First off, the new IGN blog post is up. This week, we take a look at N+ XBLA and provide some helpful tips and stuff. Check it out here!
There are two crazy important things to note in this post. First, people have been getting this wrong all over the internet, and it’s time the record was set straight:
N+ for Xbox 360 LIVE! Arcade was developed by Slick Entertainment and published by Metanet Software.
N+ for DS and PSP was developed by Silverbirch Studios, published by Atari, and licensed by Metanet Software.Metanet also provided all level design for N+ XBLA and Single Player level design for N+ DS/PSP (and acted as Consultants), but you already knew that 😉
and second, yes, Metanet Software’s official Xbox360 Gamertag is “w00tteen74”.. it’s a long story 😉
Early reports of N+ downloads are amazingly good — we’re so thrilled that players worldwide have been giving N+ a chance. It was our main goal to get N+ to a new audience, and so far it seems to be going well! Thank you, Xbox360 gamers everywhere, for playing N+. You rock!
We apologize for 14-4, Master Control. Don’t hate us! But isn’t it incredibly rewarding when you finally beat it?
We’ll be releasing new level packs shortly, containing brand new levels for both Single and Multiplayer, some classic levels from the original N, and a whole bunch of new ninja-related goodies for you to enjoy. Look for those soon!
Nick from Slick put the N+ Postmortem slides in image form here. You should check out his DevBlog too, which has some great insights.
We’re really happy with how N+ XBLA turned out.. so far the only disappointment has been our total lack of #1s on the leaderboards. We’re still trying though!
master control wasent as hard as hexecity to me 🙁
well i sent a freind request to you guys. ttyl
once agein great game
I just spent the last 6 hours playing N+ on XBL, and I didn’t realize it was midnight. You have me addicted, and I need sleep.
Master control is one of my favorite levels, and in no way was hard to me. Hexecity on the other hand was like smashing my face in a wall. And i’ll shoot you guys a freind invite as well if ya don mind it’ll come from inunedo24
thanks guys!
the _very_ last level may be a bit too hard.. it took us like an hour to finally beat it!
how come the very last levels dont have leader bords
there’s a limit on the # of leaderboards each game can have 🙁
expect a friend invite from Wrath57. I’m curious what you two are really made of.
im guessing there made of bones meat muscle and various other living parts… couldent oyu have just asked me what they were made of? 😛
o snap i just missed you guys by 3 miniuts thanks for accsepting
It sucks not having a 360 🙁
But because I’ve been playing N since May 2005 I think(when 1.4 came out) almost every day(was a big NUMA addict) my friends figured they’d give it a chance, and now they’re addicted.
And I freakin’ love the game btw, since my friends got it I’ve been playing at their house a lot.
So… i KNOW we’ve been over this..
and i KNOW you’re probably sick of making 3 N+ games already
but here is my question:
could YOU make a DIFFERENT N+ (rather than a port of the 360 version) to the PSN?
i know you have an exclusivity deal with the 360 version..
but… clearly it didnt stop you from making a psp and a DS version.
is it possible?
have you even talked to sony about this? is this something you are even thinking about?
/not ready to give up on my N+ dreams
btw, for the last 3 weeks i’ve been playing N every night for hours, to make up for my sadness, so it hasn’t gone without significant positives as well.
the exclusivity clause was limited to downloadable console games, we made sure that handhelds/pc weren’t on the table. sorry!
Sweet! We’re thrilled about the launch of N+ for XBLA over at Genesis Device. Check us out for reviews of user made levels. Or post pics of your own! Organize matches! We’ve got it all! http://www.genesisdevice.org
GT: GenesisDevice
im sorry, i just heard that PC wasn’t on the table.
:p
as much as i’d love the game on PSN, i’ll take a PC release anyday. :p
…not saying you formally announced it or anything, although i must say, i hope you don’t wait tooooo long before you release it!
/beeggggggs
Also, I agree with what Joel just said.
well, we’ve talked about it, but if it does happen it won’t be for a while.. by then the 360 may have dropped in price 😉
N+ coming to PSN!!!
click the link for proof
http://www.ps3fanboy.com/2008/02/29/n-coming-to-psn-but-itll-take-a-while/
uh.. that’s sort of out of context. we are definitely interested, and so is sony, but we haven’t really started talking or anything yet.
so, don’t hold your breath 😉
now that is funny
Hi, I’m Tinlion. Long-time lurker. I just have a small request: If/when you guys make a Title Update for N+, could you keep it so that when the headband gets caught in something, it stretches out to ridiculous lengths? I like doing that.
Love N+, got most of the Achievements (well, seven, really…), keep up the good work.
2 weeks in a row and you guys are still tops on the xbla arcade charts from majornelson.com. That’s very impressive, especially with such a popular game, “triggerheart Elexia” coming out this week! Well done guys.
/me scurries to increase lead in leaderboards!
What’s even more impressive is that they actually manage to place N+ in the Xbox 360 top ten live titles (#7th spot). The only arcade game else I’ve seen on there was Undertow, the week they gave it away for FREE. That’s probably not very accurate tho, could very well been a lot of other arcade games on there, however non that I remember.
Keep the good work up and I hope this will increase the chance of seeing a title update a little bit faster than expected (not sure what it should fix tho, and one can only hopes there will be some changes towards Microsofts policy about user-created content 🙂
But oh yeah, there’s actually one thing I would love to see in a possible title update, and that would be support for more characters/letters in naming your user-created episodes/levels. That’s really annoying, because you’ll see your level names and you should think that there shouldn’t be any reason for the limit to restrict your names to just a word.
Awesome game anyway, but thats something I would consider as a huge improvement if it was fixed.
I’m probably not going to be on the leaderboards any time soon, too busy messing with the level editor.
A couple of things I don’t like about it though
1. The object limit. I understand why its there (mostly) but i really liked creating paths that changed as you ran around using the trap and lock doors.
2. there’s a problem with the trap and lock doors, if you try to create 2 of either so that they form a 90 degree angle, it will sometimes just delete it until you turn it the other way around. I do this a lot and it gets annoying when you’re putting the lock key (or trigger) on the other side of the map.
I like your IGN blog post, though! 🙂
[…] Stuff I’ve been playing this week: Sam and Max – The Raving Dead (excellent, for those following the Sam and Max series), Metroid Prime 3 (probably even better than the original Metroid Prime, for those who like exploration/puzzling action), Burnout: Paradise City (fantastic example of how to squeeze huge amounts of value out of a single set of level geometry), Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations (I have a real weakness for this series), Oendan 2 (this game is going to ruin my eyes. Must.. remember.. to.. blink!), Professor Layton and the Curious Village (Casual game with stunningly high production values. And the setting is straight out of a platform game that I’ve been wanting to make for a long time, so I’m mildly annoyed that they got there first, and more fully-realised than I could possibly manage on my own), Patapon (I like its graphic style, but I’m not yet convinced by the gameplay), and just in case I somehow manage to finish all of the above, I also have the new “Apollo Wright” game in my “to be played” queue. And N+ on the 360 has more levels than I’ll ever manage to make it through. Especially bits of episode 14. Mean ol’ Metanet (they do apologise for that one, at least). […]
Just thought I’d throw this out to you two, Valve Software is currently involved in somewhat of a tissie fit with Microsoft about making DLC free, and while they have the advantage of being a large company, certainly some precedence would be awesome. Hopefully you too can manage to work it out. I like the one quote: “[VP of Marketing Doug] Lombardi says that while some “bigger companies” find it difficult to understand that, given the time, effort and money that goes into its DLC, it’s all about keeping the customer happy”
Best of luck!
sadly, i wouldn’t hold my breath for longer names — microsoft didn’t even want us to have names AT ALL, they were pushing for autogenerated “username + date+time”!
again, stupid legal reasons. i guess i don’t understand US law all that well, i don’t see why putting a disclaimer/EULA that the player has to agree to wouldn’t absolve them from liability in the case that someone makes a penis-shaped level called “GIANT PENIS”.
we’re not holding our breath(s?) — apparently epic also tried to get free stuff out (for UT3 i think)..
we’ll be able to get out a percentage of DLC for free, but not nearly as much as we’d like. It’s like the great battle of free gamerpics/themes we fought last month — simply unwinnable. We’ll still try as hard as we can though. It’s the least we can do!
Honestly it confuses me because Halo 3 has Forge which you can create and make maps, name them what ever the hell you please, and put them in a very visible public file share. If you wanted to argue with precedence I can think of no bigger game to point to.
Plus there is a disclaimer when you save a map in forge that basically says this isn’t your property and it needs to be such and such content wise. I fail to see why the same can’t be done here.
Hahaha, no way! I didn’t know you guys had a blog, and the first thing I read is an apology for level 14-4… oh man, my friend and I were fuming at that level for a while! I finally did beat it, though… it took me, seriously, like 5-10 hours, though, I’m sure. But man, when I beat it, I felt so much like a rock star that I got up and threw a jumping sky punch. Seriously. It was like the Breakfast Club ended, in my house. If only I could freeze-frame myself, and roll credits.
i’m pretty sure the difference is that the Forge stuff is hosted on a server that Bungie is renting.. as we mentioned before, this costs more than the entire budget of N+ 🙁
our content-sharing methods all used microsoft-hosted storage (such as leaderboards), hence they had a problem — i believe this was the same for forza, that was leaderboard-driven also.
“when I beat it, I felt so much like a rock star that I got up and threw a jumping sky punch. Seriously. It was like the Breakfast Club ended, in my house. If only I could freeze-frame myself, and roll credits.”
R.O.F.L.
BTW, M&R, PLEASE start those talks with sony, asap. :p
i don’t care how long i have to wait, i just want to know that it will happen.. one day.
/weeps
Epic is still going with microsoft with the same forza fiasco problem you are having.
and seriosly woulden a user agreement allow them to do this seriously…..
M&R how many more downloads per week has 1.4 gotten scince N+?
oh and as i can not find a merch sections, would you mind if i put the ninja on a shirt?
or make a stencil to put on my xbox?
master control is poor game design. I had fun playing N+ until that level, then I stopped playing and haven’t picked it up since.
have you tried skipping to episode 15? you can start any of the top episodes in the column (00,05,10,15,etc) if you get stuck.. the upper episodes tend to be easier!
know what i’d really like right now?
an update on robotology!
..oh, and N+ for pc/psn (i’ll never stop till i get it!)
Its not that hard i can help you when i get gold agein if you want.
I’m really thrilled that N+ is doing so well. Congratulations. Unfortunately, I don’t have a 360.
dr.coconut brings up a good point. You need a merch page. I would love to have a t-shirt with a big ol’ Metanet logo slapped on the front of it. If I remember correctly, there was a merch site before, wasn’t there?
we had a pixeltees page, but sadly the site sort of died 🙁
we definitely want to figure something out for merch, the main problem is that we’re already working 7 days a week on other stuff! but we’re trying to think of something.
merchandise would be cool.
some patches would be cool. also.. zipper hoodies!
i have no credit card though, so i couldn’t buy anything anyways, sadly.
also… psn version of n+….. :p
Hey just wondering if any of you guys have had problems with the multi player coop achievement? I ran through all 10 and have times saved for all of them but no achievement.
I think there needs to be a patch for the editor
such as a grid snap on/off
item limits gone.
able to make a grid of doors
glitch= when having a slant and a one way platform like |/
oh limit to text 🙁
where was i , ok
when having a slant and a one way platform like |/
palcing a door horizontaly next to the one way will cause the ninja to go through.
Also there needs to be a butten to turn off dnap to grid, or at least decreease the size of the gird.
Peices should be able to share a grid space,such as having 2 steepangles touching.
full 360 rotate or at least adding 45 135 exc
and getting rid of item caps.
Other then that, love the editor
hey, M&R, here is something i noticed that i dont REALLY like an N+, although admittedly, i haven’t played it, only seen gameplay vids on youtube and stuff.
okay, when you die, the blood effect isn’t very good, imo, it looks corny. it should be more blood-like, and fluid, and splattery.. lol.. or alternately, no blood at all. i certainly don’t mind the lack of blood in the original n.
also.. when the rockets explode, they have a LOT of debris that shoots everywhere, and i think it can definitely make it confusing as to where your ninja is, and if you have survived. that seems to make really precise movements more difficult.. which is an unfortunate side-affect, if you ask me.
anyways, i just thought i would throw those ideas out there, and trust me.. im a huge N fan, so its not really complaints, just suggestions for future versions. :p
oh, and just to note, i realized the original n does indeed have blood. i for some reason don’t find it offputting in the original n.
but also, i should say, the spinning lasers look GREAT, and so do the rocket trails. aweeeesome.
sorry for 3 posts in a row, everyone.
but, i also want to say…
how about trying to get Nicks racing game on PSN instead of xbla….
we’re dying for some quality games on psn, and it will be a good way for you to get your foot in the door with sony, before your n+ contract is over with msoft.
plzzzz guys.