I played for like 3 hours online and just got one of those when in the lobby. Other then that one, online is really smooth.

Just occassionally and only between races (most likely due to not being able to connect with certain players who just joined). Never had a race interrupted.

It's a pain, but you might want to invest in a wired connection.

E3 website lists next Call of Duty for Wii U

http://www.gonintendo.com/s/229523-e3insider-website-lists-call-of-duty-advanced-warfighter-for-wii-u

I haven't had any problems with the online itself, it's basically lag free all the time. However, just out of nowhere I get this error (one was when I was 1st place and was just about to hit the finish line). I played like 5 races, and I was only able to finish 1 of them...the rest I got this...

That's fine. I'll be sure to take that into consideration.

KingofredLions is the same, and I may bring my brother as well.

Oh, cool.

I guess with a game like Mario Kart, this should be expected :P

Very much so. Doing a rough count there's 17 people who want to play, so 8 in each group sounds about right (with numbers likely to increase after today's tourney). 

I'll be sure everyone who is in a pair is in the same group though!

I get this in the middle of races sometimes. Pisses me off because it takes like 3mins to get into another game. I always end up spectating first.

Sing me up for the MK8 tournament. The races have been more steady now for methankfully.

Today in Nintendo History:

Superman 64 was released in America. (1999)

As a citizen of the internet, you've probably heard of this game. And most likely, you know about this game's reputation, that of being one of the worst games to ever hit the retail gaming market. My question for today is why? Why did this game suck so hard?

As always, we need to start by looking at the game's maker. In this case, it was Titus Software, a Greater Paris-based company that lasted from 1985 to 2005. Titus was a mid-sized company in the late 90's, sort of on the same level as, I dunno, 505 Games or Deep Silver in today's console climate. What's important to note though, is that Titus didn't exactly have a terrible reputation. Far from it. Although they made a lot of licensed games, some of these were actually fairly well received. Their Lanborghini racers were well received, Virtual Chess 64 was a great adaptation of the board game, and 1991's Prehistorik did well enough to get sequels and a DSiWare release in 2010.

Superman 64 was to be Titus's first 3D Action/Adventure game, but it was hardly their last. Not long after the release of Superman 64, Titus released a game based off of the Hercules TV show shown in the mid-to-late 90's. An adequate Ocarina of Time ripoff, it got reviews of around 6/10 or so. So it seems that Titus, though far from being the best developers in existence, did not lack the talent to make a decent Superman game.

So why did Superman 64 suck so much?

Well, due to the secrecy surrounding the game, it's hard to tell. The public's first look at the game was at E3 1997, about two years before the final product was released. Considering how Titus was showing screenshots by this time, this means that the game likely started development months possibly as early as 1996. A 2 or 2 and a half year development cycle is a pretty long one for a licensed game, especially one made in the 90's.

One thing to keep in mind is that Superman 64 was not a generic tie-in for the entire Superman franchise. It was made largely to cash in on the famous Superman: The Animated Series of 1996 to 2000. Since development of the game began around the same time as the show, it's possible that the game had to be changed at points to fit into the show's universe. By the time the game was finally released, a total of 51 episodes, complete with then-unique depictions of Superman heroes and villains, had been shown.

In a 2011 interview, Eric Caen, the producer of Superman 64, was interviewed about the game. When questioned about why the gameed up the way it did, he constantly brought up the "political" aspect of working with DC Comics and Warner Bros. According to him, they had a major impact on the game's development, imposing new restrictions as time went on. Apparently, one of these restrictions involved Superman not hting "real" people. Hence, the "virtual world" plot.

On one hand, it is easy to believe that Caen is merely a disgruntled former employee of a project gone bad. However, a beta of the game, circa mid-1998 has been leaked online, which lends some backing to his words.

For one thing, the infamous rings you have to fly through? Those are missing from the beta. Heat vision was a basic ability and ranged alternative to melee. And glitches, though present, are apparently due to the game being incomplete, rather than bad programming.

According to Caen, Superman's design was "too ambitious for the N64." That can be hard to stomach, but considering how Metropolis was apparently a literal square mile of environment (2001's ps2 hit GTA3 was three square miles and 2011's Skyrim was 16), this entirely possible, especially for a third party not used to making 3D open world action-adventure games on the N64 like Titus. Even games like Ocarina of Time had much smaller areas (Ocarina's Hyrule Field was about 0.4 square miles according to Google).

As it turned out, all this work was for naught. Most of the levels and such we are familiar with today apparently were all made during the last six months of development. That means almost everything shown as late as E3 1998, nearly two years into development, had to be thrown out. The infamous rings appeared, and soon became half of the game. Glitches began popping up where there had previously been none, and mecahnics were simplified or made sloppy.

We know how it turned out.

Our story doesn't end there.

Despite the game's abysmal reviews, it actually got good sales. According to VGChartz, listed under its official subtitle of "The New Adventures," this game sold over 300,000 copies in North America alone, a decent amount. The game was a big enough hit so that it was actually in the process of being remade for the PlayStation. Apparently, the game was mostly done before it was scrapped due to licensing issues.

The scary thing: the PS1 version had over 400,000 pre-orders, despite the original's reviews.

Conclusion:

Superman 64 was never going to be a great game. Sorry Titus, but you lacked the talent or experience at making this sort of game. But it could have been a decent one, had things not gone wrong. Ultimately, Superman 64 belongs in the same category as E.T. for the Atari 2600, but not for the reason you'd think. Both were games based off of licenses held by people/companies who did not give the developers what they needed to do the game justice. In E.T.'s case it was a few more weeks of time, in Superman's case it was artistic freedom.

Unfortunately, neither license has ever had its day in the limelight since. Since the advent of internet reviews, there has never been a generally praised Superman game. So I guess this story ends on a sad note.

Screw that. Here's a decent game Superman was in!