You know, like, for reals. Finally.

They've posted a neat little video to Youtube showing that it does, in fact, really work, and looks slick as hell. Everything's translated, everything's super-polished, and it looks like it's the quality of a release a game like Mother 3 deserves.

So I guess now they just have to actually release the damn thing.

Examine this wonderful quote from a recent interview LEC's President Jim Ward had with MCV, a UK Gaming Mag:

“There’s an attitude in this industry that says in order to make a great game, it takes whatever time it takes and it takes whatever money it takes, and that that’s okay,” he claimed. “Well it’s not okay – it’s wrong. It’s not okay in other entertainment businesses. In other businesses it’s big trouble.”

Guess what, Jim: videogames aren't like other forms of media. If you rush a movie by a couple months you're not going to risk releasing it with a bug that shuts off movie theater projectors 15 minutes in. You're not going to have to cut the entire ending because you didn't have time to get it to work. With videogames, even the smallest overlooked bug due to rushing can be the difference between "buy it at release" and "don't buy it at all because it's a broken piece of crap that's going to require seventeen patches to be playable".

Now, no one is expecting every game ever to be entirely free of bugs at release, hell, several of my favourite games of the past few years have had some quite major bugs at release, but when you have a corporate mentality of "RAR! DEADLINE SLIPPAGE IS RUINING THE INDUSTRY! RUSH FASTER!", your games are going to have more bugs and more severe bugs.

Look at KOTOR and KOTOR 2. LOOK AT THEM. Look at ANYTHING ANYONE SAID ABOUT BOTH GAMES. KOTOR wasn't rushed too horribly. It had bugs, but it was an overall amazing game. KOTOR 2 was rushed like mad to get it out for Xbox in time for the 2004 holiday season. It was impossible to go ten minutes in the game without running into some kind of glitch (ranging in severity from "depressing but benign" to "gamebreakingly horrible") or awkward poorly-designed bodged-together quest element due to the devs trying desperately to salvage all the cut content. The result was a confused and disjointed game that paled in comparison to its predecessor. It all made sense once the PC version was released and we could finally see all the remnants of the hastily cut content, including the entire ending of the game.

Luckily (but also sadly), there's only one game coming from LEC in the near future that I remotely care about: Lego Star Wars 2. Good news: it looked quite far along at E3, and we're still three months away from release. Bad news: it's got a hard release deadline that coincides with the re-re-re-re-re-re-release of the Original Trilogy DVDs. However, we know the dev team responsible for the Lego Star Wars games has had to deal with LEC's crazy hard deadlines in the past, with Lego Star Wars being released vaguely in conjunction with Episode III's theatrical release. So it might turn out ok, despite Mr Ward's attempts to rush all his games into the ground.

The real problem here is that deadlines are one of those things that you can't take to either extreme. If you enforce unflinching drop-dead dates like the one that was imposed on KOTOR 2, you end up with a product full of bugs and failed potential. If you take an absolute "when it's done" approach, you end up with Duke Nukem Forever. To produce good games you have to take the middle road. Deadlines are great, but shipping an unfinished game to make it hit an arbitrary deadline is ridiculous. I know LEC's business model in recent years has been based entirely around milking Star Wars license tie-ins, but I seriously question the value of getting a mediocre or bad game out "on time" vs a highly polished game out "slightly late".

Now, Nintendo announced a lot of games. First party, third party, all different consoles, I'm sure I'll miss something, but here's what made an impression on me:

WII GAMES

• Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - A proper Wii version has been forked. Simultaneous release is planned, the Wii console, the Wii version and Gamecube versions of Twilight Princess will all launch on the same undisclosed day later this year.
• Wii version includes all kinds of impressive new features, most impressive to me was the bow system. You use the nunchuck controller extension to mimick pulling back a bow string, and the Wii remote's speaker makes the matching sound. Release, and you hear the remote make the sound of the arrow being released, and the sound of it flying then transitions seamlessly from the remote to your tv. Bitchin.
• Mario Galaxy - Pretty safe to assume this is what "Mario 128" evolved into. Mario flys around through exaggerated 3d planets that remind me of the crow boss level from Yoshi's Island. But 3d. And controlled with the Wii remote.
• Wii Sports - An In-house collection of sports games that make use of Wii features. Shown during the press converence were Wii Golf, Wii Tennis and Wii Baseball. Hope you like flailing your arms around at the television.
• Exite Truck - The term "Spiritual Successor" is starting to get old, but this is one. Excite Bike-ish courses with a big-ass truck. Features suitable quantities of DUUUURRRRIFTOUUUUU.
• Wario Ware: Smooth Moves - Nothing needs to be said. WarioWare. With the Wii controller.
• Metroid Prime 3: Corruption - Not much said, but it exists.
• Red Steel - I wasn't sold on this game initially, but after the Ubisoft guys demoed it, sign me up. Two things stood out for me, first everything is destructable. EVERYTHING. I haven't seen a game with this much destructable stuff since Revolution X. Second is the "natural" off-hand control. The nunchuck has gyros in it now, so if you run up to a door and nudge it forward, you open the door while retaining full control over your gun hand.
• 27 games will be playable at E3. That doesn't count any Virtual Console games. That's a lot of games.

DS Games

• Yoshi's Island 2 - !!!!!!!!!1!1!1!!1!!!!!!!1!
• Elite Beat Agents - Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! 2: Same concept, entirely new game, new songs, etc. No clue what songs will be included yet, but we'll see at least some of them from the demo stations tomorrow.
• Mario vs. DK 2: March of the Minis - Nothing needs to be said, it's a sequel! It's sequel time!
• Starfox DS - Looks like a "normal" Starfox game, as opposed to an "adventures" game. This is Good.
• Overall, Nintendo is planning on having 100 new titles for the DS over the rest of the year.

STUFF NINTENDO FORGOT

• (Nintendo forgot to mention some games that were pretty awesome, but they showed up on their site.)
• Kirby DS - Kirby platformer, features four player MP, and a mix-n-match power system.
• Super Paper Mario - GCN - Nintendo still makes Gamecube Games! And SPM looks really amazing. Paper Mario was good to start with, but now it's super.
• Classic Controller - Check it out. Totally real, totally awesome.
• I swear there was other stuff for this, but I guess I forgot it too.

Overall, I was disappointed that Nintendo held back the price and date, but hey, modern Nintendo has been all about innovative hardware and incredibly compelling software. Nintendo has already wooed us with Wii's hardware, so obviously it was time to impress us with some great software, which they have done again. Tomorrow, though, we'll get to play, and, obviously Believe.

Squeenix's Press conference this year was largely about two things: release dates of known projects and Final Fantasy XIII. There were a couple other new product announcements, but largely it was about known stuff and FF13. So lets run down the list.

MANA SERIES

• Children of Mana - DS - Summer/Fall 2006 - Classic top-down 2D Mana game.
• Dawn of Mana - PS2 - Release TBA - Fully 3D game, new for the Mana series.

FF PORTS

• FFIII - DS - September 2006 - First time FF3 will show up stateside. The real FF3.
• FFV - GBA - Late 2006 - Still just a straight port.
• FFVI - GBA - Late 2006 - Also still just a straight port, but should be awesome regardless.

VALKYRIE PROFILE PORTS

• Valkyrie Profile - PSP - 18 JUN 2006
• Valkyrie Profile 2 - PS2 - September 2006

FF12

• FFXII - PS2 - October 2006 - Localization is coming along very nicely. They went all-out on high quality voice actors.

DRAGON QUEST

• Rocket Slime - DS - September 2006 - Might be a port of Slime MoriMori Dragon Quest?
• Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors - Wii - Launch title for the Wii. Hilariously long title, wouldn't be surprised if that changes.

MOBILE STUFF

• Squeenix is jumping head-first into the mobile market. They're pushing not only a ton of Final Fantasy-based mobile games, but also leveraging their acquisition of Taito to get classic Taito games out on mobile platforms. Will anyone care? Time will tell. Even if no one cares, that probably won't stop them, because they seem REALLY committed to phone gaming.

FF: CRYSTAL CHRONICLES

• Ring of Fates - DS - Just Starting Development - It'll be a Crystal Chronicles game, with 4 player wireless multiplayer, and they promise to make it have a worthwhile single player story.
• Crystal Bearers - Wii - Just Starting Development

COMPILATION OF FF7

• Dirge of Cerberus - PS2 - 22 AUG 2006 - New levels / features are being added for the stateside release. hopefully some of those additions include "make the game fun".
• Before Crisis - Phones - "Soon" - Even the Turks can't make mobile phone games attractive. Think about this, Squeenix. Please think about this.
• Crisis Core - PSP - Date TBA - Crisis Core is a Zack / Cloud / Sephiroth game, which I know nothing about.
• After these, FF7 is done. Seriously. Please stop. Please. Now.

FINAL FANTASY 13 [The main event!]

• For reasons I apparently don't "get", they're making three FFXIII games. Here they are:
• FFXIII - PS3 - Core game, based in a far-future setting where "magic and technology have merged and evolved" [I suggest we call this combination "Magitek", and perhaps have it powered by "Espers"]. It's being made by the FFX team, with the director from FFX-2. Apparently they were doing it for PS2, then they paused to make the FF7 PS3 tech demo. After that they threw out everything and made what we've seen of FF13 from scratch, over the past year.
• Versus XIII - PS3 - Not a whole lot is known about this, except that Tetsuya Nomura is taking the Kingdom Hearts team, pairing them with the Advent Children team, and making a very pretty touchy-feely game about "bonding". I think we should expect zippers. So many zippers.
• Agito XIII - Mobile Phones - ACES, ANOTHER SQUEENIX MOBILE PHONE GAME!
• Squeenix is calling the FF13 project as a whole the "Fabula Nova Crystallis" project, Latin for "The new tale of the crystal". Squeenix apparently has some kind of massive hardon for Latin as of late.
• The really weird thing about this project is that none of the games - as far as they've told us - are in the same world. It's not going to be like Compilation of FF7, where there's like, 38 games all in the same closely-knit deeply involved world. Instead, they're looking to build a whole new Final Fantasy "Mythology", and then tie the games together with that. Expect confusion once both FFXIII and Versus XIII are both on sale.

So . . it looks like a lot, and from one company it is, but these are largely all products we knew were in development. We just have a bunch of dates now. And as the development of the projects we knew of winds down, new projects get announced. We'll be looking for more in-depth stuff about all these projects once the expo actually starts, and will be reporting on what we find worth talking about.

Now . . On to Nintendo and Microsoft . . .

So here's what we've got:

• Guitar Hero - Sid Meier likes to rock out with Guitar Hero. The GDC likes throwing awards at Guitar Hero. Andy had a hard time pulling himself away from Guitar Hero to write this.
• 2004Mbit Compo - A few months back, GBADev.org shipped actual carts of the result of their long-running contest to find some of the best homebrew games for the GBA. A rom has since been released, but we reviewed this off the actual cart. That makes us cool.
• Fight Night: Round 3 - A boxing game that's fun and isn't in the Punch-Out series? We're as shocked as you are.
• Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter - This was quite impressive a year ago at E3. Now? Not so much.
• Dragon Quest 8 - Dragon Quest 8 was so long that I had to write parts of this review twice. Once when I thought the game was about to end, and then a second time 80 hours later when the game was really over.
• Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time - This review is a paradox-free zone.

More reviews as soon as we can pry ourselves away from Oblivion, Metroid Prime Hunters, Tetris DS, Worms DS, Bleach, Guild Wars Free Trial Weekend, World of Warcraft, Puzz Loop, Earthbound, Guitar Hero . . . you get the idea.

In case you haven't been keeping up, Mother 3 is Earthbound 2, and you'll be hearing more about it from me as time goes on. I've been waiting over a decade for this game, so there's going to be some gushing, even when it's just over a short little mp3. This short little mp3 is the most tangible proof that this game is real and happening that we've gotten in years.

I'll try to hold back, though. Unless Itoi puts up something really unbelievably awesome in a future present. Until then, you can check it for new stuff yourself. Mother 3 still has a solid Japanese release date of 20 APR 2006. Still no clue as to if we'll ever see it stateside, but if Nintendo skips localizing this, we may very well have to resort to violence.

Here's a translation of the announcement, via Starmen.net:

"Mother 3's release date has been set. It will be April 20th, 2006 (Thursday). At least it's spring. It'll go on sale before the start of Golden Week. We'll be doing an official announcement pretty soon, but this is the "final" date. Once the release date is set, there are no more additions of new specs or anything like that. We'll no longer be able to fiddle around with anything in the game, unless it's something especially important. It makes me a little sad, but I can't be selfish. Since it's GameBoy Advance software, that naturally means that you'll also be able to play it on the Nintendo DS that everyone's so crazy about these days."

This date has also been confirmed by the incredibly sparse Mother 3 product page at Nintendo of Japan's site. Still no word as to if it'll be translated and released stateside, but hey, this is still super huge news. Hopefully localization plans will be announced at E3, or hell, maybe even earlier.

It's expected that since the game has a release date, and that release date is only a couple months off, that we might start getting to actually see or hear . . well . . anything about the game soon. I'd say I can't wait, but I've already waited a decade for solid details on the sequel to Earthbound, surely I can wait another couple months.

Lets hope we won't have to, though.

It may or may not be worth noting that the logo is the same one originally used for the first Mother 3, AKA Earthbound 64. Whether or not this actually means anything is still up in the air, since we've previously heard that pretty much everything related to Earthbound 64 was thrown out.

Can you tell I'm giddy about this? Because I am. Very giddy.

In a message posted to his website yesterday, Mother/Earthbound series creator Shigesato Itoi had this to say on the subject (as loosely translated by Tomato of Starmen.net in this thread):

"After some discussion with Nintendo, I've decided to make a slightly head-start announcement here on Hobonichi. I've worried people quite a bit this whole time, but I'm happy to report that Mother 3 for Game Boy Advance is nearing release.

I've thought to myself, "It should be all right now that it's this far along," on many occasions, but I always made sure not to announce anything until I could say that it was "ABSOLUTELY all right." At any rate, this time I've decided to try and be reserved about everything. It looks like its release date will be about one season away, and I'm in the middle of doing many work retreats to get it finished. I'm going to work especially hard for a short while longer to get everything done.

By announcing this, I'm sure I'll receive all sorts of questions, but I'm probably going to stay quiet about Mother 3 until just before its release. I know the importance of publicity, but what I feel is that I want players to REALLY enjoy Mother 3. So until just before the game comes out, I'm going to remain as quiet as possible.

In any case, we're working on Mother 3. I'm happy as well that it's reached the point where we can make an announcement. Thank you to all who have waited patiently. Please forget about it again for a short while."

We've all waited a decade to see a sequel to Earthbound, and now after so many false-starts it's finally in sight. I'm absolutely ecstatic, there are very few games I'm looking forward to this much. If Nintendo for some ungodly reason decides to not bring this stateside, there will be blood.

Source: Starmen.net

First up, the obvious: Final Fantasy III (that's IIIj not IIIus, the one Final Fantasy game that's never seen this side of the Pacific) is coming to DS. Since most of us have never seen this one before, and since it has more or less been ignored since it was originally released in Japan, they're taking quite a few liberties with it. So it's being completely re-invisioned by Hiromichi Tanaka, director of FFXI. It's also been confirmed that the game is going 3d. Not much else has been let out, but hey, at least the game has a proper logo now so it finally matches the other 11.

Now to the more exciting ones. Final Fantasy V and VI. Yes. Yes. They're not coming to DS, but they're coming to GBA, which to me is still the king of 2d consoles, and hey, your DS has a GBA slot for a reason. It's currently unclear as to if these will be a double-release like FFI + II "Dawn of Souls", or if they'll be releasing them both seperate, but they have said that both will be getting new content compared to their most recent releases for the PSX. No matter how it washes out, it's pretty safe to assume it's going to be amazing, since V and VI were two of the absolute best RPGs I've ever played, and now I'll be able to play them on the go.

Only downside? None of these releases will be out this year. We'll be waiting until 2006 for all three. While this sucks, I'm not incredibly concerned since as I mentioned the GBA slot on my DS won't be going anywhere. I just hope it still works once I've actually got a cart to put in there.

Source: RPGamer