2a2.  I guess you misunderstood me regarding the graphics.  I was saying, "I disagree with your claim that the graphics are dated.  What is the evidence you have for this claim?"  You have given none. 

The rest of what I said is about the development or evolution of the genre.  But you claim that even if the genre is evolving, it's not evolved from other genres; IMO you're making a pretty subjective judgment about that.  For instance, if you want to pursue this point, explain how you judge how "sophisticated" the gameplay is. 

2a3a.  "Art costs nothing." 

If a game has great art it doesn't mean the developer put effort or money into the game?  Either simply pointing out the ridiculousness of this statement will be enough to turn you around, or it would take so much effort on just this one thing that it's not worth derailing the debate.  If the latter, this point is done, stick a fork in. 

2a3b.  "By now you have already concluded Metroid Prime isn't objectively deep."

I don't know if you intentionally misread what I said, or just have a poor grasp of the English language.  What I ACTUALLY said was that the REVIEW SCORES didn't objectively PROVE that it was a deep game.  All my earlier points still stand; and if we were to peruse the individual reviews, they might well provide objective evidence of depth.  Try again, if you like. 

2a4a.  I am confident that upon objective examination Super Mario Galaxy 2 will prove to have superior graphics than PS2 and Xbox games including those.  Of course, just by glancing at them it's impossible to say because they have completely different graphical styles.  I'm sure you wouldn't make such a subjective judgment. 

2a4b.  I am curious to know what you mean by "balloon based games", but on the other hand, I'm a little afraid of the answer.  Anyway, I already told you I didn't research that much into it after getting my initial list of 10+ (which you rejected).  Also, since you care much more about these kind of criteria, of course you are more likely to know about games that fit them.  For instance, at the time of my earlier response, I didn't remember WarioWare, which I just thought of.  WarioWare games have hundreds of little minigames in them.  Wii Sports Resort has dozens of variants, possibly over 100.  And so on.  You, however, categorically state that only Pokemon qualifies, proving that you are making claims without sufficient evidence.  You ought to have known about a Nintendo franchise as important as WarioWare if you thought you had done enough research to make such a bold claim.  Also, at least one of the Brain Age games has well over 100 gameplay elements, a fact I just discovered when I thought about other Nintendo franchises that might qualify for that one.  These are huge games, selling as much as 20 million copies!  There is no excuse for being ignorant of their existence if you are purporting to know all about Nintendo games, enough to deny that they qualify for your criteria. 

So we've gone from 0 (after you threw out the ones I'd done and then stopped looking) to 1 (after you came up with one and then stopped looking) to 3 (after which I stopped looking again because I've proven my point). 

2b.  That was actually just to settle the question of your personal opinion of Wii Sports.  I now have your word on the answer:  that you like it enough that you'd buy the game if you owned the system but not the game. 

2c.  "Retro games" is not the same as "games from the past"?!
As crazy as that may sound, it's entirely true that those are no longer one and the same thing by the way you've defined the term retro, if something can be retro and unlike anything from the past. 

2d.  Videogaming (which is part of Information Technology) can evolve into something simpler?? Sure, I'm immagining the next gen PCs to have less processing power, less memory and less features. A PC with 20MB HDD...amazing! That's not regression, no! That's just an evolution some won't like.
Your mockery notwithstanding, games evolving to be simpler is a completely different thing from the technology evolving to be simpler.  Consider a simple game like "Flower" on the PS3.  Surely you don't deny that the gameplay is extremely simple.  I am sure you would call it a minigame.  But that doesn't mean that it is skimping on the presentation.  I don't know if it could have been done on the PS2 and look remotely as good as it does.  I wouldn't like it, frankly, if all games moved in that direction.  Flower is a nice game to visit but I wouldn't want to live there, if you get what I mean.  But if that happened, it would be an EVOLUTION in games.  Not the same thing as people spontanteously deciding to go back to 1995's computer hardware.  And Windows 95. 

3.  That's the one this particular issue was about. 

4.  If you're talking about the gravity shifting as shown in this video, that is a completely different gameplay concept from the "Little Prince" style planetoids in SMG, each with their own gravity.  If you have better evidence, please produce it. 

A shrink would have a field day with that post as it has nothing technical, or really even speculation, just desperate clutches at straws.

Zod95 and Final-Fan please just stop it, it's enough, really! I have one little wisdom I want to share with you: Facts (any fact) are linked to the perspective of the group of people who claimed and/or believe these facts. If you do not belong to this group of people, these "proven" facts are not facts anymore and therefore aren't "proven". The conclusion: Facts (any fact) are just subjective! And yes, this includes scientific facts! For example, it's a hard "proven" fact that any human being will die without water within 3 days (or at the very best after 5 to 6 days). Nevertheless, there are proven cases where people survived much longer!

For Zod95 I have one thing to say about Nintendo: Shigeru Miyamoto set the tone for Nintendo games many years ago. He said many times, that he is not interested in photorealistic graphics, he doesn't like violence and is not interested in making typcial arcade type games (meant are typical arcade games from the mid 90' to early 00') on consoles. Shigeru Miyamoto is producer or at least a consultant of ANY game Nintendo produces. As he is the one everybody is looking upt to at Nintendo, of course anybody wants to please him and accordingly everbody makes games he will like. Especially in Japanese behaviour this is something to be understood. That's the real reason why Nintendo has no photorealistic graphics, no violence and no typical arcade type games. Because, believe me with that many employees in the development of games Nintndo has, do you really believe none of them would be interested in making a photorealistic or violent game?

I've pointed out 3 incorrections from your statement and I'm pretty sure about them. What have I misunderstood? Or is it just a way for you to withdraw from your own arguments without causing the impression you were wrong about them?

As for the evidences about the dated graphics, I've given none because I don't need to. You had already gave them. Look at your own video about that shoot-em-up and then look at videos from AAA games like Killzone 2, Gran Turismo 5, Crysis, Project Gotham 4, FIFA 13, etc. Don't they seem to have better graphics? Honestly, if you say no, I can't do more about that. I won't search for someone on the internet, expert or not, that tells that shoot-em-up has clearly worse graphics than most of 7th gen titles. That is actually moving away from the evidences. Much better than to see the opinion of someone about something is to see that something with your own eyes. If you tell me your eyes see no difference on those videos, I laugh a bit and then I just quit this debate.

You seem to be nervous. Is it because we have finally got into a substantial point where you can't escape of its objectiveness? You were so interesting in understanding what could qualify as a criteria to assess the depth of a game and the commitment of a developer. Now that you have a solid answer, you're scared about how miserably Nintendo will look on that. You're panicking so hard that you haven't even said a word about that. Instead, you've just focused on 1 single detail (that you know you can't win) and tried to make me unreasonable about that matter.

But you know, I know and everybody knows that art costs nothing. Some artists are just more talented than others. That means, for the same work hours, they will produce better pieces of art than others. They won't make a bigger game or a more sophisticated gameplay. They may even focus on the simplicity you were talking about and thus making in some months a game that sells millions.

But even if all of this wasn't true, even if I'm all wrong and you're all right about this art costing nothing, there's still the problem that art is subjective and thus not measurable. So, it can't be included in this analysis. I won't say this analysis shows the best games and the best developers. It's far from representing my tastes. But it shows something neither I nor you can't deny. It get us somewhere rather than making us going in circles in subjective matters because we have different visions due to our different tastes.

So please forget about the philosophic debates about art and the meaning of evolution and start focusing on what can get you somewhere. You won't do it for me. You will do it for yourself. Stop lying to yourself. In the end, you can still think Nintendo is the best. But then you'll also know in what it fails miserably. You will honestly say Nintendo is the best game developer in your opinion rather than pretending it is the best in everything and that it has no weak spots.

Than prove that. Because you said Wii had better graphics than the 6th gen games ("as evidence I say that the Wii indisputably can and has done graphics far superior to the graphics of previous generations"). Then prove Mario Galaxy 2 has far superior graphics than Gran Turismo 4 or Project Gotham 2. Otherwise, you can't say you have evidence.

"Balloon based games" are boring games based on boring reading of boring messages in bored ballons. From the 6th generation onwards, it was replaced by voice acting in non-lazy gaming studios. Unfourtunately, Nintendo was not one of those. That's my personal view about it

Objectively, "balloon based games" usually belong to a major classification: discrete input games, as opposed to continuous input games. Taking Pokemon as example, it's discrete-input because I tell the pokemon to perform the attack rather than controlling the pokemon and making the attack myself with my own skills. Taking another example, a RTS game is also discrete-input since I click on the tank and then click on the target (to tell the tank to shoot the target). The inputs are performed one by one and they don't involve physical skills, like a driving game or a FPS or a third-person action or a sports game does, which are then continuous-input games. Unless the sports game is like Championship Manager and, in that case, it's a menu-based game (which also belongs to the discrete-input group).

In these kind of games, it's much easier to achieve gameplay with more than 100 variants since the animations, the sounds and the gameplay mechanics are very limited or even non-existent.

I haven't rejected any of your 10 games. I've just rejected your criteria because it was misunderstood from my words. If you tell me the 10 games you've listed qualify for the photo-realistic environments (environments replicated from reality) requirement then I may accept or reject each of them based on my research. As for now, I don't need to do any research on them. The challenge is yours, not mine. I have already done mine in regards to Sony, Microsoft and some other companies...and I also said the only Nintendo game I was seeing capable of qualifying was Pokemon. That doesn't mean I claim it's the only one on Nintendo's list. I'm still waiting for YOUR list and then take some conclusions. But you're delaying it and I'm wodering why. You were so quick to speak about SNES specs. Now you're so lazy...

I didn't understand what is the requirement you're trying to say that WarioWare fulfills. Please let me know.

Wii Sports Resort has dozens of variants of what? For example, I know that FIFA has thousands of players and each of them has his own skills map, which will make him behave differently than other players in certain situations. Of course the situations and the way they develop can be much more than thousands but that's the output. The input (more than 100 players) is what makes them to be infinite and it's what is work from the dev. Plus, even if you're talking about inputs, "to have dozens, possibly over 100" isn't enough. "To have hundreds, possibly 1000" is more like it (then I know it has 100 for sure). Don't forget we are talking about lower limits. If the game struggles to get 100, forget it.

Regarding Brain Age, I didn't talk about gameplay elements. Everything can be a gameplay element. "Gameplay variant" means it's a different version of the same gameplay. Taking FIFA as example, that game could have only 1 player skills map and then every player would behave like the others (yet, the gameplay would be complete). Taking Gran Turismo 5 as example, that game could have only 1 car handling and then every car would behave like the others (yet, the gameplay would be complete). But if I remove gameplay elements, the gameplay becomes incomplete. If I remove all gameplay elements but 1, the gameplay simply doesn't exist anymore.

As for now, Nintendo continues to have only Pokemon qualified.

In regards to 2c and 2d, I'm done with philosophy.

Then stick to the issue and don't make assumptions on the overall matter.

No, I wasn't talking about that. And yes, I do have better evidence:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEIC70VzwAY

As you can see: gravity, "Little Prince" style planetoids and even transporters between different gravity systems are all there, in a Sega's game launched in 2001. Sega's shown Nintendo how to do it.

Sure, I see a lot of violence in Gran Turismo and Forza. Those games are full of blood and terror...LOL...I've seen better excuses to avoid hard work in photo-realism. I'm sure Miyamoto has also interesting excuses to avoid all the other 8 requirements.

C´mon guy, more details!

'Less than Wii' is too vague.

Final Fan and Zod please take it elsewhere you're just rabbiting on about nothing now!!! Gees!

I've missed the past 6 pages. Something going down?

johnlucas must bring this kindergarten to an end...

Final fan and Zod argued about whatever.