Wiggler’s Nest by Lutomes

To open this column I hope to continue over the coming months, I would like to say hello to all the gamers out there. Hopefully some of your gaming interests will converge with mine and you will enjoy the read. For those of you who seem to have the complete opposite taste in games – sorry everything here is just my personal opinion on the state of gaming. I’m an oldschool gamer and I care not for graphics, music or ratings. I am going to try and comment on the state of gaming as I see it, and splash it with as much Australian content as possible. So with much pleasure I bring you the first in the series of Wiggler’s Nest.

Having put my pre-order in for 2 DS this week (my brother’s included), I still find myself wondering why I did it. Normally I just wait around 6 months and score a bargain on a (lucky) price drop. Picked up my Gamecube for $120 when it was retailing for $300 and my Gameboy Advance for $130 after only 4 months when it was retailing for $200 still. Given the DS launch titles aren’t up to scratch, it seems odd that I would go out and spend the extra money that would be buying me a minimum of an extra game – and by that stage there will be some decent titles out. Personally I’m waiting on Castlevania, Advance Wars, Animal Crossing and Soul Calibur.

I’m not alone in this decision; many people out there have also ended up buying a DS with no games. Going through the weekly sales after the American and Japanese launches I remember seeing figures where console sales out ranked total game sales. That means there were more consoles out there than games, and given that some owners had multiple games – there must have been quite a few who picked up none of the DS launch titles. Maybe it’s because the included Pictochat and Metroid demo are there, and the fact it’s going to play my old GBA games. I never got a GBA SP so this will be my first time experiencing backlighting and recharging.

At the end of the day what remains is that the DS launch in overall terms is quite poor. The only games we even get are:
Super Mario 64
Warioware Touched!
Spider-man 2
Asphalt Urban GT
Sprung
Ping Pals
Zoo Keeper
Mario 64 has been played to death here, new characters and mini-games aren’t exactly worth $70. Warioware has potential, the series is unbeatable for a quick play, and I’m a personal fan of LCD style and the Gameboy Gallery games. I don’t think I need to comment on the remaining launch titles.

Next on the block – and also DS themed is the issue of multiboot games. Now Nintendo is calling this Single Cart Multiplayer and Multiple Cart Multiplayer. In all the press releases they spit out they talk about how you are going to be able to play games using only one cartridge and how amazing this is going to be. Face it Nintendo you screwed up on the GBA and the DS isn’t looking better. GBA multiboot had some good features, the Mario arcade game (which I’ve had on my Atari XE for about 15 years) is fun for half an hour or so, and there were some Gamecube games that made good use of the memory. But the number of GBA games that actually had 4 players off 1 cart were abysmal. Luckily I picked up Bomberman Tournament which gives you a full multiplayer Bomberman game for all 4 players. Not like Advance Wars which is only 1 pre-deployed map, and not forgetting the fact I have NEVER played battle mode on Mario Kart Super Circuit because nobody else has the game – yet it clearly says 4 players off the one cart on the box.

Now you will tell me that the DS has all this new memory and can stream data wirelessly and blah blah blah. Currently there are only 4 games which are supporting Single Cart multiplayer which are Super Mario 64 DS, Ridge Racer DS, Ping Pals and Zoo Keeper. One of these isn’t even a launch title and 2 of them aren’t worth the box they came in, leaving us with Mario 64 DS to experiment with multiboot. Spectacular isn’t it.

Now putting that behind us there have been some interesting developments on the Gamecube front. Coming up on the horizon there are some new gems to look out for. Resident Evil 4, now apparently Capcom is actually giving us ammunition to use this time. I’m not sure if this is a good thing for the genre, I enjoyed playing Resident Evil 2 for about 8 hours till I eventually ran out of ammo and had to quit. Ammo makes a fun zombie shooter, but it’s not survival horror then is it. Given the Ammo situation I think I will buy this game as opposed to the other Gamecube RE titles because I do hate having to run and cower so much.

Next up we have a few games on the developer’s desk still, no need to trade in your Gamecube yet; Pokemon Stadium 2, Star Fox Assault & Fire Emblem. Pokemon Colosseum 2 is still a long way off but looks set to continue the addition of a (basic) RPG into the 3d battle arena. Star Fox Assalut – now that’s a title I want to get. Lylatwars was a work of wonder and even the appalling multiplayer mode still had us playing for days straight, so as long as we pretend Star Fox Adventures never existed the Star Fox line has been gold since it was released back on the Snes. As for Fire Emblem, the Gameboy Advance version was a good strategy RPG and let’s face it the Gamecube needs some RPG blood in it. Locally we also have Mario Power Tennis which is nothing but improvements over its n64 counterpart. Though honestly with out the RPG action the linking Gameboy game provided I can’t see this being as good.

Well that’s all for now. I’ll be back to update each month or maybe fortnightly if there is a slew of news out there. Also I’ll try and keep this more “”industry”” related than game specific, there is always the daily news for individual games.