Martin Gordon's Blog

I just picked up New Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo DS and have been playing it for about an hour and a half now. It'sbeen the longest gaming session I've had since I played the World of Warcraft trial last November, so that should say something.

Difficulty

Notwithstanding, I'm already on the first castle of the second level in the game and have 29 lives (coins are way too abundant). I've also collected all the star coins in the first world (of which there are 3 per level; most on my first run through the level). I haven't had to try any of the boss battles more than once. Bowser Jr. is easy to kill with fire and one jump; the Bowser Sr. "battle" is the classic Mario Bros battle where you have to drop the bridge. The game is way too easy, at least up until now.

Music

The music is good, but I haven't put in enough time in the game to really have it stick in my mind. The Super Mario Sunshine music wasn't that catchy either. And maybe it's because I've put in way more time into Mario 64, but I know that music a lot better. The classic underground music is still present, but I wish they included more of the traditional Mushroom Kingdom music in the first world to get the nostalgia flowing.

Controls

The controls are standard Mario controls, but "run" has turned into "dash" which takes some getting used to. The main difference is that Mario doesn't speed up right away, you need to get some distance to pick up speed. Not much else to be said here.

Powerups

The new powerups are too gimmicky, in my opinion. The mega mushroom is a flashier invincibility star, and you get 1-ups after it runs out depending on how much damage is done. The mini mushroom is only useful to get into the smaller pipes, it doesn't have much other in-game utility. I haven't really figured out what the blue shell is useful for since a butt stomp can be used to open blocks on the ground where shells used to be needed. I find myself going back to the fire flower time and again since there's nothing better to use (where's my flying powerup?).

Conclusion

I can't say I'm too impressed with the game thus far. Maybe the level design will get more interesting and the game harder later on. If the rest of the game is like the first world and a half, I'll be sorely disappointed. I'll have more later as I continue playing.

Technorati Tags: New Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros., Nintendo, Nintendo DS, side scroller, games, gaming, handheld

Being back home in Miami Beach has kind of put a damper on my blogging. The change of environment has me preoccupied with other things and I've only been skimming my RSS feeds and skipping over a bunch of my daily reads.

Another thing I feel has kept me from writing is the fact that there's a ton of stuff going on. Google released a couple of new apps and E3 has brought a ton of new gaming news. I feel that if I do blog, I'll miss something and I'd rather not worry about that. Instead, I prefer to know that I've missed everything :-)

I have been keeping up with Joystiq's Nintendo Wii coverage and I think there is an underlying theme that can be summed up by two sentences: "The controls are cool, but too sensitive and the developer should be able to fix this. The graphics are okay, but not great."

Microsoft seems to be siding with Nintendo, having stated something to the effect of: "For the price of a PS3, one could buy both a Wii and a 360." I think it's good for the industry that all three companies are taking different stances in the market. Nintendo is going for the the casual gamer looking for cheap, innovative fun; Sony is going for the hardcore gamer looking for the high-end, "ultimate" experience; and Microsoft is going after a little of both (good games with next-gen graphics and casual games via XBox Live Arcade).

Strangely enough, it's Sony that appears the most stereotypically Microsoft-ish in this industry: They're creating a long list of features (with a price to match) that users may or may not want in hopes that the gaming industry equivalent of the Megahertz myth (i.e., that better graphics = better games) still applies.

In other news, AOL has launched its competitor to MySpace called AIMpages. I haven't had a chance to really check it out, but a quick look at the configuration for the friends shows that none of the people on my buddy list are eligible anyway.

There is a Philadelphia Bloggers meetup a week from this Saturday, two days after I get back in. I'll probably make it out to this one since I won't have much to do then, unless of course my self-diagnosed Social Anxiety Disorder kicks in and I become deathly afraid of meeting even geeks in person.

That's all for now.

Technorati Tags: Miami Beach, vacation, Google, E3, Joystiq, blogging, Sony, Playstation 3, XBox 360, XBox Live Arcade, Nintendo, Wii, AOL, AIM, AIMpages, MySpace, social networking

The official Nintendo Revolution website has announced that official name of the Revolution will be Wii. While I think Revolution was a cool enough name (and the abbreviation RS nicely watched the DS), and aside from all the PS/XBox fanboys making wii-wii jokes, it is an alright name. Nintendo has gone out on a limb with the focus (originality over graphics) and the controller and the name is just a reflection of this.

One thing is for sure: the Google Juice will be strong with this one. Since 'Wii' is not a real word, even just a little press will jump Nintendo's 'Wii' straight to the top of search results. Compare this to 'Revolution' which would have to compete with the American Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, et al for Google pole position.

Update: Chris Kohler at Wired posted a more in-depth defense of the 'Wii' name. He basically argues that Wii doesn't sound anything like a video game, and that's what Nintendo is trying to do with the system – make it like no other video game system ever.

Technorati Tags: Google Juice, Nintendo, Revolution, Wii, gaming, XBox, Playstation, names, rename, marketing, video games, search

It seems that someone does "get it." A professor at Ball State University will be teaching her English 104 class entirely online in Second Life.

I installed Second Life a few weeks ago but only spent a few minutes in it. There doesn't really seem to be a purpose to Second Life (much like First Life, one might argue), so I was turned off. With all the hype it's been getting recently, I may have to take a more in-depth look at it.

Either way, it's great to see new teaching methods being tried. I can't wait to see how this little experiment turns out.

Technorati Tags: Second Life, MMO, MMOGs, MMORPG, online, games, social networks, education, teaching, college, university

One of my biggest problems with my Wharton education is that a lot fo the stuff we're being taught is outdated. Our Marketing 101 and Management 101 classes are being taught based on models and frameworks developed 30+ years ago.

In either class, I have yet to hear the word "blog", yet blogging has been around for at least five years and doesn't show any signs of slowing down. Blogging has changed the way businesses should be run, yet the leaders of my generation will be running businesses the way we learned to in school and the way its been done for the past few years. You know that boss that'll fire you in 10 years for blogging? They're sitting next to me taking pages and pages of notes on the Nadler-Tushman Congruence Model and learning how to do "business as usual."

So do we get it or not? Dean Harker does, but its not apparent from the "front lines". As the leading undergraduate business school (and one of the top graduate B-schools), I'd have hoped we could do something a bit more cutting-edge than the usual research/paper/presentation deal we have been required to do in many of the core classes. For example, in Management 101, we are to research a company "with a problem", analyze it in the context of the frameworks of the class, and offer our recommendations. Imagine instead, we assembled a class-wide World of Warcraft guild (or for the less war-mongering among us, perhaps set up a Second Life business) and built our characters over the course of the semester. Over the course of the semester, we would have to do small writeups defending the contributions we made to our guild. Which one would teach us more about being leaders and managers in the real world? I can tell you that the former probably won't and Joi Ito can tell you that the latter probably is.

Technorati Tags: Wharton, Penn, UPenn, MMOGs, World of Warcraft, Joi Ito, Dean Harker, Management, Marketing, Web 2.0, leadership, gaming, Second Life, business school, MBA

Pantsland has discovered some similarities between the XBox 360 and Dell's old GX PCs. Both have that "inhaling" case design and they both have the circular power about 3/4 of the way down.

Other than that, I don't know. I'll leave that up to you to read too much into :)

Technorati Tags: XBox, XBox 360, Microsoft, Dell, PC, design, industrial design

A character in Nintendo's Animal Crossing: Wild World for their Nintendo DS apparently has something to say about the current state of the music industry:

(via Digg)

Technorati Tags: RIAA, Nintendo, DS, Animal Crossing, free, music, funny