Wii Zapper

Ever since I was little, I was brought up with guns. On my tenth birthday, I received a BB gun. On my sixteenth birthday, a small gauge rifle was my present. I never grew up to be a serial killer, nor an armed robber. True, I was taught the proper way to handle a gun, and the safety involved with it. It seems now that some parents are in outrage over a new attachment for the Nintendo Wii called the Zapper.

Now this little piece of plastic, when aimed at your TV screen will simulate a gun. It will be used for certain games to emulate a gun. This is what has parents in an uproar. They believe that this will increase gun violence in children. First of all, most of the games that will be using the gun will be either rated Teen or Mature, which means that most of the kids will be old enough to know the difference between real and fake. It is also up to the parent to be involved (*gasp*) and let the child know that there is a difference.

Why do some people think that the government should help protect their kids from things that parents should be doing in the first place? The first Nintendo console that came out also had an attachment known as a Zapper. It was my second gaming console (after the Atari), and I was younger at the time, so I don't know if there was a big deal made about the use of a toy gun in a game. I really doubt it. But in a time of school violence and lack of parental involvement in children's lives, parents are wanting the government to control their lives and teach their children.

I found a blog from a New Jersey newspaper that states that they had plenty of response that said that the Zapper should be banned. From the comments I was reading on the blog, I found plenty of support for the Zapper and hardly any condemning it.

Grow up parents! Learn to be a better parent.

PS3 gets PlayTV

I think somewhere along the way Sony has confused its Playstation 3 gaming console with an all-in-one multimedia center. Sony has said that they are releasing a product by the name of PlayTV that includes two 1080p tuners. Owners will have the ability to record TV broadcasts and transfer them to their PSPs if they like. There will also be some Slingbox capability, where you can watch TV from a remote location through your PS3.

While I'm all for cool tech toys, this just seems a bit much for Sony. Personally, I think they are trying to justify the cost of their product (get $ figure), and I also seem them trying to differentiate themselves from the pack. By making the PS3 less like their competitors, the Wii and Xbox 360, Sony is banking that more people would be willing to spend the extra money to get these multimedia features.

If I had a flat panel HDTV, I would consider getting a PS3, especially since it has a lot of cool games I can play from the PS2 era. Unfortunately, the PlayTV add-on is will only be available in Europe for the time being. If this is the direction that Sony would like to go, then I say they should go for it. I have no problems with them going this way. It almost seems to be more of a cross between a multimedia computer and a gaming console.

It seems kind of odd that Sony will not be offering this to the U.S. right away as I think it would bolster sales. Maybe it is because sales are lacking that Sony is not offering it to the States just yet. To me that would seem like a Catch-22. Good luck Sony.

Manhunt 2 Cleared

As released by developer Rockstar, their controversial game Manhunt 2 has now received a Mature rating by the ESRB. The game began with an Adults Only (AO) rating in June. For games, that spells disaster as Nintendo and Sony both will not allow AO rated games to be released for their respective consoles. That wasn't the only hurdle for them as retailers such as Best Buy and Wal-Mart would not sell AO rated games.

It's not certain what was adjusted within the game to allow the game's rating to be downgraded, but you can be sure that the game has probably dumbed down the amount of violence and gore that was prevalent before. Not to say that the game won't be worth playing for the violence and blood (if you're into that sort of thing), but it definitely won't be the same as it was intended by the developer.

My take on the whole situation is that the ESRB is way more over-powering in their rulings. For games the AO rating is akin to the NC-17 rating for a movie. It limits the target audience and in turn lowers profits. But what really sets apart the ratings are the fact that if Manhunt 2 were to be a movie, it would clearly be rated R, not NC-17. Just look at movies like Hostel to see violence and gore as depicted in the game Manhunt 2.

It seems that the ESRB needs to loosen up their restrictions on game ratings and start making them more in line with the movie ratings system. Not that I'm a fan of these games that depict this sort of violence and gore, but I believe that the developers have a right to build a game and as such have it rated fairly and accordingly.

Nintendo dominance Part 2

I left off my last post on Nintendo stating why I thought Nintendo could still fail with this generation of consoles. There are many reasons actually, and a lot of them have to do with what Nintendo is not offering.

Although the Wii is built with wireless technology, there are no games that currently use this capability. The first game will be Pokemon Battle Revolution. While it may seem that games just have arrived with this ability, a lot of it has to do on how Nintendo is approaching online play. In order to show that the console is "safe", they have installed "friend codes". These codes must be traded with those you would like to play online with for every game that you own. That is, every game has a different code that you must trade to play online. This is great if you know who you would like to play against. But if you're like me, and don't have any friends that have a Wii, I can't play online.

So the easy of use of online play is an issue. Nintendo is aware of this fact and chooses to keep the setup the same. While Microsoft uses "gamer tags" to identify a gamer and allow them to connect through the console to play the games, even if they don't know each other. Nintendo could easily do this, and apply parental controls if they are worried about how safe it would be.

Another issue at stake here is third party support. Many developers are pushing out PS2 remakes and not too many original games. The original games that do come out are gimmicky and seemed rushed as the controls do not seem like they have been refined as they should. Also, why do we need motion control for every game? Why can't we be happy with simplified controls every now and then?

Right now the Wii seems to be holding very strong and has broken a lot of sales records already. I would like to see the Wii succeed and spark innovation. This is all when there are still shortages of Wii's everywhere. Can you imagine what the sales could be once the supply problem is fixed?

Some areas that I would like to see the Wii improve on is online gaming. I really think that Nintendo needs to seriously look at the online fan-base and realize what the community as a whole wants. Friend codes are not part of the equation.

I would also like to see more Real Time Strategy games released for the Wii. The motion controller would work perfect as a mouse cursor to control the games. You could bring new franchises to the console market that have been strictly on the PC. Take Command and Conquer, Warcraft, Starcraft or Civilization and port it to the Wii. It would work brilliantly.

It would be neat to see Nintendo open up the console for Homebrew applications. These are programs that are made by people who are fans. They make the games and applications and make them available for the console. If Nintendo could open up that market, they would surely succeed.

Of course, these are only my opinions, but they are shared by many in the Nintendo community. Hopefully Nintendo will be able to do some of this, but I won't get my hopes up because as soon as I do, they will spoil my dreams.

Nintendo dominance

I have been a Nintendo fan since I was a kid. I was born in 1977, which if I do the math correctly, means I was 8 when the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was introduced. That's prime gaming age. So needless to say, I've always had a soft spot for Nintendo and their consoles. As I read more about the company and some of the practices they have used in previous years, I'm starting to question how much I am attached to them. I also love the Nintendo Wii, but I'm frustrated with it as well.

It all began when I received my first NES on Christmas Day of 1987. My younger and brother and I were not allowed to play it very often, but at least we got to play consistently. The Atari seemed like last decades technology compared to the NES. On that day I became a Nintendo fanboy.

Since that time I have owned every Nintendo Console that they have released, from the NES to the Wii. When the Wii was announced in 2005 as the "Revolution", I was genuinely excited. You see, the Nintendo Gamecube (GC) didn't do very well despite being more powerful than Sony's Playstation 2 (PS2). Nintendo's business practices had made the developers move elsewhere and caused Nintendo's decline.

Beginning with the NES, Nintendo only made it possible for game developers to use their cartridges with the system. So the developers had to buy the cartridges from Nintendo at a higher rate than they could from a third party. Before the game was released, Nintendo had to put their seal of approval on the game. Also, the game developers were not allowed to release more than five games a year. In short, there were a lot of controls that Nintendo placed on the developer, but the developers put up with this because the NES was the leading console and they wanted to make money. Some of these controls were not without their reasons.

Many problems that had plagued previous consoles was an over saturation of low quality games. Nintendo was trying to prevent this by limiting developers to only five games a year. They also reviewed the games to make sure that the consumers were not receiving a game that was low quality. While this seemed to help in the short term, abuse of this would lead to the company's trouble.

The Super Nintendo (SNES) had led the console wars through the use of its previous success and marquee titles such as Super Mario and Metroid. By the time the Nintendo 64 (N64) was released the Playstation was extremely popular. Nintendo decided to use ROM cartridges for the N64, which was not accepted well by game developers as Sony was using CD-ROMs at the time. The CD-ROMs allowed for more data storage at the cost of piracy. This may have been one of Nintendo's reasons for staying with the cartridge, but many developers saw it as a way for Nintendo to get more money from them since they had to buy the cartridges from Nintendo.

This began the decline of Nintendo. Many gamers were sold on the Playstation and its line of games and many attribute this to the core gamers aging and wanting more from their console. The Microsoft XBox and Playstation 2 were released later with online capability and the Gamecube was released with no online options. Despite being more powerful than the PS2, the GC didn't receive a great fanfare because it didn't have online capability and it did not have a lot of 3rd party support.

Bring on the Wii! Despite the some failures of its previous two consoles, Nintendo comes to the plate and hits a home run with the Wii. Its motion activated controllers were revolutionary and were a big hit with casual gamers that may have been intimidated with consoles before. Along with Sony's Playstation 3 blunder (released at $600), Nintendo began to regain some of its former dominance.

Stay tuned for why the Wii may still fail...