GDC Recap: Retro Revolution
The keyword that was bandied about during Satoru Iwata's speech at the Game Developer's Conference was "disruption". Through the DS, Mr. Iwata illustrated how Nintendo was disrupting the mechanistic game industry by creating new and unusual games, some which may not even have been considered as games if Nintendo hadn't pushed the idea that maybe, just maybe, exercising your brain was just as fun as exercising your trigger finger.
Unfortunately for some (particularly us), the attention placed on Brain Training meant that not much information was revealed regarding that most secretive of next-generation consoles. Sure, Nintendo's strategy of unsettling the games industry is equally applicable to the Revolution, but what we really wanted was a few more cold, hard facts. Undoubtedly the biggest Revolution news (which we completely failed to predict) to emerge from the speech was Nintendo's announcement that the "best" Genesis and Turbo Grafx 16 games would be available on the Virtual Console service. What exactly "best" entails has yet to be seen, but we're fairly confident that we'll have once again the opportunity to wise fwom our gwaves.
Iwata also implied that original content would likely be hitting the Virtual Console, possibly in the form of smaller games generated by independent developers. With plenty of retro power already backing it up, the service would truly enjoy the best of both worlds if it could obtain unique games on par with the Xbox 360's insanely addictive Geometry Wars. Let's just hope that the machine's 512MB storage capacity gets upgraded between now and E3, lest we constantly be switching SD cards in and out.
It looks like we'll have to wait until E3 before we get any more substantial news on the Revolution front. And yes, that's still the console's name. For more coverage on Iwata's keynote, check out Chris Grant's ramblings over at Joystiq by clicking the "Read" link.
