TheFlyingGerbil

you can't leave one unfinished! You should finish spirit tracks before you replay another one. If you're near the end you won't have to put up with much more of the trains. The warping on the tracks was my least favourite method of getting around the over world of any Zelda game. I never ended up where I wanted to be

I've just written a rambly post that has been open for a few hours, so there are several new posts, but damned if I'm not going to post it now. As a concession I've condensed it down to one paragraph: I don;t think Nintendo is doomed (I agree with the last post about all consoles currently struggling to adapt to the new landscape and Nintendo isn't doing any worse than the others). But what does everything I have just written have in common. "This is the console with motion controls!", "This is the console with 3D!", "Look it's got a tablet that isnt a tablet!". These are attention grabbing differentiators from the competition - practically the dictionary definition of a gimmick. Motion control worked for advertisers but not for gamers, 3DS sold inspite, not because of 3D, and the gamepad is good, but the it doesn't add anything unique enough to justify the extra cost. You can read the rest if you want to: You will not find a bigger Nintendo fan on these boards than me and I personally love all the Nintendo innovations, and I hope they keep on with them - as some of them stick and are industry changers. We all know the aspects that were popularised if not invented by Nintendo and Nintendo are the biggest reason controllers are the way they are now. BUT, not all their ideas stick and whether or not they are good, they do not catch the imagination of the developers or the public for whatever reason and they are considered as gimmicks. The most often cited would be 3D, gamepad (also second screen on 3DS) and motion controls. Motion control can be put to good use, and definitely adds to some gaming experiences. The thing I liked best was the pointer for ersatz mouse funtionality. However, for the handful of games it improved (or made possible such as Wii Sports) it more often than not it was poorly implemented, inaccurate, distracted from gameplay or simply ignored completely. The simple fact here is they dropped it as the main control method for the Wii U so Nintendo themselves tacitly admit this was not a success. I love 3D and have it on on the 3DS whenever I can. But I cannot hand on heart say it improves or changes gameplay. In fact, I think we can all agree 3D has pretty much died the death. While you couldn't move for 3D TVs a couple of years ago, now it is often being left out in favour of smart functionality in the mid range. I'm looking at new TVs at the moment and it's really narrowing my choices, and I don't even know why I'm limiting myself because what would I put on it? Both the the PS3 and 360 were capable of 3D the games supporting it were few and far between, and no one exactly trumpeted it from the roof tops. I don't even know if PS4 and XOne support it, and even if they do, do the games? I can't imagine they do when they are already mired in resolution-gate, 3D would almost certainly be dropped to make room for more pixels on screen. Again, Nintendo quietly admitting defeat here - While it started as the main selling feature of the 3DS console, it is no longer advertised as a feature and indeed the 2DS removes it completely and to this end, many games adverts actually say you can play it without the 3D on, so it is not the feature that you can turn it off! And let's not forget the ungodly price the the 3DS started out at because of the cost of the 3D screen. It didn't start selling until they slashed the price (making it the first console they sold at a loss for a short while) Now to the more controversial second screens. Most people like the funtionality they add - it's nice to have the menus and maps moved off the main screen and touching menus is a lot easier than scrolling them. We all love off-screen play and I frequently hear people here mention their use of it. But even if the people who have the gamepad enjoy its features, it is not causing the public at large to rush out and buy the Wii U. In fact, it may well have had the reverse effect. The gamepad confused people who thought it was a Wii accessory they didn't need and those who knew it was a new console baulked at the price because it meant the console itself was current gen powered but next gen priced. This was directly caused by the addition of the gamepad. Without it, Nintendo could have released the Wii U console alone, at a similar launch price to the Wii U (and profitably) with the simple message "play the nintendo games you love in HD" We can never know, but this seems like an easy sell. Instead they had a confused public wondering why they should spend nearly double the price (even though it cost Nintendo a loss on the hardware).

I grew up in a small village and consequently did not see much diversity until I moved to a large city for university (e.g. in my primary school class (4-11yo) there was one chinese girl and everyone else was white). The smallish town I work in I see minorities everyday, to the point that it is unremarkable but not nearly as much as my uni city, so I would say there is a strong correlation between a population size and its diversity. I would guess places like Uk and France (because of empires) would have more diversity than most and Scandinavian countries are generally considered less diverse. Immigration is often an issue in the scandi-noir shows that are popular recently. Racism has always existed but here's a recent potted history of the UK. Obviously racists will happily hate everyone but these are what you'd associate with/made the headlines in different recent time periods. During the 1950/60s UK encouraged immigration of black people from west indies and asian people (mostly from india an pakistan) to fill skilled job vacancies (Mainly in the fairly new/expanding national health service). there is an unfortunate amount of TV "comedy" based on racism towards these groups during the 1970s e.g. about how awful it was to have a black family move next door and shameful caricatures (including brown face make-up) of Indian people. These were the most prominent target until the 2000s when ALL MUSLIM PEOPLE BECAME TERRORISTS, radicalised against the decadent west. Since the economic downturn and the expansion of the EU to include poorer eastern european countries the most recent target is toward these EU migrants. Reasons given (freely and frequently) are 'coming to take our jobs', 'coming to live off our benefits', 'coming as organised criminal gangs'. This has actually led to a resurgence of right wing politics in Europe and has effected recent election results. The last is the only sort of racism I actually personally hear on a regular basis and from a surprising number of people and people I wouldn't expect it from and I hazard to guess wouldn't think of themselves as racist - I'm guessing because they class it as politics? It's kind of scary.

If you refresh the page and click in the text box, at the bottom it should have the option to restore auto-saved text. Too late for that post but it's saved many of us here several times, especially when the boards are being dodgy.

Zelda Four Swords would be good for the gamecube.

It is my mission in life to find some open shoes (sandals or mules, etc.) that don't give me blisters or make me look like a geography teacher. So far I have failed.

Mario Maker doesn't seem like a very flexible system (compared to Little Big Planet) from what little I've seen of it, so it will be interesting to see what sort of levels people come up with. That would put me off buying it straight off the bat. I would be interested if it's a £10 download (£15 if they do one of their offers with it) but if they try and package it as a £40 retail offering I will not be impressed. Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker looks like the sort of game I'd love. Apparently there were similar bits in Super Mario 3D World, but I haven't played that - can anyone who has tell me if I should be excited?

If you click on location, between the toggle on/off button and recent location requests, does it say mode? If you choose battery saving that only uses mobile and wifi. Does it make a difference if you go into the full settings menu rather than the quick menu, or do Samsung meddle with the main settings too?

Hi, TC. Welcome to the forums. People get a bit over excited by fresh meat here. Once the welcomes are over and you've moved in to the rest of the forum you'll see we're a decent bunch. I see you've made some good posts around already, so I look forward to you becoming a regular. Good luck!

Oops. Bit slow there.

I'll definitely go back to it. Just probably only play a few days at a time and I'll probably have a read around on strategies for simpletons.

I can see it's a good game, I just can't enjoy it, unfortunately. I only got to the first boss - lost a truck load of pikmin and remembered I can't deal with the stress of deciding how many pikmin is an acceptable loss or whether to restart the day - plus there are the fruit supplies to worry about so you have to decide if you've been productive enough that day to justify a juice being used up. Pretty much I'm always second guessing myself and hesitant to press on. I think to enjoy it I'd need it so the only constraint is finishing your tasks during the day/night cycle. Losing pikmin would be fine if I knew I could spend the next day concentrated on growing more, but in the current game that would be a waste of juice.

He's done loads and they're all pretty adorable.

I do feel the characters actually had character (and development) in Skyward Sword compared to other Zelda games and it seemed to be the plot that drove you forward rather than just the discovery of new items. Definitely an enjoyable game.

I loved skyward sword too. I think we're just ahead of the curve-there arms to be a tendency to hate new recent Zeldas when they come out and opinions mellow and even become postpone over time.I guess people have such a long time to build up expectations between Zelda games their never going to be what people have imagined and put takes a while to get some perspective. You could always transfer the save over to your Wii u. The HDMI out really improved the picture for me.

Urgh. When that happens in Zelda it actually makes me want to kill myself and continue (without saving, obviously) rather than listen to it if I know there are no hearts nearby.

I just bought the four 3DS streetpass games. They're reduced by a third at the moment (£8.99). I've wanted them for a while but the normal price of £13.49 for them is mental. Nearly crumbled at bought them full price a few months ago too so glad I resisted. £8.99 still seems like a lot but trying to think of them as £2.25 each which doesn't seem so bad and I've had plenty of use out of the two free ones so...

Why not stick with the k400r until you decide rather than spend $10 on a temporary one?

SPOILERS! Here's some leaked plot details:

Not sure how you can defend someone on their third offence. The annoying thing is footballers seem to get away with anything if they are any good at playing, with fines that sound big but amount to a couple of days wages for them, or bans that seem to mostly span off-season friendlies.

This is quite handy. I think a lot of people (including British people) use some of these terms interchangeably and don't realise there is a difference.

The biggest plot twist he will ever pull off would be making another decent film

What's the first thing you're going to play? edit: woohoo! You mentioning the transfer process reminded me that LostWinds wouldn't transfer over when I did it ages ago, so while a little annoyed I wrote it off at the time as a casualty of progress. I just did a quick search now. They fixed the problem in April this year and since I am so disorganised I haven't got around to selling my Wii yet so I can transfer it over now. Landed!

Not really a trope that needs to go, but with all the recent "look at our graphics" trailers it reminds me that I really don't know why developers insist on showing off waterfalls which invariably look awful no matter how lovely everything else looks. The one I specifically remember from E3 this year was The Witcher, but there were definitely others and it's a perennial problem. I think the issue is they can only make water look convincing when it is not interacting with anything. Flat bodies of water can look lovely, and the most graphically "wow" thing in a scene until they meet with a character, a boat, the shore etc. and with waterfalls being entirely interaction with other objects the result is inevitably ropey and looks like fire used to in the 90s when it was super obvious it was half a dozen 2D animations sat on top of each other at angles.