Radio Ninty - The Nintendo Podcast

The global economic downtown and games....

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:11:35 +0000

In a move that will almost certainly prove far too ambitious to ever be completed, I'm attempting to gather some industry opinion about how the world of gaming may be effected by the widely reported recession the world is doomed to enter into over the coming months.

I plan on getting an audio report with brief interviews with a few people in, and would love your thoughts about it too.

Are you likely to stop spending so much on gaming?
Do you worry for the the smaller more independent devs and publishers?
Is shovelware likely to combine with recession to cause a similar effect to the early 80's?
Can publishers really afford games like MGS4, Mario Galaxy et al anymore?

One publisher has already agreed to take part, so I'm going to aim to do this next week, however as with most things RN at the moment it might never happen lol, but aye, get involved with your views please cheers.

Share your views in the forum.

Radio Ninty S3:E14 - We're On The Edge

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:53:07 +0000

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27.3MB | 0:59:40

NinjaTown, Trackmania DS, MySims Kingdom and Dead Space all feature in this weeks show as does our Game Of The Week which is Mirrors Edge.
Stuart is joined by Riva on presenting duties this week.

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Catching up

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:27:27 +0000

Well I'm back from Japanland now, and realised we have fallen behind somewhat with our reviews, which is not good enough is it now?

So, a quick round up of some games we've had with full reviews of these appearing on both the forum and the podcast over the next couple of weeks.

MySims Kingdom (Wii) - Improves upon everything in the original and adds a whole heap more good stuff. A cracking title. 4/5

Mirrors Edge (360) - Unlike any game before, gave me the feeling I had when I played Half Life 2 for the first time. Can be frustrating but only because of your playing, not the game itself. A wonderful visual style too. 4/5

NinjaTown (DS) - After waiting what seems like forever, the game we've been waiting for is finally here, and it doesn't disappoint. Charming, cute, funny and so full of depth, this is a game that will be on my DS for months to come. Brilliant! 4/5

Next show should be up tomorrow, Centy should be back in a couple of weeks too!

Radio Ninty S3:E13 - Unlucky for some......

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:53:44 +0000

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16.9MB | 0:36:48

A rather late show for you this week.
Stuart takes the wheel to steer you through quick reviews of My Japanese Coach, Castlevania and a bunch more.
Features a guest appearance from Pilot 51 to chat about some GBA games.
No show next week as Stu goes to Japan.

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Radio Ninty S3:E12 - It's Spike Time!

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 23:29:24 +0100

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31.5MB | 1:08:41

This week Stuart is joined by Spike to bring you the latest news and views.
Also contains a bit of homebrew along with some of our favourite Game Boy Advance games.

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Introducing.....

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 20:06:56 +0100

Radio Ninty - The First Disc

It contains nearly 2 gigs worth of awesomeness, including the complete first and second series of THE Nintendo Podcast with cleaned up tags, a couple of out take things and some other awesome stuff hand picked for you wonderful people!

Soon this will be the only way to obtain our first 2 series of shows, as we will be removing them from our server to make space.

So make sure you grab one now, simply CLICK HERE,
use the drop down menu to choose where you need it sent and fill in the form that comes up.

All payments are made via Paypal so are safe and secure.
If you have any issues ordering or any questions at all simply send Stuart an e-mail.

Prices are £5 for UK, £6 for EU and £7 for everywhere else.
This is based on a charge of about £3.50 for the disc itself, a little for paypal fees and of course the rest for shipping.
Each disc will also include a badge or 2!

Radio Ninty S3:E11 - Better Late Then Never

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:48:42 +0100

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30.6MB | 1:06:43

A delayed show that can be considered by some to be worth the wait.
Rivaoni joins Stuart on board the good ship Radio Ninty to dissect the weeks news and review Sonic Chronicles, Samba De Amigo Wii, Zubo and Crazy Machines.

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Buy from Amazon and help Radio Ninty
Air Traffic Chaos
Zubo
Samba De Amigo
Sonic Chronicles

Loads of news

Thu, 2 Oct 2008 10:53:06 +0100

Nintendo held a press conference today.

A new DS was announced, the DSi.

But more importantly, a whole heap of new games for both Wii and DS were also announced, check the threads for all the latest as we get it during the day.

And of course, the next Radio Ninty episode will have a biiiiiig round up of all this stuff.

General Conference thread
DS-i Thread

Radio Ninty S3:E10 - Buy Air Traffic Chaos!

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:44:58 +0100

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28.4MB | 1:01:56

DropCast, Air Traffic Chaos (again), Gabu Gabu Planet, Kirby Superstar Ultra, Lego Batman and Mystery Case Detective all feature this week.
As of course does the news and your Random Questions.

Discuss this show in the forum!

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Big Bang Mini Interview
DS Cartridge Treasure Hunt - Win Bakushow DS!
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INTERVIEW - Arkedo (Big Bang Mini)

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:45:57 +0100

Radio Ninty ignited some questions off to Arkedo regarding the explosive new DS game Big Bang Mini.
Camille Guermonprez kindly answered them and here they are.

Bangin'!

---

Radio Ninty : Can you tell us about the history of Arkedo and how you came to develop Big Bang Mini?

Camille Guermonprez : Arkedo was founded by Aurelien and myself in mid 2006. It was my second studio (first was a mobile games studio between 1999 and 2005. It raised some nice money with VC (around 10M€), but was quite a serious company. I sold my stake in it and f(o)unded a much smaller studio (from 60+ ppl to... 3^^), and we called it Arkedo. We (Aurélien, Eric and me) immediately started to work on Nervous Brickdown, a retro-cool, DS-oriented remake of good old Breakout. We showed it to publishers only near completion, and were fortunate enough to be signed by Eidos, and later by Success Corp in Japan.

We then took a huge step forward and raised our HR by 25%, as we hired our intern Maiwenn (actually in charge of the multiplayer & online things)
So we are now 4 for the core team, plus the electropop band Yubaba, Smith and Fortune (we meet once a week, so their music is completely intricate with our games), and of course additional devs depending on the kind of projects we are on. For instance, we had Clément who joined on Big Bang Mini, and he took complete care of the Challenge Mode (a Vectrex-powered mode with highscores, and a worldwide score+ranking leaderboard-like system via Nintendo Wifi), and also the Mission Mode (a mode unlocked when you have completed the Arcade one -25 missions, quite similar to what they did with the Advanced Levels in Portal).

The interesting thing about Nervous Brickdown is that we had to come up with many different design ideas to try and keep the game from being boring too quickly. So when we did the post mortem (basically having drinks and casually talking about it for days afterwards^^) about which part of the game we enjoyed most as a player, the gameplay of the Boss in Shoot World was the one that came out -also because the handling of the ship was so precise and new and cool thanks to the stylus. Oh, and to be honest, Aurélien and Eric wanted to make a shmup for ages: they just pretended I took the decision, but they knew it from the start

Radio Ninty : What were the original "must haves" in the game design for BBM?

CG : A Shmup. With Fireworks. Everywhere, boom!
No really. After having design-proofed the basic gameplay with a quick and dirty demo, and made sure it was fun to send missiles with the stylus on the upper screen, the next step was to see what Eric (lead dev) could do with the particles and explosions and stuff on the DS. It turned out this console was quite powerful for this!
And basically, that was it. The gestures felt easy and cool, and we felt the visuals could be nice + Yubaba was also hyped by the whole thing + we had friends willing to help, so we decided to make Big Bang Mini.

Radio Ninty : What games, if any, have influenced you and your team in the development of BBM?

CG : Wow, tough question. I know Aurélien has been gaming since he was a little one, and has a real crush for many retro Japanese games and culture (and he is particularly fond on their colours). [Aurelien adds: for Big Bang Mini, I'd say Galaga, Cosmo Gang the Video, Phoenix, Duck Hunt and for more recent titles, Titanion (Kenta Cho), and Cave games like DonPachi. It can sound weird, but Machigai Museum / Quickspot and Picross inspired me a lot too, even if it can't be seen obviously in our game] Eric started with a VCS 2600 as a kid (me too), and with the PS1 as a dev. We come after almost 30 years of games... It teaches respect We just try to have fun while making our own little games (basically, games we would like to play ourselves), while knowing where our feet are. It's the nice thing with the DS (and downloadable content lately): it allows small studios to try and do things. Yay for 2008!

Radio Ninty : What are you most proud of in BBM?

CG : I can only answer for myself, but after Nervous Brickdown, I hoped we would be able to make something cool based on a new gameplay, not stealing a classic one as we shamelessly did previously. 15 months after the project kick-off, and a few days before final submission to Nintendo, I am still having fun playing it o_O. This, I am proud for the team: my hope is that other people will feel that way too. We hope the love we put and the fun we had will show through

Radio Ninty : Did any ideas have to be left out of the finished game, and if so , what were they and why?

CG : As everyone, we tend to try and trash quite a lot. Actually, it's the only way to see if a gameplay is fun or if a style is cool: try it.
Like Nervous Brickdown (where we trashed a complete World -called Bump- a few weeks before the end of the project), we tried numerous gameplays and rules and styles for each World. In Big Bang, we trashed a world called « Blocky » which looked like a lego world. It was judged not so sexy, but you can see a background of it in the tutorial. It's the good thing to be only 4 or 5: you just happen to be there all the time, making the game, and discussing it all day long in the same room. To think of it, it's quite a luxury to be still able to have such small projects going on: the freedom is great. We don't waste time in meetings and planes and confcalls and stuff: we just make the game, slowly. And play ping-pong ^^

Radio Ninty : What are your thoughts on the DS hardware, what's it like to develop for and have Nintendo themselves had any words of advice during development?

CG : Nah, we just love it. It does exactly what we need from it. Of course, more memory for more graphics, more horsepower for cooler effects, all that jazz, could be better. But it gives us enough work already for a team of 4 to 5 ppl. And Nintendo, along with the community, is very helpful.

Radio Ninty : What games are you and your team playing at the moment?

CG : Everyone: PSN, WiiWare and XBLA lately quite a lot: it's been a great semester! And for boxed games also
Plus quite a lot of Wipeout (on PS 1 and PSP) for me lately in wait for glorious 25th September of HD Win
(Sorry, I'm having a great time expecting Wipeout HD "lately", loving every minute of it just like a kid)

Radio Ninty : And finally, can you tell us a secret about BBM that no one else knows?

CG : No
Only thing I can say is that there is indeed one secret hidden in the game, and we hope no one will believe you afterwards
---

Many thanks to Camille for taking time to answer our questions and to Keiron for organising this.

Discuss this in the forum

Big Bang Mini news thread
Official Big Bang Mini site