News is slowly begining to seep out of Japan on the Gamecube launch,
-Steve Langhorn of Cloudchaser gives his initial impressions.. -IGNs Japanese reporters bring us initial impressions and movies of their Cube in action.. -GameWatch Japan have some good technical shots of the machine..
-IGN blow $1500 on Gamecube, and chart its journey across Tokyo to the Shinjuku FedEx office?!?
Keep checking back for more updates..
3 comments
THE LAUNCH:
A little bit of a letdown. Not so many people turned up, there was no excitement, the queue moved extremely slowly, and I had a strange American guy next to me trying to talk to me, but his favourite PS2 game was SSX, so I don't think I need to say any more on that subject.
THE GAMES:
After having played Wave Race at Spaceworld, I decided to give that a miss. I picked up Luigi's Mansion, and I already had Super Monkey Ball on order so I picked up my extra joypad, AV cable and memory card, then legged it home for a quick blast before work.
Luigi's Mansion is SLICK. I was blown away by the total lack of loading times. The graphics are nice, with some great transitions between rooms. The control is silky smooth (a little tricky for the actual play but movement is good). And there seems to be some nice little touches (sucking money into your vac, wobbling vases etc).
In the evening, Super Monkey Ball arrived with my free AiAi keyring. This game is awesome. Alone, it is a frenetic puzzler. But with friends it is a hoot. Even the single player game can be played in 2 multiplayer modes! But the party games are incredible.
THE MACHINE:
A lovely, solid piece of kit. It's small, chunky and has ridiculous amounts of expansion possibilities. Two serial ports and a high speed port, but the space for peripherals is actually built into the case so you won't have any external problems like the initial PS2s. The controller, despite being ugly, is a joy to use. The discs are tiny. It's amazing they can get any kind of game on something this size, but maybe that adds to the quick loading. The memory card is tiny and plugs further into the machine than the PS2 one did so you won't find yourself tripping over it if you keep your machine on the floor :)
THE INTERFACE:
The memory card / options interface is lovely too. Not as futuristic as the PS2 one, but it's pretty, it's fast and it's obvious. Kind of comparable to Zelda 64's interface.
Posted by Jonny Ram on 15 Sep 2001 at 07:14 AM
1. What's an AiAi keyring?
2. When can we come over to your house and play?
:)
Posted by Anonymous on 15 Sep 2001 at 10:09 AM
I guess the events of this week may have taken a little shine off peoples excitement. I suppose its still at the back of the mind, and gamers are probably just going and picking up their Cube and wanting to get home again..
Posted by Dan on 15 Sep 2001 at 10:17 AM