An oldie, but a goodie

After a break due to illness I find myself returning to gaming in a bit of a lull. There are no interesting major releases scheduled to arrive in the next few weeks and while I still have games like Kingdoms of Amular: Reckoning and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim sitting on my drive, uncompleted, I feel like I need a change from the fantasy RPG genre after having been almost completely immersed in it since Christmas. It was a conversation with my lovely wife over the weekend that finally got me settled on what I would play next.

It started innocently with her asking if I had any of the original Sonic games, as she wouldn’t mind playing one of those with me. I was pretty sure I had the first two for the Sega Mega Drive, but after digging out the console I realised that I was severely lacking in the Sonic department. It didn’t really matter though as upon connecting the Mega Drive up to my TV I struggled to get the thing to work. Eventually I gave up, realising that the wire that connected the system to the TV was probably broken. However having seen some of the classic games that I still had for Sega’s console I decided to check out a bit of PC emulation.

Going back a few years I used to have a pretty extensive emulation collection on my PC, but after a subsequent hard drive failure I lost it all. I could still remember most of the sites I used to build that collection, so I set about getting hold of a Mega Drive emulator and some roms of the games I currently owned. After a bit of fiddling with a program called Joy2Key I managed to get Castle of Illusions running with my Xbox 360 pad. This only whetted my appetite though as I started thinking about whether I could emulate a more modern console, namely the GameCube.

I duly set about finding out about Dolphin, which for those who don’t know is a great emulator which allows you to run Nintendo’s finest GameCube and Wii games on your PC. The idea of playing The Legend of Zelda:Wind Waker or Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door in stunning high-res was too good to pass up, so I promptly got hold of the latest version of Dolphin and a rom of each game. After consulting various guides I managed to get the graphical and sound settings just right and also configured the 360 pad to work with the GameCube games.

After everything was set I decided to boot up Paper Mario first and was greeted by a spectacular sight. Everyone knows that Nintendo’s art direction is among some of the best in the business, but due to the antiquated nature of the GameCube tech married with an HDTV, it doesn’t look as good as it could. But when you play the games through Dolphin, the power of modern CPUs and GPUs are brought to bear and the result is nothing short of astounding. Having seen the effect on Paper Mario I quickly booted up Wind Waker and was equally delighted with the result. 

Seeing these classic games in their new clothes made me want to instantly sit down and play through them again. However first I had to decide which one I was going to start with and I also wanted to try and get a better set-up going. I have a fairly decent 21” LCD monitor connected to my PC, but I also have a lovely 26” HDTV sitting only a few metres away, as well as a nice comfy couch. I already had an HDMI cable connecting the PC to my TV and after a few tweaks Paper Mario was now displayed on a nice big screen.

Game wise I decided to plump for Paper Mario as, like many games I brought when I was younger and had more disposable income, it fell by the wayside when other games arrived and distracted me. Yes I know that technically it is another RPG, but it is quite different from the RPGs I have been playing with a totally different setting.

Having got GameCube games working on the PC I am now resolved to also get Wii games working. This will require a bit more work though as getting the Wiimote to talk to the PC is slightly convoluted and requires a Bluetooth connection, something my PC is currently lacking. However I have ordered a Bluetooth adaptor and once that arrives I am hopeful that the added fidelity will get me back into Skyward Sword, once I have completed Paper Mario of course. Right now though, I am happy that I can once again enjoy some of Nintendo’s finest games in a more modern setting.

If you are interested in playing your GameCube and Wii games on a PC here are a few pointers to help you get started.

• Dolphin Homepage with the latest version. 
• A Wiki which will help you with most problems including getting the right settings for each game. 
• A guide to getting the Wiimote to work with Dolphin 
• As for getting hold of game files you can rip the games directly from the discs if you have the necessary hardware, just Google to find out how. If this is beyond your capabilities you can get GameCube roms from the net by searching Google, there are a few sites out there. As for the Wii your favourite torrent site is probably your best bet.

The Nintendo 3DS, more like the Nintendo £DS.

Figures coming out of Japan today show that the Nintendo 3DS has set another sales record. This one is relating to the time it has taken for the machine to sell through five million units. The previous record was held by the DS at 56 weeks and before that the GBA at 58 weeks. According to Japanese site Adriasang the 3DS managed the feat in just 52 weeks.

It has certainly been some turn-around for Nintendo’s latest handheld. Only a few months ago experts were lining up to declare that the handheld market had moved on, that Apple’s way of doing things was what customers preferred, and that game-orientated handhelds were doomed. A price-cut and a deluge of great titles later and the 3DS is consistently breaking sales records–shows how much the supposed experts know.

Personally I never subscribed to the belief that the public were happy playing games on their phones and were not looking for a dedicated portable games machine. After all while Apple and Android were having a great deal of success in the download market, whilst smartphones were flying off the shelves and Angry Birds was being downloaded over 200 million times, people were still buying DS consoles and games. So it wasn’t like the market for a DS style handheld had disappeared.

There is also the fact that the 3DS wasn’t really a failure when it was launched. Between the launch of the system on the 26^th of February and September 30^th the console shifted 6.68m units compared to the original DS, which managed 6.65m over the same timeframe. The trouble was that due to the massive subsequent sales of the DS the 3DS was always going to be judged unfairly. It’s the same problem that the successor to the Wii will no doubt have. It is very rare for a console to launch and then reach the kind of numbers that the Wii and the DS were doing during their height. It is accepted fact that it takes a couple of years before a console reaches its sales peak. With the 3DS it seems that the industry expected it to be a blockbuster out of the gate and when it wasn’t they were quick to call it a failure.

True, Nintendo did make some mistakes with the launch, chief of which was that it didn’t have a great slate of games available for it, but then that has been true of most console launches. More importantly was that they didn’t manage to get across the message to the public that this was a new console rather than just another DS with 3D added. The price was also probably a little off; they perhaps should have sold it for around £229.99, but I’m not sure it was such a significant factor.

I do think though that the media were too quick to jump on the 3DS and call it a failure and this is a problem with our media as a whole. Nothing is given time anymore. You have to be able to launch and be an instant success, if you don’t then prepare to be called a failure, something which quickly becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy–as no-one buys your machine as they think it is a failure due to what the press has said. This puts incredible pressure on anyone looking to launch a new product, be it a home console or a handheld system. Expectations are being set way too high and when those expectations aren’t hit the condemnation is swift and vicious. It’s damaging to the industry and something that needs to change.

I’m glad that Nintendo were able to prove the doomsayers wrong, but it was only their deep pockets that allowed them to combat the negative press with a sharp price-cut that was able to combat the furore over whether the console was a failure. Without that pressure from the press I think the 3DS would have gone on to have a good Christmas and going into 2012 would have been able to follow the traditional path of a console launch and reduce its price accordingly. All the press managed to do was push that chain forward a bit and make themselves look silly in the process.

Next time I think we should wait before pronouncing the death of a product, especially a Nintendo one. You would have thought that the media would have learned their lesson after what was said about the original DS and Wii when they were first announced. However it seems whilst the media is quite prepared to make swift judgements, it’s a little slower when it comes to learning from its mistakes.