israfel

Atdt1991,

Since CackNBallz already addressed the battery and friends WiiConnect24 issue, I'll stick to your mention of the manual. You are 100% right. The manual for Metroid 3 is complete crap and serves only as a glossy marketing tool for a product that you only see once you've purchased the game. How nuts is that? That said though, manuals are a premium item these days.

You don't *get* a good manual for games anymore, you have to *buy* it as a strategy guide. Why? Because not everyone reads manuals, so they sell them to people who want them. It's an extra now. And, cynic that I am, if they make the odd bits of a game indecipherable, it's just more incentive for you to buy the strategy guide for $20. I'm fine with that practice though, but this manual goes too far.

The manual for Metroid only has the most cursory mention of some of the basic features/buttons for Metroid and doesn't even describe the entire menu system! At least document it; I may not need a complete description of every item in the menu, but at least give me a tree to find out that you've hidden the WiiConnect 24 feature under Extras, for pete's sake.

The Metroid manual's English portion is only 12 pages long. Of those 12 pages, only 9 are of content interesting to a user. And those 9 pages have triple paragraph spacing in FULL CAPS (in a crappy font as further insult). Who the HELL TALKS/WRITE IN ALL CAPS?! THAT'S STUPID. STUPID. STUPID.

The screenshots in the manual are also way too dark to make them really useful. Someone needs to open up PhotoShop next time and turn the brightness up a bit. Just a lazy oversight.

I love Metroid 3. I give the game an A- (no multiplayer). The manual for Metroid 3 gets a C-.

Do you think I should copy this post into my cover letter when I apply for a job at Nintendo next time?

Lost is my favorite show on TV currently.

If they hadn't turned things around this season it would have been Battlestar Galactica, but, so far, Lost is really good.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms (NES) is an all-time classic! My friends and I, as warlordish kids, would hang out for days at a time playing just one game of RTK. It was Risk for the NES. Trading rice and strategizing on whom to thrust war upon next... magical. Absolutely magical.

Liu Bei is my boy! You're my boy, Liu Bei!

Sword of Vermillion FTW! Love that game.

How has no one commented yet on the awesomeness that is Gain Ground? I go from reading Kotaku, where the poster on this VC release (Michael Fahey), didn’t even “remember [Gain Ground] in the slightest” (blasphemy) to seeing GG relegated here to suffer as a game “a bit less well-known”. Ouch. Ouch, ouch, ouch.

Since no one is going to stick up for it, I’ll be damned if I'll let this pinnacle of Sega perfection go unheralded. Gain Ground rocks. It rocks so hard that your pet rock is shivering in a corner for fear of the enormously heavy rock that is Gain Ground. I think it might have even peed a bit in fright.

This game was one of the best around in the late 1980’s and it is one of the very select few games that I will purchase for the VC.

Simply put, if you do not play Gain Ground, then you can’t come over to my house any more for punch and cookies. The punch is Hawaiian and the cookies are chocolate chip. The game is Gain Ground. Play it.

http://kotaku.com/gaming/virtual-console/monday-morning-vc-goodness-233920.php

Madison, Wi = now
Seattle, Wa = in six months (no more Wisconsin winters! JOY!)

Iveo, I checked Nintendo first, but the fine print made me hesitate...

Straight from the Nintendo Online Store
"Due to high demand, our initial allotment of the Wii Component Video Cables has been depleted. We expect to begin shipping again the week of November 28, 2006. The Wii Component Video Cable will also be available at select retail stores (Best Buy, GameStop, Circuit City) in early/mid December."

Waiting a week+ before shipping isn't that bad, but I kind of wanted them before that. I was really hoping for someone who had them in stock and who could Next Day Air them to me so that I could have them before the long Thanksgiving weekend. Yes, I am a dreamer.

A week or so isn't really that bad though, so I'll go with that if I have to.

The #5 item in the post says it all for me (and all of Wisconsin): No Component Cables ANYWHERE. The only retailer who got any amount of component cables (Nintendo brand or otherwise) was Best Buy and they are sold out statewide.

I've been searching everywhere online trying to find someone who is selling Wii component cables. Has anyone found any place? I'd really appreciate a helping hand here.

Thanks!

@9
I second the motion. Thousands of idiot posts, one good one (somewhere I'm guessing).

Okay, you beat me down, I watched the clip. I didn’t want to, but I did. I understand that this game is *all* about the fights, but that's my problem with it. You tell me that my RPQ experience is entirely on rails, and I'm bound to dismiss it outright.

Dragon Quest Swords is a spin-off of Dragonquest (Dragon Warrior in the US and Dragonquest in Japan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Warrior), and I like Dragon Warrior much more. Dragon Quest Swords shipped with a gameplay sword that worked with motion detection to hack and slash your way through, but it’s always been the simple (younger-audience-geared) brother to one of the foundations of modern video game RPG’s.

Dragon Warrior came free with my subscription to Nintendo Power when I was in grade school, but it cost me hours and hours of delicious, candy-like gameplay. Roving the expansive world (five towns and five dungeons was BIG back then), hunting for the elusive Gold Golems to make some cash, fighting against that wicked Dragonlord... *sigh*. Call me crazy, but Swords' absolute lack of a world in which I get to decide where the character moves next (call me a fool for fighting for free will), pisses me off and loses an essential element of any RPG: discovery and storytelling. They could do it in Sword (though I think it would be pretty hard), but that’s not the point of Swords, is it?

Don't even bother making Swords, just do a Wii Dragonquest (outside of Japan too PLEASE) with Wiimote sword slashing and magical gesticulations to incorporate the assets of Swords. I just can’t imagine buying Swords right now, especially after watching the rudimentary and plodding clip you posted. I’d really, really, really like to, but I’ll wait to see some good reviews first. I won’t hold my breath, though I’d love to be wrong.