Planet Nectarius

I didn’t really have much of a reaction to the name, but I’ve been reading what the gaming world thinks of it. It’s all rather silly really.

[edit] Actually I did, I started thinking about what their plan is. It fits in really well.[/edit]

Perhaps this is a way Nintendo will enable it to reach out to the mass market, there’s dickhead gamers everywhere giggling at it. Soon enough the wider market will just see it as a brand, but certainly a distintive brand. They are definitely seperating themselves from the other consoles with this name. The non gamers will be intruiged by it. The way grandma’s are using and talking about iPod’s now, that’s Nintendo’s hope. That it becomes a ubiquitous term for an experience.

Thinking about it, the Wii will offer an experience unavailable from any other medium. PC’s and the other consoles have no way of acheiving what the Wii can (not out of the box anyway). So people who think about some particular task they want to perform with this thing will be thinking of nothing other then the Wii. Since there is nothing else like it.

It’s a medium, not a console. Wow I should go into marketing.

To achieve that, will really come down to software. From the few bits of info on Wii games in production at the moment, it seems feasible. For instance ubisoft are making a Yukuza game where you’ll do you’re own sword slashing, and supposedly you must become simpler and more efficient in your slicing as you progress through the game.

But the real power of the wii will be in non games, like braintrainer stuff. And unconventional games, such as a puzzle game where you slide blocks around with the controller physically. It fits that slogan they came up with for the DS, “Touching is good”. It’s a little sexy really. That’s not the Nintendo of old. That’s a Nintendo that went to Apple marketing school.
Okay, I refuse to further their cause without pay any longer.

Here are some photo’s I took at the NFF of the fantastic Italian puppet show that was there. Click on the images to go to a page describing what’s happening.

I made a very crude level editor for my game yesterday. Ludicrously simple. But it’s a simple game. It makes having levels load from xml files a useful idea. Fuck hand writing xml levels bleh!

Once I’ve handed in this game, I really want to expand it a bit and add some basic 2d physics. I want to make a puppet show tool

I met a really interesting girl at the folk festival,

Stupid me, didn’t ask for her email address or anything. She would have said yes.

I’m pretty sure I’ll never see her again. le sigh.

[edit]

Ch has inspired me. I’m going to go to her uni and hand a note to her school office (it’s a small school) with my email address. Proactive and simple. Then at least I tried eh? Leaving things up to a chance encounter is a ridiculous idea.

I stuffed up with my numerical analysis assingment. It was due on monday, but I thought it was due today because today was our first lecture after the break. I should have read it better.

So he wouldn’t accept it, I get zero for that one.

In other news… my other assignments are looming over my head. A computational one, and this brickout game for graphics class.

I just got back from seeing The world’s fastest Indian, at my local hoyts.

There was only 5 people in the cinema at a 6.30pm showing.

It’s a bit sad that so few people see good movies, but at least it makes them more enjoyable for those that do, hehe.

Yep it was fantastic, Anthony Hopkins was brialliant. I’m always biased to a movies I’ve just seen and liked, but I think it’s the best thing I’ve seen him in. Considering he usually is playing himself in recent roles I’ve seen, it might not be that much of a feat.

I really didn’t notice it was Hopkins. The character was so real. I had this constant feeling of dread that something horrible would happen to him. It’s a really inspiring story, that makes me want to get the documentary now. Basically it’s about an old guy from New Zealand who’s been tinkering with his old Indian motorcycle for his whole life, he has a 24 year old dream of going to Boneville salt flats to see how fast he can get it. He goes there and breaks a world record for fastest streamlined motorcycle under 1000cc’s.

The real story is in the determination he has to follow his dream. I guess it sounds a little cliche put like that. But it’s the best told version I’e seen. That, and it never ceases to be an inspiring lesson.

He wasn’t just determined though, he had an open mind. It’s like his dream had put into perspective the things that were important. He clearly made friends easily, and wasn’t concerned about the walls that are so often constructed around us (by us). If I remember correctly a quote from him is something like: “People expect old people to just die quietly in a corner”. I don’t know if that’s just for the movie or from the man, but either way, he was a doer, that ‘lived’ to the end.

It’s people that ‘do’ that are remembered.

Burt Munro is the man’s name. I had to look it up even after just seeing a whole movie of people calling him Burt.