3 Ways To Enjoy Baseball Games Without The MLB

In case you hadn’t noticed, Major League Baseball started yesterday. Yeah, I hadn’t either. I stopped following MLB quite some time ago, dissillusioned by the great strike of 1994. However, that’s not to say that I don’t still enjoy a good baseball video game every now and then. While I’ll admit that I tend to find some of the newer baseball sims a huge hassle to really dig into, if you give me a solid arcade-style baseball game, I’ll play for hours. I miss the days of games like “R.B.I.,” “Little League Baseball: Championship Series,” and the often overlooked classic “Dusty Diamond’s All-Star Softball.” Also, baseball video games has lost a bit of their appeal when pro ballers stopped having their names on games – Roger Clemens, Bo Jackson, Ken Griffey Jr. just to name a few. What’s a gamer to do if they want to play a little baseball, but has been scorned to the point of no return by the Majors? Here’s three options that should help solve your problem, and kill more than a few hours at the same time. [Continue Reading]

GDC ‘09: We Shall Clean The Fridge No More … Video of the Wii Storage Solved

GDC 2009: Satoru Iwata (Nintendo’s President) has announced their solution to the Wii’s pretty sad storage problem. As of this writing, you can now download firmware update 4.0 which adds support for SD card storage use. With this update, you can now download WiiWare and Virtual Console games directly to your SD card, as well as play the games directly off of the SD card. Along with the update, it also supports SD Cards up 32 gigs. That seems more than enough for people who are building up their Virtual Console library. It’s been long overdue, but it’s finally here and we can all rest easy the next time a large game becomes available to download. Hey dev’s… now we can start getting some game demos!

You can check out the video of the feature in action below.

Nintendo’s Top 10 Games Still Missing From The Virtual Console

It has been 844 days since the Wii was released here in the U.S., and since the day it was released, classic titles from my childhood show up every Monday courtesy of the Virtual Console. It’s like a little chocolate chip cookie for me to wake up to first thing in the morning as I begin my trudge through another week. Over the last two plus years the V.C. has had its ups and downs; from great classic titles that never saw Stateside release, to weeks and weeks of virtual drought. However, through the thick and thin, the retro gamer inside me has stuck with it, in hopes that some of my all-time favorites would become available for me to download, and play again, all at the click of a button. However, even after all this time, and all these weeks, there’s still a hearty list of essential Nintendo titles that are still missing – and I’m talking about first party Nintendo published games. I mean, it’s fine with me, just one more missed opportunity for Nintendo to take my money, but the thing is, I’ll gladly pay to play a lot of these games, in most cases for the second or third time. Whether these games will ever make it on the V.C. is unknown to me, but hopefully someday I’ll be able to give Nintendo more of my hard earned money, just to reminisce about being a kid. Below is my list of Nintendo’s Top 10 games that are still missing from the Virtual Console, and it’s restricted only to games that were published by Nintendo at the time of their original release. Who owns them now might be a whole different story. [Continue Reading]

No Wii Can’t: The lack of games for Nintendo Wii

No Wii Can’t

What’s going on with the Nintendo Wii? Not since the original Nintendo Entertainment system has the company had a console that could be considered the ultimate Trojan horse. Everyone’s got one. EVERYONE HAS A WII. Which defies all logic because it keeps selling hand over fist. Then why is Nintendo happy not enforcing that they are the ultimate in videogame entertainment?

My partners here at TrueGameHeadz love to refer to Nintendo as printing money. Which quite frankly they can. The Nintendo DS and Wii are runaway financial successes for the company, but at what cost? They have all but squandered an opportunity to introduce “revolutionary” games to match their revolutionary control scheme.

Take a look at the now hundreds of title strong (soft) library of Wii games. You’ll notice what should be quite alarming. They have 6 titles that would be considered above a reviewed 9 rating and two of them are Game Cube ports, 3 of them are simple sequels and only 1 is a true revolutionary experience. Those titles are, Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess (GC), Resident Evil 4 (GC), Metroid Prime 3 (sequel), Super Smash Brothers (sequel), Mario Kart Wii (sequel) and the only revolutionary title Super Mario Galaxy.

If that aint enough for you, they’ve also announced that they aren’t releasing any new games outside of Animal Crossing this year!

But yet the system keeps selling. How do you explain it? The much talked about Virtual Console pre-launch has now come to “full realization”. We have numerous re-thread classics that we can go back and play if we’ve not already experienced on other consoles. But wait! Didn’t you hear about the vaunted Wii Ware lineup of games that would round out the experience? My either.

There are 24 WiiWare titles and can only be described as time wasters. The one with promise Lost Winds was a really nice experience that had people saying screw Lil Big Planet. But for realz has this new offering of games not been a let down?

People are quick to point out that XBOX Live Arcade didn’t have anything worth its salt when it launched. Which was true 3yrs ago! But in it’s formative years it had, Geometry Wars, Cloning Clyde, Small Arms, Assault Heroes, Alien Hominid, Pac Man Championship edition, Prince of Persia Classic (Which is how you should re-release a game) and not to mention the string of hits that has been coming since Jun 07.

While we are on the subject of online connectivity. Let’s talk about Nintendo’s still reluctant commitment to online. I get it that they want people to play with each other in the same living room. But that’s just not feasible in this day and age, where most people have moved to outlying places and just don’t have sleepovers anymore

Why is it that I have to wait 15mins and keep trying over and over to get a fight in Super Smash Bros? Oh yeah that’s right it’s one of the few games online and everyone is playing it at the same time.

I was one of those gamers who got the Wii on day one in 2006, thinking about the promise that this new control scheme would bring. Who knew the pack-in Wii Sports title would be the pinnacle of what it could be? Nintendo continues to frustrate 3rd party developers by with holding things that they would like to use to make better games. First Mii support (remember them) and then most recently the peripheral that allows for greater 1 to 1 support for games such as the upcoming Star Wars Lightsaber Duels.  But I digress.

For a company that has so much history and innovation I for one wish that it would stand up and deliver. I grew up playing memorable games on the NES and sometimes I wish that they would create a new era of games and not rely so heavily on their re-threads. Give me a new lead character; I don’t want another Mario game right now. Give me a new adventurer; I’m tired of saving Zelda. Is that too much to ask?

But when sales start slowing you know what will happen right? No that’s not when we’ll get great new titles. We’ll start getting bundles of old games with… yep you guessed it, Candy Colored Wii’s!

Viva La Revolucion!!! – DaveDaGamer