Looks pretty near perfect to me. I haven’t like gone over it zoomed in but apart from the most imperceptible noise you’d swear it was actually digital.
Been on a bit of a “Tales of” kick recently, revisiting even the much-maligned Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World.
One thing that always impressed me on its release was how it was the first game in the series to incorporate full motion capture into its cutscenes - this was a huge step up coming from previous 3D games, and even Tales of Vesperia, which launched after it.
Anyway, according to the game’s credits the event director has origins with the Soul Calibur series, and I just realised a game called Soul Calibur Legends existed! Had completely forgotten about this one. Lloyd Irving from Tales of Symphonia is even in it!
Did anyone play Legends? Is it good? Feels like one of those games that never found a significant enough following, but seems like it could have potential given the Project Soul development talent behind it.
Has anyone played the House of the Dead games on Wii?? My wife and I recently plugged a bunch of money into HOTD4 at the arcade and I was wondering if you can unlimited continue on Wii? I’d love to blast through them and see the games w/o playing them over and over to “get good”.
I believe freeplay is unlocked only after completion of Arcade mode.
Alternatively, there’s an unlimited credits item that can be picked up during play, at least iirc in HOTD2.
That said, I think your best option is to play the game (disc or file) on a modded Wii using a launcher that supports Gecko cheats. Infinite Credits cheats are available for both.
House of the Dead Overkill is completely unhinged and one of the most amazing Sega games ever made. It’s as Hard R as videogames get. Completely nutso, but a really good time.
Spent the last month playing Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, and it’s really good! It’s one of those controversial sequels that splits the fanbase in half, but the reception in Japan seems a lot more positive than the western reception.
What surprises me the most is how much it gets dismissed as a lazy sequel with worse graphics than its GameCube predecessor.
The graphics are much improved over Tales of Symphonia in terms of detail, use of Wii/GC-specific effects, and character model quality. In fact, it’s the first Tales game to use full motion capture across dozens of cutscenes, something Tales of Vesperia did not benefit from despite launching months later. The credits suggest the Soul Calibur team were brought in to make it happen.
And these cutscenes really are the star of the show:
Which got me thinking, are there any other games that have full mocap cutscenes but still used textured facial animation? I think it’s quite effective here!
Our Wii got a bunch of use over the Easter long weekend. We exclusively played Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort. Bowling, Tennis, Golf and Sword Play were the favourites and it was great to see the in-laws and family get into it.
I never played Resort back in the day as I had sold my Wii by that point but that game is awesome and I highly recommend revisiting it in 2025.
Does anyone know of a third party Wii remote with clicky buttons rather than mushy? My fiancee has trouble playing Rhythm Heaven because the A button is too mushy for her liking.
Played some Wii Play Motion other the weekend and hadn’t realised I’d unlocked some bonus modes in Teeter Targets.
They were so good I had to look up the particular developer for that minigame, and it was…Nintendo.
In this bonus mode, you tilt platforms using the Wii Remote to roll and flip and bounce a ball higher and higher onto more platforms. It’s harder than it sounds as the ball can easily be flipped off-screen if you’re not elegant enough with the sharper tilts required to launch the ball into mid-air (think of a see-saw).
(This player is clearly much better at it than I)
And this very minigame is quintessential Nintendo design…there’s no medals or scoring goals attached to it, instead it starts challenging but the sheer mystery of what lies ahead keeps you hooked. Simple, but with plenty of hidden depth.
It got me thinking, Nintendo used to put out high quality bite-size games like this on a regular basis. Perhaps the last time it happened internally was with Rusty’s Real Deal Baseball on the 3DS. Compared to Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour, a title outsourced to Nintendo Cube, the difference in quality is night-and-day and you could easily accuse Nintendo today of a failing commitment to unoriginality. I think the problem is most of Nintendo’s most talented designers are trapped in the triple-A IP machine…
I never got Wii Play Motion back in the day, but started it up over the last year as I have a four year old and he’s obsessed with it. He loves Umbrella racing, Ice Cream cones, Whack a mole, stone skipping, Mii posing… Almost all of them except shooting and the satellite placement one are a bit hard.
Yeah there is actually way way more content here then there was with the original Wii Play.
