The Nintendo Boy Project

*exhale* Well, it's been a while since I've done a rant... but there really hasn't anything to say until now. There seems to be a pattern of me complaining about Rock Band, but boy oh boy do I have some things to get off my mind! So grab a seat, as I call out Nintendo for some of the frustration I've faced with The Beatles: Rock Band, specifically regarding the Download Content (DLC). Read on to see why John Lennon looks so offended...!

I have been a fan of The Beatles: Rock Band since it came out. Yeah okay, I never really actually talk about video games or Nintendo on here anymore, but heyy... does anyone really wanna hear my banter? HA. But yes, I do still play video games and stuff when I have the time, but that's once in a blue moon! ANYWAY. The Beatles. They are literally one of my all-time favorite bands. They have the best music I've ever heard. So you could imagine how ecstatic I and the other millions of other Beatles fans around the world were when this hit 9/9/09. Grabbing it at Micro Center for a crazy low $39.99 (regularly $59.99), I immediately headed over to my friend Katie Marsh's house (she's in a new video that will appear on the site soon!) and we ripped open the game and we had SO much fun. If you have played the game, we can all agree that the dreamscapes (the trippy backgrounds) are the coolest part of the game. Harmonix & Pi Studios (they specifically developed the Wii version) did a FANTASTIC job on this title, and I was VERY happy with this game and everything about it! You can ask my sister ell oh elll... when slash if I came home for the weekend I was playing that game non-stop! OKAY. So you get the point. I LOVE this game. I LOVE The Beatles. All you need is LOVE! HA. Now... here comes the part of the rant where I frown upon something that has recently come to my attention.

The Abbey Road album just hit the music store for all systems (Wii, 360, PS3) for you to download with new dreamscapes, new songs, even the Abbey Road medley! OH WAIT. The Wii version does NOT get the Abbey Road medley. Why, you ask? Read on. First, if you are unfamiliar with the Abbey Road medley, it is simply the last 9 songs on the Abbey Road album; they are all rather short, but the songs are seamlessly connected to one beautiful 16 minute listening experience - like I said, they are all individual songs, but when they are played together it is widely known as the Abbey Road medley... if you don't have this album, I definitely recommend getting it to listen to this fantastic medley! Okay, so I mentioned that this clocked in at almost 16 minutes. It looks like Nintendo has a problem with huge file sizes, so they made it impossible for Wii owners to play the medley straight-through as it was meant to be played, but instead rather they broke it up into 5 parts. That's right, 5 freaking parts. Instead of being able to play the medley straight-through, Wii owners will have to sit through 5 loading breaks to bring up the other songs in the medley. Do I even need to mention that 360 & PS3 owners will have no trouble playing this medley and be able to fully experience the abbey road album? The surprising factor is that this is not the fault of Harmonix, but of Nintendo. They have weird file restrictions and such, which is understandable considering the Wii has literally no internal memory storage, while the 360 & PS3 are always advertised as having like 120 GB systems. GAH NINTENDO. Why did you have to be different? "Nah, let's not use GB. Let's just say you have 100 blocks of memory!" What does that even mean?!

Okay. NOW, here's the kicker of this whole sha-bang. You are gonna LOVE this. Because of this wacky file size thing, we are not allowed to purchase the album in full. We have to go into the store and buy each track individually if we want the whole thing. If you are an iTunes-music-purchaser, you know that buying the whole album is cheaper than getting each track one-by-one. Yep. That's the case here. 360 & PS3 can hit the "buy full album" button and get the entire album for $17.99, medley and all. It's pretty bad for Wii owners. Ready for this? All we can do is hit each song one-by-one and end up spending $19.50. What. the. heck. So basically we are forced to pay MORE (because of not being able to buy the album but just songs) for a LESS quality product (instead of the full medley we just get the puzzle pieces of it). And what's funny is that The Beatles: Rock Band has sold the best on the Wii platform (I guess the party nature of the Wii matches the party atmosphere of rock band). In the end, we are left with angered Wii fans who just want what the 360 & PS3 owners get - we paid the same freaking price for the game, so why do we get the shaft? A call to action plan would be to lower the price because we can't get it at the buy the album price. There's literally nothing we can do about it... it's a file size problem with Nintendo, but geez, we shouldn't have to pay more because of their personal problems. As much as I want to add Abbey Road and its famous medley to my game, I refuse to do it under conditions like this. Let me re-inforce what I said earlier: We are forced to pay MORE for a LESS quality product... just because we chose Nintendo. I'd rather pay $17.99 for the full thing with the medley then $19.50 for the chopped-up lesser version. No full album ability, no medley, but hey, let's pay more money for that, just for kicks and giggles!!! *sarcasm* Thanks Nintendo. This is THE definition of unfair. =/

Quick and exciting update about some games and music i have recently seen and/or reviewed. For you RPG fans there are some amazing games out for grabs for DS. I'm all about handheld since thats al i can afford. I know we may abe a little old but if youare interested Pokemon Platinum is out and ready to be ordered. It should be intene with all new pokemon to collect legendaries to fin AND EVOLVE =). I know right and you that manaphy was hard enough to get. Anyway next on our newcomer list is for you Final Fantasy Crystal Cronicals: Ring of Fates, Final Fantasy IV, and FINAL FANTASY TACTICS A2! As a fan of tactics gaes like fire emblem and Advanced Wars I believe that FFTA2 will be amazing but all to their own. All of these games are expected to be amazing if you decide to invest some money into them.Finally is a Wii game tat I recently played and is a lit of un. If youare a little mischievious and greedy you can relate to our good evil twin of Mario: Wario. In WarioLand: Shake it! you shake only the controller vertically to control ario to new 2d and vibrantlevels and shake the controller for special extra moves, shake enemies like crazy, and other antics to get yourself as many coins as possible for greedy Warios or yourself(if that were possible. Finall is our music of odds and ends. I recently bought a CD for a unique group called Flight of the Concords(or FotC for now). FotC is a duo from New Zealand who sings comedic music but might be a little obscene if youare too young but stilll funny so don't let parents hear xD. I am not comerciallizing this site you can even hear thes guys for free on youtube or mooch off somebody for the games. I was jut overwhelemed with how behind i am in gaming because of school and all the other crap i have to deal with. if you wanna hear flight of the concerds here is an example song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGoi1MSGu64

Just copy paste on to your searchengine cause i suck at getting my computer to get this to work.  I dont mean to oveshadow Jeff's interview so make sure to check out that interview on Nathan's site.

I am pretty cool... well, not that cool. But apparently, cool enough to get the attention of one of our affiliates, Nathan Adam's Smile. Yeah, that's right, a blog post about affiliates! Haven't you seen that "new" update next to the affiliates link on the sidebar? (I've used "affiliate" 3 times now) ... make sure you check out that page, and even apply if that's your cup of tea! Anyway, Nathan has asked for a quick little interview about my take on the Nintendo world, hence the title... you do get it, right?! The title is a reference to a movie I have recently seen, which is now pretty much my favorite, Frost/Nixon! :]

That being said... it's an interview! Do you even know what my "favorites" are, as far as Nintendo goes? Yeah, I didn't think so. ;] Well, now you can find out! Nathan is a great pal of mine who lives in Australia (he is probably sleeping as I write this), and he loves the site, and even works with Laura for getting his own comic art. So, as a visitor, I ask you to support him (along with my other affiliates of course!!), and visit his site, now with this exclusive interview with me! I feel so special! Haha. Here's a quick snippet to get you excited!

"Uhh, well from #1.1-1.3, all the way to the latest video, Rock Band Documentary (at time of writing), I really don't write a script for it. I literally gather the group for a Saturday and just film... or at least for the projects I call "Improvisational Videos," which are basically just random videos with no structure. Haha, it doesn't sound as bad as it does, as of course I do have some idea I want to accomplish. Just recently I've been working on an actual script for a new series of videos, but that's a secret for now."

Click here to read the interview, exclusively at www.smileynathan.com!

Josh here for a quick updaye on whats going on lately in the nintendo world! My research will not be as extensive as Nintednoboy''s but at least I won't take four months to update this site all the time >

Mine will also not be as fancy as Nintendoboy's because i do not have access to any pictures so you are jsut goign to have to bear with my computer illiteracy.

The NB project team is currently discussing their next NB video so keep an eye out for that for it wll go over the latest in Nintendoboy commentary and antics. Although, since the last documentary was a failure we will NOT do a documentery...hopefully. On the bright side Nintendo should have new merchandise comign ot thsi year! The Nintendo DSi is expected to release sometime this year with a camera built in and wifi and upgradable software. Unfortunately I ahve heard rumors of brand new game cartridges so you might have to keep taht old DS of yours to play your favorite DS games. Agai this is from school so to find this out yourself jsut go to the forums discuss with people who mgiht actually know what they are talking about o_o.

Aside from the modern games and consels and fancy handheld devices I have found myself reminiscing to old school gaming from NIntendo. Heldheld games like Zelda: The Four Swords,  and Pokemon Red and Blue  versions. Another instant classic is Megaman and Metroid. The Final making the favorites and classics list is Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64. Hope you enjoyed this breif update from jinx. Over and out!

I thought about writing something about Rock Band, and it seemed fitting with our latest video, the Rock Band Documentary. You... have seen that, correct?! Anyway, Rock Band! How many of you actually own this rather expensive game? Of course I do, and if you have keen eyes when watching our Rock Band video, you'll see that I have the original Rock Band 1 (RB1) Special Edition version, rather than the much more superior Rock Band 2 (RB2) set... although, I do have the RB2 disc-only game! Now, I've had a reason for this odd purchase, and when I stumbled upon a recent article about RB1 & RB2 for Wii, I felt I had to come out with my thoughts.

The article at GoNintendo titled "Consumer buy Rock Band [1] for Wii, love less features," is of course a sarcastic statement, but according to statisitcs... it's true! O_O Now, if you are someone who keeps up with game information, the following rant about Rock Band for Wii will not be news to you. Basically, when Rock Band 1 first came out in 2007, it came out for Xbox 360, PS2, and PS3. Way to leave Nintendo in the dark, huh? Well finally in June 2008, Harmonix (the game company for RB), finally gave Wii owners the chance to rock out and release RB1 for Wii (almost half a year later). You think, finally you can be cool and pretend to play in a band!

FYI, RB2 beats RB1 in EVERY WAY, as RB2 Wii had all the features that RB1 were missing... so I guess in a way, Harmonix apologized and FINALLY delivered RB2 with all the bells and whistles, something we deserve! And having both games from experience, every Wii owner needs to pick up RB2... a fantastic game!

Here was my plan. I knew indirectly that I would pretty much be supporting Harmonix of buying crappy games (RB1), as evidenced by the article mentioned earlier. I did this, not because I love less features (that is so stupid), but because I am a SMART shopper! Let's take a look:

Option A) RB1 Full Bundle + RB2 Disc = $100 + $50 = $150

Option B) RB2 Full Bundle + RB1 Disc = $190 + $50 = $240

As you can see, I went with Option A for the price tag. $150 is LOWER than the entire RB2 bundle by itself, yet I am getting 2 games for STILL, less than RB2. Now, you can't tell me that isn't smart shopping. Of course, there is the downside of supporting Harmonix's crappy version of RB1 version, which prompted the above linked article, and also pretty much getting the old set of instruments. With RB2, the instruments are new and improved, most notably the drums having a gel center on the pads to quiet the noise a little bit more. Soo I'm pretty much getting the "ugh" bundle of RB, but I save almost $100 by doing it this way. However, there was one really neat benefit that I tell myself for getting the RB1 bundle, and that was because the drums are white, to match the Wii! Now, that's kinda cool, I will admit, considering the other platforms are just the boring gray/black color, including the RB2 Wii version. So maybe Harmonix gave us a special white-colored drum set as an incentive for buying a lacking RB1? Who knows. That's what I tell myself. Even though I sadly gave my money toward the shoddy product that is RB1, I still got both RB1 & RB2 for less than RB2 by itself. Soooo, that's my reason why I bought the RB1 bundle. But trust me, if money wasn't an issue, I wouldn't of touched RB1 with a 39-and-a-half-foot pole.

So, that's my rant on Rock Band. Again, if you haven't read the article I linked above, please take a look at it, it isn't that long, and it's pretty much what prompted me to type out this rather long nRant. But thanks for reading, as I see you've made it to the end! Also.. you may be thinking, what about Guitar Hero: World Tour? Well, again, from watching the Rock Band video... I'm just a Rock Band kinda guy. ;) (and a smart shopper!)

Ready to discuss this nRant? Join in on the thread here: http://www.nintendoboy.com/apps/forums/topics/show/250328-nrant-discussion-rb1-rb2-right-wrong-