Mailbag time! For this mailbag, we tackle questions covering Matthew losing at video games, the potential for a Guitar Hero game featuring The Beatles, our feelings on the Twilight Hack, a new Legend of Zelda game for the Wii, The Tanooki staff’s personal collections of… anything, and - of course - Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

You can head on past the break to read the mailbag. Enjoy!

---

So, Matt, after watching your Guitar Hero video (great job btw) I’ve come to the conclusion that you, like myself, hate losing/dying in video games. So, I was wondering, have you broken any Wiimotes, glass, lamps or any other inanimate objects because of those damn purple comets in Mario Galaxy?
- Robert

Matthew: Fortunately, the Wii remote is one solid piece of plastic. I’m also fortunate to have hardly any fragile objects in my room- just an LCD TV. So as long as I’m careful to not launch my sturdy Wii remote into my not-as-sturdy LCD screen, I might make it out of this current generation unscathed.

However, that still doesn’t fix the fact that I still get extremely frustrated throughout my Galaxy and Guitar Hero play time. I also get rather moody when I play Call of Duty 4 online, but that’s mostly because there has been some serious lag going on in the past few weeks. For the record: lag sucks.

---

What songs would you guys be most interested in playing on the rumored Guitar Hero: Beatles game? Yellow Submarine and Revolution would be awesome for me.
- drktrpr1

Christian: Ooooh, you brought it up. Anyone who knows me knows I’ve been the biggest Beatles fan for almost my entire life - I liked the Beatles before it was cool for kids my age to like the Beatles, back when it was still “our parents’” music. I memorized the lyrics to over 200 of their songs, memorized the ID# on the sides of all the Beatles CDs, and started learning to play all the songs from when I was 5.

As for what I’d like in a Guitar Hero game, it’s hard to pick only a few. At the same time, there are so many I’d like to pick, but since the Beatles liked experimenting with instrumentation in their later years, there’s not always a guitar playing. Browsing through all my CDs, though, I’ll rattle off a few of the songs I wouldn’t mind picking up a Guitar Hero guitar for (since I have yet to do so):

• “Nowhere Man”
• “And Your Bird Can Sing”
• “A Day in the Life”
• “Revolution”
• “Back in the U.S.S.R.”
• “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”
• “Helter Skelter”
• “Hey Bulldog”
• “Come Together”
• “Octopus’s Garden”
• “She Came In Through the Bathroom Window”
• “I’ve Got a Feeling”
• “One After 909″
• “Get Back”
• “Real Love”

OK, so it’s more than a few. Now that I think about it, they need to make this a Rock Band game instead (add a keyboard). It’s much better suited - you’d be able to throw in the drum solo to “The End” in there, among other songs.

Matthew: First off: forget Guitar Hero, The Beatles need to be on Rock Band. With that said, I will like to see the following songs in Rock Band: TEH BEATLES!!!:

• “Golden Slumbers”/”Carry that Weight”/”The End”
• “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”
• “Happiness Is a Warm Gun”
• “A Day in the Life”
• “She Came In Through the Bathroom Window”
• “Back in the U.S.S.R.”
• “Come Together”
• “Rocky Raccoon”
• “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”
• “Blue Jay Way”
• “Helter Skelter”
• “Octopus’s Garden”

The list could go on, but I’ll spare you for now. Just one quick note: if this game doesn’t have the master tracks for every song, I don’t want to even look at it. And if they ever put Aerosmith’s cover of “Come Together” into a game, I will call for a mass boycott of that game/company/video game industry.

Michael: Haha, this is starting to look like a full catalog of their music..

I, too, am a huge Beatles fan. I’ve never been the guy who knows the lyrics to every song, but I definitely know each and every tune. In any case, the following are a couple of tunes I’d like to see included along with Christian and Matt’s choices:

• “And I Love Her”
• “I Feel Fine”
• “Day Tripper”
• “Paperback Writer”
• “Don’t Let me Down”
• “Here Comes the Sun”

---

I’m sure many people have been trying to convert their SSBB .bin file photos so that they can view them on a computer (I know I have). There are a bunch of sites out there but I find this one to be nice and simple: http://brawl.kakkoister.com/

And now for a question: Who is the best Brawl player on The Tanooki staff?
- rickytheleaf

Christian: We’ve haven’t all played each other yet. School and work obligations take up the majority of our time these days. After that, writing on The Tanooki comes second and gaming comes third, as it should be for anyone serious about journalism. From what I have played, though, Joey seems to have an edge over Ryan and me. I could hold my own and win a good number of battles, but I think Joey won more.

After that, we simply need to get Becky her game, get Matt his game back, get Michael a landline connection, and locate the rest of the staff currently MIA.

Matthew: Correction- Becky owns Brawl, but I do not. I’ll play her copy, but I don’t plan on buying my own copy. With that settled- I’m the best player on the staff.

Joey: Thus far I have only played against Ryan and Christian in Brawl. Christian said it first, so I will acknowledge the fact that I won more games than I lost during those matches. I’m looking forward to taking on Michael after his internet gets a much-needed upgrade. Also, I’m calling out Matt right here, right now on his claim that he is the best. Bring it!

Michael: I’m living in an ultra remote area of the world known as “Canada”, where it’s not uncommon to find people living 2 minutes outside of town either struggling with a dial-up connection, or getting by with satellite. In this desolate region of the world where the internet is known, but rarely traveled well… I train.

*cue training montage sequence with 80’s music*

Actually, I’m pretty sure Joey would have the edge on me. I’m not sure about Christian, Ryan, Pete, Matt or Becky, but you can be sure the first chance I get to take on anyone, I’ll be ready!

---

I was wondering, what do you guys think of Wii Homebrew and the rather recent ‘Twilight Hack’? Personally I think it’s great, I was wondering if any of you have tried it. :)
- Ian

Michael: I haven’t tried it yet, and I’m not really sure that I want to.. :(

For me, the Wii is just the video game console, I’ve never really been into homebrew. That being said, I find the community that forms around consoles and gadgets fascinating. They always manage to pump out an amazing amount of innovative software.

Christian: I support independent game developers, I really do. However, I don’t support hacking into a system to get your games to run on it. Bigger developers have to pay tons of money to obtain the materials needed to develop games for specific platforms, all major console manufacturers are finding ways to offer cheaper SDKs to smaller developers (WiiWare, ahem), and there’s no reason other indies should have to cheat the system in order to express their ideas.

That said, I don’t support the “Twilight Hack,” and won’t try it. I’m not denying that some great ideas will be born through homebrew games made now that the Twilight Hack makes the games more accessible and thus developing for it more appealing, but I won’t be trying them out until they’re distributed officially.

---

It’s me again, with another “stuff” related question. Do any of you guys have a collection? You know, bottle caps, hockey cards, etc. etc. Supply pics if possible ;)
- Nintendude

Matthew: I don’t have the photos right now, but I used to have a massive collection of Pokemon cards and wrestling figures (yes, wrestling figures). These days, my only collection is my small Nintendo and Metal Gear Solid memorabilia collection.

Joey: I used to be a pretty hardcore Pokemaniac back in the day. There is a box stored in my closet with all of my old cards and collectibles. Sadly, my deck that I put much time and effort into building somehow got disassembled at some point. On the other hand, though, for all I know my older “retro” cards probably couldn’t stand a chance against any of the cards released in the newer expansions.

Also, while I am somewhat embarrassed to admit this, I have a number of toys and collectibles of Stitch from Disney’s Lilo and Stitch. That movie was and still is my favorite Disney film, and I acquired a number of Stitch-related items through both personal purchases and gifts during the two years that I was an employee at the Disney Store.

Christian: I used to be a numismatist… I’ve got the Yeoman price guide book and everything. To this day, I still cringe when people hold coins by their faces. Oh, and I have binders and binders full of basketball cards. Back when the Chicago Bulls were still winning championships (and games, for that matter), you could name any then-current player in the NBA and I could rattle off a ton of stats and info about them.

I’m quite a packrat all-around, and I do have lots of stuff. Honestly, though, the only other thing I can think of that I have a lot of are the old Sonic the Hedgehog comics from Archie Comics. These bridged me over to gaming, believe it or not. I’ve got them all in a couple of boxes right here, but I’m not about to lay them all out on the ground just for a picture. I’ll tell you which ones I own, though.

• Sonic the Hedgehog: #18, #21-22, #24-63, #87, #96-#100, #127-130, #132, #134-#136, #138, #150
• 48-Page Specials: Sonic In Your Face, Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic Triple Trouble, Knuckles Chaotix, Super Sonic vs. Hyper Knuckles, Mecha Madness, Sonic Live, Sonic Blast, Sonic Super Specials #1-5
• Mini-Series: Princess Sally, Tails, Knuckles, Sonic Quest
• Knuckles the Echidna: #1-8, #10-11, #13-14
• Sonic Firsts (special cover/paper)

Yep, there are quite a few holes in there. Feel free to fill them in by mailing me any I’m missing. ;)

Michael: I have a good-sized SNES collection that I’ve been building over the past couple of years. I have Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana and Evermore, Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinstrals, and a bunch of the classics: The Legend of Zelda: A link to the past, Mario Kart, Star Fox, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest, Super Mario World, Super Mario All-Stars, and Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior to name a few.

My latest addition is Ranma 1/2: Hard Battle that I found at a pawn shop. Me and a friend obsessed over the manga series for a while, so I thought it would be fun to play one of the games.. It wasn’t.

Christian: We’re counting old video games, too? I think Matt, Joey, and I need to re-visit this question…

---

who have you been giving the most play time in brawl? and what’s your smash and friend codes, let’s play online haha
- Earlio

Joey: As I had with Melee, there is a short list of 4-5 characters that I am very familiar with and switch between frequently. This time around for Brawl, my fighting roster is made up of Peach, Sonic, Marth, and Toon Link. Some of you might snicker at the first choice on my list, but I assure you that I am quite formidable with Princes Toadstool. Plus, it is always fun to have someone say to me, “Are you seriously going to use Peach?” before the match, and then proceed to open up a can of whoop-ass with the princess.

Also, if any of you are interested in challenging me in Brawl, send a message to my profile in the forums. While I do have a very busy schedule at the moment, I should occasionally have time for a match or two, especially during the weekend.

Christian: The stats under my name suggest that I use Pit a lot, but that’s simply because I used him to unlock all characters via Brawl Mode in the first six hours we had the game in possession. Since then, I’ve been using Ike a lot. I used Marth in Melee simply because I’m a Fire Emblem fan, and I use both Ike and Marth in Brawl for the same reasons. I’m more familiar with Ike’s character simply because of Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, but I may use Marth again more once the remake of his first game comes out on the DS here.

As for my friend code, it’s ***kkrrrssshhhhh*** (tunnel)

Michael: I’m going full out with Toon Link. Every one of his special moves fits in with my playing style perfectly, so I’ve been playing with him a lot. Besides him, Marth and Ike are a close second and third respectively, followed by Lucario and Diddy. I still try out Snake and Sonic every once in a while, but I don’t have nearly as much success with them as I do with the others.

As for my friend code, you’ll have to wait until I return from my rigorous training regime in the desolate land of “Ottawa, Canada.”

---

Do you think there will be a new Zelda game for Wii? If they made a Zelda game with TP graphics that would be sick!
- Jayson

Joey: Considering that Twilight Princess‘ release coincided with the launch of the Wii, I strongly believe that we will be seeing a new Zelda title on the console sometime this generation. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that Miyamoto has clearly stated that the next game in the series to be featured on a console will be unlike any other previous title. It sounds to me like Nintendo is planing on redefining the franchise with this upcoming game, so it may be some time before the final product is ready for release.

Christian: That said, we’re already overdue for seeing the next console Zelda game in trailer form. Think about it. Majora’s Mask came out in October 2000 (I’m using North American dates). We saw the real trailer to The Wind Waker less than a year later at SpaceWorld 2001 (August). That game came out in March of 2003. Just over a year later, crowds roared at the first Twilight Princess trailer in May of 2004 at E3. That game finally came out (delayed) in November/December 2006. We’re almost a year and a half later, and four years since the last “first” trailer. Where’s Zelda?

---

That wraps up this edition of the mailbag! Remember, you don’t always have to send us “opinion” questions. We’re pretty new in the business, but we can pass along your questions to game developers and publishers and get back answers with varying degrees of success. Provided you give us enough time before each mailbag, we’ll be able to post any responses in the following mailbag.

Feel free to send in any submissions for the next mailbag here - they may or may not be answered in written form first next time. ;)

Trackback URI | Comments RSS