Zelda Bonus Disc Movies Uploaded

[BreakmanX]

http://www.breakmanx.com/first/zeldadd/

You can find the movies I promised for the Bonus disc there. I captured all of them myself =) I'll do a write up sometime soon, too.

[sephiroth_4]

I've gotta get that warioland and fzero! My girlfriend nor I can hardly stand to wait for those titlez. o well, there's plenty other stuff to do to pass the time! Thanks for going with apple quicktime, esp for us mac junkies!!! l8rz

[loosecannon]

Just picked up my copy and ill be playin some ocarina to warm up for march 25, well 26 to be accurate.

[BreakmanX]

Did you get one day shipping, too?

[loosecannon]

I walked into target, gave em 15$ and they handed me my two disc set.

[BreakmanX]

I was talking about this:

playin some ocarina to warm up for march 25, well 26 to be accurate.

I ordered mine from EB, and I'll get it 1 day after they do. That's all I know.

[loosecannon]

I see what you mean, I get mine on the 26th guarnteed. I walk into target and give them the difference from the 15 and i get my copy.

[BreakmanX]

Awesome. Maybe we'll be Waking the Wind on the same day. Damn, my excitement meter jumped up like 50,000 points today.

[BreakmanX]

I've gotta get that warioland and fzero! My girlfriend nor I can hardly stand to wait for those titlez

Same here man!

[Evilmagicpirate]

GG to break for uploading these awesome movies..

I was watching the one entitled 'Hot', the one that shows quick snippets from a whole bunch of games.. it was at this point that I figured out how Nintendo pushes out so many top-quality games... Im pretty sure that for all the in-house developement, they would use the same customizable engine for every game! That would explain much.. why so many Nintendo games have a similar 'look' to them..
I must give mad props to them.. its a highly efficent way of making games.

[BreakmanX]

Actually, I don't think this is the case. Most games are designed from the ground up. Mario64 and Sunshine did feature very similar engines. But, these engines are tweeked and changed a lot from game to game.

Nintendo has even had to contract some trusted outside developers for some of their franchises. Star Fox Armada is being developed by Namco, Fzero by Amusement Vision (One of SEGA's dev houses,) and I've heard Wario world is done by Treasure. Capcom has even pulled some Zelda duty by doing two recent GBColor Zelda's, and I think they did work on The Four Swords as well.

Nintendo has paved the way for so many genres by doing the first game for genres (Super Mario Bros. side scrolling, Zelda top down RPG, Metroid Prime FPA, Animal Crossing Communications, Pikmin RTA) and by redefining genres (Mario 64 and Zelda 64.) Mechanics created in those games have been used, duplicated, and improved by many developers; Nintendo and outside.

And, if the games look similar, they definately have a distinct feel. And, the change in look may be a reason for the Cel shading. As its cohesive environment is completely different than Mario's.

I can see how you can think that. But, from all the GCN games I've played, I don't think this is true for the majority of cases. Not saying there aren't a few exceptions. There are exceptions to everything =)

EDIT: This may just be do to perception, too. I don't play many PC games, but they all look the same to me. But, I bet if I played more I'd see the difference.

[Evilmagicpirate]

This is pure speculation... Ive never read anything to confirm this.. but it makes ecconomical sense that they would.

For most in-house games (First party), why would they not re-use as much of the same code as possible? Which is essentailly using the same 'engine'. They might even license the code to 2nd and 3rd party developers to reduce development costs and time.. I could see games like Mario Sunshine and say Luigi both using the same underlying code, and even Metroid and Pikeman coudl share alot.. Even the new FZero racing game looks like it is.

I know US companies do that.. heaps of games are built on the Unreal and Quake engines.. It makes sense that japanese companies would do it too.. Especailly Nintendo, where they already own all the code and dont have to pay the licensing fees. Certainly there is nothing wrong with doing this.. it is a very smart. LIke I said, this is just speculation on my behalf, but there is little doubt in my mind that they wouldn't reuse a large amount of code from game to game.

[The Siege]

both and break and emp are right about this. nintendo has been pushing so many first party franchises by licensing them to 2nd or 3rd party developers, the only games that were developed fully in house over the last year were Mario Sunshine, Zelda Wind Waker, and Metroid Fusion. RARE made Star Fox, Capcom did the GB Zeldas, Retro did Metroid Prime, Treasure is working on Wario World, Hal made Super Smash Bros. Melee and the original, Namco and Sega are working on F-Zero, Camelot is making Mario Gold and Tennis. The cool part is that Miyamoto has still been overseeing these projects and providing the base ideas for the companies to build off of. It was Miyamoto who designed the unique fighting engine for Smash Bros., and I was even surprised to find out that it was Miyamoto's idea to move Samus into first person, something which Retro hadn't even considered (they were planning on using same old 3rd-person adventure viewpoints)

EMP is right though in that Nintendo does reuse a lot of it's graphical engines (obviously in the new zelda this is not the case due to the cel-shading). Zelda Ocarina of Time was originally built off of the Mario 64 engine during the early stages of development. However, Nintendo made vast improvements on the engine, added better textures, better models, and a more refined and distinctly less Mario-ish style, and thus improved on there original code to make a game that at the time of it's release looked absolutely fantastic. Certainly much better than the development screens I saw that used the unaltered Mario 64 engine. So I suspect Nintendo reuses code for GC games as well, but modifies it somewhat for each game. Of course I could be wrong, perhaps the GC graphics engines are already so advanced that they don't need to modify it. (I can't even imagine a game that looks better than Metroid Prime or X-Box whatever game looks so good, I personally don't even see much of a reason to release a new wave of consoles)

[BreakmanX]

I agree with everything except

Namco and Sega are working on F-Zero

According to IGN, GameSpot, and Nintendo.com the developer is only Amusement Vision (One of SEGA's dev houses). The only game Namco is working on, for Nintendo, is Star Fox Armada.

And I do think they reuse some things for different games. I think they have a base to work from, and then its drastically modified. I'm glad they do this, or we'd wait FOREVER for games.

[Evilmagicpirate]

Yeah, its a common thing game companies to do.

Im curious as to just how different making a cell shaded game compared to a regular game (such as Zelda vs. Mario Sunshine for example) is. I remember reading somewhere (or maybe I just imagined reading it) that that most of the graphics engine is exactly the same, just all the 3D models are special.

Im not sure if Break and Siege were saying this or not, but I doubt the Mario 64 engine would be the building blocks for any GameCube games.. If it was, it would be updated considerably. However, I was suprised to learn that the Unreal2k3 engine is the same as the origional unreal engine, just a much much later build.. I though they started from scratch, but apparently not.. So Nintendo could have used mario 64 as a basis for the newer generation of engine.