big body of text and moved on.
It makes no difference to the content but it'll scare less people away :-)
As for the report, I'm also looking forward to Zelda and Mario although I'm still really disappointed about Metroid being first person.
FPS aren't good for good characters and Samus is wasted on a first person shooter.
I think that a Jet Force Gemini style third person shooter would be a much better approach.
Break it up into paragraphs a bit more next time.
If I didn't know you better then I'd have had one look at that big body of text and moved on.
It makes no difference to the content but it'll scare less people away :-)
As for the report, I'm also looking forward to Zelda and Mario although I'm still really disappointed about Metroid being first person.
FPS aren't good for good characters and Samus is wasted on a first person shooter.
I think that a Jet Force Gemini style third person shooter would be a much better approach.
kingklik wrote:
> Thanks. :)
You deserve praise.
> Thanks. :)
You deserve praise.
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