Previous rants:

Guitar Hero/Rock Band (Part 1)
Nintendo: Overview
Nintendo DS
Wii _____ Games
Wii games
Virtual Console
Nintendo Wii
Nintendo DSi
--------------------
Hello all and welcome to the second part of the Guitar Hero/Rock Band rant. Previously, I mentioned how obsessed people are with the whole craze and how if some of them are that dedicated to playing music, why can't they pick up a real instrument.

So what else is wrong with these games? How about the expenses for this game? Now it's only natural for the game with peripherals whether it be just the guitar or a full rock band kit to cost a little extra, but when you think about it, do they have to charge £150 for the desired game, a guitar, a microphone and a drum?! The game with a guitar was £70 RRP, so that's another £80 coming out of your pockets for two more peripherals. Although Rock Band's kit with the game has gone down in price, it used to be that much at first and since the release of Guitar Hero: World Tour, Activision want to charge their customers £150 for the whole thing.

These peripherals are rather overcharged, most especially when the craze expanded beyond just playing a guitar. £75 would be more reasonable since it'd be £35 for the guitar, £35 for the drums and £5 for the microphone. However, these companies LOVE to suck as much money as possible from their customers, although EA have had the decency to cut down the price of their Band in a Box. Activision on the other hand, doesn't look like they'll cut down the price anytime soon.

What else is so bad about the expenses for these games? Downloadable Content which has a fee. As small as it may be, it's actually sad to think how much you have to pay for the desired tracks. Now to be fair, some expense would have been acceptable, most especially when they offer to let you play an entire album (e.g. Judas Priest's Screaming for Vengeance, Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy, etc), but the fact that they charge you at least £1.70 for one track is despicable.

Let's look at how much iTunes charge you for music. A single track only costs 79p. It might be a little higher or lower than that for whichever track you look at, but that's the usual price. A track you pay for 79p, you can put on your MP3 Player, play it on your favourite media software or even play the track on a music rhythm game known as Audiosurf, but we'll get to that later. Now what can you do with a single track you purchase from Guitar Hero/Rock Band? You can play them on whichever game the track is for and....That's it. So unless you hack the game and export the track as an MP3 file, you're paying roughly twice the amount to play a track on these games and only to play on these games than to listen to it on your media player, your MP3 Player and even use it on a completely different music rhythm game.

What's worse, imagine if you bought a certain track from iTunes already and had to pay for it AGAIN just to play it on these games! Let's say you buy an Iron Maiden track from iTunes and really enjoyed what you heard. You then find out that the same track you picked up from iTunes is also available to download from Rock Band. You'd think to yourself, "Hey, that's good news!" but it all goes downhill as soon as you hear you have to pay around £1.70 for the desired track when you already bought it from iTunes. Wouldn't you hate having to pay for the same track twice?

Same thing can be said for albums where you buy one album you really like and then find out on Rock Band you have to pay for the entire album AGAIN! So that's spending roughly £10 for the album itself and then another £10 for the DLC on whichever game it's available for. Now this wouldn't be as bad if you only get the album via DLC and not a retail or an actual digital purchase, but the fact that they charge you that much just to play more tracks on the games when they should be charging much less is appalling.

These tracks should really be charged for 20p per track. If that's far too low for the companies, then what about 40p? That's a more reasonable price for a track which can only be played on Guitar Hero/Rock Band. If that's still too low for the companies, then they can get the hell outta here. The only excuses they'd come up with are "Ohh we're suffering recession, please spare us a few more pennies to make us last longer." or "Ohh there's far too many people downloading these tracks from the internet illegally." The former is already an invalid argument as Guitar Hero and Rock Band are published by Activision and EA respectively, while the latter, just have a look at the records charts and tell me if the sales are suffering or not. Trust me, they're not! Sure, there's a good amount of people who aren't buying music for squat, but there are many people who still buy music legitimately and it's actually more than enough for the record companies to survive.

Unless it's a track that becomes neglected for a long time, these companies won't reconsider the fees for their DLC and it's a damn shame. Now that's the expense issues covered, there's still one more topic to go through concerning Guitar Hero and Rock Band and if you've been keeping yourself up to date with the craze, then you already know what's next.

I didn't think I'd be going onto a third part here, but it happens. Due to my little schedule with my next two news posts, I won't be making another rant until after my birthday, which is on 12th July. I know it'll be a while before another rant is posted, but it'll be here before you know it.

Previous rants:

Nintendo: Overview
Nintendo DS
Wii _____ Games
Wii games
Virtual Console
Nintendo Wii
Nintendo DSi
--------------------
PLEASE NOTE: This rant is more towards the extremely obsessed players and not those who simply enjoy the game, so if you play a lot of these games, don't immediately assume this applies to you.

It's no surprise that Guitar Hero (and later on Rock Band) has become a phenomenon in the gaming industry over the last few years. With the ability to play rock songs on a video game, it's understandable for the franchise to catch so much attention from gamers and even non-gamers.

The idea of Guitar Hero and Rock Band itself isn't so bad. As long as you're having fun and not taking the games too literally, there's no problems with that. I might be contradicting myself here from the Nintendo rants, but even if casual "gamers" who play the game just for fun, there's nothing wrong with that since the games were made to have a good time with your friends.

Sadly, there's a good number of people who take these games far too fucking seriously. These people are the ones who HAVE to play every single note correctly on expert mode, even the hardest songs officially released (i.e. Through the Fire and Flames, Free Bird, etc) and they will keep trying and trying until they perfected it on the hardest mode. Some have succeeded in mastering these songs in the video games but really, was the effort worth it in the end?

iamchris4life, a user on YouTube was well known for the highest score for Through the Fire and Flames at the time. He was also known for being the first to get 100% on that particular song due to its extreme difficulty. However, what did he achieve in the end? Thousands of YouTube comments praising him? A little box on the screen saying "Achievement Unlocked"? As far I'm concerned, all he got for this was 15 minutes of fame.

There's no pot of gold waiting for him or anyone else for perfecting these songs on a video game. Sure, there's no pot of gold waiting for the real musicians to perform these difficult songs flawlessly either, but at least at a concert they'd get legitimate praise, not thousands of YouTube users going "OMG U ROX 4 PALYING DAT SONG 100%!!!!!!!!" Which brings up a good question: Which would impress you more? A video on YouTube showing someone playing a song with a plastic guitar or an actual band playing REAL instruments at a concert? The answer should be pretty obvious.

There was one kid who dropped out of high school so he could focus his life on being a professional in Guitar Hero. Although it was said that the kid was to be homeschooled in return for not going to school, when you think about it, it's one of the saddest excuses you could ever think of to get out of school. What's worse, this kid's parents are SUPPORTING THIS! He's also been given sponsors and such and he's actually getting paid for this! He claims he'll be going to college sometime, but dedicating your life to a video game sure doesn't suggest he'll get in, let alone do well.

Another thing to wonder is if these people are so obsessed with playing these songs on a video game, why haven't they considered getting a real instrument for themselves to play? Not only you'd have more freedom to play whichever song you want to cover (assuming you know which notes to play), but the effort into playing these songs well would be much more satisfying than pretending to play it on a video game. Sure, this would require practice, but the amount of effort you put in to playing a guitar very well would be worth it in the end, most especially if you get in a band and do very well. All Guitar Hero or Rock Band will get you is hopefully some motivation to get you to play a real instrument.

Unfortunately, there have been people who have given up playing real instruments and paid attention to these games when really, playing real instruments should be more encouraged, most especially to those who are spending an excessive amount of time. However, when there are sponsorships, tournaments and Guinness world records encouraging this, you know there's a problem.

Yes, for playing plastic instruments to a video game, people can get these sort of recognitions. Although there are professional gaming tournaments for other games such as Halo and Super Smash Bros. and there's already world record for other games, they really shouldn't highly encourage Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

There's still more to talk about regarding Guitar Hero and Rock Band, most especially the expenses for these games and the DLC, but I'll be covering this on the next rant where the subject on these games will be concluded.

Previous rants:

Nintendo DS
Wii _____ Games
Wii games
Virtual Console
Nintendo Wii
Nintendo DSi
--------------------
Hello and welcome to my overview on Nintendo's current state as well as the last rant on Nintendo for the time being. This isn't really a rant and more of a review on how they are right now, but I've named it as "Gaming Industry Bullshit Rants" for the heck of it. :P

Since the release of the DS, Nintendo have been on a very bumpy ride. While the Nintendo DS is a good handheld overall, it still suffers from a few issues and them being the shovelware overload and the lack of backwards compatibility for GB and GBC games, which is a damn shame. They even released the Game Boy Micro a year later, but for some fucked up reason, that wasn't able to play GB or GBC games either. This downfall is really bad since if you want to play any games from those two platforms, you'll have to get an SP in order to play them with backlight.

They went onto making a new DS console called the DS Lite. Sadly, this was the same as the DS, only smaller. Not bad for those who have yet to get a DS or want a smaller console, but the real deal is the DSi, the piece of shit which can't play GBA games in place for a stupid ass camers with terrible quality. Editing pictures and an MP3 Player doesn't do justice for the DSi and the only thing that came close to saving it is the handheld Virtual Console. However, gamers would be much better off getting a GBA SP and game cartridges.

The Nintendo Wii had its ups and downs. It had originality and creativity and made lots of gamers looking forward to Nintendo's newest console. However, it all went downhill with stock issues, low amount of great exclusives, stupid ass Wii _____ games and their poorly done Virtual Console, which most games suffered from PAL conversion bullshit and not having games which should be there from the fucking start (e.g. Contra, certain Rareware games, etc). With these problems, the Wii isn't fully enjoyable and should have met its expectations and most of the time, it's been nothing but a disappointment.

Their target audience has also changed over the last years. Before the DS and Wii, it was focused on actual gamers and actual gamers only. Now, they are paying more and more attention to casual "gamers". While it was fine for them to introduce others into gaming, the main problems are not only most of them will have a poor knowledge in video gaming, but Nintendo have proven they care about casual "gamers" a lot more than real gamers, most especially at their E3 2008 press conference.

Which leads to the next subject on Nintendo: Their E3 conferences. They became a laughing stock at E3 2008 when they made Wii Music as their main announcement. The only notable game they announced was GTA Chinatown Wars, a DS third-party exclusive. Overall, they were an embarassment at E3 2008 and the only reason this was shaken from some of our heads was because of the latest Wii titles, Mario Kart Wii and Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

E3 2009 happened just last week and of course, Nintendo had their press conference and how did they go this one? Well, not as bad as last year, but major improvements could have been made. For instance, they made such a big deal out of Wii Fit Plus, Motion Plus and Vitality Sensor crap. This didn't give a good impression on their conference despite mentioning New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

On the other hand, they did announce games worth checking out such as a new Metroid game, some Mario games and the third-party exclusives were also positive with The Conduit and Dead Space: Extraction. Despite that, there are still wishes for other Nintendo franchises to have a new game such as F-Zero, Kid Icarus and Star Fox, even though it's confirmed there won't be a new Star Fox game anytime soon. Perhaps Nintendo paid far too much attention to Mario and although the upcoming games don't sound too bad, they can't rely on Mario all the time. They have other brilliant franchises, dammit! If they announced other franchises to have new games as well as what we've been given, Nintendo would have restored so much respect from many gamers.

In conclusion, Nintendo have made many bad moves over the last few years, but they're slowly kicking back with certain titles. Unfortunately, they'll still pay a ridiculous amount of attention to casual "gamers", but as long as they still care about the real gamers, even if it's just a teeny amount, there's still some light at the end of the tunnel and we can only hope things get better for Nintendo from now on.

No rant this week, so why not have fun with you all asking questions, hearing what I think of you all, allowing you all to say something random here, a list of people who rock/suck and where you can find me elsewhere on the internet?

Only those who have commented here are eligible to be on this list and those that have but aren't here, it's most likely that I don't know you well enough.

Users that rock

aldlv
BatDan
iscrulz
Odyssic
Ragnarokia
RohantheBarbarian
Sir-Nuts
TehSlapHappy
ThePigeonMaster

Users that suck

These people don't deserve a mention!

Me on other sites

Last.fm: NGBahamut
Steam: Bahamut7
Twitter: Bahamut7
YouTube: BahamutSeven

Previous rants:

Wii _____ Games
Wii games
Virtual Console
Nintendo Wii
Nintendo DSi
--------------------
So I've ranted on the Nintendo DSi and made four rants on the Nintendo Wii, you may think I've said enough on Nintendo's current state, but I'm not done just yet. Today, we'll be looking into the Nintendo DS, so this is the console itself, not the stupid ass features the DSi has. To start off, I DO NOT HATE THE NINTENDO DS!!! The DS is actually a good handheld console, but there are a few things that simply cannot be overlooked.

The main issue, the one no-one was happy to hear about, was Game Boy and Game Boy Color games not compatible with the DS. This sure pissed me off when there are GB and GBC games I still wish to play from time to time and I was hoping the DS would support all four platforms. As the successor of the Game Boy Advance, you'd have expected the DS to support them all. Too bad Nintendo went against that and said "It's not an actual Game Boy, so it only supports GBA games." Fuck that shit, it's still a Game Boy to me except with two screens and not having Game Boy in the name.

The lack of support for GB and GBC games on the DS was a terrible idea since if I wanted to play any games from those two platforms, I'll have to get out my original GBA, which is scratched to death and has no backlight and it's really awkward for me to play games on the old GBA now. Sure, the Game Boy Advance SP can play all these games, but really, I shouldn't have to get another console just to play games that should have been backward compatible on a newer console.

Now I'm fully aware the Nintendo 64 can't play NES or SNES games and the Super Nintendo can't play NES games, but when you consider the GBC was able to play GB games and the GBA was able to play both GB AND GBC games but the DS can't play GB or GBC games, that's just fucked up. Sure, it may have a GBA slot unlike a certain piece of shit called the DSi, but COME ON!

As for the Nintendo DS games library, it's actually better than the Wii and even when we now have the most sought for games such as Mario Kart DS, Metroid Prime Hunters (even though I think it's a piece of shit) and Pokemon Diamond/Pearl, there are still recent games to look into such as Chrono Trigger and GTA: Chinatown Wars games to look forward to such as Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver, so the DS has had good support with worthwhile games.

However, the DS also suffers a similar problem with the Wii: SHOVELWARE OVERLOAD! Seriously, the DS has so much shitty games out there it's unbelievable. There's loads of Disney games (e.g. High School Musical, Hannah Montana and similar crap), Deal or No Deal (yeah, it's on the fucking DS as well), cooking guides, "What's Cooking with Jamie Oliver" AND A MOTHERFUCKING CORONATION STREET GAME! Honestly, why fucking Jamie Oliver and Coronation Street? Why did the game developers think it would be a good idea to make games based on a douchebag/crappy soap opera that gives Britain a bad name?! These examples of worthless games are enough to tell you that there is so much shit on the DS.

One last thing about games for the DS, game developers need to realise that the console isn't cut out for first-person shooter games. Having to use the touchscreen to aim where you want to shoot as well as tapping on the screen/pressing a button isn't very pleasant. I know this very well after playing Metroid Prime Hunters where my hands ached after 15 minutes playing it. I won't be surprised if I get a similar problem if I ever tried another FPS game on the DS such as any Call of Duty game.

All in all, the Nintendo DS is a good console, but the fact that it can't play GB or GBC games still pisses me off even to this day. The games library is good with the exception of the shovelware overload and first-person shooter games should stay the hell away from this handheld as it will do no good to your hands. Despite that, it's good to see the DS is doing well.

Previous rants:

Wii games
Virtual Console
Nintendo Wii
Nintendo DSi
--------------------
You've all heard my thoughts on the Wii games library and now you're about to hear what I have to say about the Wii _____ games. These games are of course Wii Sports, Wii Fit and such.

To begin with, we had Wii Sports which was included with every Wii console and still is. This game was only fun for a few weeks. Now, it's just boring and I don't see the point in ever going back to this game ever again in my life. All this game has is five mini-games, which I just saw as giving a good feel of the Wii controllers. Now, is there any point to go back to this game sometime? Nope, nothing at all. However, I will give it one thing. I'd rather play this game again than touching any shitty ass EA Sports games with a 10-foot pole.

Next up, there's Wii Play. My sister and her boyfriend bought this game around the same time they got a Wii for their flat. I decided to give this game a go and see what it was like. It was amusing for the first time, but after that, no desire to play it ever again.

After that, we got Wii Fit. This game had lots of mini games and was only notable because of its use with the Wii Balance Board, which is required to play Wii Fit. While there are a bunch of mini games in Wii Fit, this suffers the same problem as the other two, THEY GET BORING VERY FAST!! Thus making the Wii Balance Board nothing but a dust collector and a waste of £70. Over the last four months, the only one that's even touched the board is my budgie Sky, no joke.

The fourth game is Wii Chess.

...

Really? They had to make a Chess game as well? Why on earth is this shit necessary? Not only if you wanted to play Chess with someone in real life you'd get a damn Chess set out, if you wanted to play Chess online, there are so many other alternatives to this. I remember playing Chess on the AOL software when I was still using that piece of shit years back. Now you're saying I can play Chess on the Wii? Give me a break, I'll get a Chess piece out or go to a Chess website (FOR FUCKING FREE!) if I want to play Chess, not getting a Wii game.

The fifth Wii series game is Wii Music and this is the game that a few people have anticipated for myself ranting on. Although I've never played this game and never will, what I wish to say is it's just another gimmick from Nintendo. As far as I'm concerned, all you're doing is waving and shaking your controller around to the music you're currently playing. There doesn't seem to be any reward to playing the tracks in this game, so what's the point? Just wave your controller around to the current music? Fuck that, Guitar Hero and Donkey Konga have proper peripherals to the respective games and not another gimmicky use of the Wiimote. At least with Guitar Hero, you felt like you were playing the game. Wii Music on the other hand, pfffffffft!

Oh, and here's anothing thing about Wii Music, my mum reckons it's pointless as "You just move your Wiimote around." and my mum is like one of those causal "gamers" you see on Nintendo's adverts. So yeah, you know Wii Music has got to suck so much balls when even the target audience hates it. What's even worse is that this was Nintendo's main announcement at their press conference in 2008. Looks like Nintendo kicked themselves in the nuts really hard then for promoting Wii Music that much. (To those who were eager to hear my thoughts on Wii Music, I hope I pleased you. If not, I apologise for the disappointment.)

Finally, there is one more of these games coming out called Wii Sports Resort, but this will be just like Wii Sports and the other games where it'll get boring really fast. Therefore, I won't be picking this up.

All in all, these Wii games are a joke. While they may seem fun at first, they just get boring really quick and there's absolutely no point in going back to them ever again once you're sick of them. To me, there is no purpose to playing any of these games now and I highly doubt I'll even go near any of them over the next 10 years, whereas games such as Final Fantasy VII, Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee and Exoddus and Crash Bandicoot, I'll still have the urge to play them again and again even in the next decade or two OR THREE no matter how many times I've beaten them.

Previous rants:

Virtual Console
Nintendo Wii
Nintendo DSi
--------------------
Welcome to the third part of the Wii rant. Previously, I mentioned Virtual Console, which had so much potential for someone like me, but Nintendo made huge mistakes on it and I'll only put faith back in it once they correct the mistakes they've made, most notably giving us games more frequently as well as fixing the PAL conversion bullshit.

Today, we'll be looking at the Wii's games library, and by games I don't mean whatever is playable on the Wii, I'm talking about games you buy from real stores, so no WiiWare and no Virtual Console, just Wii games!

Like I said before, there were games to be excited for to come out on the Wii, most especially Metroid Prime 3, Mario Kart Wii and of course, Super Smash Bros. Brawl. There was also Zelda: Twilight Princess to look forward to, but that was also available for the GameCube.

However, we now have all the major titles for the Wii, so what now? There's going to be a new Zelda game, new Kirby and new Punch Out (although I hate to admit it, but I've yet to play any Punch Out games). Nothing has been said about a new F-Zero game or a new Star Fox game and that just adds disappointment to the Wii. If we end up not having games from certain franchises for the Wii, the games library will feel like it's lacking a lot of things.

As for third-party exclusives WHICH ARE WORTH CHECKING OUT, there sadly isn't as much as there should be, but I guess some support is better than nothing, right? As weird as this may sound, the third-party company that's giving Wii the best support right now is actually Sega (I'm talking about games BESIDES Sonic) who are giving the console worthwhile games such as The Conduit and MadWorld! Yeah, it sounds bizarre when Nintendo and Sega were competing head-to-head back in the days, most especially the 16-bit era. Nothing bad about that, but really, the Wii needs more gaming companies that will give them good support and not just throwaway/shovelware crap, which EA and Activision make most of the time.

The main problem with the Wii's games library is how much crap there is. From the looks of things, Nintendo will accept almost everything, even if the game is utter shit. Rumour has it that Rockstar wanted to have at least one Grand Theft Auto game on the Wii and Nintendo went against the idea and said they never want to see any of those games on their consoles with the exception of handhelds. Really, if Rockstar want a GTA game on the Wii, just let them do so Nintendo. The fact that they allow a fucking Deal or No Deal Game on the Wii and not GTA is just embarrassing.

The one other big issue with the games library is the "New Play Control!" This is nothing but GameCube games being re-released to support Wii controls, which to me is a shameful cash cow from Nintendo. These games were released just last generation on Nintendo's previous console and they think it's necessary to release them again so soon. The GameCube controllers are fine as they are, they don't need to have Wii controls to be any better, even Metroid Prime 1 and 2. I mean, what was wrong with the GameCube controls?! Nothing! Nintendo need to learn the phrase, "If it ain't broken, don't fix it!"

The only other light the Wii has are remakes such as Klonoa and Silent Hill. While it's great to hear that the Wii will be getting those remakes, for actual Wii games, we really should be having more than this. Don't get me wrong, I look forward to these games, but remakes should be like bonuses for consoles rather than being one of the main highlights, so this and Sega's exclusives don't fully recover from the downfall of Wii's games library just yet.

All in all, the Wii was looking good with its exclusives, but now there's only a little amount of light for worthwhile games coming out for the Wii. We have some games from Sega, some remakes, a few more first-party exclusives, oh and Nintendo pointlessly re-releasing GameCube games on the Wii. It's a shame the Wii has this little amount of good games and the console truly deserves a lot more than this. And yes, I'm aware I haven't mentioned one particular series of exclusives for the Wii and they'll be covered next week, so stay tuned! My string of rants on the Wii isn't over just yet.

Today, my family left the house to go on holiday to Egypt for a week. As I really don't enjoy really places with very high temperature (with a few exceptions) and had a few bad experiences from last year's holiday, I had no desire to go anywhere this year. As a result, this house is all mine up until a week tomorrow.

My grandparents, uncle and aunt will still see me for some of the time, so I'm not completely lonely for the whole week. Plus, I've invited my friends to come around next Friday. All we'll probably do is play games on the Wii, PS2 or whatever, but as long as we have fun, that's all that matters. :)

My only other plans right now for this time is to spend one night watching the original Star Wars trilogy. I will be doing an all-nighter here, but for watching these films for the first time in my life, it's gotta be worth it. :D I'll let you all know how I'm doing with just myself at home most of the time as the days go on.

As for my video game rants, the upcoming one has been postponed to a week tomorrow for not only keeping this post on the front userpage, but after doing a little research on the Wii games library, I now have to revise a few things in the rant. This is fine as I stated at the start I'd be posting a rant every week or two.

One last thing, thanks to all who are taking part in my Alternative Character Battle. While there's only about 10 participants, what I have is better than no participants and the results so far are more impressive than what comes out of GameFAQs' arses.
-------------------------
Sunday 3rd May:

- Said goodbye to my family.
- Played Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2 and a bit of Left 4 Dead (the latter two with gfox)

Monday 4th May:

- Played more Half-Life 2 and tried to get back to playing Metroid Prime 3. Also tried Twilight Princess, but where I left off, I'm completely lost so I should start the game again when I'm up to it.

Tuesday 5th May:

- Had to go into town to sign-in for my jobseeker allowance for this fortnight at 9:30AM. Amazingly, I was able to wake up early enough without my parents' help.
- Played yet more Half-Life 2 and a bit of Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee on PC. First try on the PC port, despite it running faster than the PS1 port, I prefer playing it on the Playstation.

Wednesday 6th May:

- Level up on Newgrounds, yay.
- Saw my friends outside, so I had some company for that day. :)

Thursday 7th May:

- More taking care of things.
- Played more Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee and Half-Life 2. Almost at the end of Half-Life 2 now.

Friday 8th May:

- Went out to town again to visit someone to do with job advising, but was unfortunately late. :( Bad luck for this time.
- My friends came over to my house. We played Hogs of War, Mario Kart Wii, Micro Machines V3, Micro Maniacs, SSBB and Worms original. Had a great time playing all these games. The only problem we came across was the multitaps not working with the slim PS2 very well. My friend claimed his multitap worked on his fat PS2. Perhaps the PS1 multitaps aren't ideal for the slim PS2.

Saturday 9th May:

- Watched Star Wars: A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back for the first time in my life (NOTE: I started watching them after midnight for that day, so it counts as Saturday).
- Saw my friends in town, so I had more company for that day.
- Played more Half-Life 2, getting closer and closer now. :)

Sunday 10th May:

- Watched Star Wars: Return of the Jedi and is my favourite out of the three.
- Played more Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee and Half-Life 2.

Monday 11th May:

- Parents coming home soon (00:11 as I'm writing this).
- They're back! (01:02)

Previous rants:

Nintendo Wii
Nintendo DSi
--------------------
***** BEFORE I BEGIN *****

1. I don't condone people downloading ROMs from the internet, but I don't blame those who get ROMs because the game they're after is too rare, wasn't available in their region or was affected by PAL conversion issues.

2. I'm fully aware that there are other games available for Virtual Console besides Nintendo and Sega consoles, but as a Nintendo console, I'm more focused on Nintendo's games/consoles.

3. This rant contains more rage than the previous two, so expect to read quite a lot of CAPS LOCK when I talk about PAL conversion.

4. Completely unrelated to the rant, but if you're interested, have a look at my Alternative Character Battle, held on my alt account.

And now for the rant.

Welcome to the second part of the Wii rant. Previously, I commented on how ridiculous the price of a Wiimote-nunchuck combination is, the pointless features the console has, the small ass hard drive space and a few others about the Wii itself and some of the accessories. The second part of the Wii rant will be on Virtual Console. While I said I'd be ranting on WiiWare as well, I've decided to let that wait until I talk about the flaws in downloadable games in general.

Like I said previously, Virtual Console is (or maybe I should say was in some cases) a great opportunity for myself and other gamers to pick up old games we missed out on. Although there were already other ways to catch-up on old games such as NES re-releases on the GBA, Final Fantasy ports on PS1 and GBA, etc., Virtual Console have games that haven't had a re-release before such as Super Metroid, which was a game I was dying to play ever since I got into the Metroid franchise.

Initially, I (and perhaps others) thought there'd be most, if not, all the titles from NES, SNES and N64 as soon as the console was launched. Too bad Nintendo decided to take another path by releasing 3 - 5 games every week and then every fortnight when WiiWare was launched. While it made it exciting to find out which would be the next game to be released on Virtual Console, it's now coming to the point where they're slowing down and doing nothing but testing people's patience.

Sure, they've released most of the most well known titles from NES and SNES and some of N64, but the keywords here are most and some, not all. This means we've yet to get games like Contra, Battletoads, Earthbound, GoldenEye, Star Fox and more and it's beginning to piss people off, especially myself. Besides agreements on releasing games and shit, I cannot see why Nintendo can't release the majority of the previous generation games right away.

Contra, although this was re-released as a bonus content in Contra 4 for the DS, I'd rather have this on Virtual Console as 2-player mode wouldn't work well on the DS. Seriously, if you want to play Contra with someone, would you really want to share the console with someone in order to play it? Wouldn't you prefer to play it on Virtual Console instead where you'd have a bigger screen as well as holding your own controller?

Earthbound, this one has been debated about A LOT on the internet. There could be a whole rant on why not releasing Earthbound on Virtual Console is bullshit, but to keep it short, would Nintendo rather have people downloading the ROM of it or paying 800 Nintendo points for the game on Virtual Console? The only other option would be to spend over $75 on the original SNES cartridge, but unless there's a toploader for the SNES, the Europeans/Australians wouldn't be able to play this game on their console.

Star Fox, a well known franchise and since Star Fox 64 is on VC, why not release the first of the series? After playing Star Fox 64, I would love to play the original game. It's very surprising that this game has yet to be released on Virtual Console.

Battletoads and GoldenEye, although they were developed by Rare who are now owned by Microsoft, it's still a wonder why there isn't any actual word on them being released on Virtual Console. Supposedly, Nintendo have the right to release anything from their previous consoles on Virtual Console, no matter if a game company is now part of Sony or Microsoft. If that's the case, you wonder what's holding them up. They've released the Donkey Kong Country games, so shouldn't they have thought of releasing other Rareware games by now, especially GoldenEye which is highly ranked on most game sites.

I won't go on asking why each and every NES/SNES/N64 game isn't released on Virtual Console yet, but I will say that it's ridiculous how we've got to wait so long for certain games to come out or may not even see certain games coming out to give gamers such as myself a chance to catch-up on what we've missed on. Sure, there's always the option to get the actual consoles and the game cartridges, but:

1. As someone who missed out on the NES, SNES and N64, I thought it was convenient to catch-up on all the must-play games with just the one console, the Wii.

2. Getting the consoles and all the must-have games is going to cost so much money, especially when there's many games that are very rare nowadays.

There is one other major problem with Virtual Console and that's excluding the hard drive space problem. This is the fact that PAL gamers are FUCKED IN THE ASS for most VC games. Why so, you may ask? The majority of pre-N64 games are forced to run on 50Hz rather than 60Hz. Therefore, the games run on a slower frame rate and the music is slower as well. Mega Man 2 is a brilliant example. Compare the PAL version to NTSC. This game has some of the finest music in video game industry, but was butchered to death by the PAL conversion and IT'S COMPLETE AND UTTER BULLSHIT!

You're saying that a problem which occurred to PAL users only in the 80's is still happening on a console which was launched in 2006?! You'd expect them to fix the issue, especially when you can play the games from Sonic Mega Collection and such in 60Hz, but it seems they didn't care/try one fucking bit. The sad thing is, even the Sonic games from Virtual Console run slower, but from a compilation game, it runs at the right refresh rate. You know what? NINTENDO HAVE NO FUCKING EXCUSE AS TO WHY THESE GAMES CAN'T RUN ON 60HZ FOR PAL USERS!!!

This is yet another reason why people may resort to playing these games on an emulator rather than buying them from Virtual Console. This is also why I've been reluctant to buying any other pre-N64 game from the store. As a matter of fact, besides the N64 titles Star Fox 64 and F-Zero X, the last old games I bought from there were Mega Man 2 and Super Metroid together last summer. I'd be willing to buy more games from Virtual Console if Nintendo solved this issue, but from the looks of it, they don't seem to give a shit at all.

All in all, Virtual Console had so much potential for those who missed out on previous game consoles, but Nintendo completely ruined it by taking far too long to release certain games and making some games a nightmare to play thanks to PAL conversion bullshit which shouldn't have even happened in the first place. These two factors do nothing but disappoint gamers and most likely encourage them to get emulators instead of purchasing the games from their store. If Nintendo want more people to buy games from their store, they really need to release old games more frequently as well as solving the PAL issues for the applicable games.

Worst of all, I haven't even gone on about the actual Wii games. Yep, a whole rant on the Wii's game library is coming up next.

Previous rants:

Nintendo DSi
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***** READ THE FIRST PARAGRAPH BEFORE CRYING TO ME ABOUT RANTING ON THE WII *****

Before I begin my rant, let me say that I don't entirely hate the Wii, but there are many problems with the consoles. I am not a fanboy of any console, so don't even bother screaming "XBOX 360/PS3 FANBOY!" as the only console out of the current generation that I own is actually the Wii, although I plan to get a PS3 sometime this year. Anyway...

In the beginning, I was hyped for the Wii and so were many others. The Wii Remote was a great idea from Nintendo and the ability to download older games from the Wii Shop was also great. Well, to those who missed out on previous generations, that is. I unfortunately never owned a NES, SNES or even a N64 (though I almost considered it, but wanted a PS1 instead) and when I heard the Wii would allow people to download games from those consoles as well as others, I was really excited as I would finally have the chance to play games such as Mega Man 2 and Super Metroid, which are considered as classics by many.

Of course, the major titles such as Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Metroid Prime 3 were to be excited for as well, most especially how they would go with the Wii Remote. The idea of trying to get different kind of people into gaming wasn't such a bad idea back then since Nintendo wanted to get more people into gaming. So as time went on and more information on the Wii were revealed, I was more excited about the console and couldn't wait to get the console. However, things went wrong as soon as the console was released.

When the Wii was launched, there was a huge shortage of stock (most especially in the UK) of the console for reasons I'm not aware of, but I'm pretty sure Nintendo can't come up with any good excuses, especially when they released it near fucking Christmas when millions were wanting to get it. Most were unable to get a Wii that Christmas and either had to wait until they were back in stock or get something else such as the DS or even a PS3 or Xbox 360, thus giving Nintendo's competitors an advantage, which is what competitive companies should be avoiding at all costs.

What's more, when it was Christmas 2007, there were even more stock problems and the shops were fully stocked with Wiis that summer. There was even more struggle to get hands on a Wii and once again, people were unlucky enough to miss out on getting a Wii for the second time running. Fortunately, it's now easy to get a Wii, but having such shortage of stock for both Christmasses is a big fuck up by Nintendo.

As for the prices, the Nintendo Wii itself is at a decent price, which is £180. Although the console isn't technically as powerful as the Xbox 360 and PS3, seeing it at a price lower than its competitors when it was launched was good to know. Sadly, if you're wanting to get all the accessories you want, prepare to take out a lot of money out of your wallet as the Wii Remote with the nunchuck is £40 each and that's a ridiculous price for a controller. No-one should have to spend so much money for controllers when they've paid at least £150 for the console itself already.

The controllers have one huge problem and that's being run on AA batteries. No-one should have to keep buying AA batteries or buying special rechargers for these controllers, especially when you may have four of them. Why can't it be nice and simple by having USB rechargers like the PS3 does? This would take away the purpose of purchasing batteries or another accessory for the console.

The other problem with the Wii controllers is how most game developers handle the controls with the Wiimote. While some games like Mario Kart Wii do a great job with it, others have done terrible. Some set out the controls for their games so bad it feels like they didn't even think for one second "You know, these controls don't feel right. Should we revise the controls for this game?" The game developers that don't seem to test the controllers for the Wii really should be more careful with how they handle the Wiimote controls as making them feel awkward to use is only going to put people off from playing their games.

The Nintendo Wii came with such pointless features such as the News channel, Weather channel and Photo Channel. Honestly, what were they thinking with these ideas? They have absolutely nothing to do with gaming and the space they wasted on this crap should have been saved for something that would have benefited the games. If someone with common sense wanted to check on the latest news/weather forecast, they'd read the newspaper, watch the news on TV or have a look on news websites such as BBC.co.uk. The Photo Channel is nothing but a shitty image editor which has a little amount of things to do. You're much better off saving that time by editing pictures on a GOOD image editor such as Photoshop or GIMP.

The main issue about the Wii not being technically as powerful as the PS3 or 360 is how some games have to be stripped down in graphics or even gameplay just so it can be on the Wii. One example is what Tomb Raider Underworld on the Wii is like compared to the PC, PS3 and 360 ports. On the Wii version of that game, the graphics and gameplay was actually different to the other ports. Although I've yet to come across any other games that have had these sort of problems, I'm sure there are some out there that have had similar issues.

Another big problem with the Wii is how small the hard drive space is. Whoever bought a lot of stuff from Virtual Console/Wii Ware would have to delete stuff from the Wii to make space and if they wanted to play it again, they'd have to download the game AGAIN! The primary storage of the Wii is only 512 MB and that's at least 40x smaller than the hard drive space both the PS3 and 360 have. Having to redownload games is just a pain in the ass, especially when you're very limited on hard drive space. Oh, and SD cards, forget them, they're pretty much useless for downloaded games from the Wii.

According to a friend of mine, backing up games on an SD card incase your Wii console breaks and needs replacing or needs to be resetted does jack shit. He had a Freeloader to use for two games, but when he had to download an update, he was no longer able to use it and had to reset. Unfortunately for him, resetting the Wii didn't remove the update and what's worse, he wasn't able to put his downloaded games back on the Wii. This brings up a very good question, "What's the point in backing up games incase your Wii breaks or anything when you'll only find out that copying them back into the console doesn't fucking work?!" That's right, if my friend wanted to play the games he downloaded, he would have to pay for them AGAIN! I'd sure as hell be frustrated if my Wii broke and I had to buy all my games again.* This sort of bullshit only encourages people to download ROMs from the internet.

All in all, the Wii had great potential and it has some good uses, but it's been brought down by ridiculous prices for the accessories, pointless features, poorly set out controls for most games, small hard drive, terrible backup support for downloaded games and this is what someone gets after going through all the trouble to get his/her hands on the console. There's still more to rant on the Nintendo Wii, so this is to be concluded over the next week or two.

* The WiiWare/Virtual Console games I've downloaded are:

Ecco the Dolphin
F-Zero X
Mega Man 2
Mega Man 9
Star Fox 64
Super Mario Bros. 3
Super Mario World
Super Metroid

That's 6400 Wii Points worth, which is around £45 (excluding DLC).