What could of it been to keep me from posting (apart from my general laziness). Well there have been a few things keeping me busy these past few weeks. The biggest news is that tomorrow I'm starting a new job, a permanent role at that, none of this contract rubbish I've been forced to endure these past few months. I'll be working for a company called STS International Inc.
There I'll be working on an IT helpdesk and making reports to them about what goes on each week - oh as for why they need reports about something that is in house - well they don't , but I won't be working in house - I'll be working at Googles house. That's right, STS want me to work as their eyes and ears at Google. I think I didn't stop grinning for 4 hours after I got the news I was hired :)
So on to other matters. I've been spending a bit of money lately, a fair bit of it on Nintendo. I have now added The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past and Lylat Wars (Starfox 64 to the Americans) to my Wii VC collection. I also have brought the Classic Controller and the Godfather: Blackhand Edition.
First off I'm going to talk about the Classic Controller.Overall I'm happy with my purchase. The controller has a nice firm feel to it, the buttons are responsive and the size of it fits neatly in my hands. That's not to say this thing is perfect though, there are a couple of minor gripes - and I do mean minor.
As you can see in the picture to the side it has a wire coming out of it - this hooks up to the Wiimote, now this is only a minor gripe seeing as how you aren't teethed to the console but rather the Wiimote, but still - come on Nintendo, this is the 21st century, ditch the wires. Also for some reason the shoulder buttons are analogues.
These I just don't get - this controller is meant for use primarily with the Wii VC, Nes Snes and the like i.e before analogue buttons - so why put them on here - it messes up twitch response in the older games relying on the shoulder buttons - Do you have any idea how hard it is to do a barrel role with this thing? Very Hard is the answer. Oh yes - not really a controller issue per say but it would be nice if we could re-assign the buttons in the Wii VC. Lylat wars is tough to play using this controller as the blaster is assigned to A and boost is assigned to Y, meaning that you can't boost forward and keep blasting at the same time - using the Gamecube pad for Lylat Wars works very well in this manner.
There are 2 odd things to note about the Classic Controller though. The Z trigger on the N64 pad has been split in 2 - 'ZL' and 'ZR' for this controller - a bit odd as I can't think what games ever needed four shoulder buttons pre-playstation. Still they are good normal buttons - what L and R needed to be. The 2nd odd thing is on the back of the pad. You might of noticed the 5th button along the top at the centre of the pad, well that is a release button for a couple of catches on the back of the pad - catches for what? Who can say?
As I mentioned a moment ago I've also brought the Wii version of the Godfather. I have to say I am really enjoying this game on the Wii - despite it being another port. The big fear for the Wii is that lot of game developers are simply going to start porting PS2 games onto the Wii having just tweaked the controls to take advantage of the Wiimote - and to be fair that's just what happened here. The graphics are the same as the last gen versions (though the explosions have been enhanced) but the addition of the Wii controls really make a big difference to this game - there is no feeling in the world that can describe how good it is to extort a business by mimicking the actual motion of slamming a guys head into the cash register and having it happen on screen. I haven't had much chance to play this game a lot yet - I've only just become an enforcer for the family, but I can see this eating away my free time for some time to come.At least after I've finished Final Fantasy XII that is - I'm almost done, another good day at it should see my though :)