rpwll

I've got fond memories of Four Swords Adventure on the GameCube, so today I was thinking about what a 2D co-op Zelda game on the Wii U could look like. One of the ideas I had plays around with time travel, with the player or players on the TV inhabiting the present while the player on the gamepad goes around changing the past to assist them.

You could even have puzzles that involved the player in the past opening time bubbles similar to the desert sections of Skyward Sword. Where the players in the present might see a crumbled bridge, the player in the past can open a time bubble that brings a structurally sound bridge from the past into the present. This concept could be used for all sorts of puzzles.

Anyway that's just my half-baked idea of what they could do. Do you guys have any ideas how a 2D coop Zelda game could work on the Wii U?

I've always liked the concept of the XMB, all the way back to when I first got my PSP, but it suffers from a few core design shortcomings that make me think it should be dropped for the PS4. The core idea of the XMB is that most media browsing UIs are essentially different means of showing hierarchical lists.

Think about how an iPhone's Music app UI works, you have tabs along the bottom to switch between lists of artists, albums, etc. which would count as the first level of hierarchy. From there if you chose say the Artist tab, you'd select an artist, drilling further into the app's information hierarchy until eventually you reach the deepest point by picking a song.

The XMB's stroke of genius here was to plainly show that hierarchy with a standardised, universal presentation. At the top level you have a horizontal list of icons denoting different types of media—the top level of hierarchy—from there you drill down into vertical lists to further explore that hierarchy, that's all there is to the XMB.

But there's potential issues here, what if you wanted to show a grid of information? Surely that would be faster to navigate than a simple list? Compare the speed with which you can type on the standard PS3 on-screen keyboard versus the scrolling list of letters on the new PSN store to see what I mean.

The more glaring issue with the XMB is that it restricts the display of any given item's information to an icon, title and subtitle, often restricting the display of anything but an icon to the currently selected item. So if I have my list of friends and I want to quickly see who's online and what they're playing, I have to cycle through every single one of my friends to check this. Even then a lot of the information I want to see isn't displayed at that top level so I have to select every one of my friends and wait for their player card to load.

Also it lacks a certain personality, white icons on a background can be kind of boring to look at after 6 or 7 years.

Basically my main issue with the XMB is that it's core design principles are often too rigid. It restricts the display of information in such a way that you don't get to see much at once, it's slower to navigate, and it's kind of a little bland looking.

It'd be great if someone could set The Wonderful 101's background to this:

@insouciant: That's interesting, it gels with the reports I've heard that AC: City Folk is basically a Wii version of Wild World.

The mechanics have changed significantly enough that I doubt it, and the precedent set by the previous games would confirm that doubt.

Okay, let's clear this confusion up. Development of console games is predominantly done on PCs, however this doesn't mean the PC is capable of running the result. While PC-based IDEs, debugging tools and compiler toolchains are used, the compiled executable must be linked against the platform's SDK and run on a development kit provided by the platform vendor—for reference an Xbox 360 dev kit is pictured to the right.

Keep in mind I might not have the facts 100% correct here, I'm an iOS / web developer, not a game developer.

I use Safari's 'Top Sites' page limited to 6 pages. I think Giant Bomb sits at like number 5 there.

Well, I grew up with Gen 1 to 3, but recently I've gotten back into the games and I've got to say I really like a lot of what they've done with Gen 5. Moving to a setting outside of Japan makes it all feel fairly fresh again and the decision to not include Pokémon from previous generations in Black/White brought back the same sense of discovery I felt playing the originals.

Anyway, as you can probably guess from my avatar I've still got a soft spot for Gen 1, but the latest games are definitely some of my favourites.

I'll usually have it on, but sometimes when I'm on a bus or train where it's a little harder to hold the system still, I'll turn it off. I don't think it's really a big enough deal to name the system after, but it definitely adds something to games that embrace it.

Yeah the 360 controller is pretty great, shame about that d-pad. Also I find with the 360 controller, the triggers tend to depress a little into the controller's shell, so you'll be able to feel a sharp ridge when you press them down the full way. That and the d-pad keep it from being a perfect controller.

Regarding the GCN controller, I really like the way the triggers click right at the bottom, acting as an extra button, games like Super Mario Sunshine did cool stuff with that. I also really like having an octagonal surround around the analog stick and c-stick, as well as the great button arrangement. Unfortunately the d-pad on that thing is a little too small and the buttons tend not to give as much feedback as I'd like.

So yeah, probably a tie between the GCN and 360 controllers here.