hijinx

Other MMOs? Phantasy Star isn't a proper MMO, but it's not a huge mistake to think of it as one. But PSZ is certainly not an MMO. There are no lobbies, so you only see up to 3 other people at a time. That's not massive.

The DS can't even handle MMOs, in principle. With just over 2000 triangles onscreen at a time, you can't render more than a few characters. You could switch to sprites, but WiFi and CPU speed become bottlenecks. Plus sprites take up more RAM than 3D models.

Maybe on the DSi (4x RAM, 2xCPU and better WiFi), but you're still stuck with sprites (or _really_ low poly models.)

It'd be really nice to see some specific dates in these posts.

it's a big mystery. maybe they invested all of their mojo in PSZ and everything else suffered as a result?

I'm not sure Sonic Team really exists anymore. I'm beginning to think the PS team is kept separate from everything else.

About a month before the lite was announced, I commented to a friend that I'd buy one if they made them smaller. Woohoo. I put it off until I found out about DSFrotz. I still wouldn't have one if it weren't for homebrew (and I'd be missing out on the great Castlevanias, too. I *still* want a SotN port.)

Actually, they knew the pitfalls early on and considered not giving us Apollo Justice at all. I was hesitant at first, but by the end of it I loved the game just about as much as the ones with Phoenix.

There wasn't a lesson to be learned: "Japan finds these changes more acceptable than we do," is common knowledge to their developers/publishers.

And the step ladder joke spans a few games.

I'd say there are quite a few 3D games on the DS, but honestly it can't do much more than what we've seen. The polygon limit is very small, and the shading options are 'off', 'flat', 'gross' and 'toon'. Predictably the texture RAM is minimal too. (Soma Bringer actually looks better than I thought possible, but maybe they're using different LoD models for different zoom levels.)

Don't forget the Final Fantasy remakes and Phantasy Star Zero, those are 3D games.

It's hard to pay much money for an adventure game. They usually are fairly short (though there used to be some longish ones.) The replay value is a problem, too. I kind of think that in the current era they should all be $5 downloads (well $10-$15 for some of them.)

Write the story well, keep production cost low and be smart with advertising, and produce quite a few. People who like adventure games like adventure games, so selling a lot of cheap games is easier than selling a single expensive one.

Phoenix Wright is an exception. I think Capcom did the best they could. The length is quite satisfying, but I think they should move to a DLC model for the DSi. Otherwise I don't think we'll see much of it in this regoin.

I wish Sierra's studios would port all of their old adventures to DS. They'd fit well, and you could stick half a dozen on a cart and no one would feel bad spending $40 on it. I'm not sure it's even possible for them to organize it though--you'd think they'd already be all over the DS if they could have gotten the old materials together.

@chibi_wings

Professor Layton isn't developed by Nintendo, and afaik, the J version isn't finished.

Similar story with Soma Bringer, (except the J version is done) but NoA hadn't heard of it until Wired brought it up in an interview.

Every time a new CV game comes out people mention the difficulty. They're not really getting harder though--the games just don't seem as hard in retrospect. Every time I pick one up, I find myself remarking at the difficulty, but when I really give it some thought, OoE doesn't even have as many seemingly unfair boss fights as the previous DS titles. The sense of accomplishment is a part of the fun though, and I really feel like CV games of late are just hard enough (and could stand to be harder... not that I'm asking for it.)

OoE is great. It's not really all that different in formula from the other non-belmont ones. The only real difference is the particular metaphor used to explain the various attack buttons. I still find DoS to be the best of the DS titles, even if this one has (even more so) stunning art. They all have fantastic art (and I wish they'd port SotN.) It's a real shame about the writing in PoR though.

Finally, there's no reason for 2D to die. Not all good gameplay paradigms fit within a 3D model... we've all seen our fair share of games ruined by the 3D craze in the Saturn/PSX era. CV's particular formula is something I'd buy into for the rest of my life (assuming they keep the quality up)... you just can't do that in 3D. (Not that 3D CV has to be bad...)

I hope they're redoing the soundtrack--if that clip on amazon is any indication, I think I could have done a better job personally.