Famicom Dojo Podcast: Development Hell

There’s an old adage that appropriate for this podcast: “A work is never truly finished.  You just run out of time.” Sometimes you just have to say, “Good enough,” and let it go.  It helps if you have a deadline that aboslutely cannot be delayed. This happens a lot in exhibits at museums (where I’m currently working now).  We can’t delay the opening of an exhibit, so in crunch time we can’t focus on all the details.  Though after it’s up, sometimes we come back and make a few minor changes later. 

Mother 3 was stuck in developmental hell for years before it was released. Well, sort of.  It was originally going to be an N64DD, and it even had a listing in Nintendo Power.  It later moved to cartridge before being outright canceled, though not before a demo appeared at Spaceworld.  Years later it was renounced for the GBA.  From screen shots I’ve seen from the N64 game, it looks like the plot of the game was more or less the same. The end product was pretty good, though I don’t like it as much as I liked EarthBound.

Oh, and Re;Xenoblade. The gamestop is getting a art book as a preorder bonus.  Not sure if the Nintendo Store copy is getting one.  Also according to that link, the game won’t ship until the end of April.  Personally, I doubt Nintendo will pay anymore attention to a copy sold via their store than they normally would.  I’d wager that the amount of copy of any Nintendo game sold via Nintendo’s store is less than 1% of all the total copies sold anywhere.  I have no problem buying a NEW game from Gamestop.  They make far more money on used purchases than new. Plus, it was a gutsy move taking a chance on Xenoblade, and I’d like to reward that.  Of course, I’ll be buying Last Story from Amazon because it’s easier for me (and no tax…yet.)