PSA: Nintendo's international press event schedules [update 2]

The Sega Genesis had a higher resolution than the SNES until much latter when the SNES cartridges came with better chips. I think for the most part, Sega Genesis was running in 320x200 and SNES was 256x224 but with more colors.

C'mon launch date and pricing.

#5: Because forcing the developers to work using a gimped chip when they have a superior one makes perfect sense.

Do you have an argument to make that isn't based on lack of evidence? Just curious.

#41: Because you don't use basic grammar or make cohesive points. Punctuation and capital letters are your friends.

WHAT THE HELL WHO CARES IT IS JUST COMMENT #51

Let me sum up the sentiment of the entire Nintendo (and gaming) loving community:

Announce the damn crap already!!!

i am convinced that we will never know the launch date or price...even after we all have one. :|

Gabriel,
You missed a few lines of the speech...

*Iwata takes the stage*

"Hello, everyone, thank you for attending this Nintendo event. It's out great pleasure to announce our new blogger, Robert Summa, who will be leading this discussion."

*Rob takes the stage

"I'd like to say that the IBM Broadway chip production is well underway, no delays.
Good evening."

Genius!

zOMG!!11! i r00td thruogh ninty's sUper mario dumpster and found a SECRET CONFERENCE MEMO:

Iwata will go on stage and announce:
"Each customer will have to climb up a set of stairs, then jump off and grab a flagpole.
The higher you grab onto the flagpole, the cheaper the Wii costs.
And, if you manage to jump over the flagpole, you will get a free copy of Wii Sports.
Nintendo is announcing the sales of 'Mario Moon shoes' that allow you to jump like mario.
Nintendo expects to ship 2 million units of 'Moon shoes' by the end of 2006.

This is the final secret! You heard it here first!!
XD

thanks for the fixed times the press conference will be here around 5pm san francisco time this will be the biggiest nintendo event yet this year after post e3!!

I'm so freakin psyched about this.

Takes me back to when I used to get excited by video games again. That is the mark of a great system, when it makes you feel like a kid again.

And like it!

@ #1

I'm going to invent a time machine, come back to today, take myself to tomorrow, and skip this all this waiting...

"The SNES had better graphics capabilities than the Genesis, and it was the market leader."

The point isn't that the console with less-powerful graphics always wins. The point is that there is no correlation between advanced graphics abilities and market dominance.

It's the games. Whichever console gets the support of the most top 3rd-party developers is going to flourish.

Just a few more hours, a few more hours, a few more hours, a few more hours...

Aw, man. I just peed.

1am for me. Can't wait tehe. I just want a release date I don't care about the graphics or anything like that DS resurrected my love affair with Nintendo and the Wii is gonna consumate it :P

I remember both my SNES and Genesis. I played the SNES more because I liked a lot of the games more, I loved Earthbound. That game got me into RPGs and now I love so many kinds of RPGs. Although my SNES did not have Sonic series, and Sonic Spinball. That was my favorite game on the Genesis Sonic Spinball.

I hope to get some good info from this event. I'd love to see Price, Date, Bundles, Game Lists, Launch title List. All Offical too from nintendo to us. I want some lists set in stone.

Someone post or link to the Japanese press coverage, translated. Even if the event has the "in Japan" disclaimer, we would know that the upcoming US version would assumedly contain the same bits of info (price, date, launch games) as is mentioned there...this evening, 24 hours before the "US" press event.

YES! THE MEGATON IS TONIGHT!

"How crazy would it be if they just started selling them tomorrow morning at the Nintendo World Store in NY, with them showing up accross America in stores over the next two shipping days......"

You mean like Sega did with the Saturn? Yeah, that worked out great.

"The SNES had better graphics capabilities than the Genesis, and it was the market leader."

The first part of this is a myth and the second is only half true.

The SNES had the capability to display more sprites and more colors at once. But it was slow. "Blast processing" on the Genesis may have been marketing-speak, but it was accurate inasmuch as the Genesis was a *lot* faster than the SNES. You could see it in any sports game that was ported to both systems. Even fighting games ran smoother on the Genesis. A game like Sonic the Hedgehog probably really wouldn't have been possible on the SNES, just as Sega said at the time (various people have gotten hacky versions of Sonic running on emulated SNES hardware since, but they don't run that well and they're not doing all the things the Genesis Sonics did).

As for being the market leader, the SNES took about four years to wrest that title away from Sega, and only then because Sega abandoned the 16 bit market in favor of the Saturn. In the end, the difference in final numbers is pretty dramatically in favor of Nintendo, but that wasn't the case through most of the 16 bit era. In fact, you could argue that about half of the SNES's sales were after the 16 bit era was over. (Whether or not this actually matters is another issue, but Nintendo continued selling the SNES/Super Famicom long after Sega and Sony had released 32 bit systems, and even after Nintendo themselves released the N64).

What's my point? I guess I have a couple. The first is that history can be twisted any number of ways to suit any argument, but to get close to the real truth, you have to look back at history *as it happened*. Not as a cumulative thing. The second point is that graphics capabilities can be measured any number of ways, and ultimately they don't seem to matter much - in any given era, the most powerful machine may or may not do better than its competitors. There are many other factors at play. But it certainly *is* a factor to consider - you can't say it doesn't matter at all either. But it's just another pro or con in relation to the competition, no more or less weight than price, or marketing effectiveness, or game selection, or whatever.

I am almost thirty years old and feel like a kid again.

Thank you Nintendo!

It will be called the Revolution again.

To John Lucas, #25,
Great youtube video of the Wii line building up. I saw that very line, but I was one of the first couple hundred people in line because of being media, lol. I played Wii at E3 (close to 20 of its games), and really enjoyed the system quite a bit. I think that the world's in for a real treat come this (whenever Nintendo launches it).
Paul Gale
1up.com

Comment #26 is the funniest thing I've read today! Bravo.

Secondly, I predict that the Nintendo press conference will proceed as follows:

*Iwata walks out with a Krazy Ken mask. He hauls with him a huge silver grill with "PayStation 3" printed on the side in the Spiderman font*

Iwata: I be's cookin' up BIG FUN! Dump your money into a PayStation 3! The next generation starts when we say it does!

Sony drones in audience: It starts when Krazy Ken says it does.....

Iwata: Call me George Foreman 'cause I'm sellin' everybody grillz.

*At this point, Miyamoto comes running in dressed as Mario and barrels into Iwata, destroying the PayStation 3*

Miyamoto: Wiiiiiiiiii-hee! IT'S-A ME, MARIO!!!! *throws a Wii-mote into Iwata's eye, a la Nacho Libre*

*Reggie then walks out dressed in a suit and looking very serious*

Reggie: I think we've made our point. Thanks for attending, everyone.

Journalist: *standing up abruptly* ... but Reggie, what about the Wii release date and price?

Reggie: ... oh, that. Yes, I'll take the names of everyone who wants this information and get back to you. Repeat: I WILL TAKE YOUR NAME if you want this information.

Journalist: ... *slowly sits back down*

Man this is crazy exciting I haven't been this psyched about a new game system in years. I think it was the Ultra 64. I had mine reserved and got it on launch day but couldn't play it til Christmas.. man those were the days. Or even better the excitement of finally playing Super Mario 2... Nintendo please don't kill my childhood memories with a sad release. Even my wife looks forward to finally wanting to play video games again.

~Always been a Big N fanboy, but man that Dreamcast did rock. RIP

Who's doing live coverage of the NYC event?
I need my information to be *instant*!

And Joystiq, even if you're not doing live text-based coverage, I expect you to have *someone* in attendance. I don't want to see a [via "X"] under your post tomorrow. That would be weak, considering everyone and their grandmother has received an invite to this thing.

My "perfect" scenario for tomorrow's event would be a little something like this:

"Welcome, everyone. Thank you for coming. Is cringer8 in the audience? [pause] Has anyone seen cringer8? [pause] Well, even though he's not here, we would like to announce that he has won our super secret contest that even *we* didn't know about. The prize is an exhorbant paycheck every week for the rest of his life! Now he'll have all the time in the world to play our great systems. Thank you cringer8 for being so damn 'you.' Now that that's out of the way, we can move on … to Europe. Good night everyone!"

Mmmmmmmm....money.

Why they would say "good night" at nine in the morning is anyone's guess. What buffoons.

Peter Davis

Nope, EBGames/Gamestop don't want what happened with the Xbox 360 to happen again, so they aren't letting us pre-order until they have numbers.

Best VG day ever: when Software Etc. (those were the days) started selling the preordered N64's five days before the launch date. Today, I can't even preorder it yet on my favorite retailer (not Lik-Sung, though I'm tempted).

:Note--NOT a guerilla marketer: :)

@ jay

I agree 100 perecent. When I saw MArio Strikers Wii I looked at the 3D crowd and said "holy @#$^ that's all rendered and running at a smooth clip with no slowdown. Awesome!"

Also, if you look at Tony Hawks Downhill Jam check out the resolution, the textures and the draw distance...all pretty good and running at a smooth framerate.

@ Zsavior,

great post. Let me a add a bit. Nintendo has downplayed the power of the gamecube and the DS. Gamecube gave us RE4 and Metroid Prime. These titles rivaled the quality of Xbox games without question. Even RE1 remake has models that are nearly CG quality showing that the Gamecube is a powerful piece of gear. Zelda Windwaker has the best cell shaded graphics I've ever seen. It could be a saturday morning animation. Rogue Leaders opening sequenced was compared to the actually scene of the Approaching battle with the Death Satr and rumors circulated for weeks that Factor 5 used ILM models for the game. THAT'S quality graphics.

People that complain about the Gamecube's graphic ability have short memories and are narrowminded. It's proved time and again that it could rival the Xbox with less tech under the hood.

Like I mentioned many months ago when the Wii/360/PS3 debates started....how can a Wii Resident Evil that looks twice as good as RE4 be a bad thing? How can a Metroid Prime that looks twice as good as the original Prime be bad? I'm not complaining. I have $140 in credit at EB right now. If preorders start tomorrow for Wii then I will reserve it. I believe Wii will be a capable console.

@ jeff

The Genesis had a faster processor but that's about it in comparing it to the SNES.

The SNES did display more colors on screen, had a dedicated sound chip (made by sony no less) and allowed for hardware scaling and rotation. As far as "blast processing" goes, there were games on the SNES that ran at a good clip without the additional MHZ that the Genesis sported. Remember Contra 3 the Alien Wars? there are stages in that game alone that display the SNES's ability to run at a good speed. Some games did run better on the Genesis though but who can argue the quality of FFIII, Actraiser, SuperCastlevania 4 with the help of the hardware the SNES had that the Genesis didn't.

The Motorola processor in the Genesis was also the favorite of Commodore Amiga Engineers during the Amiga's hayday. The Amiga could display 4096 colors, animate and provide great sound quality at a time when the Mac and PC couldn't even come close, all thanks in part to the Motorola.

At any rate, the SNES was able to provide games with similar performance as the Genesis once the hardware was pushed just as the Genesis was able to improve quality for the same reasons. I'd still take the Snes over the Genesis though.

SNES has one of the greatest libraries in gaming history.

Oh no not again!


Well I learned my lesson the last time. I will be damned if I am going to stay up all the way till 5PM just to see an article about how they shipped CPU cooling fans.

How about some real news Joystiq. You know like when the Wii will ship and the price. Or toasters cause toasters are always good. Or about that LaserDisc game system that went defeunct because it cost too much and Laser disc was untested format!

i live in the united states. near chicago, il. so i am in the central time zone. i do not understand when i will be able to hear about the japanese press conference details. can anyone clarify when that will be for me?

@79 It's about 7pm for you. Tonight.

Yeah, the Genny had a higher resolution, true (320x224), but it was not nearly capable of some of the graphical tricks that the SNES was. Mode 7 was pretty slick, but it's the color palette that pushed it over the top. And the sound was WAAAY better. Except for Streets of Rage. That had a great soundtrack. :)

Seriously, I doubt the Genesis could have pulled off Chrono Trigger or Super Mario RPG, but we'll likely never know. Vectorman looked quite good, as did Phantasy Star 4.

Most games for the SNES, by the way, didn't use the maximum resolution available. The SNES was technically capable of 512x448, but it was usually reserved for random games' menu screens (like Seiken Densetsu 3). That 3.58 Mhz chip just could push out that high a resolution with any speed.

Sarge out.

I hope they annouce the date and price tonight and maybe annouce a how many virtual console games will be available at launch. I also hope the Donkey Kong Country games for SNES make it to the virtual console and they should afterall Donkey kong is a license nintendo owns.

There is one reason SNES won the 16-bit war after all:
Street Fighter II.

@dachuk

I remember when Street Fighter 2 was announced for the SNES and the first screens broke for it. People went nuts because it looked close to the arcade version. Genesis may have been ahead in the sales in the US but SNES dominated in Japan. It wasn't even funny how badly the Mega Drive (Genesis) was beaten in JApan.

Also, does anyone remember Axelay by Konami? Awesome of which we;ve never seen anything like it on Genesis. But Genesis had M.U.S.H.A which is one of the greatest shooters of the era. Do I even have to mention Secret of Mana? But Genesis did have Phantasy Star 2. I'm still kinda pissed that Palma was destroyed...even after all of these years.

TMNT Turtles in time was hot on SNES...Genesis...well....
Mortal Combat was all Genesis though until MK2 came out.

When it was all said and done, Sega had no answers for Donkey Kong Country,
Star Fox, Yoshi's Island, Super MArio RPG, Zelda, Super Metroid and Super MArio World.

sorry dacuk for getting your name wrong

I know this has been said before, but I'm going to say it again. The greatness of a certain system in a certain gen has always been about the games. And the greatness of games is dependent on a lot of factors.
Funness, graphics, music, multiplayer, replay value, availablity, price, the stories, the characters, and other things. While I'm excited (very) to find out when this thing will be launched the real excitement will be playing the games and determining if they are great. I'm truly hoping for another SNES type sucess (for they did win that gen "because of great games") but only time will tell.

@ #59 lol Calvin and Hobbes

And yes, each press conference will most likely only give details for that region, but given that its a 90% chance of a global launch, only the Price will be a mystery after 8 pm EDT

And i think it would be funny if this were another LGC and they just unveiled Kid Icarus and Mario Kart Wii, there would be riots...

yay looting!

After reading through some of the rumors posted here and in other places, I must say I'm impressed at how close some of them are to the truth. I'm currently on my way to New York for Nintendo's conference, but now is a perfect time to shed a little light on the information you will have by the end of the week.

Many people have been letdown by Nintendo's previous conferences. Hopes were high, only to be brought down hard by the lack of information. The same won't be said of these conferences. This week, and for the rest of the month in fact, gamers will finally see the entire next gen picture Nintendo has in store.

I'll save some of the more...angelic revalations of the conferences unspoiled, but offering up a little insight on other issues certainly won't hurt:

Budget Bundle:

Wii system, one Wii remote w/nunchuck attatchment=$179.99

Family Bundle:

Wii system, two Wii remotes w/nunchuck attatchments, one Virtual Console download credit, Wii Sports pack in=$229.99

-Launch Date: November 5th
-Metroid Prime 3 delayed (Feb 2007)
-Wii DJ announced (iTunes supported)
-nSpace FPS announced
-Wii Smimming included in Wii Sports
-Harry Potter Wii exclusive launch title (EA)

Uhh, right #88, and your so much more beliveable then the rest of the people who post saying that they know for sure... right.

Okay, maybe I'm just a stupid chick, but where can I find the live coverage of the press event? I've looked at all my usual spots, and nothing. Japan is supposed to start any minute, right? Am I completely wrong?

I'm starting to get a little nervous here...

Actualy, it should have started by now...

"90. Okay, maybe I'm just a stupid chick, but where can I find the live coverage of the press event? I've looked at all my usual spots, and nothing. Japan is supposed to start any minute, right? Am I completely wrong?

I'm starting to get a little nervous here..."
-----------------------------------------------------

I'm going to be here:

http://gonintendo.com/irc

apparently even though it's not a feed, they are going to be updating throughout the conference.

k supposedly its not till 9:00

OMG, they just announced it wii drops October 30th!

FOR REAL!

dude it hasn't even started yet.

The conference they're quoting from was in June. The real Nintendo Wii press conference isn't until Friday. Someone's either snowing you or not realizing what they're seeing.

10 pacific, rats. time to get some AP US-hist done, then find a live coverage somewhere... anyone got a spot (preferably translated)? and where do i go for the us live coverage? that's at 6 pacific i believe, yeah?
japanese release date prediction: october 31 (if it is a universal release, otherwise, the 13th). based on nothing more than holloween is a tuesday, and no one would forget- all of a sudden, everyone's holloween party becomes: stay up all night, get a wii, clean house, holloween party at the house playin' wii all night. this is hell for the educators by the way.
by the way, for sake of curiousity only (no flames here guys, just friendly poll. we're all bonded by the fraturnity of nintendo anyway, why bicker?)- what is the spiritual nature of those reading? deist? agnostic? athiestic? christian? budist? other? point being: watchin' nintendo's progress, i see that there must be a god. res ipsa loquitor- my statement stands on its own.

fuk. 10 oclock pacific? damn

We are tracking this as it develops too, our japanese translation is pretty good, there are a lot of overlaps, but looks like this stuff is the real deal!

http://www.mywii.com.au/NewsDetail.aspx?id=16