circle_of_iron

I got a Deluxe Wii U on launch morning at a Target. I purchased Mario, ZombiU, and Black Ops 2. I have seen plenty of white Wii U bundles around.

The white bundle is such a rip off it's not hard to see why, although I would prefer to own white hardware.

As for the high sales of the original Wii and DS - I'm going to chalk that up to the economy. Both are dirt cheap for video game systems (costing under $130 each and both coming with games I think). I am curious to see how the Xbox and PS3 did as well though, and morbidly curious to see how the Vita did.

I've been with Giant Bomb since before it "blew up". This is something I can't condone. Best of luck to you guys.

30 individual sessions (assuming there's no other limit beyond the length of the demo) seems pretty fair to me. Let's not forget that XBL has had several games that offer only a 30 minute demo (Battlefield 1943 being one of them).

I would prefer the limit not be there at all, but it's not totally unreasonable.

I'm sure they enjoyed the game. Also, remember that the GB crew all works together and presumably spend a lot of time together. It's not uncommon for a group of friends to have similar opinions on things. I do agree that they are pretty high on Bastion though. Cool narrator, pretty good music, very nice visuals, but I was bored with the repetitive gameplay before the XBLA demo was up. I can't give any sort of authoritative judgement because I didn't play it anywhere near completion but it was a total miss for me.

Here's some of mine:

The Legend of Zelda (NES) and Twilight Princess

Super Metroid and Metroid Prime

FFIV or FFVI (yeah I'm old)

DQ IX (yeah IX, I said it)

Monster Hunter Tri

Super Mario World and Galaxy 2

SF II Turbo (arcade)

Samurai Shodown 2

Advance Wars: Day of Ruin

Team Fortress Classic (best multiplayer FPS ever)

Civ III

Burnout Revenge

Really? I'm always surprised at the constant criticism directed towards the Zelda franchise. It largely began a couple years ago with Dan Hsu (former EGMer / current Bit Mobber) and has slowly picked up steam until now it's officially 'a thing'. Lets take an objective look at as much of this as we can. Since 1998 there have been 6 games released on home consoles. 6 games. For the sake of discussing how samey the series is we can throw two of those out right now because Majora's Mask and Four Swords Adventures are both clearly radical departures for the series. That leaves us with 4 core Zelda games remaining. Ocarina of Time, Windwaker, Twilight Princess, and Skyward Sword. We don't even have to go back 15 years to have been treated to 8 Call of Duty Games (since it's debut in 2004), 4 Halo games (since 2001), 3 Gears of War games (since 2006), and 3 Uncharted games (since 2007). No one seems to be clamoring for overhauls of those games? Why does Zelda get picked on? I can understand some old timers (like myself) who grew up playing Zelda feeling some franchise fatigue but I honestly don't think that's a problem that most gamers are honestly experiencing. I think this concern is something that people have picked up in podcasts and sortof accepted as true.

OoT the granddaddy of 3D adventure games is excellent. Windwaker is amazing, until the Tri-Force map quest. Twilight Princess looks like ass but other than that masters the "formula" set forth in OoT. Skyward Sword is a major overhaul of the "formula" featuring an innovative (although understandably divisive) motion control combat system, a lack of a unified overworld (something that originally debuted in the now loved Windwaker), and bringing a variety of new elements to the series (some of which are better than others (I like the addition of the energy bar but I could live without some of the RPG light upgrading things).

Outside of the traditionally slow start to the 3D Zelda games I don't think the series really needs much "improvement". If there was something that I would like to see come back in the series, I would like to have Nintendo try a true open world game in the vein of the original Legend of Zelda where the dungeons could be beaten in any order.

Maybe this means they'll be some really good downloadables from Nintendo in the future...

Well - they're saying all the right things... now we have to wait and see if they do the right things...

Finally some games... and get me some Fire Emblem... and some of that MH4 too please!

Ok... sorry to post again... but seriously go look at that thing.  Just look at it.  For like 30 seconds.  Do you see that thing?  It looks hideous and cheap.  It fits terribly around the hardware.  I mean holy shit - just look at that piece of crap.  Arg.  Nintendo, you are a multi-national, multi-billion dollar company who is involved in only 1 business and that is the best you can do?  Nintendo - WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU!!!