SUPER PLAY CORNER: FEBRUARY - APRIL 1995

Hi again! Time for some more...

Two issues in the 'Corner tonight.

As usual, you'll need to view the pictures in their original size to read them properly. You know what to do by now.

 

Amazing that Starfox 2 was being shown to the masses with its own official booth. This game was never released. Sounds like the Virtual Boy was making as much an impression as ever.

This is just really strange. This is the first confirmation of Rare making a Goldeneye 007 game, but I never realised that it was originally going to be a Super NES game! This report says that the game would be ready for Christmas '95, but it didn't actually eventuate until August '97. Ahhh, Rare and their delays. Remember those days...?

The Satallaview was a hugely ambitious device, one that really took Nintendo as a company in a whole new direction. A lot of people talk about modern gaming as companies offering a "service," more than just physical media. Well that's kind of what the Satellaview was. There were episodic Zelda games on it amongst other things, and all you had to do was tune in at the right time each week. This concept surely wouldn't fly in today's "information NOW" era, but wow, what an experiment! I can see how it would have been far too much hassle to release it outside of Japan though.

Retrospect is a wonderful thing. Nintendo severely underestimated the power of the PlayStation. At this point though, who would have thought it would become the juggernaut it eventually was? Final Fantasy, Metal Gear and Tomb Raider were still a long way off, and the launch was pretty darn weak. I think that, in Japan at least, the 32-bit era was started too early. It took a long time to really take off. (ironically, it wasn't until the Nintendo64 came on to the scene that the PlayStation really took off)

... And speaking of underestimating... The fact that Nintendo went with cartridges over CDs is one of the biggest facepalm moments in gaming history. Granted, the '64 didn't have a fraction of the piracy problems that the PlayStation did. But man, the amount of A-grade companies and franchises that Nintendo lost over this issue (Square being the biggest, but Capcom and Konami as well) solidifies it as an EPIC FAIL.

... And, the story so far, as of April 1995.

Hope you enjoyed this little trip down memory lane. And as a little added extra... I'm only about a year late in discovering this (oops!) but I just watched it and think it's insanely cool. I love almost everything Brentalfloss does, his lyrics are often very funny. This one has no lyrics though, just the Super Mario Land theme and some kick-arse jazz chords. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

See you soon.