I seriously hope you're not going for In Spite of A Nail when it comes to the Columbine Shooting. Or is Polly going to be able to talk him down?
I've gone through several different ideas for what ultimately goes down, but the idea I currently have and the one that's going to appear in the April 1999 update, I've had in mind since I've been writing the 1996 stuff. You'll have to see the update to find out what happens!
I think the real question will be is if the official licenses from the leagues will end up being restricted to one publisher in the future? Like how OTL EA secured the NFL rights, Take Two got the MLB, and so on and so forth. There used to be competing sports games... but no one makes them anymore besides the license holders.
We'll see what happens with this as well, but it won't be for a good long while yet.
Nintendo originally had Retro working on an NFL football game for the gamecube that fell through (and the studio nearly went bankrupt and Nintendo had to bail them out and have them make metroid prime)
Hmmmmm..... HMMMMMMMMMMMMM.....
So who provided their Japanese voices, or do you not know enough about seiyuu to make that decision?
I don't know too terribly much about seiyuu. I know of a few of the big ones but I know like 0.1% as much about seiyuu as I do about American voice artists
Also, trying to remember what a long-ago online quiz gave as my FOX-HOUND codename, I found the conversation wherein Col. Campbell briefs Snake on the Sons of Big Boss, and I noticed that he introduces them in
gojūon order, making it easy for me to write the TTL version of that speech with the exclusive members in the right place:
Those work! They sound awesome actually, thank you
We've got some big plans for the MGS series. While much from OTL will be carried over, there's also a lot of original stuff that'll be coming into play. The way the series itself plays out will be significantly different.
I noticed (though I know her more for her voice work than her comedy work), and I look forward to that as well.
Really? Mindy Kaling's done Taffyta and Disgust and that's about it in terms of voice acting, I'd have figured most people would know her for The Office and The Mindy Project (even if nobody watches The Mindy Project). But yeah, especially from 2002 on she'll have a recurring role ITTL.
ESPN NFL 2K5, one of the greatest football games ever made, was only 20 bucks and the NFL flipped out at the "devaluing of their brand" while Madden sales were badly hit. So basically the NFL demanded only one license and EA were scared by the competition and so were willing to pay.
I remember this! I played that game so much. What a shame that the NFL put an end to that series
Well Sega was the sports console IOTL. ITTL the late term SNES CD probably is, by virtue of market size (aka PSX/PS2) even if the sales split is a little in Sega's favour. John Madden Football for the Genesis sold 400,000 copies on the tiny Sega Genesis install base in 1990 (I'd wager that it sold half that in consoles actually). It only got bigger after that and real fast. Which is why I figured stealing the sports market is an achievable goal for Sega, they already have that appeal and just need an extra hook...
This is true, and early on, Sega Genesis was kicking the SNES-CD's ass in terms of sports, especially with the Mega Charger (remember that whole big thing from 1994's CES where Mike O'Malley was geeking out over Madden on the Mega Charger). I imagine that first Madden game on the Mega Charger sold at LEAST a million copies, perhaps two million or more, and remember that until Squad Four and DKC came out, the Genesis WAS winning and Madden was a major part of that. And then NHL '96 was probably the best launch game on the Saturn and again, the Saturn was kicking Nintendo's ass at sports games until the Ultra came out. Grant Hill NBA Basketball and Ken Griffey Jr.'s Winning Run were a big deal for the SNES-CD as well.
Overall though I'd agree with you on that sports games weren't as important in the 1990s as the early 2000s from what we know... but I also know that Sega and Sony poured money into sports (hundreds of millions), and Nintendo spent a lot as well, in a field dominated by EA, so both must have considered it very important, more so than we'd think from the outside. Shrug, I'm open though.
Nintendo's still doing sports games, we'll be seeing another Grant Hill game and another Ken Griffey Jr. game on the Ultra in 2000. We might actually include a sports game update in next month's post, though April 1999 is quite a busy month...
