#2331 - tepples - Sun Feb 02, 2003 3:39 am
Nintendo seems to hate big multi-game titles except when they have some sort of story that encompasses the games, such as Casino Kid or Mario Party, or when they have a big name attached to them, such as the Microsoft Entertainment Pak.
Publishers seem not to have trouble selling play-alikes of other games, even on the same platform. For example, Snood for GBA is a play-alike of Bust-A-Move for GBC and GBA.
If I developed a GBA game consisting of play-alikes of sixteen different puzzle games that have appeared on NES, Game Boy, Sega Genesis, or Super NES, and I put a role-playing story line around it, and I made it more polished than Tetris Hurls by THQ, would anybody buy it?
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#2338 - JonH - Sun Feb 02, 2003 4:35 am
i'd buy it, but only if it wasn't ?30! thats the main factor that puts me off buying GBA games - in the majority of cases they are genuinely not worth that amount of money. if it was ?5 - ?10 and i knew that most of the money wasn't going to some money grabbing publisher type company, then yeah i definitely would. :)
#2347 - Maddox - Sun Feb 02, 2003 8:44 am
| Quote: |
| i knew that most of the money wasn't going to some money grabbing publisher type company |
Hold it. A LARGE PERCENTAGE of the money you pay for a GBA game goes directly into Nintendo's pocket (in a way). This is because publishers have to pay a large sum of money to Nintendo to buy those stupid cartridges. Nintendo is in it for the money, folks.
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#2365 - tepples - Sun Feb 02, 2003 3:41 pm
| Maddox wrote: |
| Quote: | | i knew that most of the money wasn't going to some money grabbing publisher type company |
Hold it. A LARGE PERCENTAGE of the money you pay for a GBA game goes directly into Nintendo's pocket (in a way). This is because publishers have to pay a large sum of money to Nintendo to buy those stupid cartridges. Nintendo is in it for the money, folks. |
Then why do GBA games cost $30 (?18) in the USA but ?30 ($49) in the UK? We had a discussion about this some time ago on gbadev, and it was figured out that quite a bit of the extra $19 for a GBA game in the UK goes to the retailer.
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-- Where is he?
-- Who?
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-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#2369 - JonH - Sun Feb 02, 2003 4:46 pm
| tepples wrote: |
| Then why do GBA games cost $30 (?18) in the USA but ?30 ($49) in the UK? |
exactly! if all GBA games over here cost just ?18 the market wouldn't be quite as unhealthy as it currently is. does this industry have no common sense? and while i'm at it, the jap boxes look MUCH better :)
#2428 - Vortex - Mon Feb 03, 2003 8:58 pm
I don't like puzzle games in general. Myst, which was a decent game, was ruined IMHO because of the heavy puzzle element. I think we need some Real-Time Strategy (like WarCraft, StarCraft) or Turn-Based Strategy (Civ I,II,III) games for the GBA. If you release a simplified WarCraft clone I will buy it regardless of the price.
#2449 - peebrain - Tue Feb 04, 2003 7:58 am
Depends on what the 16 puzzles are...
~Sean
#2452 - Splam - Tue Feb 04, 2003 8:36 am
Not keen on puzzle games myself but there are a LOT of people who are ;) Handhelds seem to be the ideal platform for them, something akin to a rubik cube etc, easy to carry around and just mess with.
#2456 - tepples - Tue Feb 04, 2003 9:46 am
No, Vortex, I'm not talking about puzzles as in Myst or puzzles as in Sokoban but rather puzzles as in Klax, Bust-A-Snood, or Pac-Attack. With games like Lockjaw, Gem Greed, Convey, Insane, Vitamins, Zoo Boy, Hermetic, Bubble Revolution, Ignorance, Jove, and Alpha[1], how could Tetris fans not like it, especially after having endured the disappointment that is Tetris Worlds?
| When trying to think up a believable story line, I wrote: |
As I've planned it, the story revolves around a boy, call him Pino (after the hero of Toypop), who receives an 8-bit Pretendo console with a platform game as a Life Day present and plays the heck out of it. (Platformer minigame.) A month later, he takes a field trip to a science museum with his classmates. A couple of them are carrying Pretendo's new handheld; one has Lockjaw, and the other has a platform game. Pino is initially turned off by the abstract unfamiliarity of Lockjaw and plays the platform game for a while. (Platformer minigame with tiny greenscale graphics.) But then somebody shows him how to play Lockjaw, and after two tries, he's hooked.
Pino then discovers that Lockjaw is also available for the console and asks his father to rent a copy of Lockjaw from the local Quick Video. A day later: "Sorry, all they had was Convey." But he likes it anyway. Then Vitamins comes out, and Pino likes that too, seeing how it borrows elements from Lockjaw and Convey. Now he's a puzzle fiend. He enters the local video game competitions (thus the "Puzzle Arena" name) and uses the prize money to buy more puzzle games. Eventually he buys consoles just to play their exclusive puzzle games (Gem Greed is only available on Dryy's Deuteronomy console and Sprocket handheld; Alpha is released only on Phony System 1). |
spoiler: [ It's half autobiographical. ] But is the story too far-fetched for players to accept as a back story for a *tris collection?
[1] I'd be happy to explain how these games would work via private message. I feel it'd be too much of a spoiler to post them in the public forum. But start with my first public prototype of Puzzle Arena, called "freepuzzlearena" here.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
Last edited by tepples on Sun Dec 11, 2005 6:32 pm; edited 2 times in total
#2533 - XeroxBoy - Wed Feb 05, 2003 10:58 pm
| Quote: |
But is the story too far-fetched for players to accept as a back story for a *tris collection?
|
Hey, if people'll accept that FF Tactics Advance's story involves kids getting sucked into a book called Final Fantasy... :P
#2539 - tepples - Thu Feb 06, 2003 3:44 am
| XeroxBoy wrote: |
| Hey, if people'll accept that FF Tactics Advance's story involves kids getting sucked into a book called Final Fantasy... :P |
Then why can't Nintendo and the bigger licensees get together to make a game called "Captain N 2003" which involves a kid getting sucked into his GameCube?
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.