Nintendo Voice Chat Podcast Summary - mystery third party core title hyped up

Via Nintendo Everything:

GDC

- Doesn’t really start until Wednesday
- Iwata will have a keynote
- Can only film first 5 mins of the keynote

Punch-Out

- Playable at GDC
- Looks pretty good
- Almost a remake - what they want
- Disco Kid is a new character
- 13 fighters
- Will have multiplayer
- Looks like there are different moves for old characters
- 13 fighers doesn’t seem like too much
- They will have impressions on the game

NPD numbers

- Came out last week
- Almost not newsworthy
- Wii #1, DS #2
- Wii Fit sales have outpaced Halo 3
- 10 million copies of Wii Fit sold
- House of the Dead: Overkill not doing too well
- Report on MadWorld’s sales at the end of March
- Daemon casually talked to VP of Marketing for SEGA of America, happy with early results - gives us some hope

Excitebots: Trick Racing

- Matt thought it was great
- Everything you love in Excite Truck, multiply it
- Control robot animal-like vehicles
- Stunt system like Excite Truck
- Some interactive elements are cool
- Over-the-top
- Terrain can change
- Looks like a little of advance in the engine
- Bozon beat the game - took 4 hours of steady racing - now is going back to get S ranks
- Still things that they can’t talk about yet
- Didn’t play multiplayer
- Bozon loves using the bat
- Controls feel tighter
- Not sure if it’ll be at GDC but Matt thinks it will be
- DSi, Excitebots, Punch-Out probably at GDC

Boom Blox Bash Party

- It’s fun
- Everything you hope it’d be out a sequel
- Zero-G, underwater stuff is cool
- Everything is seamless with online
- Can create own multiplayer levels
- Stages looked smooth and nice

Klonoa

- Not a lot of differences between Japanese + NA versions
- Visuals have seen dramatic improvement - looks really nice on Wii
- Still a lot of fun, even after 10 years
- Definitely worth your time if you’ve never played it
- Voice work is cheesy

Top secret third-party game

- Learn about it in April
- It’s totally badass
- Really good, high-quality
- It’ll surprise you how good it is
- You can hate Matt for giving a hint about a cool game
- Game is for the hardcore

Lux-Pain

- Steer clear of this game
- It’s a bad game

Rune Factory Frontier

- Bozon reviewed it
- Bozon likes it
- Adds dungeon crawling, weapon making
- Start out with $500
- Seems like the developers want to continue with the game
- Seen a lot of it before, but it’s a good start

PES 09

- Made some improvements
- Looked pretty awesome to Matt

Pokemon Platinum

- Craig retired from playing Pokemon RPGs
- Distortion World is new
- Better than Pokemon Diamond/Pearl
- Might not be for people who have played Diamond/Pearl
- Enhanced Internet experience
- Can save battles, post them online, people can download and watch battles
- Craig will come back from retirement if they turn Pokemon into an MMO

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time

- Wii version is a port of the DS version
- Main changes from Rings of Fate - better online, better multiplayer, controls
- On Wii version, back to being complex - constantly pointing and changing stuff
- No reason to play it on Wii
- On Wii, can only have people come to your system
- Not a good game on Wii
- Wii version running around in the 6s, DS in the 8s

Suikoden Tierkreis

- It’s awesome
- Review up now
- Some readers didn’t like the ending
- Game is great even though the story isn’t great

Knights in the Knightmare

- Half real-time half tactical strategy game
- It’s crazy but awesome
- Light and dark to it
- Very arcadey
- Really interesting but impossible to describe
- Turn-based strategy games should be interested in this game

Reader Questions

- Only multi-cart play for Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time
- Need to see new games that will use WiiSpeak - Not sure if Tiger Woods is using it but probably not
- Nintendo released NPC! Metroid Prime in Japan before US - Nintendo of America has their own agenda, schedule
- Text size of dialogue in MadWorld is small but it isn’t a huge problem
- The Conduit is going to be a T game
- Craig not sure if DSi supports SDHC cards - doesn’t think so, could be supported in future updates - no reason to have it anyway
- EA Active, Don King Prize Fighter, probably Shaun White 2 will support the balance board
- Craig heard a rumor that Tony Hawk for Xbox 360/PS3 is really cool - Wouldn’t use balance board on Wii - would come with a peripheral
- Don’t know if WiiSpeak support will be in Tony Hawk
- Craig saw a DSi game last week, it’s pretty cool - won’t be at GDC - working out specifics of how it’ll be distributed

(Thanks Brian!)