Nintendo Podcast 57

Hello podcast listeners, this is Daniel DS Cubed Friedlander and this is the Nintendo Podcast or Lithcast, episode number 57 for Sunday, January 15th, 2012.

Thank you for watching.

I think they were pretty good.

They're still pretty relevant, so if any of you are considering LASIK, there you go.

But anyway, he recorded this one thing I sat in front of the microphone, and this is what he said.

And now, from the Nintendo Podcast capital of the world, we bring you LASIK Podcast number 684.

The topic tonight is LASIK using the Wii Nintendo system to...

...improve the vision of all your favorite Pokemon characters.

We'll be right back after this word from your sponsor.

Well, anyways, I hope that all sounds okay.

I hope you can hear all this.

If not, I guess I can probably even out all the levels, but we'll see.

Anyways, I'm just annoyed because my computer seems like it's not cooperating with my recording software the way I used to be able to use it.

And it seems like whenever there's not a need to record a podcast, that it all works out just fine, that nothing happens, and everything is just working so well.

But then now when you need to do the podcast, then it doesn't work.

Anyway, folks, let's continue here.

So I thought that was kind of funny.

It's kind of fusing his sort of need, and I think it's good to do LASIK on Pokemon characters.

That seems like a good idea.

Anyway, I guess I didn't talk also about the song that we had at the very beginning of the podcast.

And it's particularly relevant because it's from the game that I've been playing the most recently, at least the Nintendo game I've been playing the most.

And specifically, that was the Skyloft theme from The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword.

Skyloft is kind of, for those of you who don't know, and don't mind spoilers a little bit,

it's kind of like the main...

hub that's like the area in the sky that you start out with in The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword.

And you return there, and it's kind of where...

It's kind of like your home base.

It seems almost actually like they made the...

kind of that hub system a little bit more like Super Mario Galaxy-like.

And of course, that's not the only thing.

They also changed it in that they have now orchestrated music in Skyward Sword, which is really nice.

I don't know if it was a really big deal.

I think...

You know...

Maybe I have to watch what I say about this, but...

I know that was one of these sort of holy grails that a lot of people wanted in a Zelda game,

was to have fully orchestrated music, as opposed to MIDI tunes.

And, you know, that's, I think, all well and good, but...

I sort of think it might be one of these things where...

It sounds better, of course, but...

You know...

It's not a big deal, really.

And besides, most people really are going to be playing this game on a...

a television...

using their built-in speakers of the television.

And they're not going to hear the big difference, I think, in terms of audio quality.

But at any rate, the game itself, which I will talk about...

Because I think this show, to be quite honest with you,

I think I got sort of out of the...

out of the routine of doing my usual Nintendo news sweep of the internet.

And to be quite honest, while I'm still following tech news,

Nintendo's been a little bit off my radar screen.

I think when I first started...

When I first started LithCast, Nintendo was almost half of what I thought of during the day.

But, you know, Nintendo as a company...

There's a lot of stuff that hasn't...

That's been...

That's really changed, you know, in the way that they are...

I mean, I think a big thing is their relevance recently has seemingly shrunk.

But I sort of detect a little bit of a pickup at the moment.

And so I kind of thought, well, it's probably a good time to do LithCast.

So I think most of this show is probably going to be most, you know, opinionated.

And which it usually is, as opposed to news.

Obviously, a lot has transpired since I last spoke with you.

I'm going to kind of assume you've all kept up on it.

And that's probably correct.

And in fact, most of you have probably kept on it...

Kept up on it better than I have.

So at any rate, of course, I was saying like, well, you know,

very perhaps pretentiously that, well, you know, 2011 wasn't such a great year for Nintendo.

And I think that's accurate in terms of the stock price.

But of course, in terms...

In terms of the gaming side of things,

Nintendo did, after all, release the Nintendo 3DS last year.

And obviously, it was released at a price point of $250.

And then was dropped $100.

So now you can buy a DS for...

I think it retails like $170.

So almost not $100 quite, but, you know.

But you could find it for about $150, I think, at certain places.

And of course, they revealed it in a few different colors.

And now they've got more and more colors since they...

But they dropped the price.

And as those of you who hopefully were on top of this know,

Nintendo offered this thing called the Ambassador Program,

which is kind of a sugarcoating way of saying, you know,

the people who bought it early and sort of paid the early adopter tax,

what we're going to do is we're going to give out a bunch of free games.

And to be quite honest, they did give out an awful lot of stuff.

And, you know, they didn't...

Well, let's just say that the stuff that they've offered

is probably worth that much in value if you're going to buy it anyway.

But frankly, what it basically amounted to was a bunch of free content

on Nintendo's eShop channel,

which, while I would say is better than what we've had so far,

like, say, on the Wii,

I have to tell you, I'm really still disappointed

with the way Nintendo's been handling online.

For those of you who had this Ambassador Program given to you,

I think it's funny, we actually sort of had two incidents in the last year

where companies have kind of had to give away free online content.

And one, of course, is Nintendo, which is what we're talking about right now.

But then the other one was Sony,

which is after they had this big, huge password breach,

they, of course, had to give away a bunch of things as well.

Didn't have to, but, you know, it was to save...

Not save, I don't know if save face is the right word, but to

sort of make up for the fact

that they did this, you know,

that they had all these passwords leaked

and they weren't encrypting them

or they weren't, you know, salted hashing their database,

whatever, all that stuff.

And so they gave away a bunch of free stuff.

And while I would say neither company handled it particularly elegantly,

it's really quite amazing to see how

the Nintendo system, what it basically amounts to

is that you need to go into the 3DS eShop channel

and you have to re-download it.

As in, you just go, you know, you pretend you're downloading it,

again, and they add it to your list of re-downloadable content.

So I think that's kind of an interesting way of doing it,

but it's just, it's a clunky system.

And I think what's unfortunate, really, to me

is that I think this type of delivery mechanism

that is using online is really going to be the next wave.

They say, I don't know if it's been measured, it probably has,

but they say that 3DS cartridges are between 1 and 8 gigabytes.

And that's really starting to get to the point

where, yeah, that's large, that's a big file,

but many, many online distribution platforms like Steam

are delivering content that is that large.

And so it's not going to be so unreasonable in the future, I think,

to expect that a company like Nintendo can push out full-length games

without using any cartridge at all.

You can already see with the 3DS a much greater emphasis

on the 3DS cartridge.

Use of the SD card, all sorts of things are saved to the SD card,

which is included.

And the included SD card was a pretty good size.

I don't know what it was, maybe 2 gigabytes.

Anyway, moral of the story is just that 3DS has some really neat features to it,

but of course they dropped the price.

So right now I'd say it's a great thing to buy.

There are some decent games,

although frankly I think the best game right now,

to buy, is probably Skyward Sword, which is, of course, for the Wii.

So I would say if you haven't played that

and you're interested in playing a Zelda game

or you're a fan of the series, definitely play that.

That's got a lot of content in it.

But again, we'll talk about that a little bit more.

I assume most of you kind of know what's going on with the 3DS

in terms of features,

but I guess I did want to talk a little bit about my opinion of it

because I think you haven't heard it.

And I assume if you're listening to the podcast,

you want to hear it a little bit.

But the 3DS, at this point,

I wonder if I didn't have one right now, would I buy one?

And of course for me, I would.

I happen to be in a situation where

one of the features that has really been surprisingly really fun

has been the StreetPass feature.

And they just recently expanded it.

I just got the 3DS.

I just got the update,

which adds a bunch of new Find Me,

like M-I-I-Me,

Quest and new puzzles.

And of course, San Diego, I was at Comic-Con,

and that was a great place to use StreetPass

because you'd walk around with your 3DS in your pocket or something,

and you would just have so many StreetPass tags.

But for those of you who don't know what StreetPass is,

or maybe those of you who don't even care,

Nintendo is one of these companies,

that maybe doesn't do a great job of marketing their individual names

for things like StreetPass.

So StreetPass is basically this feature

where you keep your Nintendo DS in your backpack or in your pocket

or in a purse or whatever it is that you carry.

And it does two things.

If it's in sleep mode, if it's off, it doesn't do any of this.

But if it's in sleep mode, it does two things.

Number one, it acts as a pedometer.

And so it counts your steps.

And then as you're walking, it tells you how many steps.

But then...

It has certain milestones.

And so for every, whatever, 100 steps,

you get what's called one PlayCoin.

I don't know if it's 100 steps or 150 or something like that.

And a PlayCoin is kind of like their currency.

And you can use it for a bunch of things.

But not like real money.

You don't get like downloadable content for it.

That you have to have real money for that stuff.

But what you do get is you get a lot of these...

Well, we'll talk about that in a second.

The second thing that it does is that it also, you know,

sort of pings other devices around it.

And so it looks for other Wi-Fi or other 3DSs.

And I assume it's just over Wi-Fi.

So when you walk past someone,

although I have a question as to exactly how true it is

that you only have to walk past the person to get tagged.

I think, you know, in all the experiences

when I've had street pass tags,

and I've had over about 100 street pass tags,

unique people.

So I think I have a pretty good handle on this.

I've found that it usually is I get tagged by somebody

if I'm sitting in an area for at least a few seconds,

maybe 20 seconds, and so is the other person.

I'd say if you're really walking down a street

and a person walks past you with a 3DS,

possibly if all the stars line up

and all the planets line up, then it would work.

Obviously at Comic-Con it works very well

because people don't walk around very quickly.

People are kind of in one area.

And there's just so many people with 3DSs

that it works out.

But in terms of being able to just like

the way they advertise it,

like, oh, you're walking past someone in a train station,

which is the Nintendo 3DS commercial in Japan.

They have people walking past each other in train stations.

Probably not.

Now, if you're on the same train as somebody, probably.

Yeah, I think you'd have a good shot

at getting a street pass tag.

Anyway, what a street pass tag does

is it allows that person's Mii

to arrive at your plaza gate.

And so the Mii Plaza is the place

that holds all these different games.

And so, of course, it holds a copy of all the Mii's

you've ever tagged from all the people.

So in my case, it's about 100 Mii's.

And it's really cool because now with the new update,

you can see a map of where all the Mii's came from.

And I have some from the United States.

I have some from Canada.

I have some from various parts of Europe.

And I have some from two different regions in Japan.

Just people that I must have walked past.

And that's where they're from.

Or at least that's where they say they're from.

I mean, I think you could always change your location.

But probably the Japan ones and the European,

Japan ones were from Comic-Con.

So it's very possible.

And so once you get these Mii's,

you can use them in two ways.

You can collect puzzle pieces.

So how it works is that you're constantly collecting

and building these new puzzle pieces,

or these new puzzles.

And you know, you just,

when a Mii arrives in your town

that has a puzzle piece that you don't have,

you can swap it with,

you can collect one piece from them.

And you can usually pick which puzzle you want.

Like if you want the Zelda puzzle to be filled in,

or if you want the Kirby puzzle,

or the Mario puzzle,

or the Pikmin puzzle.

So you can kind of choose that yourself.

Sometimes they don't have anything new.

I mean, I know I ran into a lot of people where,

you know, especially when you're getting towards the end of it.

When you're getting towards the end of finishing all your puzzles,

you're like, geez, I'm so much farther ahead

than everyone else that I'm tagging on.

I'm not getting anything.

But even then, you can actually use the,

the person for one other,

or Mii for another thing.

You can do the puzzle thing.

But then thereafter,

or before,

you can use them for a game called Find Me,

where they kind of fight on your behalf

to rescue your Mii from the clutches

of like this evil monster.

So actually, it's like a mini,

it's sort of like a mini game,

or like it's like a turn-based RPG

that kind of comes built into the 3DS.

And I have to tell you,

it's one of the more enjoyable features of the 3DS.

And I don't know if that's,

if that's like a real compliment to the 3DS,

or if that's like, if that's a real,

if that's kind of a diss.

Because in a way, it's also saying,

well, gee, this built-in game is better

than the stuff that they have.

But it's not just that.

I mean, Nintendo, I think,

just went all out with the built-in games.

They also have this one called Face Raiders.

And I told you about this.

I'm so glad it made it onto the 3DS after all,

because I think I talked about it after E3,

this game called Face Raiders.

And it's just, to me,

it has like, it's like an augmented reality game.

And so it really, because of the 3D camera,

you know, augmented reality,

they have on the iPhone and the iPad,

and those are great things.

And they work well on those systems.

But I have to tell you,

because there's two cameras on the back of the 3DS,

which can capture 3D images

and then relay them on the top screen,

which is the 3D parallax barrier screen,

it's really, really a much more realistic,

realistic augmented reality, to me, anyway.

And it's funny.

I mean, it's like the game itself is like,

really has a lot of like good humor

and you can take faces,

you take photographs of people that you know,

you can put them on the faces of your enemies

and you can like rescue their faces.

And it's pretty funny.

You know, I enjoy Face Raiders a lot.

And of course, it uses the gyros in the 3DS.

And so it just, it takes advantage

of a lot of the features really well.

And it's free, you know, it comes with every 3DS.

So I really, really like it.

I really do recommend Face Raiders

if you haven't played it.

But anyways, so I think these Find Me games are great.

And so they just kind of released like an,

I should call it like an expansion pack

for the Me Plaza games in the,

like Find Me and they added more puzzles.

And of course, I don't know

if this is something you guys know,

the puzzle thing is a little bit

of a recycled feature from E3.

They actually, once you finish the puzzle,

you can view the puzzle in like full 3D glory

and like pan around.

And when Nintendo first showed us the 3DS

at E3 in 2010, I guess,

what happened was, I think it was 2010.

They didn't really like let us play it.

I think, you know, if you watch the video

of the press conference that these kind of,

all these booth babes came out

and they had the 3DS like strapped to their hands.

And then you were allowed to like go up

and like look at the 3DS.

And actually you couldn't play anything.

You could just kind of pan around

in a 3D scene.

And actually those 3D scenes are the exact ones

that are in these puzzle pieces.

And so they're kind of recycling it,

but I don't know if that's like,

I just, in case you guys were wondering,

they actually, I actually did see this

as I was a little bit like deja vu

when I saw this because I'm like,

oh, I saw this at E3.

And so, yeah.

But anyway, I really would do recommend,

especially if you're in an area

with a lot of people who would have a 3DS,

if you live like in a big city

and you can have a commute to work

or to school or something,

and you're going to be on public transit,

I think it's really great.

At first I felt that,

I have to tell you,

if you're someone that's maybe working

like not at a GameStop or something,

you have like an office job, a desk job,

and without a commute, maybe you drive.

I mean, not that you don't have a commute,

just a commute where you're kind of by yourself,

like you drive.

You know, I'm in San Diego

and driving is kind of the only way to get around.

So, you know, if you drive,

this may not be great.

However, I think if you're in an area,

like if you're a college student

and you're in a college that has a lot of people

that are really into Nintendo

and care around their 3DSs,

this is a great thing to have,

especially just StreetPass

because it just works really well.

Or if you go to a convention,

like I know sometimes there are a lot of people

who listen to Lithcast.

I know who frequent these conventions

like PAX and E3 and Comic-Con.

I know there's a lot of other like anime conventions.

And I think for that type of thing,

it's also a great thing to use

because you're just going to get a lot of tags

and you'll really find that you progress an awful lot

in one day when you get a lot of tags.

So you can also use these PlayCoins, by the way,

to buy puzzle pieces

and you can use them to hire like mercenaries.

They're called Hire a Hero,

but it's basically like a mercenary.

And actually with this new expansion pack

that they gave out,

that they have available,

you can actually hire heroes that you've tagged before,

as opposed to these,

they're called Wandering Heroes,

which are basically mercenaries.

And the reason that they're,

the heroes that you met are better

is because they're higher level,

they can deal more damage usually.

And they increase levels by how many tags that you get.

And there's other little cute things

like people can rate you as fantastic

and you can swap little messages

every time your Miis go past,

you know, you walk past someone.

In fact, they're actually sort of,

they have another little feature that kind of,

they also just,

they just put out,

which is the swap note feature.

And so the swap note kind of works the same way.

Of course, if you've registered someone with friend codes,

you can just over the internet,

send their messages directly,

but you can also do swap note,

which is basically like PictoChat,

but it's kind of like,

instead of being instant messaging,

it's kind of like email basically,

but it only gets sent once you walk past the person.

Again, unless of course you've registered their friend code,

in which case you can send it over the internet.

Because the actual short messaging service

that is kind of,

available with StreetPass

is a little bit limited in what you can say.

I mean, there just aren't very many characters.

It's kind of like Twitter on steroids in that regard.

Oh, speaking of which,

if you want to follow me on Twitter,

it's a twitter.com slash dscubed,

twitter.com slash dscubed.

All right.

Still got it with the spelling.

So yeah, I think that this 3DS,

in terms of the games,

I mean,

I've been very,

very pleased,

but I think I'm a little bit easier to please.

And I think most people are,

are actually playing mostly DS games.

One thing that's really kind of interesting,

and this is actually a great thing for me as a podcaster about Nintendo,

is that one other feature with the StreetPass

is that you can see what the most recent game that person was playing.

And when I say game,

it really means like anything,

whether it's a particular channel on the 3DS,

like the 3DS sound channel,

or a game like Legend of Zelda,

or it even tells you if it's a DS game,

whether you're playing.

So I have to be honest with you.

I see a lot of Pokemon HeartGold,

a lot of Pokemon SoulSilver,

a lot of 3DS music channel,

a lot of SwapNote,

and also Zelda Ocarina of Time.

And I see a lot of,

I guess what I'm saying is I don't see all that many 3DS games.

Of course,

the original launch titles were really depressing.

I bought Street Fighter.

That was not a great title.

And so far,

my favorite 3DS game,

I think would have to,

oh wait,

sorry,

I forgot about Pokemon Black and White.

I don't even know what my favorite 3DS game is.

I think what I've been playing most recently

has been Ocarina of Time,

which of course is just a remake of the Nintendo 64 game.

Although I will say that they did do some,

the 3D,

I don't think it adds too much to the game.

Although they did really,

you can tell,

do a pretty sizable amount of work on the graphics

in terms of renewing,

or not renewing,

redoing the graphics.

And it does look a lot better,

I think,

than the Nintendo 64 version.

But,

you know,

if you play the Nintendo 64 version,

you may not find that it's that great.

Although one thing that is good about it

is that it has Master Quest.

So if you guys never got that,

that GameCube disc that came,

I think with like pre-ordering Wind Waker back,

you know,

back when the GameCube was around.

And if you never bought,

sell the Master Quest and you want to have,

it's basically all the dungeons mirrored.

So,

you know,

you can buy it.

You can buy it.

And it's also harder.

I've never played Master Quest actually myself.

That's also included on the 3DS game

and with better visuals.

So I think you'll probably find that

for some people that might even be enough content

in Zelda Ocarina of Time.

But in terms of what it's making use of,

it doesn't make great use of things like,

it just doesn't lend itself to making use of

street pass features or spot pass features

and things of that nature.

So,

yeah,

well,

anyway,

there you go.

So 3DS,

I really do like the 3DS a lot.

I think,

I haven't been able to tell

if there's going to be a new design.

I think the thing I'm looking more forward to

is not so much a new design,

but is really the

games that are coming out for it.

So in particular,

I'm excited for the next Animal Crossing.

I mean,

I really am.

And of course,

there have been games that have been out recently

that I really should have played.

And what I mean by that

is,

let's see,

I think I've been,

I had like a big pile of stuff to play for the Wii

and also for,

I even also wanted to play,

I think you probably all know this,

but DS Cubed happens to also be a fan

of Assassin's Creed.

Which is totally weird because

DS Cubed is not very big on violent games.

You know,

Call of Duty doesn't do it for him.

But for some reason,

Assassin's Creed is just really fun.

And I just like the,

I like the story a lot.

I think the story is great.

Despite how repetitive it can often be,

the missions that is,

I really do like the game.

But,

you know,

in terms of

some good 3D games,

3DS games have come out,

but I haven't actually played the two

sort of elephants in the room.

Which are Super Mario 3D Land

and Mario Kart 7.

Both of those are out.

They came out in

November and December,

respectively.

And so,

but I really want to play both of them,

especially Mario Kart 7.

Although I've,

reviews of Super Mario 3D Land

have said that it brings platforming to a new level

and all this great stuff.

But there's still more stuff to look forward to.

I think,

I don't think we have release dates for it,

but you know,

things like,

oh,

well,

I mean,

Animal Crossing is a big one for me.

I think especially if they can really get

the Street Pass feature to integrate.

To me,

Street Pass,

just the way I,

way,

where I am

and just kind of like the people I'm around,

it really works well to have Street Pass

built into something.

So if they,

if they can build it in,

then

it's,

you know,

it's terrific.

But,

so Street Pass is going to be really important

for me

in a game like Animal Crossing.

But of course,

they're also going to have games like

Paper Mario,

they already released Star Fox,

I forgot about Star Fox,

which is basically just a remake of the N64 version.

However,

it is a,

it is a like,

more,

you know,

a graphically updated version.

And then they also have,

I mean,

they're also coming out with,

oh,

I forgot,

I mean,

there's like a few other titles that are coming out in March,

which I'm,

I guess I'm sort of excited for.

Namely,

I'm not that excited for this,

but,

you know,

maybe they've,

maybe they're pushing this series a little too far,

but Kid Icarus is coming out in March,

as is Mario Party 9.

Poke Park games,

there's some coming out in February.

I,

I can't say I've enjoyed any of them,

so I'm not going to like sit here and recommend any of them,

but,

but anyway,

that's just like,

that's on the release schedule.

So I'm excited for things like Animal Crossing,

personally.

And,

but I think the games really have started picking up recently.

And now with the lower price point,

I think it's a little more reasonable.

Unfortunately,

I think what has driven Nintendo,

Nintendo to do this with the price point has been the low sales.

Pretty remarkably,

I think Nintendo has only sold 4 million DSs.

And that's as of January 1st,

they put out that press release,

sorry,

January 3rd.

I mean,

maybe they sold,

I don't know when they reached the milestone,

but they've only sold that many 3DSs,

which isn't that,

that's not good.

I think that's far below projections considering also the fact that Nintendo is,

I mean,

you know,

you know how DS cube is.

The DS cube likes to look at the economics as well,

because I know sometimes maybe that's boring for some of you.

It's really interesting for me.

But one thing about it is that the economics are really important because,

you know,

I think a lot of times people say like,

well,

we always,

we would get,

I wish we would get mother three here in the United States.

I wish we would get this here.

And,

you know,

Nintendo's not focusing on the United States.

They're not releasing this game in the United States very soon after the Japanese version or before,

you know,

and I think what often determines that really is the economics of it,

whether it's feasible and whether it's a good idea for them to do it.

So I like to look at that thing.

And so kind of on that,

on that note,

you know,

Nintendo stock price has really not been doing very well since,

well,

since we last spoke.

So I'd say,

let's say,

the last,

in the last year,

if you look at Nintendo's stock right now,

they are at $16,

which is really upsetting.

I don't know if you know this,

but at their peak,

they did get to around,

like,

you know,

peak as in back in the day when the Nintendo Wii was like a brand new thing.

I don't want to misquote myself here,

but I think they got up to around 72.

I guess,

maybe not that high,

but they must have gotten that high.

I thought they must have.

So I want to check the stock chart here.

That's interesting.

I thought they got up to 72.

Anyways,

they've been much,

they have been much higher though.

Anywho,

they just haven't been doing so well.

I mean,

they're,

they're at a,

you know,

year to date.

They're just not doing so great.

I think part of that,

I mean,

or at least,

a lot of the reason for that has been the stuff that's going on in Japan.

Not only is Nintendo just may have been a little bit weak in terms of what they've been releasing for us,

but of course there,

there's like the whole,

there's like the alpha factors or when I started,

I guess it's beta.

No,

I'm figuring all my stock terms now.

Anyway,

the stuff that,

you know,

is in the market,

that is to say like the Japanese earthquake and particularly what that has to do with,

you know,

this is the appreciation of the yen and so that when the yen appreciates relative to the dollar and the Euro and wherever else you were talking about the currency can create an environment where it's makes more sense for Nintendo to not sell foreign areas.

I mean,

so for example,

the 3ds,

they were selling cheaper even at the original release date at the original release price here in the United States than they were in Japan.

As in,

if you just did a one,

you know,

just a direct conversion,

they were selling,

you know,

the nominal rate that they were selling things for made it appear that the 3ds was far cheaper here in the,

or not the nominal,

the record,

if you put in real dollars or real yen,

it looked like it was much cheaper here,

even though it was so expensive.

Um,

and then they dropped the price even more and the ends appreciated.

And so it just hasn't been,

that hasn't been good.

And of course,

Nintendo holds a lot of foreign cash and a lot of foreign,

you know,

things denominated in dollars as opposed to yen.

So that of course isn't great for them either.

And so,

um,

it's at least been encouraging though,

that they've been doing things really recently that are more geared towards,

um,

releasing good games for 3ds.

I think really the 3ds games recently have been great,

um,

on the Wii,

which is really where at least most of my gaming attention has been recently.

There's some,

there are two games that I would highly recommend.

Uh,

one is Skyward Sword and one is,

uh,

Kirby's Return to Dreamland.

Now I kind of was playing Kirby's Return to Dreamland and then it kind of got

shoveled,

not shoveled,

you know,

whatever,

pushed aside because,

well,

you know,

Skyward Sword came to the picture here and so did Assassin's Creed.

And I,

you know,

Kirby though,

it's really a lot of fun.

I,

again,

maybe not everyone loves playing Kirby just because it might be too easy for

some people.

And,

um,

well,

I think this Kirby has a little bit more in the difficulty department than

some Kirbys.

It's not as hard as Canvas Curse and,

you know,

it's,

um,

but,

but it's still an enjoyable game.

I,

I'm going to play it.

I think once the dust settles with Skyward Sword and I finish it,

I haven't finished it because I haven't had much time.

Unfortunately,

I spent the last month almost dealing with my phone company just because,

um,

it's switched over internet service providers.

And they canceled my account accidentally and it was just a pain to get

everything back together.

But it was,

um,

kind of an experience,

but at least DS cube now has like fiber optic internet out of it or mostly

fiber optic internet out of it.

So that's perhaps worth it.

So my,

maybe my internet's faster and,

um,

but anyways,

there's a lot of,

a lot of hassles the last few last month or so.

Um,

I don't know if you noticed,

but it was obvious with cast turned,

um,

how old six years old with cast turned,

um,

pretty amazing.

Uh,

back in July of 2011,

of course I didn't celebrate.

Uh,

it wasn't,

it wasn't a very celebratory time for me.

So,

um,

I didn't do anything for it and I guess I could still do something,

but it's been cut.

It's kind of late.

And,

um,

I,

again,

at the time I just was not gonna be in the mood to celebrate like cast six

birthday,

even though I like to always tell,

like the with cast story and everything.

Um,

you know,

it's still a,

uh,

difficult thing.

So hopefully you'll all forgive me.

I'm not doing a birthday contest this year.

It was hard to organize.

I had a bunch of,

I had a bunch of other things I had to organize at the time and,

um,

still am.

I,

you know,

it's really a difficult thing in general.

So,

um,

I think I want to talk a little about,

well,

sorry,

I was talking about 3ds,

I guess.

And,

um,

you know,

I don't know if any of you guys have bought it.

Um,

I,

I assume,

many of you have bought the 3ds at this point,

but probably most of you are not that are not using it much.

And I would say that I haven't played the most recent offerings.

That is things like Mario cart seven and,

um,

at,

um,

super Mario 3d land.

But I think if you like those games and Mario cart seven does look pretty

good.

Um,

I imagine you'll probably enjoy the 3ds.

Um,

but again,

if I'm being totally honest with you,

to me,

the big feature that I use are the street pass features.

And so if you're not in an area that's going to offer those to you,

or if you're not going to be going to like a lot of conventions or,

you know,

things where people have these types of devices,

I would say it may not even be a buy at this point.

Not that I would expect necessarily the price to come down anymore,

but you know,

maybe they'll do a redesign or maybe they'll,

you know,

keep the same price.

Um,

so at this point though,

I would say that if you,

if you want those games,

I'd say,

go for it.

Um,

the 3ds is not cheap,

I guess,

but you know,

it's not too expensive either.

And the three,

the 3d technology,

um,

I told you guys this,

you know,

I saw it at E3 and it's one of these things that you really have to see it to

believe it because you've probably never seen anything quite like it without

glasses.

So it was like an experience that I was not really used to having.

And so,

you know,

for me anyway,

it still has,

a certain sense of amaze me even now,

I'm still really amazed at the 3d,

but some people,

uh,

many people I talked to say that the 3d gives them headaches.

And,

um,

I,

I am not in that category of people,

but there are a lot of people that I can think of off the top of my

head.

Who's telling me that,

you know,

3d just really gives me a headache.

So I sympathize.

And perhaps for those people,

it's not for them,

but even still,

you know,

visually speaking,

the 3ds is pretty decent with graphics.

You can turn off the 3ds,

3d and still enjoy it quite a bit.

Um,

there are some games that I think I wouldn't enjoy as much without 3d,

but for the most part,

games I think are just as good without 3d and particular,

particularly,

um,

Zelda,

Ocarina of time is just as good without 3d as far as I'm concerned.

Um,

and I imagine Star Fox probably is in the same,

the same category where I imagine it'll be more difficult.

Although I don't know this for a fact is going to be in games like paper

Mario,

where the depth really is a big factor.

And while you could still see it without,

without 3d,

um,

the immersion and like kind of the really intuitive sense of depth that you

get from the 3d,

of course you'll just be missing.

And,

um,

I don't know about super Mario 3d land.

It looks like,

um,

judging by the way that looks,

it looks like the ability to see the 3d is going to be pretty crucial there as

well.

So we'll see.

But,

um,

for me,

I think it was a good purchase.

I don't regret purchasing it.

I could have done without the,

um,

without the ambassador features.

Um,

for me,

while some of the ambassador games are good,

um,

and they,

I mean,

they're all good.

You know,

they're not,

Nintendo is not,

they're not cheaping out in terms of what they're giving away.

You know,

good titles are giving away game boy,

advanced games also that are quite good.

They're not cheaping out in that sense,

but what they are kind of doing is they're just saying,

you know,

you have to take the,

take it or leave.

You know,

it's,

this it's not,

we're not giving you credit and you can use it on whatever you want.

It's we're giving you these games and take it or leave it.

Um,

of course,

right now,

if you haven't taken it and you bought a 3ds at the $250 price point,

it's too late.

You can't get it at this point.

You had to have signed into e-shop,

um,

between a certain window.

If you did it and didn't know it,

you can always go ahead and check by looking at your download history and

seeing if these games are in your download history now.

Um,

so,

but of course I'm in the coming weeks.

I'm really looking forward to playing this kind of expansion pack to the,

um,

to the,

um,

street pass,

not street pass.

Yeah.

Street pass to that me Plaza.

Um,

and I've been using swap note a little bit with some friends.

Um,

it's,

it's kind of fun.

Um,

personally,

I can't draw.

So I think it loses a lot of the fun element.

It's because it's always a little embarrassing and it's kind of always like one of these things where I sort of feel a sense of inadequacy every time I use it.

But assuming that you guys don't have that kind of thing that goes on when you play it,

I think you'll have a good time.

Uh,

so don't worry about it.

Um,

at any rate,

in addition to all of that,

um,

I wanted to,

I didn't want to talk a bit about skyward sword,

which is for the Nintendo Wii and it's the next in the series and the next in the Zelda series.

But I have to start off by saying that this is a game and I,

I'm going to,

you know,

I'm eating crow a little bit on this because I have to say this was a game that when I played at E3,

I looked at the graphical style and I looked at the,

and I played with the controls and,

um,

and I have to tell you that I was not impressed.

Um,

I didn't think the graphics,

like style was very good.

I thought it was,

it wasn't all the way like cell shaded,

like wind waker.

So I felt,

okay,

well this is going to look dated just,

I mean,

but at the same time it wasn't really cool and edgy like twilight princess.

So it didn't even have like the cool factor to it.

So I thought to myself,

well,

you kind of like the worst of both,

of both worlds.

See,

because here you've got this kind of cartoony look to it,

which is great because of course it keeps games looking young and like fresh.

Look at paper Mario,

you know,

from N64 or GameCube and like,

see how that's aged,

you know,

compared to,

compared to another game from the same system.

It's really amazing how,

and,

um,

and wind waker from the GameCube,

you see these cell shaded games really do keep their,

keep their life.

Um,

you know,

sure.

The screen resolution changes,

but it's just amazing.

You know,

they really,

there aren't a lot of pixels.

There are not,

I mean,

they're well,

pixels are the same,

but there aren't like,

um,

you know,

things don't look like so angular,

you know,

like they do on the N64 games of the time,

like looking at super Mario 64,

um,

or Ocarina of time.

Things don't look so like blocky in games that are cell shaded,

but it seemed like they forgot.

They,

they like sort of gave up that huge advantage because they decided that,

okay,

well,

we're going to kind of do it a little bit halfway between cell shaded and

halfway between,

I don't know what you call the,

I don't know what you call the other thing,

but so it kind of just looks,

it'll be,

I thought like,

wow,

it was like kind of like a fruity version of,

um,

legend of Zelda's,

uh,

um,

Twilight princess.

And they said they were going to improve their visuals.

Um,

but you know,

Nintendo says something like that,

something like that to you at their booth.

And you know,

you believe them or you don't believe them.

And usually if you don't believe them,

that's usually the better bet.

But,

and the controls also,

I didn't think we were very great.

We're very good.

I know they said that use the motion plus,

but I didn't find,

I found it more annoying.

I mean,

I found like,

wow,

this is really an annoying use of the motion controls and the motion plus is

maybe good,

but is it that good?

I wasn't sure really,

but I have to tell you that in both of those categories,

which were my two biggest gripes coming away from E3,

um,

and having looked at it,

um,

Zelda,

uh,

Skyward Sword really,

really met and excelled in those areas.

Now that I've played it,

um,

both areas are a real pleasure.

Like I love the visuals now.

Um,

and I love the,

I love the motion controls.

It adds to me,

it adds so much to it.

I mean,

the,

some of the items that really are only possible with that really fine tuned

precision of the Wii remote with the Wii motion plus are so fun.

I mean,

like the beetle,

I don't want to,

I don't want to spoil too much,

but just,

there are some items that just really are amazing and how they work.

Um,

uh,

they added running.

I mean,

to me,

running was something I couldn't believe was never in Zelda and they still put

the roles in so that you can still look stupid because I remember,

you know,

playing Zelda,

you would want to run around quicker and they had rolling and then they added

this,

you know,

and that's the thing that's also amazing about this game is even the things

that they added that I thought were going to be really a pain.

Even now that I,

once I was playing it,

like the stamina,

the stamina bar,

you know,

I thought that was gonna be a real pain,

but you know,

it's actually a really,

really,

it has a really nice,

um,

element to the game.

And,

um,

you know,

like you're going through the quicksand and you're like really sprint up

some of these Hills and it's just really,

really a great,

actually,

a great addition.

Um,

this stamina bar,

I think.

So I have to say all in all,

even the things that I have like almost no complaints about this game,

to be quite honest,

I haven't finished it yet.

Um,

I'm not super far away as far into it.

Oh,

I love the flying dynamic.

I mean,

that's like,

to me,

that was like the sailing and wind waker,

which I really missed in some of the other games.

And you can see Nintendo was kind of trying to bring it back.

I think they had,

um,

I think it's better than just the walking that they had in the,

in 2012,

like princess or an ocarina of time.

They had the sailing dynamic in wind waker,

but they tried bringing it back in spirit tracks.

And I thought that was super annoying.

Um,

and the train thing I thought was really,

it was really dumb.

And,

um,

it was just awkward and clunky.

It's almost took like wind wakers and kind of made it like slower and more

awkward.

But then what they really ended up doing with this,

um,

flying system with these,

uh,

what they're called,

they're called loft wings.

The bird,

the birds that you fly around.

The first time they've come in,

there's a nice little story behind it that they put in,

but it is really a lot of fun to fly the loft wing.

I think,

um,

and the maneuvers you can do,

and there's a really cool backstory.

And,

um,

I think this game in terms of a story perspective really does actually

explain quite a bit from the legend of Zelda series.

It's a game that it kind of explains a lot of why,

like that they were green tunics,

like where the origins of that's from.

Of course,

you know,

I think,

I think what I'm starting to get the sense of this,

and I,

I'm sure all of you are as well,

which is the story in Zelda,

you know,

it's there and maybe there's a master timeline,

but it wouldn't have surprised me to find,

it wouldn't surprise me to find out that it turns out.

Yeah,

there was a master timeline,

but yeah,

we've also messed with it a little bit that there's no secret,

like safe somewhere in Nintendo's headquarters that has like the

timeline laid out for everyone to see and for everyone to enjoy and

like reference back to when they're making those Zelda games.

And so,

um,

yeah,

you know,

I,

I think in terms of story,

it's not really deep,

but it does kind of explain a few things.

I think in the legend of Zelda series that for those of you who are like big

into Zelda history or Zelda chronology or you'll,

you might find that interesting.

Um,

but I wouldn't look for it to be,

um,

you know,

super story heavy,

but if you've played Zelda,

I mean,

you kind of know what to expect in terms of story,

you know,

no,

no surprises,

but I really can't recommend this game highly enough.

Again,

I don't want to spoil a lot of it,

but it's just the control.

You know,

I mean,

I'm,

I'm really saying this as a guy who is really,

really skeptical about the controls and about the visuals.

And I,

not only am I like,

Oh,

it's better than I thought.

I love both elements of it now.

Like those are,

but they're both,

they're both exemplary for the,

we,

the way you control on the,

we should be and the way visuals on the,

we should be.

Um,

I,

I really can't recommend this game highly enough.

This,

this may be one.

I mean,

I've only,

I'm only playing it.

Like I'm not,

I'm not done with it.

Um,

it,

it is definitely one of the best Zelda's I've ever played.

Um,

and I loved Twilight Princess and,

you know,

I,

this is definitely,

and this,

of course it was totally designed for the Wii and it's,

it's obvious this was not a GameCube project.

This is probably the last Zelda we'll get on the Wii.

And,

um,

and,

um,

I mean,

it seems that way.

We already now have the,

the successor to the Wii announced,

um,

which I haven't talked to you all about,

but it's called the Wii U and I,

the light,

like the,

like the letter U.

Um,

and I,

I gotta tell you,

Nintendo's always had a way with naming things in kind of a funny way,

at least with the Wii,

like the nunchuck and the,

and your me's and the check me out channel.

And,

um,

I mean,

you know,

kind of that type of thing,

but I think we,

you might take the cake.

It's an interesting concept though,

if they can really make it work.

Um,

and especially,

I think,

again,

I've been saying this,

I've been saying,

I've been singing this tune for,

I don't know how long,

but again,

I think if Nintendo could really make online,

go,

um,

I mean,

if they can make online implemented a lot better,

then,

um,

a lot better in their systems,

it's really,

it really would be a great help to them.

And,

um,

but we'll see.

We'll see.

The Wii U has an interest as interesting concept.

Well,

I guess I'll talk about that in a moment.

Um,

I was not at CES when they,

they,

Nintendo did talk a little bit.

They didn't say much.

Um,

um,

although to be quite honest with you,

again,

I haven't been following this stuff much,

but I have been playing some of the games and I can just tell you from my own perspective,

I'm really excited to finish skyward sword and I'm really excited to have the ability or to have the chance to,

um,

get more content in the street pass feature of three DS.

And of course,

I'm also looking forward to playing animal crossing and Mario cart seven and super Mario,

super Mario,

three D three D land.

There's just a lot of stuff to play and not enough time.

And,

and so,

um,

you know,

Nintendo,

you know,

say what you want,

you know,

they're doing their lunch in some ways because of the,

um,

ease of publishing and downloading games.

And of course the really low price of games on the apple app store.

But I really think that there's still,

um,

there still is some room for a company like Nintendo to really,

you know,

chain to really,

um,

not change to,

um,

to provide like a more solid gaming experience.

And,

um,

I think some of their recent gaming offerings,

at least have to me been a lot more encouraging than what we had to say the last,

the first three years or something of the Wii or the first half a year of three DS.

Um,

I think those are all very incur.

I think that stuff recently has been very,

very encouraging.

And so,

um,

I want,

I do want to talk a bit about the Wii U of course.

It's amazing of course,

because they're going to already do the successor to the Wii.

It's hard to believe,

but if we remember,

if you,

if you remember,

came out in November 19th,

2006.

So the,

we just had its fifth year,

um,

and,

you know,

birthday,

which is crazy to think because,

you know,

lift cast just had its sixth year birthday.

I can't believe I only started with cast a little bit before the Wii.

Um,

and I think,

um,

well,

I mean,

that's always interesting,

but,

and now here,

the Wii U,

you know,

an eighth generation video game console is supposed to be,

first of all,

it's backwards compatible,

which is nice.

And it has one feature,

to be honest with you,

that I've always sort of secretly wanted in a video game console.

Um,

and I'm really excited,

not secretly,

but you know,

it's not,

it's not really scandalous,

but,

um,

I,

I'm,

I have to tell you that I,

you know,

we'll see if the Wii U is going to be good,

but,

um,

I think it's going to be coming out pretty soon.

Uh,

they,

they said between the,

so it's the second half of this year.

So between June and,

um,

December of 2012.

So this year,

I mean,

to think,

you know,

the next time we could be speaking and,

you know,

with with cast release schedule,

this really could be it.

This really is right.

You know,

this is possible.

Um,

the next time we could be speaking,

we could be on the eve of the Wii U coming out,

or,

um,

it was still another E3.

I mean,

who knows the next,

this next E3,

if the Wii U is going to be out in June or December,

we're going to see an awful lot of the Wii U at the next,

at the next,

um,

uh,

E3.

And,

you know,

the Wii U has got some things I want to talk about,

but,

um,

to be quite honest with cast listeners,

I actually have to get going.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to pause it.

So you're not even going to know I've gone anywhere.

So I don't even know why I'm telling you this,

but when we get back,

I'm going to talk to you about the Wii U,

and I'm going to be very excited about it.

So through the magic of television,

I will get going.

See you later.

Oh,

wait,

actually,

one thing I did want to mention before I left,

which was,

um,

about the birthday contest for lift cast.

Uh,

you know,

I,

if you think I should do it,

I can do it,

but I think maybe we'll just skip it this year,

if that's okay with all of you.

And,

um,

maybe we'll,

we'll do a seventh birthday contest,

which is going to be crazy.

The lucky number seven can't believe with cast is so old,

um,

starting to get gray around.

You're starting to get gray here with cast anyway.

All right.

See you later.

All right.

I am back.

And,

um,

all right.

So I actually,

I just came back from a bar mitzvah.

So that's funny thing to leave in the middle of podcast for,

but so I'm amped and ready to talk to you about the Wii U.

Although,

unfortunately the horror was very like,

it was very like boring this time,

which,

you know,

is the only dance that DSQ feels comfortable doing,

but,

um,

that's okay.

Um,

so anyway,

um,

uh,

right.

We,

you,

so obviously many of you have heard because I know you are all up on these

type of things about the Nintendo Wii U,

which is the successor to the Wii.

And it's going to be totally backwards compatible,

um,

to

Wii games.

However,

apparently it won't be backwards compatible to GameCube games.

I don't know exactly why that is,

um,

but I suppose it's probably just knowing Nintendo,

something simple,

like they can't fit the Wii,

or they don't remain.

They don't feel like putting on the GameCube controller ports,

like the little slots,

um,

you know,

just to put in the GameCube controller,

which is kind of unfortunate,

I think,

because,

um,

you know,

the GameCube is,

has a really nice controller and,

um,

I think it's really ergonomic and I'm going to kind of miss having GameCube

back and forth.

So,

um,

you know,

it's,

it's a little less than GameCube backwards compatibility,

but it's all right.

Um,

I think the new controller is something that's a little bit is what's

really different with the Wii U.

Um,

I don't think we know exactly everything when it comes to the Wii U,

but,

um,

looking at the controller,

I think that's definitely the most unique thing about this system in

addition,

just like,

just like with the Wii.

And so what I mean by that is if you've seen it,

it's kind of like a giant touchscreen controller,

I don't,

um,

it's 6.2 inches apparently and what it's going to be able to do is it's going to be able to do i

guess a few things i mean they showed a few demos i mean so who knows how many of these things are

going to be really supported in the future but one of the things that they showed was that you

could like say take the controller put it on the ground and have a golfing game and have the actual

remote in your hand and then kind of golf and you kind of see the ball kind of below you put

the controller at your feet and you can see the ball and you can hit it that way um now i'm gonna

not gonna lie to you i have a feeling that's going to be one of those applications that doesn't get

done and i say that because remember back when we saw the wii and we saw um the application of

having two wii remotes in one hand and then drumming and stuff with that and that i mean

how many games can you think of that actually have two wii remotes in them i mean even wii music

which was i mean of course a huge letdown for me anyway um didn't even do anything like that

so i think it's fair to say that's probably not a that's

probably not a fair to say that's probably not a fair to say that's probably not a fair to say

not very likely use the touch screen um but i think what will be used the touch sorry yeah right

so the 6.2 inch screen is touch screen um so as far as we know not 3d nintendo has said before that

um 3d screens don't work well with touch screens they say they don't mix because

with their technology the parallax barrier technology um the fingerprints and i think

you've know that you'll notice this if you put fingerprints on your 3ds um they kind of like

trick your brain and they kind of take out the 3d effect um because your brain says well what's

that in the foreground there so i think that's probably not to be something we we should expect

um but they did say that it's going to be compatible with things like the we remote

and the motion plus and the balance board so um i suppose they i'm sure i'm sure i can give up on

we fit i mean um and i think the controller itself still has like gyros i mean it still has like

motion sensitivity to it but it has a touch screen so i think we're just gonna be really

useful

for like item selection and i think it's also going to be a really great thing um for games

that are like um two-person multiplayer um i remember pokemon i would really like to see

pokemon stadium it'd be cool if that was brought maybe over to wii u i remember that's always a

fun thing it's like oh don't look at my controller while i press the direction while i press the

button for my next move um i think that could be a great thing to use the um the wii u for in fact

i remember you know there's some ds games that like i think pokemon maybe maybe he's the only one

that kind of interfaces with the wii in the same way and um i'm blanking on the exact marketing

term for it but there's like a you know there's a name for it where the um ds connectivity to the

wii i'll try to look it up but um basically you can kind of use the um the wii and the ds

kind of together i thought there was a name for it it's in pokemon battle revolution

um maybe there isn't a name for it but i thought there was a name for it

for it um so i think maybe that'd be a great you know put one battle revolution wasn't such so

such a terrible game maybe if they had a good version of it and they could use a um they could

use that kind of in the same way another thing also i think about the wii u that's going to be

good is that the controller is looks a little bit more traditional um it now has two analog sticks

on it um which i think is really useful and actually um there is going to be a like a nintendo

ds um peripheral that kind of gives it like triggers and like kind of the two analog sticks

so it kind of um i think it's a good thing and i suppose even though it doesn't look like a

traditional controller it's going to have kind of that same like horizontal layout of you know

the gamecube controller i mean there's nothing about this look at the wii u that i think couldn't

be done on the gamecube controller i mean of course the x and y button

would be a little bit um a little weird and but i think a c stick could be done with this you know

just use the right stick as the c stick and um it also has a camera on the front of it i don't

really exactly know what that's for um just um and i i guess it i don't know if it has a microphone

i really i probably should have read up on this but uh oh i guess it's okay so i guess it does

actually have a microphone speaker gyroscope accelerometer rumble and camera so okay so it

has a microphone i think that's better than say

the wii speak um and i think um they've confirmed a new smash bros game for it um a new pikmin and i

think a lot i think what these what this particular controller is going to be really strong and

is in like maybe real-time strategies um and it could be um you know useful where you know where

you want to but you want to have two people on the same screen and you want to maybe have like

your data kind of kind of like a heads-up display although because the heads down it's a heads down

um unless you want to like hold it over your face um and then

let's see what else i think and i think that's also really cool and i think probably i'm afraid

the biggest um the biggest feature of it at least this was the thing i was saying earlier was kind

of the secret desire of mine for video game consoles is i've kind of always wanted to have

a system that would you could you and you didn't want to use the tv you could just put it in your

hand um i've always wanted to have a system that would you could you and you didn't want to use the

tv you could just put it in your hand um i've always really been a fan of the handheld gaming

in general um where i don't know somehow just that form factor just really works out for me

um my favorite system ever um maybe as my name suggests is uh the maybe not the ds actually i

think maybe i just really like handheld gaming i'm i was a nintendo handheld gamer before i

ever touched a video game console um i had you know my game boy was like my first um system and

consider handheld gaming to be like my most and to be honest with you this podcast again i didn't

tell the lithcast story this year for the birthday but really i think lithcast was started because

of interest um that i for that that i had in the nintendo ds and that originally what happened was

i said wow this is really a cool system i want to find out about this and i think i told you i think

i was i was an editor for a website called dsfans.com i mean it's a website doesn't exist now

but um it was a really cool website you can like users could submit articles and i kind of became

like an editor and it was new and i was like i'm gonna do this and i'm gonna do this and i'm gonna

and so handheld gaming has always been big for me and so i always loved that form factor

um so now what you can do is you can kind of have the wii u kind of serves as like a mainframe

and then it'll it feeds the video content that would normally be coming across on the tv screen

onto the into your hands into the wii or into the wii u controller with onto the 6.2 inch screen

of course i don't expect that's going to be 1080p like thankfully finally the wii u will output to

now um in terms of they're not

using they didn't say if they're gonna i mean they said they're not gonna use blu-rays i guess

they're using 25 gigabyte proprietary discs um but it's like a single layer it's not dual layer

and my suspicion with that is that i think doing a dual layer reader is maybe very difficult for

them i think what we've what we saw with the wii was that games like super smash brothers

which were dual layer discs i think i think it was smash brothers was the first one where this

really had an issue they had problems with the reading and it just was i guess a mess

um but i don't know why um necessarily they're using a proprietary format they might just feel

like weird giving money to um blu-ray um into that you know maybe paying into that um that

spec that sig or that i don't know that consortium i mean i have no idea why you know why it is that

they don't want to do it um i'll be honest i really haven't um picked up on too much of the

too much of the uh details of this unfortunately for some of you maybe the touch screen is going

to be resistive as opposed to capacitive like so capacitive screens obviously you're used to

on the iphone and ipod touch and ipad and many android phones um maybe also like the um like

kindle fire also so um but what you're used to on the ds are these resistive touch screens and

also like on palm pilots um and that's still apparently what's going to be used and there's

um you know maybe there's a reason i i don't know what i prefer to be honest with you i don't like

having to use i mean i like it depends really on the game i suppose you know in um pokemon diamond

and pearl for example or put one black and white rather you know when there's a lot of options that

were on the bottom screen but they're kind of like really quick like just tap the button and go

options you know like attack select the attack those are things i don't like to have to pull

out a stylus for and so i think if it's going to be a lot of that type of thing i'd rather have a

resistive touch screen or sorry rather a capacitive touch screen and then i'd rather have a

screen like you have on you know the apple products not a lot of like android phones a lot

of smartphones now um and um in terms of cpu power though apparently it's they're still still power

pc based it's multi-core it's 45 nanometers so that's um you know maybe a little bit it's not

i don't know if i'm gonna that's okay i guess um

let's see

i don't think there's anything else this oh they do have an ir sensor

that makes sense so i'm just quickly looking at like all the the specs apparently that have been

revealed um they have internal flash memory um that's that seems reasonable the wii does anyway

hdmi 1.4 so i guess um 1.4 the one's 3d i think that might be the 3d one

um just want to make sure i suppose it's going to be 1080p finally which is really

which is great i mean because i guess one i mean one point i think 1.4 does support

3d uh still no word i think on whether or not it's even going to be able to play dvds um

but uh we'll see oh one thing actually i forgot to kind of mention with the 3ds that's actually

something that i think has been i don't want to say it's been under appreciated but it's something

that i'm now looking at the spec sheet for the uh wii u i'm seeing again is this thing called the

circle pad so the circle pad is like is like an analog stick it was what i called the analog stick

it's done really well on a handheld system um to be honest with you i've had a sony psps

and they had an analog stick i mean like it was kind of a flattened version it wasn't as like

large as what you'd see on a playstation controller or a gamecube controller um or on like the nunchuck

but it was like kind of a miniaturized version and to be honest with you i never found those

to be particularly comfortable i found they weren't super accurate like they didn't grip

your hand very well but i have to say one thing that nintendo i think did really well on the 3ds

what you think um is this thing called the circle pad and so on the left side of the ds in addition

to the d pad there's um the directional button pad it has this thing called the circle pad

it's basically it's basically just like the psp um analog stick kind of done right at least in

my opinion i think it's like has a really good like grip um and i i don't know i may you can

try it and see what you think but apparently the wii u is going to have this i've never played the

wii u um they had i think at e3 this past year but i didn't go

it was a difficult you know difficult year for me um at that time i'm looking forward to maybe

going this year um be nice to go i didn't see it at um comic con um and um but it's

going to be out this year so i i'm pretty sure we'll see um you know the next um what you call

it the next we you know the wii u at um e3 i'm really excited about the fact and i was a little

surprised by the fact that the wii u is going to be out this year so i'm really excited about the

they're going to work on the next another super smash brothers game for wii u and i don't want to

say that i was um surprised in the sense that you know like oh wow i can't believe they would they

would sell that piece of garbage on the wii u i mean i love super smash brothers um it is one of

my favorite series if not with pokemon that's right up there um and they're apparently making

it again the reason i was surprised was because if i remember if i remembered correctly i was

i thought that masahiro sakurai said that like he didn't want to make another one or that iwata

really had to coax him into doing it and given the performance of super smash brothers brawl which you

know i think sold well um people probably camped out for it i don't think it was a blockbuster i

don't think it even currently has the acclaim that um super smash brothers melee got and still

receives i think people would kind of say that for the time super smash brothers melee is

the best super smash brothers to ever be made um given that i was a little surprised that they

apparently are going to work on this now the caveat is they haven't started development and

they're not going to start apparently until kid icarus uprising is out but that's only going to

be like in march so um i suppose they'll start development pretty soon um and um so anyways they

had they announced a few like third-party developers um i'm also pleased that apparently

it's going to be an assassin's creed game

for um for it i mean i think i've told you one of my favorite series outside of nintendo really

is assassin's creed um and you know i i'm excited i mean pikmin i'm excited i think i know a lot of

people are excited about pikmin and like a new dragon quest but i'm you know those aren't really

my my things but um new smash brothers new super mario new zelda obviously and get excited about

oh my gosh they had the most gorgeous looking legend of zelda

demo at the at e3 in this trailer if i i'd have to i'll have to put this trailer

somewhere like in the show notes or something but this trailer if you haven't seen it already

it's just a demo reel for all this uh wii u content but wow i mean really they had

i saw zelda i paused it i like looped it it was funny it was kind of sad actually but i that's

that's what happened um and um yeah i totally forgot about zelda

i mean i mean they called it

let's see i don't think i don't think they don't have a title for it i mean i'm not like itching

for more and more zelda now because i'm playing skyward sword but i have to tell you this looked

amazing and it had the graphical style of twilight princess but you know really really crisp and

really really pretty obviously it was probably pre-rendered i but i it just to see zelda like

that it was so so awesome i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't

know um i mean there's a few like retro so they're working on a game for it and um so did

monolith um but there's gonna be no more heroes 3 um i think the controller you know we'll see if

they really do combine some of the things like using the wii remote with it but um one thing

that i was kind of sad about was even though i told you that i would love it to have the feature

that um you can just go ahead and switch to the handheld

i think you kind of have to be within bluetooth level range you know so like 10 meters 20 meters

of the wii u system to be able to use it i mean i don't think it literally downloads the game

onto your controller and the other thing is to be honest with you guys um you know i bought

this i mean i was kind of reminded of this um but i remember i because when i bought the

lighter zelda skyward sword i bought like the special edition that came with the golden wii

remote i mean i'm just i guess i was kind of a sucker for it i mean besides actually i

didn't even have a wii remote plus and you know i didn't have you know i had only one basically all

my wii remotes were old you're you're an early adopter so you get the wii remote without the

motion plus built into it and so um yeah uh basically i was kind of reminded that geez these

controllers are pretty expensive now the bundle deal was like 60 bucks i think so it was only

20 but i remember that the controller used to be like 40 for just one wii remote and that obviously

and it didn't have a microphone it didn't have cameras and it had speaker had speakers but so

does this one um so considering all that it didn't have the motion plus i assume that this will at

least have the motion plus level of gyroscopes um so i think but of course i don't know that

maybe the wii u doesn't um is a little cheaper because i'm not so sure i haven't looked at all

angles but i'm not sure that there is a um is if there is if there's an

infrared camera is there oh yeah it says ir sensor strip okay maybe there's an infrared camera on

the wii remote or on the wii u controller okay fair enough but anyways i just wonder how expensive

these controllers you know to buy another one will be because 40 for the wii original wii remote

but then this is now has 6.2 inch screen has circle pads i mean has i mean has basically

a lot of

extra stuff i mean i know cheap technology gets cheaper but but the wii remotes are kind of

expensive controllers um we'll see i'm really excited you know for the wii u i'm not excited

for the name but anything that says if there's gonna be a new smash brothers on it then um i'm

excited of course i have to be honest with you i think in i've recently as a gamer i think i've

been kind of elated because there's been i don't know if i sound that way but i think there's been

that elated but i um i've really been pleased because there's just been a really good stream

of games that have been coming out recently that i've been pleased with i mean i you know

mario kart 7 i haven't played and super mario 3d land i haven't played and those are two games i

really i really want to play and haven't yet and um but even among the games that i have and like

in my possession and i want to play i want to finish kirby i'm pretty i'm almost i think i'm

almost done with kirby um return to dreamland so i could i'll give you my i mean i'll tell you that

because it's really a lot like kirby 64 but anyways coming back to what i was saying

you know you also have zelda skyward sword and you also have um well for me also assassin's creed but

then you've also got um i'm so excited for animal crossing and kid icarus is coming out

i think there's a good amount of stuff to be excited for on the current nintendo systems

whereas i think really in 2011 at least the early part of 2011 there wasn't that much to get so

um too excited about him and i think of course that's that's good i mean who knows if um

who knows i mean it's just kind of a nice last hurrah i think before the wii u because we should

expect that you know in the coming months anywhere between six and um 11 months we should expect the

wii u to be to be out soon you know i i imagine it'll be out um i think realistically speaking

we're talking october november even though they say second half it really means october

november because um if it was june it was a summer if you know if it was fall it's a fall

probably and i think it probably means october november because holiday season you don't want

to miss out on that and um i think that's reasonable just want to come back to kirby

though um it that actually has been a game that i put down for a little bit because i wanted to

play assassin's creed and then i wanted to play um skyward sword and i still haven't finished any

of these three which is kind of a problem because i kind of sort of committed myself i said i'm going

to play one of them and what i did what i ended up doing was i ended up playing a little bit of all

of them um and so i mean i intend to finish all of them because they're all good games um kirby is

um for me anyway this kirby game was a really great one because it is probably the most like

kirby 64 the crystal shards um that i can think of it doesn't have like the combining the powers

like it did in the other ones but some of these things are

very satisfying in the game i mean kirby is not a not a difficult game um in terms of you know

we're not talking about like an old school metroid or you know even a zelda level of

difficulty or even a pokemon level of difficulty we're just talking about you know game that

as far as maybe if you want to call kirby a core hardcore game it's probably on the very

casual spectrum of it um so i think but there's you know there's a lot of um fun to be had i think

playing kirby because especially some of this new stuff like the like these really big what

they're called like these like mega power-ups and they're just very satisfying just to go through

and just like just destroy all this stuff and um i just like you know i like that um the boss fights

that are kind of coming up kind of of i mean just it reminds me a lot of kirby 64 if you if you

liked i suppose the best recommendation i can give you is it's a lot like kirby 64 and if you liked

kirby 64 for the nintendo 64 then you'll probably like kirby 64 for the nintendo 64 for the nintendo 64

um kirby's return to dreamland um i don't know if it's as good as skyward sword i mean it's not as

deep certainly and the controller i mean the controls are just not that exciting you just

hold the wii remote sideways and you know you use it like a normal controller you have kind of

these fun things where you have to like shake the wii remote to do like a really like like strong

inhale but um you know there isn't that much use even of the controller um which is fine i mean

um so i just wanted to mention i was playing that and so my point is just to say that i think

nintendo's recent content has actually been quite good um and that you know there's just been

well a good amount of stuff so i think even if we don't get the wii u right away and

even if they don't release animal crossing tomorrow i still think there's a good amount

of stuff to be done um and

so i just wanted i just wanted to touch on those things um again this wasn't a super well

researched episode of lithcast i just kind of wanted to mention all these things just to kind

of make you guys aware of my presence to say i'm still here um i have not forgotten about all of

you and thank you so much for like bearing with me i don't know how many people are going to

download this episode um maybe most of you have probably unsubscribed by now but um you know it's

a fun thing to do and i i like speaking with all of you invariably i always have some audio problem

here like i i hope the audio the music and the music and the music and the music and the music and

wasn't too quiet and you know that video clip that clip i played to my dad that was i hope that

wasn't too quiet either um and so hopefully i'll see you guys again soon anyway i also just want

to mention the stuff like the usual stuff like if you want to follow me on twitter um it's

twitter.com slash ds cubed and i haven't been posting too much nintendo stuff um but i promise

i'll post more nintendo related stuff um very soon and um what else

um also go to lithcast.com l-i-t-h-c-a-s-t.com um particularly the forums i really have to redo

the site um it's just it's not really workable i mean it's hard for me to really update the site

now just because it's like there's no content management system it's just really a pain it

requires too much like html just just to update the site it's really a it's really a web 1.0

website and i think if we just did something simple like had wordpress or some other content

management management system like drupal behind it we really could um get a lot of

better of a website out of it um so maybe i'll work on that at some point but the forums you

know those are those are still those are those are still going i mean they're slow slowly but

they're still going lithcast.com slash forums feel free to send me an email uh daniel d-a-n-i-e-l

at lithcast.com um and that's a good way to get in touch with me i think twitter is a great way

actually it's been it's really been a good way to to stay in touch with everything lithcast um

as always i thank you so much for listening and um i hope all of you have had a good happy new year

and i hope this year will be a good one particularly for nintendo and all things

related to that and um um i hope you guys play a lot of good games and i just want to say again

thank you so much for being with me um through all these years i mean lithcast has had its

sixth birthday which is insane i mean to think about

this having gone on for six years is really amazing um i mean we're older than some of

these companies i mean now maybe we're not as successful i think we're as old i think we're

older we might be older than twitter and just to think i mean that we are that old even if we're

not as successful i mean just the fact that it's made it and lasted this long i think is really

insane i'm really crazy and i i of course couldn't do it without all of you um so anyway lithcast

listeners i think that's all the time we have for today it's been a great day and i'll see you

an hour and a half i think it's a pretty good length for a podcast um i hope that kept you

busy i hope the audio wasn't too much of a problem today i'll try to fix it but i'll tell you os 10

lion it really i know this isn't an apple show but you all know that i talk about apple every so

often in many different contexts whether or not that means comparing them to nintendo or just

talking about them in general just off the cuff um this would be one of those off the cuff instances

where i tell you that os 10 lion while it's great for i think

like the end user like the you know the guy who's going to use it for checking his email using it

using the apple mail app it's you know there's a lot of great user interface improvements um

speed improvements they don't exist and like not like they did in snow leopard or in tiger

um and you know for these like really niche things like that we're doing like recording

which to be honest with you i think is not that niche like but if i guess they might say it is

um i really have to say it's not the best choice um i'm gonna have to change

audio programs there's a really great free one that's like um a really great like an audio work

desk i mean it's not it's not supposed to be free you're supposed to pay for it after using it

but it's called reaper and it's cross-platform it's windows and mac it might also be probably

also linux but if you go to reaper reaper.fm it looks like a really good and really thorough

like multi-track recording suite and like it doesn't have all the cost and copy protection

of something like logic or pro tools or cubase or you know one of those i don't know how familiar

with the audio recording software but for a multi-track recording it might be a really great

thing to have um for free and i downloaded it but i didn't couldn't like brush up on it quickly

enough to do it um i was able to like add some tracks but i just didn't want to risk it with

this podcast i just had some time so i wanted to get it out of the way anyway lithcast listeners

thank you so much for uh sticking with us for all this time and i know it's you know being a

lithcast listener is not easy it's um it's a lot of ups and downs mostly downs

and um so i just wanted to say thanks anyway i'll see you all at the next podcast i said i've

said you all an awful lot for someone who isn't southern i really think i should stop that um

i'll see everyone at the next podcast um anyway this has been lithcast episode number 57 is that

yeah 57 today's january 15 2012 and thank you so much for listening see you at the next lithcast