What happened to Nintendo and Connectivity!? Is connectivity the next big Wii secret?

What ever happened to Nintendo's big push on connectivity!? With the Gamecube and the GameBoy Advance there was the big push on connectivity. Games like Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion came with the option to link your two versions to unlock plenty of new features such as the original NES Metroid on GameCube via Link Cable or Unlock Fusion suit for Metroid Prime. This went even further with Animal Crossing. In Animal Crossing the Game Boy Advance's Remote Booting function was used to remotely load small applications into the Game Boy Advance's internal memory. Features like Animal Island allowed you to interact with some of the inhabitants while you were out and on the go. Obviously one of the biggest users of the GBA Link was The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures. In this adventure up to 4 people could battle it out on the main screen using their GBA's as controllers. Once they entered an underground (or out of site area) the players character would transfer to the GBA screen where they could continue playing in the cave with the other players continued on the main screen or in other caves. It was a great multiplayer experience allowing people to compete on a console without having to have "split screen" action. The only obvious problem with the model was you needed 4 GBAs.

The thing that is most surprising with the current round of consoles is this sort of game play with the DS and the Wii. The two consoles seem to be perfectly suited to it. The DS with a touch screen, mic and wifi connecting to the Wii for the rest of the game play.

It would be the idea way to have classic games like Cranium transfer to a console giving a new element to the Buzz phenomenon that sweeping Australia at the moment.

The Cranium Experiment
The main game board would be shown on the main screen via the Wii, a wireless link to the DS would allow the questions and answer to be pushed up for the player to read/answer. If you had a series of DS (ie one for each team) The touch screen could be used to input your answer for multiple choices questions. More involving mini games like the those in the "Creative Cat" section could lead the touch screen being used for a drawing interface. New/Update questions and challenges could be loaded via the WiiConnect24 interface and it could be an ever evolving game.
Think of something like a combination of Monopoly and WarioWare.

It seems to be a perfectly logical progression of both the Connectivity Push and the appeal to the non-gamer demographic. As yet, however, there has been no word of any connectivity between the two consoles.

Even for those of us who fit into the gamer demographic could benefit from download play on our DS pushed down from the WiiConnect24. Or imagine playing smash brothers with on your DS pushed out from your Wii while the whole battle plays out on the main screen. The possibilities seem to be as far and wide as those for the new Wiimote.

Will this be one of the next big secrets that Nintendo is keeping from us? Nothing seems to be far from possibility where rumours and the Wii are concerned. Let's face it they even havae a similar look right down to the colours of the Wiimotes on display at E3 and the release colours of the DS Lite

At the very least I'll be hoping for this one... There are already 2 DSs at my house and there will be a Wii when they get here.

Retro Ipod Dock

Got a house with decor that looks like it's straight out of The Incredibles? Just not happy with the Ipod Hifi fitting in with the current look? Well SpeckProducts have come to the rescue with their SpeckTone Retro Speaker Dock.

The SpeckTone Retro features 28 watts of output through a 4-inch subwoofer along with two, 3-inch drivers. The speakers are housed in a high-gloss lacquered wood cabinet that includes a big, fatty volume knob that glows green. The entire unit is available in three different colors and retails for $150

It comes in three different colours and they can even supply matching skins for you Ipod. It would look perfect atop your sideboard next to your radiogram!

The Wedge... 30 minutes of your life you won't get back

The Wedge is definate an increadble waste of 30 minutes of your life. Channel 10 have obviously spent the entire budget for this show on the advertising and not on the writing. Is this the worst new show on television? Well I'm sure the latest "When Good goes bad" show will be worse but it's going to be right up there. Infact the only good thing about the show is that it doesn't last more than 30 minutes. Most of the jokes are so old most of us will have forgotten the context, Lord of the Rings and Wayne Kerry/Shane Warne jokes went out a while ago... at this rate though I'm not sure they're going to have enough content for more than 2 weeks. Hopefully it's ratings will get Futurama back on our screens!

Should have brough a brolly

As i'm sitting on the cross river ferry heading to Oxford 152 I can't help but notice the fact that i'm surrounded by storm clouds. Obviously i should have gone with my first instincts and brought some wet weather gear with me! Looks like minx will be in for a wet weather test as well this weekend. On the gaming front i've actually managed to win enough matches in MP:H to in up a rank, which is a big turn around from previous weeks. And everyone should go out and get Resident Evil 4. I've only played it for 30 mins but i'm completely hooked. I can see why palgn.com voted it the best game me last year. It has all the atmosphere of Doom3 without maxing out the brightness on your TV.

Hooray for the internet!

Well after two weeks without it i've finally got the internet again.
I'm trying not to glut myself but i'm not counting playing online so that helps. can't stay and blog i've finally worked out how to win at Metroid Prime: Hunters!

Minx get's her big test!

Well after having the MX5 for a while it under went it's biggest test so far... The Craft Day.

Ness was heading out on a craft expedition today and needless to say most of her craft gear had to go with her... I was a little sceptical about the amount of stuff she was planning on taking and the chance of fitting it all into the MX5. However, to it's credit (and with a little re arranging) it was all in the car. You couldn't have taken another person... but all the craft made it.

Solve your cup storage problems

Won't need to worry about shelf space if you pick yourself us a set of these!!! What's more you can level them to dry while you're at it.

 

World Cup Powerdesk

World Cup Powerdesk

 May 24, 2006  -  Show original item

The fact that it's in England colours is kind of handy as it matches the rest of the decor in the house. Even without that how cool is it?

The desk has it all: an integrated PC, retractable 19-inch LCD screen, 320W sound system, TV tuner (for soccer games, duh), and best of all: a mini-fridge. 

Only problem is it might be just a little out of the budget for the study at US$15000... maybe I should just paint a red cross on a white desk from Ikea...

Not quite a piano anyone!?

I so want one of these, it's The iPod Concerto Table concept. It's basically the worlds biggest iPod Dock.

This design concept by Lovegrove and Respucci  is shaped like a piano and has a dock for your iPod and a couple of amplified speakers flush-mounted underneath the lid. It's multifunctional, too, where you can use it as a desk and when you're done, stash your laptop underneath that lid. With this table, Lovegrove and Respucci say you'll be able to enjoy the "dramatic presence that a piano offers an interior."

Much better than having to learn a new piano piece to show off your friends, simple pump you song into garageband, (fix up all the mistakes you made along the way) export it to iTunes, rip it to your ipod and voila! Dinner Music! 

Pedometers are so last season!

Like to know how far you've been running whilst hearing your favourite tunes but your running outfit just can't support a pedometer as well as your ipod nano?

No need to fear, Apple has solved this problem with the Nike+iPod... (I feel I need some corny joke about taking integration to the street)

Get a pair of Nike+ shoes

Only Nike+ shoes feature a built-in pocket under the insole specially engineered for the Nike+iPod sensor. For seamless, stylish integration, add Nike+ apparel that holds your iPod nano and receiver.

See more Nike+ shoes.

Get an iPod nano

Skip-free playback, a brilliant display, and up to 1,000 songs ⁽¹⁾ in an impossibly small iPod keep you light on your feet. And only iPod nano syncs your complete workout data with both iTunes and nikeplus.com.

Learn more about iPod nano.

Get the Nike+iPod Sport Kit

The Sport Kit⁽²⁾ allows your Nike+ shoe to talk to your iPod nano. The sensor uses a sensitive accelerometer to measure your activity, then wirelessly transfers this data to the receiver on your iPod nano.

Nike+iPod Sport Kit notification.

 

Disillusioned....

My previous half-started, half-finished blog post I think sums up my general feelings this week. Although we generally complain about having too much on at work, the inverse is hardly much fun either... It's fairly difficult trying to find it rewarding going to work when there is really not much on. I think however the crux of the matter is that even when the work is there the general frustrations with lack of direction, process and proffesionalism are starting to take their toll. It's not that I don't enjoy the work consulting but I think the manner in which I've had to perform it has worn thin.

In search of a new Style

In the last couple of weeks I've been very much in a "Let's redecorate" frame of mind. For our current round of house rearranging there have been some imaginary boundaries of responsibilty have been drawn. I'm loosely responsible for the style choices in the lounge and Ness has got the bedroom/dining room. Not really sure how it came about, but probably has something to do with the invested interest I have in the stereo gear lining the room. After a lot of battles I finally convinced Ness that we needed to visit Space Furniture to make some more furniture decisions.

And at this point I've discovered I really have no where for this blog post to go... I think the point is I want new furniture and am not really sure what I want...

Apart from the fact that we discovered that we're going to have to own some of these Kartell Louis Ghost chairs at some point. They're see through!

The iMac photo frame

Managed to have a bit of a house focused weekend this weekend, mainly due to the lack of internet I have to find something else useful to do with my time.

First of the list for the weekend was another idea for the Flickr photo frame. The old lamp shade style G4 iMacs are fairly iconic in their design and would make a pretty good photoframe as a stand alone piece. Team that with the fact that I could use it in the lounge room instead of getting out my laptop and it's really starting to get some traction. At about a third of the cost of a Flickr photo frame they aren't bad value either.

All I need now is to buy one! (and get the internet back so I can connect it to Flickr!)

I HATE dialup

Since Friday last week my trusty ADSL service has decided it and the wireless router should go their separate ways and wants to live somewhere else. As I result I've been relegated to Dialup while I "Liase" with ozemail about getting it working again.

Apparently my exchange (at 12am Friday morning) nolonger supported ADSL2+ and they can only give me access at 256kbs which still isn't working. Even if it was I'm not sure I'd notice the difference from the service on my GPRS card.

So as the fight about line quality, line filters, supported bandwidths (the fact that I've had 18000Kbps reliably for the last 6 months apparently counts for nought) continues I'm without Xbox live and Nintendo Wifi! And don't get me started on trying to browse Google reader....

Begin sulking here....

So Much E3 So little time! and why Game reviews annoy me!

So it's the almost the end of the first (real) day of E3 after all the pre-conferences with the big console touting their new wares. So with all the booths open for the game reviewers to wander around getting hands on with the new toys and gadgets the information coming out of the place is so thick and fast it's hard to keep up with everything. It's at this point that game reviews really start to annoy me. It's of little surprise to anyone that I'm more interested in what's happening in the world of Nintendo than anything else and with the Wii available for people to get their hands on, I'm most interesting in how the new controller that in theory and concept sounds fantastic actually works. Nintendo has taken a big step out of the race for Biggest and Shiniest console and tried to create something different in the world of gaming. It's something that at least for me has made the thought of the new console pretty exciting. The notion that instead of using a small analogue stick to control your interaction with a game a series of hand gestures simulating what your character would actually be doing is a pretty big stray from the current mold. The whole focus for this new console is a different and more engaging way of interacting with games, something that is designed to more involving and intuitive so you can have your Grandma over for a cup of tea and a round of tennis in your living room. Nintendo have made it clear from the outset that this is what they are about so all we're really looking for from the reviews is does it work? Have they made it more involving, do you feel like playing the game? So when people are complaining about back stories in games it's a little irrelevant   For example, a review I saw today from GameSpot was for a title we've heard very little about until now ProjectH.A.M.M.E.R. It was a 'hands on' impression of the game. It's basically a beat 'em up where you controll a character that wanders around carrying a Hammer beating up robots. The final paragraph of review went like this

The demo was short on back story, not really giving us a sense of where the robots were coming from or where our character had acquired the world's biggest meat tenderizer, but the quick-and-easy gameplay wasn't really in line with the kind of game that would be heavy on the story elements anyway. We're definitely curious, though, about any additional moves we might be able to execute using the motion-sensitive Wii controllers.

At this point in the Wii's life cycle I'm not really concerned if the game has back story or not, I'm interested in whether the design decision that Nintendo has pinned all it's hope on is really taking shape or not.

Essentially the level of mixed reports on the gaming and controller integration is becoming frustrating, some reviews say a game is great others say the controller was too sensitive, not sensitive enough and so on.

I have high hopes for the success of the Wii, the DS has become more successful (at least in Japan) than I would have thought. Initial reaction to the DS touch screen control is similar to what we're getting for the Wii and developers seem to have warmed to that new control format so in that vain there is hope for the Wii. Combined with the fact that the same basic plaform as the Gamecube was used the lower development costs might see more titles coming from the 3rd party arena. The only disappointment from this is there wasn't a little more effort put into making the console more graphically impressive but again the market Nintendo are searching for isn't necesarrily the one with the latest and biggest HD display hanging on their wall.

For me at least it will be a definate purchase, if only for the joy of party games. Games like WarioWare and Mario Party are frantic and fun enough with standard controllers which I can only imagine what will happen when you actually have to swat the fly with your controller.

I guess even with the amount of information and hands on we're getting from the E3 conference it's still a game of wait and see. The real test will come when it hits the shelves and has to compete against the US$500+ Graphics processing giants of Microsoft and Sony.

Like a Kid before Christmas

After all the announcements for the new PS3 console from Sony today and it only being 4 hours until the Nintendo Launch conference I can't help but be just a little bit excited!

Gadget update for the week

As it's E3 this week and there will be all sorts of gaming news flying every which way I thought I post up some of the cool stuff that's around that's not related to gaming :)

Self-Watering Flower Pot

This is definately for us, a Self Watering pot... Well self watering to a point. It's basically a ceramic pot containing the plant is set atop a well of water. The idea is that the roots of the plant will run down into the well of water and soak up what it neads. The only problem is that the well is only big enough to hold enough water for a week, so I guess you still have to remember every week...

The pots come in two sizes, 5" or 4.5" and in four colors: chalk white, light terracotta, red terrracotta and dark grey.

Pet Umbrella

This is just bizarre.... If you were that keen to walk your dog in the rain, it can probably deal with being wet...

MiniHitch: Mac mini LCD Bracket

This is very cool... It's a bracket to mount our Mac Mini on the back of any LCD panel. For those of us who want an iMac but already have an LCD panel we don't want to let got... it's not quite in the screen but it's close.

Invisible Book Shelf

I think this is my favourite... invisible book shelves.... nuf said.

What's the worst thing you can see on a slow Friday afternoon?

It's just not fair! Someone post something quick!

Airbus Industries Standing-Room Concept

Ok this is just plain ridiculous! Airbus is researching a standing room only cattle class concept.... I know some of our flights area only short but really people! I can hardly see enough room to get my 17" Mac Power Book out in one of these "seats"

Australian DS lite Date

Well if the news that the DS Lite was coming to the US on the 11th June wasn't good enough, Nintendo Australia announce that we'll be getting the DS lite on the 1st June! That's right we'll be getting before the US! Not only that but once it's out it's only a 7 day wait for the New Super Mario Bros title for the DS!

The DS Lite will be here for the same price as the original DS at AU$199.

DS Lite to be released in the US on June 11 for $129

In a press release sent today, Nintendo announced that on June 11 the DS Lite will be released in North America. The handheld will be priced "as low as $129" Hopefully this means that LikSang can stop ripping us off trying to sell them for $199 each! I would really like to upgrade to the new version but at about AU$240 it's really a bit much...

Best Game of Indoor EVER!

I played indoor soccer last night (as I do most Thursday nights) and it the best game I can ever remember. Everything just seemed to work the way I planned. The ball stayed at my feet and all my shots just fell in. I feel a little sorry for the other team because they got a trashing.  The best bit of all was Ness was there to watch and cheer from the sideline!

Goodbye Blue Car - Stage 1

I kicked off the first stage of selling the Blue car today. After treking around 10 different repairers trying to get a quote for them to do it privately and being turned away with "We're too busy doing insurance work, come back in 6 months" I took the insurance option and booked it in with Suncorp to get done. Fortunately being a Rating 1 for life it doesn't hit my premium despite the scrapes being from parking it.

It won't be long now and the Blue car will be in someone elses garage... seems a bit sad really...

Cannon Fodder for Metroid Prime: Hunters

Metroid on the DS is a great game there is no doubt about it. The utilisation of the touch screen for a mouse like pointing device gives the best control for a console first shooter ever (in my opinion). Also the use of the graphics capability of the DS has managed to create a realistic visual environment and the whole single player game has a haunting and lonely atmosphere to it even on such a small screen.

All this combined with the ability to play other people online in a subsciption free service is the final piece in making a great FPS shooter.

The only problem is I'm not very good at it. I love the game, but as an opponent online I don't seem to be much of a challenge... as a result I've taken the stance of changing my name to CannonFodr (I'm only allowed that many characters in my name). The marketing catch phrase for the game seems some how appropriate for my current online experience... "More Hunters, more ways to die"

I've only managed to come first once in the whole time I've played online. I really enjoy it, I just can't seem to master the tricks necessary to come up as No.1 in a battle. At least I can console myself with a few rounds of MarioKart online.