Frankly I don't know why I bothered doing this because no Ninty fan is going to read it. Ninty fans would prefer to have something to "beach" about IGN over than actually hear the correct story. No-one here really gives a damn what IGN actually said, as long as they've got a fake version that allows them to rant about IGN.
But for the record, and in case there might be anyone out there who actually cares about the truth here (though I doubt any Ninty fans care to get the story right... they always prefer strawman arguments of any contrary opinion so that they can feel happy and unchallenged) here's how twisted this summary actually is:
-Wii sucks because PS3/360 have achievements.
No-one ever said those words. This is a paraphrase of Craig: "We did a couple of editorials this week about the Wii being not quite as good as what's the current generation now - the Xbox 360 and PS3," and of Greg: "I don't play the Wii like I play my PS3."
You judge how good a paraphrase "the wii sucks" is of the quotes "the Wii being not quite as good" and "don't play the Wii like I play my PS3." This inflammatory language is all Gonintendo's own what can only be an attempt to irk Nintendo fans.
-Achievements are an innovation as big as motion controls. Achievements are a better innovation than motion controls.
Actually, Craig lists motion controls as the #1 most significant innovation while he lists Achievements as the #2. He asks if he's wrong and everyone says "spot on" and "I love it".
Here's what he says about motion controls being #1: "The biggest innovation in gaming this generation is definitely the motion control. Getting that working, getting ppl more accustomed to the motion controls, because that's one of the reasons why the Wii is so successful, because (a) we have some controls here that are a little bit easier to understand..." They also discuss how motion controls are a double-edged sword because they have been a detriment in a lot of games.
You judge how good a paraphrase "achievements are a better innovation that motion controls" is of listing Motion Controls as the #1 most significant innovation and listing Achievements as #2.
-When you play Wii games, you do not feel any accomplishment.
Craig said, "I know you've said this before that when you play Wii games it feels like you're not accomplishing anything or you're not getting credit for it---"
Daemon cuts him off. "I DON'T KNOW IF I'D PUT IT THAT WAY. It does add that extra little bit of incentive."
Then Greg pitches that it's not the incentive, but that he gets so much more out of it, tries things he wouldn't have otherwise. Then they discuss the drawbacks of achievements systems (i.e. some implementation is just dumb, Encouraging you to do dumb things and that's why people don't want it for Wii; it encourages you to buy bad games just to get achievements)
So Gonintendo decided to paraphrase Daemon as saying "you do not feel any accomplishment" even though he EXPLICITLY objected to this characterisation of his stance directly in the podcast and the only thing he actually did say was that it adds an "extra little bit of incentive."
-Mad World is awesome, it would have sold if it had achievements and social networking.
Because of their previous discussion of the drawbacks of achievement systems, they note that some devs may be putting in easy achievements just to get their bad or niche games to sell more. This brings them to the point that achievements may help sell niche or underexposed games.
The only thing Craig says about Madworld is as an illustration: "There really is no encouragement [to go out and buy Madworld] other than it is a really good game. If there was an achievement system in place that would get them credit for their gamerscore, or maybe even a social networking thing where ppl can see that, oh craig's playing Madworld, oh what kind of game is that, I'll check it out -- word of mouth -- the Wii needs that."
They don't explicitly claim that Madworld would have sold better, but that it might help promote underexposed games to have an achievement system and social networking system.
-Wants the Miis to copy Avatars in having clothes.
Jack was talking about Disney's D-gamer reward system on DS, NOT ABOUT XBOX AVATARS. He was talking about how playing Disney-published games on DS, you get achievements that attach to your Disney community profile and you also unlock clothes for your avatar on that community.
They're just bringing up ways that developers have done achievement systems on Nintendo platforms. Gonintendo misleads you into thinking they're saying Ninty should copy MS. In fact, Jack never even said that Miis should copy Disney. They never said anything about Miis or about copying. At all. They just discussed how Disney does it on DS.
-Mentions Wii Sports Resort and other games by saying it has achievements in it. But says it doesn't matter because the achievements do not go 'beyond the game'.
They never said "it doesn't matter". In fact, Craig says that this is the "greatest example" of Ninty acknowledging the achievement system but that they didn't go "that one step further by linking it" to a persistent online ID. Daemon even brings up how great achievements would be in old games to motivate people to replay them and buy them again on VC.
-Mention people in the comments defending Nintendo. "Nintendo fanboys have brainwashed themselves." IGN staff then mocks Nintendo fans by pretending to be brainwashed: "I don't want achievements!" "I don't want HD!" "I don't want to just sit on the couch and just play!" "I don't want to get up and wave my arms!"
Actually it was "I WANT to get up and wave my arms." Gonintendo apparently doesn't take much care even when they're quoting people. And this all was prefaced by Craig saying, "Reading A LOT of the comments, it's as if Ninty can do no wrong." They're not talking about all Ninty fans. Just a lot of the people who sent them emails, and those people specifically. They're not mocking you.
-Quote: "Turning on my Wii is a very lonely experience" because Wii doesn't have some Xbox Live system.
Daemon said it was a lonely experience because you can't see which friends are online and what they're up to. It needs a persistent online account, which Craig says goes hand-in-hand with an achievement system. There was no reference to Xbox Live.
-"Wii has been phenomenally successful, but it is the first Nintendo console I do not want to play." "A great example of this would be the new Super Mario Brothers for the Wii."
Craig did not say "A great example of this..." which implies that it's a great example of not wanting to play Ninty's console. No, he said as something completely separate from what Daemon was saying about not wanting to play, "A great example would be NSMB" and went on to use it as an example of graphical laziness.
There is no connection between those two quotes in this paraphrase bullet point.
-Call Mario 5 a DS port. "Nintendo just took everything that worked on the DS and just put it on the Wii."
They never said it was a port. They were talking about GRAPHICS ONLY and Craig said, "[speaking as if this was Ninty's thinking] we've already established that this game works [graphically] on the DS. We're just going to take everything we did in the game on the DS, bring it to the Wii and you guys are going to be happy."
They never said it's a port. They are just saying that the graphics are so similar, and yet the Wii is way more powerful than the DS so they expect the graphics to not be the same.
-Says there was no money put into Mario 5. No money for Research and Development.
Daemon actually said: "they're not putting A LOT of money in R&D" and one said "they saved A LOT of money that MS & Sony had to spend to put out the next gen".
-Craig Harris: Mario Galaxy is epic because of its story (as well as its texture mapping and cutscenes). However, Galaxy isn't as good as games on the HD Twins because games on the HD Twins have more epic stories.
Actually, he mentions the texture-mapping first and foremost rather than some bracketed little sidenote, and the last stuff he mentions is the story INTRO. Yes, he wasn't saying the story was great. He only said the story INTRO was great, but the rest of the story was lacking compared to games on the other systems, mainly because of a lack of voice acting.
-Craig Harris isn't happy how people accept what Nintendo is doing by not putting epic stories into their games. "Link doesn't talk!"
Craig actually said, "I don't have a problem with main chars not talking because I guess Ninty doesn't want to ruin what is in your head..." and everyone agrees. But they think that Ninty doesn't want to go thru the effort of finding voice actors for the other parts and putting in the effort to get it to sound great, and they criticise that as being lazy.
-Keeps attacking the "casual audience".
They've only been talking about their moms and grandparents. They're not attacking their moms. They're just talking about their lack of Wii usage.
-Likens the "casual players" to what caused the Atari crash in 1983 (not joking, they said it).
Craig said a lot of people bought the Atari but shelved it after a while, and only about 1/8 or so were actually active use. Atari made a bunch of copies of ET thinking there were tons of Atari consoles out there, but the game sold poorly because the vast majority weren't in active use. He thinks we're heading for this.
-Mentions an email where it asks Cassamassina, "Why don't you go after Nintendo for being lazy with Mario Galaxy? It is, after all, tons of recycled content with purple coins and all." They say this doesn't count since "all games have that."
Gonintendo forgot to mention that Craig said: "If they can do different things to make [revisiting the level] more fun, then I don't have a problem with that and that's what those comets were doing." Greg described it as simply "more content". Everyone agreed this wasn't laziness at all.
Why didn't Gonintendo add this in? Afraid it might destroy the image they're trying to paint of IGN being unrelenting Ninty-bashers?
-Start bashing Phantom Hourglass.
That is NOT an adequate way to summarise a short mention of having to revisit the same dungeon over an over in PH in order to contrast that with what Galaxy was doing to point out that Galaxy did it right. Especially since Craig and Jack were quick to mention right after that this problem with PH was fixed in Spirit Tracks.
-Says Wii is best when emulating the PC. "like games as World of Goo."
Jack also said FPS. His point was that the IR Sensor usage (i.e. in point-and-click and in FPS) is really great, while the motion control implementation has not been as successful.
-Say they like Wand because they actually hold it.
The way Gonintendo quotes this makes you think that they're comparing it to the Wiimote. They're actually comparing it to Natal, saying the Sony Gem is better because you hold something tangible in your hands (this also can be taken as implying that the Wiimote is better than Natal.)
-Others say they are skeptical of both Natal and Wand since they are copying what Nintendo is doing.
They weren't skeptical because merely because it's what Ninty is doing. That summary implies that they're insulting what Ninty's doing. They were skeptical because, as Daemon said, "[Sony & MS] are not understanding that my mom will never buy a PS3 or Xbox 360 because they're intimidating machines"
-Another email says NSMB Wii is being knocked more than it should. Is annoyed people are bashing the side scroller. They disagree with the email and says Nintendo didn't do anything with Mario 5 except putting out a red box.
The email writer expressed agreement with Matt that Ninty is being lazy. Goninty "forgot" to mention that. They also "forgot" to mention that the guys were ONLY TALKING ABOUT GRAPHICS. That's what the email was about. The GRAPHICS being bashed unfairly. Daemon said: "it could be so much more" and Craig said: "So much went into Galaxy but they didn't do anything with it [for NSMB] --- I think that's lazy."
-In a Japanese magazine, Miyamoto says he wanted the gameplay to be the same for all four characters in Mario 5.
The point of this section was that Miyamoto's excuse for not including Wario was that then people would expect him to fart, so they would have to figure out how to do that and so they didn't do it. Jack said, "who cares if Wario doesn't fart?" They say that different abilities for the characters would have made the game more interesting and this excuse about not being able to figure out how to make Wario fart just stinks of laziness.
-Reads an email who says that Mario 5 was scored too high by IGN and should be below an 8.
Goninty "forgot" to mention that everyone disagreed with this and defended Ninty. Craig says it's a fun game and he can't just drop the score because he thinks 'this or this should have been in it'.
Honestly, isn't Goninty supposed to be summarising what the IGN people say, not what the readers say? So why aren't they doing that? Don't want to ever show IGN defending Ninty because they want to create an image for their readers that all IGN ever does is bash Ninty?
-Starts bashing Animal Crossing Wii and Wii Music.
This is not an adequate summary of Jack saying "I love Animal Crossing" but mentioning that there was nothing new in the Wii version. Nor is it an adequate summary of everyone agreeing that Wii Music WASN'T lazy but, as Daemon said: "they could have done more, like they're using these cheap MIDI sounds".
What's the point of this bullet-summary if Goninty isn't going to actually summarise the criticisms? What does "starts bashing AC and Wii Music" actually tell us? All it does is serve as an attempt to get readers angry as they let their imaginations run wild with thoughts about what this bashing was like and how long it went on for.
-"What is the point of complaining?" says an email. "Because we got tons of comments and tons of traffic," answers Harris. This is perhaps why this podcast is so intentionally bad.
The letter asked "what's the point in protesting as a consumer or columnist when Ninty has no incentive to return to its roots" etc.
Daemon: "Who's listening, is that what they're asking? Well... I don't know..." and he trailed off with no answer.
Then Craig piped up: "Clearly ppl are listening cuz they clicked on that story and we got a ton of traffic and a lot of comments"
They were using the amount of comments and traffic to reassure a reader that protesting is NOT futile even if Ninty doesn't want to listen. Yet somehow Goninty managed to twist this to the point that they made it seem that the guys were bragging about how they bash Ninty in order to get more hits on their site.
-Bashes the Quarter 1 release schedule from Nintendo.
They said Tatsunoko vs. Capcom "should be very cool". Said Matt + Bozon are "huge Endless Ocean fans", NMH2 "should be good" and everyone is a big fan of Super Meat Boy. They kept mentioning how awesome it was through the entire podcast, bringing it up in many different contexts. Yet Goninty didn't see fit to mention this upcoming game despite IGN raving about it throughout their podcast.Goninty also didn't even both to make a bullet point summarising Craig's impressions of Dementium 2 which releases NEXT MONTH. I guess Goninty was too preoccupied with vilifying IGN to actually do a proper podcast summary.
They say that from Ninty itself there's nothing. Later they correct themselves after scanning through the list and find WarioWare DIY for DS-Wii, which Jack says sounds cool and should be good. Then someone else reminds everyone later: "keep in mind that's only the first 3 months."
Does that sound like it can be summed up as "bashing" to you?
-Talk about their favorite Wii games. Mention Mario Kart Wii and Boom Blox.
And SPM ("ooh SPM" "I forgot about it") and Punchout ("I love that game" "it's really REALLY good") and Lostwinds ("that is a good game") and Metroid Prime 3, and SSBB ("it's not lazy at all, they crammed so much stuff into that game")... oh wow, look, they actually like some Wii games -- even Ninty ones! Wonder why Goninty failed to mention all that praise.
-Harris admits he thinks Mario 5 is one of the top games for the system (odd for bashing it so much earlier in this podcast)
It's not odd if you don't go by Goninty's horrendously false podcast summary. Craig was disappointed by the graphics, but thought it was a fun game. He gave it an 8.9 and put it in the top 10 best games on Wii.
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