Ntuple Indemnity

I already suspected Nintendo had gone completely nuts when I spent an hour or two drawing trampolines on the lower screen of their latest handheld. To quote Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, “He no nuts, he’s crazy!”

Further evidence of the company returning to being as delightfully bonkers as it was in the glory days is its Metroid haiku contest. You know the drill – “Five in the first line / Seven in the second line / Five in the last line.” Apparently, the entries are going to be adjudicated by a bona fide black-belt haiku master. Due date: 6 December.

You can never have enough writing competitions, really. Speaking of which, I would like to remind my audience that tips concerning local writers’ circles or workshops are always welcome. And for that matter, chess clubs.

Speaking of chess, here’s a link from a while back that I never posted: for all you Harry Potter fans out there, check out the full, uncut Weasley-McGonagall position as designed for the film of The Philosopher’s Stone, and this accompanying analysis by games expert Jim Geary.

Next: A review of Alexander by someone who knows what he’s talking about.

How about both?

This in the Nintendo DS launch lineup. Completely revamped entries in franchises such as Super Mario 64 and Rayman – and that’s not considering brand-new titles with untested monikers . I’m a bit disappointed about Animal Crossing not coming out until later in the release cycle, though.

The price point for games is currently expected to be in the ballpark of USD$29.99, which is comparable to the budget releases of home console titles that have had a few months to settle, and about as much as one should consider paying for a portable title – no more.

But here’s something: also announced today was that Square/Enix’s launch contribution will be none other than Final Fantasy III.

The question being, which one?

See, the Final Fantasy III we all know and love on this continent – the one with Terra, the Espers and the opera house scene – was actually the sixth instalment in the disconnected series. North America skipped right over III, IV and V. While the last two eventually saw release, the Japanese Final Fantasy III never left the Land of the Rising Sun.

I nearly got my hopes up, too. GameSpot claims that this is indeed a remake of the Japanese Famicom title, and there is still no indication that it will end up on our shores in English, even on the DS platform.

There’s more to come tonight at a press conference in Seattle, including a Shigeru Miyamoto appearance rumoured to feature the new Zelda. The DS one, that is – nothing’s been heard of the next GameCube Zelda since its announcement last May.

The 21st of September: Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi finally come to DVD. Much commentary to follow, assuming the availability of a lot of time I don’t actually have.

The 21st of November: The Nintendo DS retails for US$149.

Nintendo really nailed it this time. They are pushing it out before the American Thanksgiving holiday as promised, which is also good timing on account of potentially serving as a solution to post-Hugill Cup withdrawal. The launch price is in the lower range of the estimates that industry analysts have been tossing around since May – most retailers taking preorders actually highballed it at $199, which is somewhat more prohibitive if you convert the figure to loonies. The PictoChat graphical instant messenger is embedded, the unit includes an alarm clock feature, and there are ports for both stereo headphones and a microphone; read the specs. The price is also lower than it looks, given that the word is that Metroid Prime Hunters will come bundled in the initial package.

Isn’t it nice when a company promises its customers what they want?

Three major unknowns remain: the launch title roster, the standard price per game, and Nintendo’s marketing prowess (which has traditionally been somewhat lacking in the North American market and in Canada in particular).

Toss in a new trailer for The Incredibles and you have yourself a good day.

It’s cool enough that Japan’s getting an anime series based on Capcom’s incredibly stylish video game Viewtiful Joe, which I have praised on many an occasion as the best side-scrolling fighting game since the golden age of Mega Man. But word is that after the 52-episode Japanese run that begins in October, there will be an English release bound for Europe and the United States, though there is as yet no word on whether or not Canadian networks will pick it up.

I have never been much of an anime fan myself aside from “The Origin of O-Ren” and the occasional Miyazaki, but I’ve seen the tremendous potential for such a project since I saw the anime Viewtiful Joe commercials that promoted the first game. While most video games, perhaps all of them, are butchered in the transition to television – anyone remember the atrocious Legend of Zelda episodes every Friday in the Super Mario Bros. Super Show starring Captain Lou Albano? – bringing VJ to television could work out a whole lot better. The entire game is already a tribute to manga art and popular film in general; and as I already mentioned, the existing commercials are a testament to the kind of quality we could expect.

On another note related to stylishness in the video game industry, check out this new glamour photo of the Nintendo DS, easily the best picture of it released so far. It tweaks the last design overhaul and resolves the one reservation I had about the colour contrast, since the plasticky black is now closer to the charcoal grey that took the PC industry by storm a few years ago. (This was possibly not a design change at all, but just something revealed by a higher-resolution photograph done under better lighting.) Also note how the DS logo is now emblazoned just beneath the touchscreen.

For those of you wondering about what in the blazes happened to the headline above my piece in today’s Gateway, it has been corrected for the online version. So that’s what it was supposed to read; I had my bets placed on “By-elections are exposé of Council’s weaknesses” with an omitted accent and “of”. Guess I was wrong.

Alas, to be in Edmonton again means I have been physically severed from the Nintendo GameCube, and will remain so for at least a month.

This is a very good thing insofar as school and productivity are concerned, as it means I will be unable to continue bingeing on Tales of Symphonia, in which I have already logged almost thirty hours of play. For a sense of the sheer girth of this RPG, consider that I am still only on the first disc of two, and that battles take about thirty seconds apiece. Symphonia is a phenomenal experience with a story that starts out as the same old quest where you traipse around to various towers representing different elements like wind and fire, but then it twists and turns in some remarkable ways. And for a Japanese role-playing game, the fights are great; some of the bosses so far have made for delightfully ridiculous duels of a few minutes apiece, all necessitating a plentiful supply of reincarnation items.

Something did manage to wrest me away from it for a day, though, and it goes by the name Pikmin 2. There are few experiences like commanding an army of flowery little space creatures and conquering a microscopic landscape, especially when you make them gang up on the big lumbering insects that act like they rule the garden. Then there are the parts where you take your hundred-strong Pikmin hit squad underground into dungeons reminiscent of the Savage Labyrinth in The Wind Waker and collect all manners of treasure; on one occasion, the critters found an NES directional pad.

These spelunking forays end with some very tough boss battles. In one instance, my Pikmin piled atop a huge caterpillar-like dungeon boss reminiscent of Heimlich in A Bug’s Life and started beating it up, whereupon it started rolling around the cave, squashing half my army. I can still hear their mournful squeals of death.