The Gamer's Quarter

[B coma]

Man, I never even thought about the possibility of a flight stick. neat!

To do air spins you have to turn the remote back and forth as you would normally steer, only more quickly with the "1" button held down. If you find the right rhythm you can chain multiple spins together.

[Nana Komatsu]

[B coma]

I would say Burnout + Jet Moto

[Tim]

[Scratchmonkey]

[Dracko]

Metal Slug Anthology is currently the only Wii game that has me interested, along with No More Heroes.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[D-A-I-S]

You know what would have been a great mode for Warioware Wii? An "expert" mode where there's no intermissions between games, and the instructions for the game after the one you're currently playing are told to you by the speaker in the remote.

Or did they have that idea already?

[Scratchmonkey]

[player 2]

[Tim]

[Shapermc]

[dmauro]

[Shapermc]

But there aren't enough buttons.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[Dracko]

I like how the Wii version has no many planned alternatives for the controller.

Not that I can say how the remote feels held, but the PS2's controller has always been iffy in the first place.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[Pijaibros]

Ya know, I didn't think about that button issue till now.

There's at least 3 basic functions and then then 4th is a "bonus" button, no? Jump, Bomb, Shoot and then D is Suicide/Weapon Swap or something.

Think you'll be forced to use one of those wacky control schemes? It still doesn't have VC controller support, right? Or was that fixed with the delay this game had for whatever reason?

[Shapermc]

You're supposed to juke the controller to throw the bomb. Or at least that's what I've been lead to believe. I also heard it was playable with the GC controller, so I got a hori-pad which solves that problem. But I have a saturn pad for the PS2 which is even better.
_________________
“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[Dracko]

[Nana Komatsu]

[helicopterp]

[kirkjerk]

The "language of the D-pad" idea is interesting, but consider this:

In 80%+ of the games on the Wii, there is still a mapping required between gesture and in-game action. Waggling a controller is not the same as swinging a sword all around you; tipping a controller is only somewhat the same as moving a steering wheel, letting go of a button is not the same as releasing a bowling ball (though some of the other games require even less mapping...)

So, then, the controllers matter in terms of non-gamer-friendliness in 2 ways:
1. when the game is such that the controller needs next to no mapping, ala Wii Tennis
2. because it's just satisfying and cool to use a whole arm or even body instead of just fingers

So in those cases where mapping is needed, the controllers can be even MORE difficult, because they have more degrees of freedom...
An NES pad speaks u/d/l/r , b, a, select, and start. I know that anything beyond that, control wise, can't be said, and I generally won't need to search for more vocabulary.

A GC controller has 2 things moving, 7 buttons, and some scrunchy-click buttons. Still, the vocabulary is rather limited.

A Wii controller, though lends itself to so many patterns... even if you can argue that there are X degrees of motion, and a "pointer" function, and that's it, the fact is they are closer to a glossary of usable gestures that previous controllers don't have, at least without specific combos like UUDDLRLRBAstart. *so for those games requiring mapping, they are not neccesarily a novie-friendly-win*

[player 2]

@ helicopterp

Read James Paul Gee's What Videogames Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy to get the real scoop at what I'm going to try to say because I'm sure I'm going to fuck it up. But I'll try.

Videogames all have a language. All activities do, actually. The example he uses is about point basketball. A guard puts up two fingers and then passes the ball. The two fingers signal a play call and the passing is really a specific kind of throw. If you were to just parse the sentence with a dictionary and no previous experience, you'd never fully understand the sentence. But if you understand sports you'd have a better understanding of what's going on.

Videogames, insofarasnow, treat inputs as verbs, player characters as subjects, the world fills in the details, and that's how they tell their story. The sentences they make, insofarasnow, are really simple. Man on a skateboard jumps over the gap.

When we decide to have WarioWare (or any game for that matter) use buttons (abstractions) over something like gestures (something more natural*)... all we're doing is adding a level of abstraction. And even though abstractions are really just language (especially when combined with rules like videogames usually are), Plato might still have a fit. I mean, really... it's abstraction for abstraction's sake.

Not saying button pressing is the wrong method or anything, it's just... self important.

*-it would be unfair to say that gestures aren't abstractions as well, but I think it's fair to say there are levels to abstraction and the level gestures are sits above the level buttons are.

@ kirkjerk

I tend to agree with you. The language of input for older games is really simple. I think the Joystick did a lot to change that (because directions make more sense in translating directions than A and B). Nintendo was onto this when they made the L/R buttons. Maybe. But they were really onto this when they made the Wii. Gestures just make sense because they're so natural to us. When you see Mario gesture the story of what happened at Bowser's castle in Super Mario RPG... well... that's a good example of gestures being universal.
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Wii #: 8749 9109 9732 3653

"It is a peaceful way of understanding life, to play"
_Marcel Duchamp

[kirkjerk]

[dessgeega]

i totally wrote about abstraction and context in warioware for issue 8, but issue 8 isn't out yet. i do touch upon how the arbitrariness of sports (the abstract rules that govern play) are easily translatable to the videogame and how warioware does just that. abstraction is the language through which the player and game communicate, and these abstractions are dressed up in context to provide meaning.

i've also written that the wii remote is going to be essential to expanding the audience of videogames beyond twenty-year-olds who played mario when they were little. warioware wii will be an interesting project, i guess.
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[player 2]

dess, didn't we disagree all the time like five minutes ago?
_________________
Wii #: 8749 9109 9732 3653

"It is a peaceful way of understanding life, to play"
_Marcel Duchamp

[helicopterp]

[player 2]

Plato's argument against the arts is that they are an abstraction removed from perfection and as such are worthless (or at the very least worth less than the real thing). The argument has to do with the idea of perfect forms and artists' inability to ever really achieve these forms. Why draw a picture of a chair when you can make a real chair*?

It's really kind of silly when you step back from the argument. What he's really saying is that bullshit for bullshit's sake is, well, bullshit. That's totally understandable. 90% of artists' worth their salt today (or throughout time) never really just did bullshit for bullshit's sake unless they were from the Baroque period** in which case it was very important to bullshit because, well, it was impossible to important otherwise.

And going back to the chair example - today, a lot of artists make a lot of chairs. So. Plato was right. Imagine the Platonic argument against the arts as merely setting a higher standard. When I criticize my own art, that's how I do it...

The Economist reference was just me name dropping. It's a good publication that not a lot of people read. It's kind of like the NYTimes in that it's really good and written by a bunch of intelligent people with a lot of intelligent content (not to say they tip the scales in any way...). The thing that I like about it is that it's accessable even though its content is highly intelligent. Read its style guide. It's kind of really good. Which is weird. Because it's a writing style guide.

*- While any chair you can make is removed from the perfect ideal of a chair, the artists' representation of a chair is at least one more level removed from that. If the artists' intent was merely to show someone a beautiful chair - well, why not show them a real beautiful chair instead of a picture?

**- The Baroque period followed quickly (although not immediately) after the High Renaissance. As art is concerned the Renaissance is an interesting period when art realizes its potential. It is when art schools form, theory becomes structured, and the great masters really master art. It's like playing basketball after Michael Jordan. Sure, you can still be great and maybe even be better than MJ, but it's hard to impress (LeBron James is having a hell of a time out-celebritying MJ despite being so much better so much earlier in his career). If the sports analogy doesn't work for you, then imagine Baroque artists as the first punk rockers - except they were actually talented.



Sorry for the stupid long academic answer to your simple question. I just thought I should explain myself because they were stupid references I made in the first place.
_________________
Wii #: 8749 9109 9732 3653

"It is a peaceful way of understanding life, to play"
_Marcel Duchamp

[helicopterp]

[dhex]

plato's response to the arts is a bit more nuanced than just why bother. you see the full scope of this engagement (or pathology?) in the republic.

good call on the economist, but it's circulation is over 1 million a week, from last i heard. that's pretty hoooge. i convinced shaper to get a sub!
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[player 2]

[helicopterp]

Nice answer!

Hey, we managed to have a good discussion about all of that. I'm going to pat everyone who participated on the back, if I ever see any of you.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[dhex]

[player 2]

Well, yeah. On both accounts.
_________________
Wii #: 8749 9109 9732 3653

"It is a peaceful way of understanding life, to play"
_Marcel Duchamp