Miyamoto: ‘Avoid SEGA-style design’

Nintendo mastermind Shigeru Miyamoto has gone on record to tell Wired News that the motivating factor behind the quality control in their games is to avoid the styles of other developers. Namely SEGA’s. Quoth:

I’m always instructing my game designers on the history of the characters and worlds we’ve created. Often we’re in development and I’ll say, ‘Oh, this looks like a Sega game. We need to make it look more like Mario.’

It’s a double edged sword really, I guess he has a point. On the one hand, SEGA have been doing nothing but running their old franchises into the ground lately. On another, it’s good that Nintendo distance their style so much so that no-one else’s name is tied in with Nintendogs or Wii Fit or whatever waggle fad is cool these days. And on a third hand I just created out of plasticine and sticky tape, Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games felt MUCH more like a Nintendo game than a SEGA one, and that ended up stealing Nintendo’s own lunch money.

Of course, there’s a 100.1% chance he’s using SEGA as a mere example of avoiding another company’s style and not running the boys in blue into the ground, but of course we’ll wait for the million and one fanboys to start cursing Ninty’s name in the street bearing torches. Give it ten minutes.

15th Anniversary: Revenge of the Wii (Wired, via Kotaku)

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New Sonic Chronicles info and screens

CVG have some exclusive info and screenshots of Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood from the upcoming issue of NGamer. The article reveals controls for things like loop-de-loops, springboards and platform jumping. The story is revealed to be more linear than most Bioware titles.

Most surprising of the info is that the tone of the game will be darker than what has been previously shown such as at one moment in the game Amy says to Rouge “You’re a tramp!”.

One of the new screenshots reveal the character summary page where you can see each characters attack list. In the screenshot shown Sonic’s attacks are revealed which all sound pretty interesting. Other screenshots display some battle sequences.

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OPINION: Dreamcast Dead?

Heard a rumour that the Dreamcast is dead? At first glance this may all seem like some sort of self-destructive pattern on Sega’s part , and that may make you lose your faith in the company as a fan. But, as this massive news special will soon explain, the odds are all in the favour of the Dreamcasters. First off, let’s address the rumours and stories and whatnot (that sounds SO English. Wait, I AM English).
Continue reading OPINION: Dreamcast Dead?

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