zero

Here We Go!!









love & peace

zero

Fanboy

I'm sure it will be great fun, but these screens do absolutely nothing at all to entice me. It still looks like Mario64+. Oh well, as long as Miyamoto is behind it, I'll end up buying the GC just to play it.

CharlesC

Man those textures! The make my eyes burn! Why do all the screens from this game look like ass? Hopefully after E3 we will see some better ones.

Maynerd

FYI guys:

http://www.planetgamecube.com/mailba...=profile&id=70

"Q: Does Super Mario Sunshine still look like crap?

Rick says: NO. The game looks great in motion. The game will FEEL like the N64 title, because it’s SUPPOSED to. Also, the textures in the background objects are PLACEHOLDERS. They are Mario64 textures, and are just there until the final textures are in. The game is very smooth, running at 60FPS, with loads of animation frames.

Do yourself a favor. Ignore the trolls. Mario will be great. It’s the sequel to “The Best Videogame of All Time.” Nintendo is NOT going to screw this up. "

CharlesC

Ahh, good info!

If it is ANYTHING like Mario 64 I am ALL OVER IT! I totally agree with the 'best videogame of all time' label.

Josh H

Miyamoto has said that the game won't be a drastic change over Mario 64, just much clearer looking with much better animation. He said the change would be like the change from Mario 3 on the NES to Super Mario World on the SNES. That was still a 2D game, just on a more powerful system. This is still a 3D game, just on a more powerful system.

Anyway, many sites have said the screens don't do the game justice and some have said that some of the background textures are just filler. I figure we'll see some better pics and movies after E3.

BTW, susposedly Metroid looks much better in motion than in the screens as well.

Aghama

It's a little late in the game to be using fillers; the game is supposed to be released in just a few months and just about all the textures look like ass.

Josh H

Read the quote from planet gamecube in Maynerd's post above. The textures are fillers from Mario 64. Yes it's a little late in the game, but just because these shots were just released doesn't mean they are from the latest build of the game. Nintendo is notorious for releasing old shots. Expect to see the game with real textures at E3, and not before. They always save up their best footage in order to steal the show.

jeffdsmith

I forgot, which gaming company do you work for?

Groucho

Anybody know of an example (preferably with before & after screenshots) of where Nintendo previously released "crappy" screenshots before "wowing" us at E3?

Aghama

I'm unsure about how exactly to interpret this snide comment, so I won't.

Aghama

Zelda looked pretty wack at Spaceworld 2000.

outer-edge

Few months? June?
Hardly.
Currently it is slated for end of August (we'll see), which gives them plenty of time to enhance and tweak. That is nothing new in videogames and many companies make last minute changes for better quality.

Aghama

It's coming out in Japan in 3 1/2 months. That leaves probably 2 - 2 1/2 months for new content to be added.Last minute tweaks and completely new textures for everything is a different story.

This is of course assuming these screenshots aren't horribly out of date, but I've seen no compelling evidence as of yet to persuade me they are.

jeffdsmith

Good thinking.

I was simply implying that you don't know what you are talking about. Many companies show games with placeholders for textures and even characters to throw off the public and competitors. It's a tatic that can be used up right till pressing time if desired.

belboz

jeffdsmith, your point is certainly valid and it may or may not be correct. But, I wish you'd stick some 's or 's in your posts since I'm guessing that it's really not your intention to come across as being so snide and hostile.

While I know aghama has been around here long enough to know better than to let himself get sucked into a pissing match, I like the fact that this board is largely self-policing, hence this friendly suggestion.

BTW, your explanation as to the fact that Nintendo may be sandbagging sort of begs the question. What would they hope to gain by doing so?

jeffdsmith

Sorry, I should have included the smilies. (fixed)

What would they have to gain? Secrecy while still promoting the product. The enviorment, and the way it is setup could be vital to the gameplay experiance, not a far out idea knowing Shiggy. By putting in "placeholders" it allows the public to know the game is coming, generate some hype, and to sell it to people.

For all we know, Mario could be a placeholder for Luigi.

However, for these two cases there is no evidence, and purly speculation, I know that. Nintendo in the past has preformed similar tatics.

Groucho

I still would like a specific example of this.

Derrich

I dont recall any recent situations of a company intentionally releasing screenshots with placeholder textures and weak models just to throw off the competition. How would this benefit them? Rival developers are supposed to look at it and say, 'The New Mario Looks like crap, lets sign up and become Gamecube developers!'. No. What's happening is that the industry and consumers are seeing this and saying 'I think I'll go for the XBox or PS2'.

These shots look like a very good N64 game, which helps no one.

D

Groucho

This might be the case if the Gamecube weren't out yet and these screenshots were the only thing people saw of it. But as it stands, there are already many games out for it, and many more on the way with much better looking shots. People know what it can do.

jeffdsmith

One example that I have off the top of my head is Starfox 2 for the SNES. Nintendo showed that game on occasion at shows. What they didn't show the press/public was that you would be able to land your arwing and get out and explore. Those facts weren't made public till afterwords. Obviously Startfox2 was never released but case and point.

Groucho

How about an example of a more recent game...one that was actually released. Thinking back, all of the early screenshots for big Nintendo games in recent years (Mario 64, Zelda 64, Luigi's Mansion, Pikmin) were pretty close to the finished project. I can't think of one recent example where there was a huge discrepancy between pre-E3 screens and what was shown there (obviously, games that debuted at E3 don't count).

Aghama

I concur. In every case I have seen where placeholder textures/sounds/models/whatever were used it was because they weren't done, period. The purpose of releasing screenshots is to advertise the game, not to fake out the competition.

jeffdsmith

Eternal Darkness. Nintendo and Silicon Knights have gone out of their way to make sure people didn't really know what to expect. They created entire parts for demo use that arnt even part of the game. This includes a character they created for demos that isn't in the game. All in the name of protecting their ideas. And it appears to have worked quite well.

Is nintendo truing to protect something top-secret? I don't know. Judging from Shiggy's words, probally not. However, I think that holding off on the textures is meant to protect something. The point of the original comment is that it's not to "late" for Nintendo to be doing this.

jeffdsmith

Did I say simply to "fake out the competition"? I guess so. What I meant is they do it to advertise and show development. While they are doing that they are also trying to cover their intellectual property, and switching textures may be one way to do it. Nintendo protects their intellectual interests , they do it all the time.