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President and CEO of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata, passed away on July 11.
I've known about the guy since before he became Nintendo's president, back when he was a programmer at HAL Laboratory, through reading issues of Nintendo Power. I still remember being surprised when he was crowned president, because it seemed like such an unexpected thing at the time, for someone at his position to ascend to the top so quickly. Being that I've been playing HAL's games ever since I was a kid, Iwata's work has had a huge impact on my life. In more recent years, I enjoyed Iwata Asks, where Iwata interviewed game developers within Nintendo about the games they worked on and then published the translated transcripts online. I didn't know the man personally, but I'll miss him.
I'm pretty biased while reviewing certain games, but I'd have to say I'm especially biased with Yoshi's Island. You see, Yoshi's Island was the first SNES game I played, at the tender age of five years old. My family was pretty late in the game (heh) when it came to the SNES; we were a Sega Genesis family throughout the early-mid 90's. My dad bought a SNES in 1997, so we ended up the the SNS-101 model (which I still use as my main SNES to this day, screw the haters), and I suspect he thought it was a new console... but I'm not entirely sure. Later that year, or perhaps early the next year, we got a Sony Playstation. If you read the linked Wiki article, you'd know that Yoshi's Island was one of the pack-ins, and was indeed the one we got with it.
Firstly, it must be stated that Yoshi's Island is pretty divergent from the Mario titles that came before it, in many ways:
Happy 4th of July, everyone! To celebrate, here's some cool bit of retro related news. First, in the event that you don't already know this, I'll give a little background information to help you understand the context behind this story: around 25 years ago, Nintendo and Sony entered into a partnership to create a CD capable console, but those plans fell through and the thing never saw commercial release. There were, however, a number of prototypes produced. One of those prototypes has allegedly been discovered, with pictures and even a video posted online showcasing the thing. If this is the real deal, then it's practically a historical relic. It should probably be donated to a museum somew
Apparently, Nintendo was seriously considering releasing a new F-Zero for the Wii U at some point. According to this, Nintendo asked the Burnout and Need for Speed developer, Criterion Games, to create a demo for a new possible F-Zero title for the Wii U. Former Criterion Games creative director, Alex Ward, confirmed that Ninendo wanted them to work on a new F-Zero in early 2011, so that the game could be unveiled together with the console at E3 of the same year. Man, what a crazy E3 that would have been! Unfortunately, Criterion was too busy working on other stuff to help Nintendo develop a new F-Zero, and they declined Nintendo's offer. Ever since then, there hasn't been any evidence to suggest that Nintendo is still pursuing development of a new F-Zero.
The last home console release o
As computer hardware technology has gotten faster and more advanced, so too has the entertainment software running on it. I am speaking of course, of video games. Increasingly important in today’s video games is the use of physics. In order to become immersed in a video game, players often expect the game world to react in a realistic way, which means physics calculations. In real life, we explain how objects move and interact using Sir Isaac Newton’s three laws of motion. In video games, we also apply these same laws, but in a video game context. Indeed, the process of applying Newton’s laws in a video games is often called a “simulation”, often through the use of a special sub-system called a “physics engine”.
Like a lot of people here in the US, I missed out on the Sega Saturn when it was still in production. As a kid, I always wondered what games I was missing out on, since we had a PlayStation. I was a huge fan of the Sonic the Hedgehog games on Sega Genesis, and seeing how the Saturn was also a Sega console, I thought I was missing out on some cool Sonic games. Turns out that, well, I really wasn't. The only game I really missed out for years was Sonic Jam, which was just a compilation of the original Genesis Sonic the Hedgehog titles, with a small 3D level to explore thrown in. (Interestingly, I've heard that this 3D level was the result of a game Sonic Team was working on, that eventually became Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast.) The only other two Sonic games for Saturn I played on PC; Sonic 3D Blast and, of course, Sonic R.
I have interesting history with the Spyro series. My first exposure to it was the demo of the first game included with Crash Bandicoot: Warped, its inclusion owed to the fact that Naughty Dog and Insomniac had a working relationship. Years later I found myself in a video rental store picking out a game to rent. Spyro 2 caught my eye, and I rented it, played it, and really enjoyed it. Spyro 2 is definitely my favorite of the series, and the one I would recommend overall. However, recently I saw a 100% speed-run race of the original Spyro the Dragon, so I was reminded that I have never completed any of the Spyro games to 100% completion. Inspired, I chose to finish the original.
Dragon View is a 2-D, Action RPG developed by Kemco and originally released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1994. It was released in Japan as Super Drakkhen, also known as Drakkhen II. That's because Dragon View is meant to be the prequel to Drakkhen, even though it bears little to no resemblance to the original Drakkhen. On top of having different names in North America, both games are so radically different that you would never guess they were related. Thank heavens you stumbled onto this review! This game wasn't very popular and therefore did not get much of a reception. That's a sad state of affairs, because this game does a lot of interesting things, and a lot of those things happen to be good. Dragon View is a game like few others, brandishing features not many other games within the genre have. It won't change your view on dragons, but Dragon View will still provide entertainment befitting a dragon.
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