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Game Tapes 13: The Four Balls. The Three Arrows

Jeff, Vinny and Ben take a look back at Nintendo's 2011 E3 press conference. Highs include talking heads, 25 years of Zelda, and the console announcement heard round the world.

Unearthing the forgotten magnetic media of the video game industry.

May. 30 2020

Cast: Jeff, Vinny, Ben

Posted by: Ben

113 Comments

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beard_of_zeus

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@asadasa5: Yeah, the shuriken thing and creeping on people in windows are both definitely minigames in Game & Wario.

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csl316

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Deeper and wider, baby.

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Pilzi

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I NEED MORE GAME TAPES YESSSSS

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ShatterMode

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@luchalma: Agreed. I had a great time with Skyward Sword. The relish some have for dunking on that game is always odd to me.

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TepidShark

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If nothing else GB related comes out of this time, it would be great to see more East-West collaborations like this when things get back to some kind of normal.

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deactivated-63991c79611ef

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Please don’t go back to „normal“ after this pandemic thing. The content you’ve created in the last months is sooooo good, especially Cross coast stuff is awesome <3

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Scorched

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Enjoyed this. More of this please. Really enjoying the blasts from the past with the new hotspot and cross-coast game tapes is great.

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LonelySpacePanda

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Edited By LonelySpacePanda
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Pacmantis

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why did they bring Iwata on stage to Zak and Sara?

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chandemic

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Edited By chandemic

@pacmantis: I just got to that part and was about to ask the same thing! Unexpected Ben Folds.

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Dan_CiTi

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Skyward was the Zelda game that made me really want some sort of "chapter/dungeon select" menu option after finishing the game. It had some of the most unforgettable dungeons and highest highs in the series, but to experience them you have to suffer through some of the worst stuff in any Zelda game.

Agreed. It looked beautiful, had some swell ideas, and some fantastic dungeons. That being said I had so many issues with the motion controls and took umbrage with plenty of other little decisions that I could never love the game, despite certain moments and dungeons being really creative and fun.

I found it funny this was posted when BioShock 1 & 2 were released on Switch, Jeff mentioning Ken Levine never shipped a game on Wii U.

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chaihazuki

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Is this Vinny's first Game Tapes??!!

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cool_news

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hell yes more game tapes!!!

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natto

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YAASSS

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jacksukeru

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The main thing I remember from the launch of the WiiU was that Nintendo was very non-commital when asked if the WiiU would support only 1 gamepad per system, and that with time it became enough of a talking point that someone, I think Reggie, around the launch of the system confirmed that it would be able to support 2. I specifically remember them framing it as "and just like the original Nintendo Entertainment System, the WiiU will support 2 controllers".

Maybe the drawbacks to using 2 were just too great, along with Nintendo never selling the controllers as a standalone thing, but software supporting 2 controllers never materialized and everyone seemingly forgot that it was a thing. Enough so that when someone much later had dug into the WiiU and noted that it supported 2 gamepads at a time it was reported as a new revelation.

I still think that somewhere out there some poor person had to work very hard for that bullet point that ended up completely bypassed.

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RobertDenby

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Very happy to see the return of this, love Game Tapes. I'd checked out of Nintendo during this console generation, so its interesting to see this.

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Redhotchilimist

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Edited By Redhotchilimist

I think Skyward Sword might take worst mainline Zelda too, but it depends on your criteria. The only mainline Zelda games I've picked up and never finished are 1, 2, Spirit Tracks and Skyward Sword. 1 and 2 are practically ancient. Realistically they're just not something I will ever get into, but they're a product of the time. Spirit Tracks isn't great, but it's pretty alright. Maybe not as good as just about any other Zelda titles outside of these games, but it's playable. I played through most of it and just got tired out from the dumb gimmicks. It's about on par with Phantom Hourglass, the gimmicks were just way more annoying for me in Spirit Tracks.

Meanwhile, Skyward Sword I played about three hours of too and just gave up. That's a very, very boring game, and there aren't any excuses for it in terms of platform limitations or age. It's all on their design decisions.

The thing I appreciate most about the bad Zelda games is just that it gave their staff more experience - There's a lot of overlap between the people who made those DS titles and Skyward Sword, and the people who made Breath of the Wild and Link Between Worlds. They just needed some practice and some better ideas.

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Physicalos

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wish they would watch themselves talking over the press conference.

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Tonch

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As far as Breath of the Wild on Wii U is concerned, it doesn't display anything on the pad (other than the option to switch from TV to pad). Originally they built it similar to the HD releases of the GameCube Zeldas, with an inventory screen and/or map, but when porting it to Switch, I get the feeling they didn't want to give the Wii U version a clear gameplay advantage over their shiny new console. They ended up cutting the features to give both versions parity. I don't really see any horsepower reason the game couldn't have done an inventory screen as it did originally.

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jrudis

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Xenoblade Chronicles X used the second screen really well on WiiU. People also really liked the ZombieU implementation (I never played it) as it gave you some added tension.

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Zripwud

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Great video guys! Tapes is one of my favorite content!

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Eroq

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Edited By Eroq

Man seeing Iwata was like a punch in the gut. Miss that guy.

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zorak

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Thank you for tapes

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RobertOrri

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I still think that somewhere out there some poor person had to work very hard for that bullet point that ended up completely bypassed.

Related to this, there is a great Iwata Asks series about the Wii U hardware and software as a whole. [https://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wiiu/gamepad/0/1]

The best part is when they talk about all the crazy work that went into making sure that the gamepad had low latency, how to do error-correction, having to chop the frames into blocks so it was easier to stream them across the network, etc... many years worth of work, all for a system that ended up being not very popular and then replaced by a handheld variant that did away with streaming completely.

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rickterror

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Were the original assets for wind waker and twilight princess high resolution? Because I tried to play the gamecube/wii versions of those a few years ago and it looked like garbage even with an hdmi dongle to fake 1080p. The footage on the screen while the orchestra was playing looks markedly better.

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Genessee

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God, the 3D.

Turned it off and that was that!

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echasketchers

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yay, game tapes!

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Aires

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I love game tapes and I’m surprised how well this worked remotely! Would love to see more

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JuanArturo

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it's so wild that in their conversation about whether nintendo has done well in the mobile market, they dont realize that fire emblem heroes is probably the most profitable thing nintendo has done in the past ten years haha

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No8Axel

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I wonder what had a bigger critical whiplash, Bioshock Infinite or Skyward Sword, in terms of 10/10 reviews and then everyone plays it and goes, "what??"

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Kryplixx

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Crazy how good this worked remotely. Thanks guys!

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twswordsman

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I've been doing (watching old E3 videos) by myself for years...Giant Bomb watching old videos with me is now how I prefer to watch these.

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Ometeotl

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Tell us that crazy story, Jeff

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Humanity

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Just to add a bit of perspective to this Skyward Sword discussion - as someone that grew up with PC games instead of Nintendo in the 90's, I think all Zelda games are pretty boring.

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zggurat

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misclet

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this was the first e3 i covered as press with destructoid! simpler times.

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ArmCommander

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Chris

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Skyward Sword is under-rated (at least by the GB crew).

It's a game with huge flaws - but it also has great dungeons, tons of personality and introduces mechanics that re-appear and evolve with massive success in Breath of the Wild.

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Nukleon

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Fun how that Wii U controller isn't the final one, the shape is different and it has 3DS style "slider" sticks.

Also it's scary how bad their messaging is. All this talk about "the new controller" would've made it super confusing about what this even was.

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betabetamax

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This is pretty much the same as "CGI artists react to bad CG". You guys cant do enough of this.

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monkeyking1969

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I think everyone thinks Switch is what the gaming community in 2011 wanted Wii U to be. I remember during the Wii U introduction people asked, "So, I can like just use this by itself want walk out the door with it, right?" The iPad come out two years before in 2010, iPhone had come out four years prior., so people WANTED that sort of table console.

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AlcibiadesRex

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TBH the bird video was ALL i remembered from this reveal lol

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Rejizzle

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Finally, the best GB video series is back!

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ricobanderas

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Finally, game tapes! Now do ranking of fighters online edition :D

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swthompson

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Love Game Tapes. <3

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rayne117

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Give the people the tapes they desire. Or else they'll start a fire.

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draconicbane

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New feature? Jeff revisits zelda? Im really glad they did this conference, i forgot so much of it.