Nintendo E3 in a Nutshell

Tonight, after a brief thirty-minute preview of what the Wii U can do technologically and socially on Sunday, we got the full seventy minute Wii U experience at E3 announcing many games for the new console, alongside a sample of 3DS games with a further broadcast on Wednesday night to give more insight into these.

So what did we get? Well it was a very enjoyable presentation with a few surprises. It was arguably Mario-centric, especially when it came to 3DS games, but there was much to whet the appetite of those interested in what the Wii U has to offer and overall was a very enjoyable presentation packed with promise.

Two of the most exciting games shown have to be the latest entry into the Mario franchise and a surprise finish with a not-heard-of game (I’ll talk about these in more detail at the end) but there was a lot to take in, even if Reggie’s suggestion they had a lot to get through in an hour not stopping him waffling and re-capping what we already knew about the tablet.

Though I’ve not played a game in the franchise yet, God-sim sequel Pikmin 3 looks to be a step-up both graphically and in game play with a stronger multi-player focus and more depth and challenge.

There were also a few other reveals including the console being available in black and white – though no confirmation whether at launch; compatibility with Netflix, YouTube and Amazon Video; and how it can support two game pads in post-launch games with rumble and speakers confirmed in the individual game pads.

Games revealed include a special edition of Batman Arkham City using the game pad as an inventory selector among other things; Scribblenauts Unlimited for both the Wii U and 3DS with the former at least boasting touch-screen combination of items to create your own unique objects; Wii Fit U which can work with just the screen and a piece of technology called the Fitmeter, which looks like a pedometer-style device that works with NFC with the game pad to upload your work out through the day to the system; and SiNG, a new franchise that sees the game pad become a lyrics screen, allowing you to face the crowd rather than away from them to sing, whilst your friends can take part in a dance game. All these look very promising titles. Even if they had to play Carly Rae Jepsen as part of the last one.

Also given more information were 3DS games including ‘New! Super Mario Bros 2’ released on August 19th in the USA with a strong gold collector theme (no real explanation though) and the return of raccoon Mario; a new Paper Mario game with a brief explanation of the sticker power-ups; and the Luigi Mansion sequel for the portable console featuring multiple mansions. More will be revealed for the handheld at tomorrow’s demonstration including, one presumes, games that don’t involve Mario and what the gold theme means for the new handheld game, not that we have long to wait for it.

Lego City Stories, also shown in the Wii U version and ending with a funny Mario joke, looks like a Lego version of Grand Theft Auto with its city-based mission-based gameplay; and the inevitable Just Dance sequel. There was also quick previews of games such as ‘Aliens: Colonel Marines’; ‘Ninja Gaiden 3’; ‘Darksiders 2’; ‘Assassins Creed 3’, ‘Rayman Legends’, ‘Trine 3’ ‘Tank! Tank! Tank!’; ‘Tekken Tag Tournament 2’, ‘Castlevania’ and ‘Mass Effect 3’ on the video screens during the presentation, all with more information on the website that was announced at the end.

After a comment that may get Reggie sacked – “Being the puppet-master is like being in charge of NOA” – we got a bigger focus on ZombiU, a Left-For-Dead style shoot-em-up first teased on Sunday night’s video that looks promising and also includes an interesting, but possibly gimmicky, camera application to turn you into a zombie, that at least moves with you as you do.

The presentation ended on the very promising Nintendoland game, see below, though it doesn’t seem like it will be packaged with the console, but will at least be available at launch.

Reggie advised people to find out more at e3.nintendo.com and there’s certainly more to be seen then from concept art to videos and other games such as Project P-100 (a Pikmin-style superhero game); Panorama View (a play on augmented reality in your living room using the game pad); and ‘Game and Wario’ which looks to be the party game successor to the ‘WarioWare’ franchise.

Overall it was a very promising presentation for Nintendo and possibly the strongest line-up of games revealed for any console launch, with the technology to back it up. There are still questions to be answered relating to the power of the console and how much it will ultimately cost, and whether the announced “hardcore” games will be enough to satisfy the naysayers and build a strong foundation on top of the aging PS3 and Xbox 360, but in the wake of E3 I feel that Nintendo are definitely in a strong position for a festive launch this 2012.

And here is some more on two games in particular I can’t wait for...

New! Super Mario Bros U

A new 2D platform game set in the Mario Universe. From the title card displayed, showing Baby Yoshis and the sea-mine type squid monsters, but with a more art-style feel with moving, texture-rich backgrounds, it looks like a cross between the New! Super Mario games and the two Super Mario World releases. One background resembles Van Goth’s night-sky paintings.

With the hints from the Nintendo Direct show, there is a new power-up that turns the playable characters into a flying squirrel, demonstrating similar movements to the hover abilities of the SMW cape. Also with power-ups you can feed the baby Yoshis, but no evidence that they grow up into full Yoshis but this will be likely. Yoshi can also receive a balloon power-up, similar to the one from Super Mario Galaxy 2, that allows a character to grab onto him and float around. It also seems that baby Yoshis can trap enemies in bubbles.

There is also four player co-op play using the Wiimotes – with Miis playable and is more assist play than verses play. The two Toad characters return as players three and four. The player in charge of the Wii U game pad can place blocks, platforms and freeze enemies to assist the others.

Star coins and red coins also return as does a Giant-style world from Super Mario Bros. 3 and the moving Boo ghost circles from Super Mario World. Moving platforms, time-sensitive platforms (including some resembling Electroplankton leaves), dark underground limited-light sections and underwater levels are also present.

New! Super Mario Bros U will be a launch game with the Wii U console.

Nintendoland

Nintendoland is the Wii U equivalent of Wii Sports set inside a theme park populated by Miis with a series of mini games including ones set in the Mario, Donkey Kong (“Crash Course”), Animal Crossing (“Sweet Days”), Metroid and Zelda (“Battle Quest: Archery and Swordplay”) universes.

One game – “Haunting Hijinks” heavily shown was based on Luigi’s Mansion, a top down Pacman-style game where the game pad player controls ghost scaring the other four players, who have to explore the maze and shine their torches on the ghost to weaken it and ultimately destroy it, but their torches have limited batteries, replenished by batteries available in the maze. Meanwhile the ghost can cause players to faint who can be re-animated by other players shining their torches on them. The ghost wins if all players are knocked out at the same time, or defeated if worn down by torch light. Only the game pad player can see everyone’s locations and the players can’t see the ghost.

Another game is one based on a tech demo for last year which is a game based on shooting metal weapons at targets.

Nintendoland will be a launch game with the Wii U console.

Wonderpedia - The New Magazine

Whilst browsing in my local Morrisons I decided to pick up some magazines (no, not that sort of magazine before anyone suggests anything!) and among the usual Stuff and NME and bits was a new magazine called 'Wonderpedia', released this month for the introductory price of just £1.99.

'Wonderpedia' is basically Wikipedia meets QI in magazine form, a stylish 100-page collection of facts, figures and articles on everything from the Mona Lewis to a Bangoko prison, the working of the brain and the heart to what makes a psychopath.

I'm not entirely sure who the magazine is aimed at as the language is straight-forward but not child-like but the straightforward laying out facts and strong design and photo focus suggest it is for a younger audience, though the style of ads are the ones you'd tend to find in a men's magazine - cars, beer, the, er, latest bladeless fan from Dyson. I think it's a magazine that is trying to hit lots of people and its a wide demographic sweep that works.

Very well composed with a good mix of chunky articles but also snippets of facts, often with large, bold photos or diagrams, it's truly an interesting read, sort of like a Schott's Miscellany book but with more pictures.

It sounds like the monthly issue will be just £2.99 from issue two and for what you get that is a bargain, and you can save even more by subscribing.

A surprise pick up and a magazine well worth reading to find out lots you don't know on a very wide range of subject matters. Give it a try!

Phil’s Adventures with his Raspberry Pi: Part Two

So, the story so far from part one is that I’ve got the actual Pi itself, the power cable, sound cable and, hopefully, a working HDMI > VGA cable but the only thing missing from starting the Pi up was an SD card.

So, one trip to Argos and purchase of a SanDick SDHC Class 4 8 Gb card later (£14.99) I now have everything I need – I hope – to get it working.

Firstly I need to install the boot information to the SD card. Heading over to http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads. For my Windows PC I firstly needed to download and install http://www.softpedia.com/get/CD-DVD-Tools/Data-CD-DVD-Burning/Win32-Disk-Imager.shtml (avoiding the misleading RAR extraction tool advert at the top).

As I am a beginner to this I went for the Debian “squeeze” download available on the Raspberry Pi website and installed using the second edition of the useful MagPi magazine as help.

Opening the Win 32 Disk Imager I located the image file and selected the device to right to (in my case ‘D’) then pressed ‘write’. Make sure you don’t make the mistake I did and have the SD card open in Windows Explorer at the same time as you’ll get an error.

With the software installed it was time to get it to work!

Now the first stumbling block was, as feared, the HDMI > VGA connector was a dud and didn’t work. So, with a bit of a change of plan, connected it to the flat screen TV using HDMI and this worked fine, booting up and allowing me to log-in using the log-in details provided on the website and then entering ‘startx’ into the command prompt to open up the GUI. And there was the Raspberry Pi in all its glory.

Now to test the other elements.

The next stumbling block was the keyboard and mouse. The ones downstairs are PS/2 connections so I had to use the USB ones from another PC so two converters need to be purchased to connect them to the USB hub we already had (though for cost I’m just going to buy a cheap USB keyboard and mouse), plus a USB A > USB B cable as I had to cannibalise another one. Problem solved for that.

I tried putting in the Western Digital hard drive I had into the Raspberry Pi and after a few error messages and a ten minute wait it finally mounted successfully and I could access the drive. My memory stick, thankfully, loaded quickly.

I am pleased to see that the Linux software is very like Windows and intuitive to use and even comes with its own music player, which is good, though for some reason I cannot get any sound out of it even though the website confirms that sound through HDMI works (and removing the HDMI gave the familiar noise of sound being pulled out) but none of the music would play even when I plugged in the headphone out > phono cables so this is the second problem I need to solve.

So some progress and though not as smooth an installation as I would hope there has been progress.

Problems to solve:
Connecting up the Raspberry Pi to my ordinary VGA monitor
Working out how to get sound of it
Waiting for the keyboard, mouse and USB cable to turn up
What to do with my spare SD card

Stay tuned as I try and solve these problems!

Total cost spent so far:
Raspberry Pi £29.46
Power Cable £03.94
3.5 Jack > dual phone £00.75
VGA Converter (Dud) £06.07
USB Keyboard £06.07
USB Mouse £04.24
USB A > B £00.81
TOTAL £51.34

Nintendo Direct Report (3rd June 2012)

Over thirty minutes last night Iwata-san of Nintendo revealed some new information about the WiiU – Nintendo’s next generation console – ahead of tomorrow’s E3 press conference.

So what did we learn about this Christmas’ console release? Well the Wii U tablet – the stand-alone controller featuring a touch screen – is now known as the “Game Pad”, has clickable analogue sticks rather than circle pads (which will make many games much easier to control) and new buttons on it including confirmation that it will be compatible with NFC (Near Field Communication, interacting with cards or devices placed near the device) and that you can use it as a limited universal remote with your television. They also confirmed the presence of motion and gyro controls alongside a slight re-tweak of the body form.

The game pad is looking to be an exciting piece of tech, one that can control the Wii U in different ways, working independently so you’re no longer shackled to your television but also working with your TV to create new entertainment experiences. Granted very little truly revolutionary information was revealed on this Nintendo Direct broadcast that we didn’t see last year but it was fun to see some clarification.

The rest of the broadcast was taken up with a description of the Miiverse which, for all the positive banter online, is really an exercise in catch up on services such as X-Box Live. When you boot up your Wii U you see a massive version of the Mii Plaza with descriptions of what your friends and other console players are doing with speech bubbles explaining their activity or what they are doing. It’s basically a huge Nintendo social network with the ability to write comments on the game pad and send them to friends or out to the general throng of players, for instance asking for help in a game as shown in perhaps the cheesiest American video game promo in a long time. It won’t be long before ‘none-specific action figure’ is set up on Twitter, I bet you.

(It comes just ahead of the explanation that Miiverse is Mii + Universe, which was a little bit of stating the bleeding obvious).

What is exciting about this network, though, is that you’ll also be able to access it on your smart phone or PC or, in fact, any internet-enabled browser, which definitely ticks the box of Nintendo’s convergence. Here’s hoping it can also connect to Facebook and Twitter for true integration.

A few other tit bits were also revealed such as the ability to take and post screen shots of games and a map from the new Mario game showing comments on levels by friends. In fact, this new Mario game shown looked gorgeous and with a Super Mario World-style map, so I’m definitely looking forward to playing that!

Throw in the new Wii U Pro Controller (many comments correctly compared it to the X-Box controller in looks) and hints at games to be revealed tomorrow the Wii U does look like a strong contender for Nintendo. The heavy focus on social networking is a definite step in the right direction but it will live and die on how much it integrates with the real world Facebook and Twitter universes and, of course, how much power the game has under its bonnet to take a leap forward from the current generation PS3 and X-Box 360 ahead of whenever Sony and Microsoft release their next consoles.

Did we learn much more from the Direct broadcast? Not really. We learnt the rumour of changing the name to avoid confusion with the Wii is not true, but the inclusion of analogue sticks is. We saw that there doesn’t seem to be an upgrade to the Miis – they don’t look particularly any more detailed – and no real clue on how powerful the console is. Hopefully this will be resolved on Tuesday.

The new Mario game looks exciting and the social aspects will be fun, and the relationship between the game pad and the tablet looks to be an inspired decision and with video chat and much more possible should make up for the weaker aspects of the internet connections of the Wii. Plus, we’ll be getting an update to the 3DS to the Miiverse. It would also be great if they could do it for the original Wii, too, so players with the older console could be part of the buzz and make it an even bigger global experience.

I’m excited now for E3 for the games and what Nintendo will do with these new powers and hope there’s something big and fresh they’ve yet to announce.

Phil’s Adventures with his Raspberry Pi: Part One

Many months ago I pre-ordered my Raspberry Pi – a small, one-PCB computer capable of doing some amazing things for a very low price tag. And then, after many e-mails regarding many delays including unexpected demand and the need to slap a CE label on it to make sure it was safe, my Pi turned up in a rather unassuming white box.

The purpose of these articles will be chart my progress of working with the Raspberry Pi, in an attempt to replace a hulking old computer connected to my parent’s hi-fi that, though fit for playing music, takes ages to load up, with a smaller, more stream-lined version using the Pi as the basis.

Along the way I’ll be talking about problems, solutions and compromises. Having never built a PC or worked with Linux I expect it to be a challenge so we’ll see how it goes!

Now the first challenge would be to buy the cables and kit necessary to get it working. Out of the box you literally just get the circuit board and nothing else to get it to work so, when it arrived a week ago I began ordering everything I needed.

Firstly, power. As I’d recently purchased a new mobile phone in the shape of a HTC One S I tried its power cable and found it fitted so ordered a new one from Amazon in the shape of “Micro USB Mains Charger For HTC ONE X, HTC ONE S, HTC ONE V, HTC Sensation XL” costing me £3.94. Plugging this in found the red light symbolising power came on onboard the circuit board so a success there.

Next was sound, which was straight forward, as that was just a standard headphone jack out to dual phono, coming in at a bargain 75 pence.

Then there would be the SD card onto which the files are loaded and the device boots off from. It has to be at least 4GB, class 4, preferably a brand name. I’ve ordered one and it’s yet to turn up so I’m going to pop into town in a couple of days to get another one to make sure I have time to test it. Until I can get this card the Pi shall remain unused.

Onto visuals and this is where it gets murky. The Pi has two outputs: HDMI and yellow composite out, both of which are fine if you are plugging into a television. Sadly, however, in my case I’m going to be plugging into a monitor via VGA which is not supported, and I’m paraphrasing here from the official website, because VGA is an old technology.

Now to me 100% of the computers I use connect the main PC to the monitor by VGA though chatting to my friends they keep mentioning DVI, but in my experience it’s VGA all the way. It seems from mooching around on the internet that this is a grey area of information and a hot bed by buying cables that doesn’t work. The upshot is that I have to connect it to a monitor so need some way of converting so for £6.07 have bought a “1.5M HDMI HDTV Male to VGA Male 3RCA Converter Cable” and I wait nervously to buy the SD card to see if this has been a worthwhile purchase or a useful piece of tech.

The Pi is not a problem if you are connecting to a flat screen television as they tend to have HD inputs and composite in, but not if like me you are using a traditional VGA monitor.

Total cost spent so far:
Raspberry Pi £29.46
Power Cable £03.94
3.5 Jack > dual phone £00.75
VGA Converter £06.07 TOTAL £40.22

Next up on my list is to get the SD card so in the next part I’ll be taking you through the process of installing the software and getting it working, and seeing if I can get the visuals to my monitor, plus dipping my foot into the world of getting a case. Then after that it’s attaching the keyboard and mouse and hard drive via USB and exploring the world of installing software like a browser, music player, Spotify and audio editing software.

It’s going to be an interesting time I think!

An Update On My HTC One S

It's been a while since I updated on my phone following articles - Part One and Part Two - and it's been a relatively smooth ride with it.

I'm enjoying the much easier to use abilities of Facebook and Twitter via the apps and the app store is itself proving to be very good on Android phones. There's nothing particular that I've wanted to download that's not been available and it makes things like IMDB, RunPee (a great app for film goers) and FourSquare a doddle to use.

I've been exploring the features of the camera much more and though the front facing VGA camera is so low quality it's almost pointless the main camera creates great quality photos though does struggle with fast moving images. One thing it is lacking is some way of taking photos of yourself with friends and it's difficult to point the exterior camera at you and then press the correct part of the touch screen to take the photos, so a physical side button would have been beneficial.

The one part of the phone I am finding a struggle with at times is the mobile signal. A 3G or H connection isn't always possible and sometimes Facebook can be rather sluggish. I also find that it sometimes takes two times to call people or a good ten second delay between starting a call and it ringing, but I don't know whether this is to do with the phone or T-Mobiles signal. The amount of bars displayed doesn't seem to connect up with the speed of the connection and the Wi-Fi sometimes seems to stop things downloading at all unless cancelled, but this is rare.

There are a few other minor quibbles. With the beautiful weather we've had recently I find the screen doesn't cope so well in bright sunlight and the side of the case gets scuffed a little.

Overall though I'm very pleased with the phone. Phone calls are clear and crisp and now I've activated my voice mails, for some reason this wasn't set-up by default, everything is working fine. The layout of text messages as conversations is very helpful but I'm still struggling with the keyboard, but a stylus bought for me by friend Liam helps. The buttons are just too small for my fingers and though the predictive text options is excellent in guessing what you're writing, even when you go considerably wrong it's still not that intuitive.

One thing I'm trying to tackle now is showing the calendar options - which syncs perfectly with Facebook - as part of the main screen but it's just a matter of uncovering the options.

If someone asked me the straight question of, if given the option, would I buy this phone again, I would say yes. There are a few minor niggles with signal and the difficult to use keyboard, but it's a phone that integrates easily and intuitively with contacts, social networks and other areas. The app store is easy to use and comprehensive. The camera is above average for a mobile device. The music player sounds great and is flexible. The screen is a great size and the device itself light weight. So, yes, it's well worth a purchase.

Men In Black 3 [Review]

Ten years after the previous film, Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are back in the third entry in the comic book inspired comedy films about an agency who monitor earth for aliens and protect the world from them.

This film sees Boris the Animal, played with much menace by Jemaine Clement, escaping from a moon base and plotted revenge of Agent K (Jones) who imprisoned him forty years earlier. Stealing a time travel device he kills him in the past, wiping K from history and leaving Agent J (Smith) to travel back and try to save his partner. Men In Black 3 is an enjoyable film to watch. Like the previous movies it’s not laugh out loud funny but it’s certainly a fun film with Smith having the majority of the good lines – the scene with police and a car back in 1969 being one highlight – but Emma Thompson as new character Agent O gets some good lines in her small appearance on camera. Jones plays his character well but in the early scenes he’s difficult to understand and doesn’t seem to have the energy he once had in the films. Will Smith is as energetic as ever and carries the film well.

Visually, the jump in CGI since the last entry is clear in the new film. Alongside some amazing camera work – the crane shots employed both in general early scenes and the climactic battle around a rocket are incredible to behold – the scenes where Smith does his time jumps are a perfect meld of real footage and generated imagery. Rick Baker’s alien make-up and costumes are as inspired as ever and effects such as those of Boris the Animal and his opening and closing skin never seem fake.

The film also takes time to acknowledge changes since the last film. Though I usually dislike scenes like this – quick throwaway lines to explain away deaths of characters because the actor has passed away or moved on that slow the film down – they are done well here with a small ode to Agent Z, played by Rip Torn who has suffered recent personal problems and several references to Frank the Pug throughout the film which, alongside cameos by the Worms, serve as fan-pleasing nods back to previous entries. Thankfully, these nods aside, it’s not a film that rests on the warm memories of the first to get its laughs.

Fleshing out the movie, Josh Brolin was perfectly cast as Jones’ younger self, both physically and in acting style, and Michael Stuhlbarg as Griffin, a future-predicting alien introduced half way through the film, quickly steals a lot of the screen time.

There is a lot to enjoy in this film and is well worth seeing, from the well created set pieces from the opening moon prison escape with its mixture of fighting and weird snogging with Nicole “Pussycat” Scherzinger, to the battle around Apollo 11 with its acrobatics and palm-sweating heights. It certainly seems to be the most well-crafted and ambitious of the three films and the ending, which is considerably down-beat in places and played with pathos, manages to be touching and clever without seeming too cheesy, plus the retro-fitting of a plot twist doesn’t seem out of place.

Throw in some great comedy pieces like the Chinese restaurant fight with a variety of aliens – the blob fish is a particular one to look out for – and you get a film that may not be overloaded with comedy but is a welcome return for Smith and Jones and, rather than damaging what has come before, adds to the mythology and universe and makes this a worthwhile addition to the first two films. It has enough creativity, interesting costume design, jokes and, most importantly, plot to carry the 100 minutes of film and is, I’m wary to say, possibly the best of the three films.

Don’t believe other reviews that suggest Jones is a mere cameo in the film; he gets plenty of screen time and Brolin plays his younger self so well it feels like the character himself never truly leaves the screen. Men In Black 3 is a well-written and performed film, though it’s not as funny as it could be.

The only shame is that the main theme song isn’t sung by Smith himself but the Pitbull track, playing over the end credits, is a grower.

(7/10)