Growing Nintendo

Well, everybody knows that Nintendo consoles are in great demand. No wonder that more games for Nintendo are sold. But look at these numbers: in the 3^rd quarter of the current year the business volume for Nintendo games was $1,2 billion! This means a raise of about 32% compared to the 2^nd quarter. This was a historical moment, because Nintendo passed Sony with these numbers.
Sony’s revenue remained constant at about $1 billion. Did I missed someone? Oh Microsoft increased their volume to $318 million.
But why Nintendo got the edge? Some market-researchers attribute this to the fact, that the Nintendo’s products have more mass appeal than the consoles of their competitors... What do you think about that?

Handheld madness

Some time ago a friend of mine had to stay in a hospital for about one week. He is not the typical “book-reading” guy. So how could such guy be kept entertained? Watching TV the whole day? This gets boring over the time. So another friend brought him a GameBoy Advanced and a Nintendo DS and I started to wonder how many handheld video game system Nintendo have ever developed. All which I know was the GameBoy. Ok its a couple of years old. But it was pretty cool back in the days... Lets check out what Nintendo did over the years:

• Game Boy Classic (1989)
• Game Boy Pocket
• Game Boy Light
• Game Boy Color
• Game Boy Advance
• Game Boy Advance SP
• Game Boy Micro
• Nintendo DS
• Nintendo DS Lite (2006)
  

Ok, that’s not bad... Lets come back to my friend in the hospital. He is well now and I want to have such a Nintendo DS Lite. I’ll keep you informed...

Hard decision

As you might know, Sony dropped the prices for the Playstation 3 in Europe. Actually they created a new version and sell it for 399€. It differs from the “big” version only in the size of hard disk (40GB instead of 60GB), number of USB ports (2 instead of 4), a missing card reader and the missing downwards compatibility to Playstation 2 games. And the last point seems to be the biggest issue. Even though the “big” version is sold for 499€ now (in a bundle with 2 games and a second controller), I'm not quite sure if the 100€ are worth the additional features. I can live with 2 USB connectors and without a card reader. But when it comes to the downward compatibility I start to struggle... Will I really play PS2 games? I never did this with PSone games on the PS2. On the other hand there are a lot of good games for the PS2 – and not that much for PS3 right now...
I have no idea what to do. Buy a “big” version (while supplies last) or wait – maybe for another price reduction? Its a hard decision...

Abandon Monday #3: Wizardry 7

Today I want to present the first role playing game of the Abandon Monday to you. And I have to admit its my favorite genre.
Wizardry 7 - Crusaders of the Dark Savant is a classical RPG. You can take up to 6 characters to go for the main goal: find the Astral Dominae.
At first let me say that the game is pretty complex. You can create your starting characters out of several races and professions. 4 spell classes spread over 6 element types lead to a nice pool of magical stuff. The often challenging battles are turn based and give you a lot of tactical options. Together with an intelligent leveling system and about 500 different items and weapons, Wizardry 7 provides hours of fine RPG entertainment. The graphic and sound quality is pretty good for 16 year old game, even tough its not comparable to recent RPGs.
Thats it for the technical facts. Let me tell you just in a few sentences what I think about this game. Last night at 10:00pm I started to create a new party. That was done at about 11:00pm. Then I thought “I couldn't go to bed until I gave this party a try”. I did... About 5 hours later I finished trying – right after I cleared the first dungeons.

The game is definitely addictive. The very good story, the huge world and the compelling mood will cost me a lot of sleepless nights... again. For me Wizardry 7 is the best classical RPG. If you like this genre give it a try!


Producer: Sir-tech Software, Inc.
Publisher: US Gold
Year: 1992
Genre: RPG