Fun Club What are common misnamings/misinformation about gaming things that drive you up the wall?

[Concernt]

why make it so you can’t play games directly from the disc, saving you all that storage space??

The reason for this is manifold. Optical disks are slower than hard drives or Nintendo Switch Game Cards, by a lot, while also containing much larger assets than Nintendo Switch Game Card. Installing it to a hard drive can allow for 100+MB/s reads, which many games outright require to funcfion, while others would take minutes to hours to load off disk directly. Xbox 360 games played off the disk, like Fable 3, would have load times just to go from gameplay to the pause menu. Forced installs fix that, and especially with modern consoles having fast SSDs and modern games requiring that speed, forced installs are the only way many games function at all.

With the next generation of Nintendo Switch, we could still be lucky, since the theoretical maximum speed of Game Card technology is 300MB/s, which after decompression could kiss 1000MB/s, enough to run any modern game. However, if they stick with 50MB/s peaks for next generation Game Cards, I would expect many games, though not all, to force an install.

 

[Concernt]

Everything about console generations.

runs away

I think for once Xbox has the right idea:

Xbox Series X|S and PS5 are "Gen9". You can work backwards from there and it makes a kind of sense.

 

[Dizzle]

I think for once Xbox has the right idea:

Xbox Series X|S and PS5 are "Gen9". You can work backwards from there and it makes a kind of sense.

I believe all attempts to number console generations are futile.

 

[Concernt]

I believe all attempts to number console generations are futile.

There are games nowadays coming out for Xbox Series X|S, PS5 and... Nintendo Switch.

So yeah, even Gen9 is pretty vague.

 

[CyberWolfBia]

On man.. don't let me start the tangent of console generations, this could go out of hand;

But here a simple concept of grasp: The Switch is the Wii U successor, a 8th generation console, so.. the Switch is, by definition, a 9th generation console.

The system after the Switch will start the 10th generation.

It has nothing to do with hardware horsepower or shelf-life on the market.

 

[Dizzle]

It has nothing to do with hardware horsepower or shelf-life on the market.

Ok, but if it's neither of those things then what is it?

 

[Joe]

I may be way off on this and I don't want to risk spreading misinformation myself so please take this with a grain of salt: didn't Wikipedia start the numbered console generation thing?

 

[Raccoon]

On man.. don't let me start the tangent of console generations, this could go out of hand;

But here a simple concept of grasp: The Switch is the Wii U successor, a 8th generation console, so.. the Switch is, by definition, a 9th generation console.

The system after the Switch will start the 10th generation.

It has nothing to do with hardware horsepower or shelf-life on the market.

I'd say it intuitively depends on its peers

the switch doesn't really have any, so it doesn't belong to any generation

wii u was nintendo's contribution to gen 8, then in 2017 they left the console market

 

[Concernt]

I'd say it intuitively depends on its peers

the switch doesn't really have any, so it doesn't belong to any generation

wii u was nintendo's contribution to gen 8, then in 2017 they left the console market

I'd say Switch is an 8th gen handheld, and NG Switch will be a 9th gen handheld.

 

[CyberWolfBia]

Ok, but if it's neither of those things then what is it?

Just the fact that one machine is meant to replace the previous one;

If it was just about horsepower, the TurboGrafx-16 wouldn't be accounted alongside the Genesis and SNES, as it was closer to a 8-Bit system than anything else; Or the Neo Geo, towering beyond anything else of that time.

And if it was about market lifetime, the Dreamcast would be accounted alongside the Saturn (as some often do with the Wii U x Switch), as the latter barely lasted 4 years until the replacement came about.

I'd say it intuitively depends on its peers

the switch doesn't really have any, so it doesn't belong to any generation

wii u was nintendo's contribution to gen 8, then in 2017 they left the console market

Nintendo was doomed the day they announced the NX!

 

[Dizzle]

Just the fact that one machine is meant to replace the previous one;

If it was just about horsepower, the TurboGrafx-16 wouldn't be accounted alongside the Genesis and SNES, as it was closer to a 8-Bit system than anything else; Or the Neo Geo, towering beyond anything else of that time.

And if it was about market lifetime, the Dreamcast would be accounted alongside the Saturn (as some often do with the Wii U x Switch), as the latter barely lasted 4 years until the replacement came about.

What did the NES replace? What did the Virtual Boy replace? What did the Switch replace?

If it isn't marketing or power, then the logic ends up being totally circular. There must be numbered generations, so what numbers make the most sense?

Embrace anarchy. No numbers.

 

[Concernt]

What did the NES replace

NES was part of the third generation of video game consoles, featuring discrete GPU(PPU) and CPU units, whereas second generation, such as Atari 2600, just had their CPU racing the beam to draw graphics, and the first generation, such as Magnavox Odyssey, were videogames but not computer games, since they were based on fixed function circuits and didn't have a true microprocessor. While Gen 4-8 are a little uncertain thanks to PlayStation, SNES, N64, Virtual Boy, Dreamcast, Wii, Wii U and Switch all acting to blur lines, the first 3 generations were at least somewhat straightforward.

 

[CyberWolfBia]

What did the NES replace? What did the Virtual Boy replace? What did the Switch replace?

If it isn't marketing or power, then the logic ends up being totally circular. There must be numbered generations, so what numbers make the most sense?

Embrace anarchy. No numbers.

No one argues against the Xbox being a sixth generation system, despite being the first of its lineage, right? ;P

and then there's the oddball low-powered system like the Zeebo on the seventh gen, that also had a pretty short lifespam.

I do agree, however, that the numbering is pointless.. but if we were still to do that, then I go by the criteria I described lol

 

[E.Gadd]

I actually think it's cute when people mispronounce Bowser as Browser. they shouldn't get made fun of for that

Nintendo gaslighting us all for years via official materials into thinking Luigi debuted in an Arcade game instead of a Game & Watch one like he actually did is weird but I can kinda see how they'd get it twisted.

 

[jirou]

And Zelda can be your Zelda 1 if you want.
I expect some playground discussions revolving around TotK calling it Zelda 2 too.

We are all getting old.

I've already heard kids saying this, calling TotK Zelda 2 I mean. It's understandable imo

 

[OctoSplattack]

I may be way off on this and I don't want to risk spreading misinformation myself so please take this with a grain of salt: didn't Wikipedia start the numbered console generation thing?

IIRC, yes. At the very least, they established the categorization (which console is which gen) that we currently use. I believe other attempts at grouping consoles together had been attempted prior.

 

[jirou]

The reason for this is manifold. Optical disks are slower than hard drives or Nintendo Switch Game Cards, by a lot, while also containing much larger assets than Nintendo Switch Game Card. Installing it to a hard drive can allow for 100+MB/s reads, which many games outright require to funcfion, while others would take minutes to hours to load off disk directly. Xbox 360 games played off the disk, like Fable 3, would have load times just to go from gameplay to the pause menu. Forced installs fix that, and especially with modern consoles having fast SSDs and modern games requiring that speed, forced installs are the only way many games function at all.

With the next generation of Nintendo Switch, we could still be lucky, since the theoretical maximum speed of Game Card technology is 300MB/s, which after decompression could kiss 1000MB/s, enough to run any modern game. However, if they stick with 50MB/s peaks for next generation Game Cards, I would expect many games, though not all, to force an install.

Learned something new today, cool. Thanks for sharing that

 

[MSnap]

Perhaps my biggest gripe is when people refer to Mario as Mario Bros., which I think is only an occurrence outside the English speaking world, but I'm not sure.

Someone mentioned that earlier and I think it’s hilarious

 

[CyberWolfBia]

Nintendo gaslighting us all for years via official materials into thinking Luigi debuted in an Arcade game instead of a Game & Watch one like he actually did is weird but I can kinda see how they'd get it twisted.

They also usually don't count Four Swords being the first appearance of Toon Link, despite the GBA game coming out before The Wind Waker

 

[E.Gadd]

They also usually don't count Four Swords being the first appearance of Toon Link, despite the GBA game coming out before The Wind Waker

Yeah see, I might understand(still don't like it tho) ignoring stuff like the Virtual Boy games or CDi stuff when they do retrospectives(and I guess now it will be the WiiU that is ignored going forward) but stuff like GBA and G&W weren't niche or failures.

It's almost like even Nintendo has a weird "handheld-doesn't-count" bias sometimes

 

[Tye]

Nintendo gaslighting us all for years via official materials into thinking Luigi debuted in an Arcade game instead of a Game & Watch one like he actually did is weird but I can kinda see how they'd get it twisted.

They also usually don't count Four Swords being the first appearance of Toon Link, despite the GBA game coming out before The Wind Waker

To be fair, in both of these cases the games that Nintendo commonly attributes to being the character in question’s debut is the game that the character was actually designed to appear in first; Luigi was created for the arcade Mario Bros., and it just so happened that the Game & Watch game inspired by it ended up releasing a few months earlier than the arcade game. And with Toon Link, that version of Link was designed specifically for The Wind Waker, but as with Game & Watch Mario Bros., a smaller scope game with a shorter development time—Four Swords, in this case—happened to just barely release before it by not even two weeks. Though, in Japan, The Wind Waker still released first. So I don’t blame Nintendo for considering arcade Mario Bros. and The Wind Waker as the games that birthed Luigi and Toon Link, respectively, because in a creative sense they absolutely were.

 

[MP!]

Yeah, as someone who prefers physical games myself, it’s frustrating to see that the most common arguments for or against it completely miss the point… It’s the same with the whole “we need physical games for preservation, and all content should be on the game card/disc” angle; both physical and digital games get dumped all the same, so you really don’t have to worry about them not being preserved in some way if your idea of “preservation” is to just pirate them eventually, anyway, and digital media is more likely to outlive physical media, too, because your discs and game cards aren’t going to last forever—even some game cards as new as 3DS have been known to fail within just 5 years or so, meanwhile you can still redownload your digital games from Wii and DS to this day (and you can easially—and officially—make backups of your SD card to ensure that data is safe for even longer).

No, the real argument in favor of physical games is that they can be freely shared or sold, unlike digital games. The fact that they take up less storage space on your console is a nice bonus, too.

I've noticed those exact same things and have started making my own backups. I guess we can only hope for future games to be "backupable"

I have a decent sized physical collection myself ... but even some of my wii U games have stopped being read for some reason. Not to mention my PS1 and PS2 discs. I keep them around for nostalgia sake. But yeah ultimately they will all deteriorate...
I tend not to sell anything... BUT have been know to pick up stuff at the pawn shop... $10 for tony hawk 1&2 on switch and $5 for Kingdom Hearts 3... I obviously can see the benefit of physical media... But it's end is near...

UNLESS... some new medium is created.

 

[souio]

Everything my former classmate's uncle at Nintendo told him.

 

[CyberWolfBia]

To be fair, in both of these cases the games that Nintendo commonly attributes to being the character in question’s debut is the game that the character was actually designed to appear in first; Luigi was created for the arcade Mario Bros., and it just so happened that the Game & Watch game inspired by it ended up releasing a few months earlier than the arcade game. And with Toon Link, that version of Link was designed specifically for The Wind Waker, but as with Game & Watch Mario Bros., a smaller scope game with a shorter development time—Four Swords, in this case—happened to just barely release before it by not even two weeks. Though, in Japan, The Wind Waker still released first. So I don’t blame Nintendo for considering arcade Mario Bros. and The Wind Waker as the games that birthed Luigi and Toon Link, respectively, because in a creative sense they absolutely were.

Fair enough, I get the perspective.. It's the same reason why Capcom insists in saying that Luke is a Street Fighter 6 character, despite him debuting in Street Fighter V (he was designed for SF6 first); In my eyes, the technicality weights less, and the actual sequence of games is what matters;

Here's a good example... The tracks that debuted in the Booster Course Pass in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe; Sky-High Sundae, Yoshi's Island and Squeaky Clean Sprint... were clearly designed for Mario Kart Tour first, but if say... they return in the next game on Retro Cups, I think they should call them Mario Kart 8 Deluxe tracks! After all.. if they don't do that, there won't be any MK8DX exclusive tracks.

-- Something more in my lane, is Nina Cortex in the Crash Bandicoot series; She was designed first for Crash Nitro Kart, and she ended being unused.. saved to be introduced first in the next mainline game (Twinsanity), but because of miscommunication between teams working on multiple games simultaneously, she ended debuting in Crash Purple earlier. And that is still acknowledged by the games, at least

 

[korok]

I don't know how common it was in other countries, but in Spanish forums, specially between 2013 and 2016, there was a widely extended myth: that Nintendo wasn't attending E3 just because they weren't doing a live conference. It was exhausting. Hundreds of people convinced that Nintendo "retired from E3 in 2013" because reasons.

 

[OctoSplattack]

I don't know how common it was in other countries, but in Spanish forums, specially between 2013 and 2016, there was a widely extended myth: that Nintendo wasn't attending E3 just because they weren't doing a live conference. It was exhausting. Hundreds of people convinced that Nintendo "retired from E3 in 2013" because reasons.

Nah, it wasn't just Spanish forums. Even now, I still see people think that Nintendo hadn't been at E3 since 2013, despite them arguably doing more stuff around the venue after starting Directs, like Treehouse Live.

 

[Dinoman96]

Here's another funny misconception people have, and it's appropriate to mention this now, considering F-Zero's recent kinda sorta revival: the idea that Captain Falcon's first name is "Douglas".

I'll let the F-Zero wiki say it for me.

Captain Falcon

For other uses, see Captain Falcon (Disambiguation). Famicom redirects here. Captain Falcon (キャプテン・ファルコン, Kyaputen Farukon?) is the protagonist of the F-Zero series. He is an F-Zero racer and a renowned intergalactic bounty hunter from Port Town. By the age of 36,[3] Captain Falcon had built a...

fzero.fandom.com

It should be noted that the name "Douglas Jay Falcon" from a defunct F-Zero X website headed by Nintendo of America, which is assumed to have simply made up a lot of the information by adding onto unfinished localized pilot bios found within the F-Zero X manual. The JP manual actually states information that is otherwise missing from the English manual. The website also heavily contradicts established lore, and is questionable at best, and not canon as it is not recognized by any official F-Zero media.

The funny thing is, Cap actually got fleshed out more in the anime, where it's revealed that he's actually Jody Summer's long lost brother named "Andy", and he also has a side gig as a bartender named "Bart Lemming" when he's not being Captain Falcon.

But yes, as far as the actual games are concerned, he's only ever just been "Captain Falcon", and the "Douglas Jay Falcon" name was fabricated by Nintendo of America for just F-Zero X, it seems.

 

[batfax]

Story of Seasons/Harvest Moon has a few. Notably, the original protagonist, with the blue overalls, backwards cap, and hair antennae dealie, being named "Pete" instead of the fanon name, "Jack." Somehow people are still learning this. No idea where the fanon name actually originated from, since it wasn't in any manuals or anything, but at one point even Nintendo Power spread that nugget of false info.

Another big one for the series is that a lot of fans somehow only caught on that the Mineral Town versions of the 64 cast had different personalities and there was an alternate universe thing going on when the Nintendo Switch remake changed their designs to better reflect those changes. Even more impressive, some folks who claimed to had never played HM64 still knew about the original traits of the characters and even preferred them over the versions present in the game they had actually played. It's something I thought about making a thread on a few times because it really sells to me that the character designs of Harvest Moon 64 are really underrated since they informed so many people of personality traits that the GBA versions of the characters simply didn't have.

 

[MP!]

Story of Seasons/Harvest Moon has a few. Notably, the original protagonist, with the blue overalls, backwards cap, and hair antennae dealie, being named "Pete" instead of the fanon name, "Jack." Somehow people are still learning this. No idea where the fanon name actually originated from, since it wasn't in any manuals or anything, but at one point even Nintendo Power spread that nugget of false info.

Another big one for the series is that a lot of fans somehow only caught on that the Mineral Town versions of the 64 cast had different personalities and there was an alternate universe thing going on when the Nintendo Switch remake changed their designs to better reflect those changes. Even more impressive, some folks who claimed to had never played HM64 still knew about the original traits of the characters and even preferred them over the versions present in the game they had actually played. It's something I thought about making a thread on a few times because it really sells to me that the character designs of Harvest Moon 64 are really underrated since they informed so many people of personality traits that the GBA versions of the characters simply didn't have.

I somehow got it into my head that his name was Hero. For some reason … like that was the name the game put if you didn’t change it but I can’t find that anywhere for any game.

Back to nature is my favorite harvest moon game I always found it weird that HM64 looked so similar but was basically completely different

 

[Mekanos]

Here's another funny misconception people have, and it's appropriate to mention this now, considering F-Zero's recent kinda sorta revival: the idea that Captain Falcon's first name is "Douglas".

I'll let the F-Zero wiki say it for me.

Captain Falcon

For other uses, see Captain Falcon (Disambiguation). Famicom redirects here. Captain Falcon (キャプテン・ファルコン, Kyaputen Farukon?) is the protagonist of the F-Zero series. He is an F-Zero racer and a renowned intergalactic bounty hunter from Port Town. By the age of 36,[3] Captain Falcon had built a...

fzero.fandom.com

The funny thing is, Cap actually got fleshed out more in the anime, where it's revealed that he's actually Jody Summer's long lost brother named "Andy", and he also has a side gig as a bartender named "Bart Lemming" when he's not being Captain Falcon.

But yes, as far as the actual games are concerned, he's only ever just been "Captain Falcon", and the "Douglas Jay Falcon" name was fabricated by Nintendo of America for just F-Zero X, it seems.

Wow, this is news to me! Good find.

 

[batfax]

I somehow got it into my head that his name was Hero. For some reason … like that was the name the game put if you didn’t change it but I can’t find that anywhere for any game.

Back to nature is my favorite harvest moon game I always found it weird that HM64 looked so similar but was basically completely different

AFAIK, the only time there was an in-game default name back in the Olden Days of the series was GBC3, but it still used "Pete."

The funfact reason for the second thing is that Back to Nature was originally meant to just be an enhanced port of HM64 to PlayStation. Just adding some cut features and festivals, like cooking and so on. However, while the series director was paying attention to PS2 development and assumed the port team was going to behave with their simple task, they instead made basically an almost entirely new game re-using most of the graphics of 64. It was too late to make any big changes by the time they were caught, so an AU was born. The idea of the two universes would still hold up for a good while, with Tree of Tranquility and Animal Parade being AUs of each other and a big endgame quest for AP having one of your kids go to the other timeline. They haven't really bothered with the concept since then though.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

and the "Douglas Jay Falcon" name was fabricated by Nintendo of America for just F-Zero X, it seems.

Somebody fabricating it is usually how fictional facts get established, though. It's probably thanks to an NOA fabricator we have Bullet Bill instead of Killer.

 

[Megafan96]

a friend i had would constantly say "megaman part three" instead of megaman 3 but the most confusing was "megaman part three battle network blue"
that's gotta be the most egregious i've had to endure.

 

[tender]

Wait what's wrong with the Nintendo Wii? That's what its called.

 

[OctoSplattack]

Wait what's wrong with the Nintendo Wii? That's what its called.

Officially, it's just "Wii". Same for the "Wii U". Hence why you don't see the word "Nintendo" in the logo.

 

[Hailinel]

Somebody fabricating it is usually how fictional facts get established, though. It's probably thanks to an NOA fabricator we have Bullet Bill instead of Killer.

There's a difference between name changes in localization that stick (Bullet Bill, Bowser, etc) and some random name that doesn't hold up beyond an instruction manual mention written by someone twenty years ago.

Some companies had English branches that were really lax in their English documentation. Like Snake's Revenge's packaging and manual refer to a villain named Higharolla Kockamamie who isn't in the game at all. It was just a bizarre joke by whoever at Konami had the duty of writing the English manual and box description.

 

[Jersh]

Why did they change their mind?

For consistency:

Though the CC Pro had ZL and ZR behind L and R.

Even though this has made things inconsistent lol. You can either blame the Classic Controller Pro, or Nintendo for feeling the positions should be more consistent than the functions.

You are correct, the image I saw was not from an official manual. Meaning the Dreamcast is likely the first official usage by a company.

Worth noting that Nintendo to this day hasn't referred to it by anything other than a +Control Pad. I personally like saying control pad, though I've started to say dpad because I've noticed some friends get confused otherwise.

"OLED Dock"

It's not an OLED dock. It's the "Nintendo Switch Dock with LAN Port".

Less precise, but something Nintendo themselves do is use LAN ONLY to prefer to wired ethernet using an RJ45 Jack, when WiFi is a kind of LAN - it's a kind of WLAN, so why doesn't Nintendo make it clear that you can play games in "LAN play" over WiFi? LAN is LAN, ethernet or WLAN.

How do you feel about the fact that I call it the LAN dock?

As for the last bit, it is really strange that all official Nintendo documentation would imply that LAN is a synonym for Ethernet. LAN modes in games that support that do indeed work over Wi-Fi, but Nintendo will insist Ethernet is a requirement. I guess they just figure the only use case would be a competitive environment?

It's still silly to think Samus and Ridley are just rivals when their connection is based on one killing the other's parents and committing an undocumented litany of other war crime-level atrocities when K. Rool...

Checks notes

...stole a banana stockpile from a gorilla.

Sure, that's all he successfully did. But I'm pretty sure DK64's plot involved him trying to blow up said gorilla's home, taking out the gorilla and his imprisoned family with it. (Also, why are we using the word 'gorilla' to make it sound sillier when the gorilla is literally the rival in question lol)

Ah, that’s right. I’m a Nintendo-only person so I wasn’t even considering other consoles when I wrote that, and I always forget that Xbox and PlayStation require installs from discs now. I don’t understand that at all, especially considering how much larger games tend to be on those systems—why make it so you can’t play games directly from the disc, saving you all that storage space?? I’m sure there must be a reason for it, but it makes no sense to me, lol. Glad I don’t have to worry about that with Nintendo, at least.

You can at least still share and sell physical PlayStation and Xbox games…right??

You already got the answer in storage speed, but I'll point out that Nintendo themselves were running into issues towards the end of the Wii U's run. Xenoblade X's load times were rough enough that optional installs were available for free on the eShop (which were collectively far too large to even fit on the internal storage of the Basic Set), and Breath of the Wild had a ~3 GB "update" included on the disc that was just a way to force some of the game data to be installed to storage.

The fact that the Wii U ran games off the disc at all was a bit of a miracle.

I believe all attempts to number console generations are futile.

confused Wikipedia noises

 

[~okapi]

King K. Rool and the Kremlings being owned by Microsoft was something I saw parroted everywhere during the period of speculation around Smash 4 and pre-Ultimate. It never made any sense (look at any of the Paon spin-offs, Mario Super Sluggers, or even Smash itself having trophies) and it got so irritating.

 

[Cucufate]

The surprisingly persistent belief that there ever was a time when the Nintendo Seal of Quality meant that a game was good. Whenever a game on a Nintendo system reviews badly, some people will always lament that the SoQ no longer means anything or that it has become pointless because it no longer guarantees that you are buying something worth your time and money.

Except that's not what the Seal of Quality means at all. It means the same it has always meant: "This game is official and it will work on your console". That's it.