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.

Yesterday, Majesco announced that they're pulling out of the big leagues when it comes to publishing. They sold off the rights to some of their games about a month ago, and as part of yesterday's announcement, they added that they've outright cancelled nearly all of their expected 2006 releases, including such games as Taxi Driver and Demonik.

Majesco is expected to go back to doing what they used to be good at: waiting for good handheld games to get old, buying the publishing rights for cheap and re-issuing the games at budget prices. This is how they used to make money back before they thought they could do real publishing.

While it apparently didn't work out for them, I'm really glad Majesco tried being a real publisher. Specifically, I liked them because they were risk-takers. The industry is full of companies like EA who are too afraid to take a risk on games that aren't sure-bets, games like Psychonauts which Majesco saved from certain doom. Unfortunately, they were a bit over-eager in taking on such games, and you just can't run a company that way. But they were on the right track. We need more publishers willing to take risks. You guys don't have to fund 100% long-shot experimental games, but gee, it'd sure be nice if we didn't continue on the path we're on now, where 90% of games being released are the 5th or 6th iterations of longstanding series.

• Battalion Wars [GCN]
• Shadow of the Colossus [PS2]
• Quake 4 [PC]

As always, we're still looking for new contributors to Directional Pad. If you'd like to review games or try your hand at interweb journalism, submit an application via our contact page and we'll get in touch.

In other Majesco-related news, a couple days ago they cancelled some manner of million-dollar "Race to Save Humanity" contest they were running over Xbox Live. Apparently they had no means to secure it, so they shut it down rather than let some cheating loser to make a quick mil. In an attempt to save face, by following the detailed instructions here, if you were in on the contest, you can send Majesco a photocopy of your Advent Rising UPC and score free copies of two of the following Xbox games: BloodRayne 2, Guilty Gear X2 #Reload, Psychonauts, Raze’s Hell and Phantom Dust. Remember, you had to already be entered in the contest to be eligible, so you can't go run out and get a copy of Advent Rising to score two other free games. Instead, you should run out and go get a copy of Psychonauts.

Sources: THQ / Majesco Press Release, Xbox.com Announcement

This morning Nintendo announced that the most-anticipated last-hurrah for the Gamecube, Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, has been pushed to 2006. The main reason cited is that the dev team wants more time to make the game better. That's great and all, and considering the remarks made last month by Aonuma and Miyamoto, time constraints were one of the main reasons behind the few tiny failures of Wind Waker. So I really want them to take their time with this one . . . but I also want it now. I want it yesterday.

To make things worse, IGN reported that a vague release date was given:

"After much discussion, the Zelda development team has requested extra time to add new levels, more depth and even higher quality to Zelda: Twilight Princess," said Nintendo of America's vice president of corporate affairs, Perrin Kaplan. "Consequently, we're announcing a new global launch in 2006, after the conclusion of this fiscal year (March 31). We'll provide a specific date at a later point in time."

If the announcement is coming after the end of the fiscal year, that means the earliest we can hope to see the game is April 2006. APRIL! Bah! Eight months from now! That's worse than the wait we'll probably be going through for Final Fantasy 12. We'll all have Xbox 360's, and possibly Playstation 3's. Halo 3 may have already come out by then. So much will be coming out in the next 8 months, and it's incredibly disappointing that Twilight Princess won't be one of them.

As a consolation prize, there's seven new screenshots. Sure, they're pretty and all, but not worth eight months of delay.

We'll live, and we'll still all be buying it upon it's release (whenever that may actually be), but I really hope this ends up being worth the wait. By pushing it back this far, Nintendo has just raised the bar of expectations. We'll see, though.

Sources: IGN, EuroGamer

At the end of the production we fought against the clock and there were parts that I was forced to approve even though it didn’t feel complete. I apologise that we didn’t fix the triforce hunt at the end of the game. It was slow and dull.
[...]
During the development of Twilight Princess, I refused to repeat the same mistakes; it means more responsibility for me, but this time we can’t let things to go wrong.

Shigeru Miyamoto added the following:

I have absorbed the criticism we got from The Wind Waker - that the sea was too big and the number of dungeons and caves were too few... The new game will have more dungeons. Many more.

Wow.

Also: don your tinfoil hats, a rumor leaked out during all this - Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - Worldwide November Release. Nintendo's official word is still "Holiday 2005", but word on the street is "whenever the Xbox 360 is released". Whenever it gets released, the "Worldwide" aspect is quite astonishing, especially considering how Nintendo of Europe seemingly hates porting anything, let alone porting it on time for a simultaneous release.

Source: Reset Magazine via GameCube Europe
[Yes, this means the quotes above have been translated twice. Japanese -> Swedish -> English]