Back To The Noughties
Will Nick ever find his way home? This month he’s landed in August 2002
Satoru Iwata didn’t take long to start making waves as the president of Nintendo. Taking the post after Hiroshi Yamauchi finally retired from the role, Iwata chose to say some very interesting things in his first speech. In outlining the differences between the company and its competitors, he claimed that Sony and Microsoft “seek to control the distribution of all types of entertainment”. Explaining Nintendo’s position, Iwata claimed, “We want to make games that are interesting. We’d be happy to work with any company that has new ideas for gaming.” But the comments that set tongues wagging
were related to hardware development. “No matter how many consoles Sony sells and whatever Microsoft does, it is important for us to make our software attractive enough to drive consumers to buy our hardware,” said Iwata. “The effort to produce machines with better technology has reached its limit. If things continue, they may lead to the decline of the entire industry.”
Magazines put two and two together, and got an answer of 27. In a report titled, ‘Is Gamecube Nintendo’s last console?’ NGC shied away from making any definitive claims regarding the company’s exit from the console business, but did assert that these statements meant “Gamecube will definitely be around a lot longer than the traditional five-year life-cycle of past generations”. Gamesmaster was characteristically less restrained, claiming “Ninty intend to do a Sega!” and that “top bods are quickly falling out of love with competing in the cutthroat console market”. It reasoned that the company would “more than likely concentrate on making games and let Sony and Microsoft fight amongst themselves for console sales”. We’re sure that with your current knowledge, you can adequately judge their powers of prognostication. The saga of Rare also continued, with NGC reporting that a UK source had told them that Activision would soon be acquiring the company, and that the deal was essentially done but had just been delayed a little. But with the Stampers and Nintendo being typically quiet, nobody knew for sure.
The release schedules this month weren’t too hot, but things weren’t quite as dreary as they could have been. PC owners had a perfect excuse to avoid the sun, as Neverwinter Nights offered RPG fans plenty to do, and
plenty of people to do it with. Although
Edge complained of “slightly suspect performance and a few minor design issues”, the game still earned an impressive 9/10 score. Bioware’s tightly designed campaign was praised for a plot that “begins to twist and turn most impressively,” but it was in online and LAN play with friends that the game truly shined, which Edge felt made the game “a flagship for the platform”.
The big surprise on the Xbox was
Buffy The Vampire Slayer, which defied general expectations of licensed games and proved to be decent. Gamesmaster scored it 80%, as reviewer Tom East felt that it was a “fun and faithful adventure” that suffered from “spending too much time in Tomb Raider mode.” XBM praised the game for featuring “expansive levels and creatively devised puzzles” in a 9/10 review.
The best Gamecube release of the month was the rather unusual Lost Kingdoms, an action RPG with card collection and deckbuilding elements. Edge gave the game 8/10, as it felt that although the main character’s movement was somewhat slow and that slow monster summoning speeds led to silly scenes, “Lost Kingdoms has the freshness, charm and vitality to overcome such imperfections.”
NGC’S Mark Walbank was similarly impressed, awarding the game 86% and expressing the hope that card battling was “hopefully going to be a burgeoning subgenre of games”. Players with access to American Gamecube releases got the better end of things this month though, as Eternal Darkness scored a whopping 9.5/10 in Cube. The Lovecraftian survival horror distinguished itself through creative effects that conveyed the deteriorating sanity of the game’s various protagonists, who engaged in a battle spanning centuries and every region of the planet. Reviewer Chandra Nair felt that it “takes adventuring and horror to levels that Tomb Raider and Resident
Evil will never reach”.
Even Playstation owners got a bit more love this month, as Capcom
Vs SNK Pro finally made its way to Sony’s venerable console. While the presentation fell a little way behind the arcade game’s standard, the game design held up extremely well. Official
Playstation 2 Magazine awarded the game 8/10, praising the game for possessing “balanced gameplay, furious action, the coolest fighters”. That made it one of the top three games of the issue – on the PS2, the only games to achieve the same score were extreme sports outing Aggressive
Inline and the cover star Stuntman, which was an exclusive review. The game, which required players to complete difficult stunts with extreme precision, was judged by reviewer Mark Wyatt to be “refreshingly challenging and rewarding” but “not a game for anyone who has a low tolerance for maddening frustration”.
Join us again next time, when we might have slightly less hyperbolic responses to speeches by industry executives. Then again, maybe not.