Nintendo 5-Star: June 2011

Thursday, June 30, 2011

Operation Rainfall denied!

A week ago, a massive operation was started by North American Nintendo fans, clamoring for the localization of Xenoblade, The Last Story and Pandora's Tower, all of which have been released in Japan and Xenoblade going to Europe. Pre-orders were placed on Amazon for an imaginary copy of Xenoblade (called Monado in US), and Nintendo's Facebook page, email inboxes, and Youtube profile were plastered with comments by eager Nintendo fans. Of course that sort of thing would gain attention. and this was Nintendo's reply to everyone's enthusiasm.

It's not a resounding 'no', but we're all pretty sure those three games will never be localized anyway. Which doesn't make any sense- effort has already been made to translate Xenoblade into English and they're not releasing it for US Wiis? What's keeping them from doing so? All three are quality games, why keep your fans from being able to play it? Region locking your consoles only adds fuel to the fire. Oh, but Skyward Sword and Kirby are coming out? Not enough Nintendo, considering the timeframe between now and the release of the Wii U, not nearly enough. Mario Party 9 and Wii Play Motion? Which serious gamers are going to buy those jokes for games now, five years after the initial hype?

Now the same people are mass-posting comments of protest all over Nintendo's Facebook, and a lot of threatened boycott. Way to treat your loyal fanbase, Nintendo. You were never great at listening to the gamers' voices but this is just unacceptable. My faith in humanity has dropped.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Sakurai: Why Smash Bros 4 is dual-platform

'Project Sora had intended to make a 3DS Smash Bros. once it had finished up a game on the system and had gotten used to the hardware's feature set. With the advent of the Wii U, though, we had a choice to make. Iwata asked us if wanted to make the next Smash Bros. on the Wii U or 3DS, and my thought was that we had to go on both platforms.

If we went solely for the Wii U, the HD graphics would really bump up the visual effects, but then we'd be stuck in another arms race. If we made this game another extension over previous one, we'd have to cut out the new things we could possibly do on the 3DS hardware and compete with ourselves again over the size of the character roster and the amount of gameplay we can put it. It wouldn't be a fruitful competition, but doing something completely new would be difficult for many reasons, not least of which that the gamers may not be satisfied with it. That's why we decided to think about ways to link the personal connection one has with his portable system to the gather-around-and-play aspect of console systems.'

From GoNintendo.

What could be done on the 3DS that can't be done on Wii U other than 3D graphics? If anything it should be the other way around since 3DS carts have much less storage.

Kirby TV Channel

With all the fuss surrounding the Netflix services and TV channels coming to 3DS (in Japan, at least), it was really a nice surprise when this new channel was released for Europe. The Kirby TV Channel is exactly what it is, a channel for streaming episodes of the Kirby anime, dubbed in English. Episodes will be available only on certain days, so if you're a fan of the show, you might not wanna miss them.

No word on a US release yet. The Kirby anime was pretty good however, and should be brought over to other regions to enjoy!

Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time 3D glitch

A glitch in the first dungeon, where you get a heart container and urn the 3D slider on at that moment. The game will freak out and split into two different outputs., giving you two hearts, two Links, and mirrored dungeon walls (oddly the text box isn't affected).

Wait I always thought the 3D effect was a hardware thing and doesn't affect what's in the actual games.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Wii sales collapse after Wii U announcement

The moment Nintendo's brand new shining star was revealed to the world, Japan dropped whatever remained of Wii sales like a bowling ball, bringing it down to just under 7500 units last week and ranking it 4th overall in hardware sales.

Depending on how you see it this could be a good or bad thing. People in Japan must be getting excited for the new tech and are putting the old console down to save up for it- the backwards compatibility is helping to accelerate the process. Or you might say the market for Wii is saturated, which has been the case for the whole of last year already.

How Kirby got his name

From GoNintendo, in an interview between GameInformer and Miyamoto:

Yes, it is a fact that I met John Kirby and got to know him when he was defending us during the lawsuit against Universal. And it is a fact that the Kirby name was partially chosen in connection to him, but it wasn’t named after him. Instead, we had a list of names that we were looking at and Kirby was one of the names on the list. As we were going through the list and narrowing down the selections we saw that Kirby was there and we thought John Kirby’s name is Kirby, and started thinking that if those two had a connection that would be kind of funny.
The other element to the naming is that the character is very cute. Kirby is this soft and fluffy character and he’s very cute. In Japan, for cute characters they use very soft names with soft sounds in them. I thought the name Kirby had these harsh sounds to it, and I thought the
juxtaposition of this cute character with this harsh-sounding name was very funny.

Harsh sounding name? Maybe I must be pronouncing it wrong.

Friday, June 17, 2011

Super Pokemon Scramble screenshots and trailer

This is from the official site's main page. If you view it there and mouse over this picture you can see it move too. Nice 3D effect! Release date confirmed too- Scramble will be out in Japan for 3DS on July 28th this year!

Official trailer for the game. Not the most exciting one though, I expected a lot more flash from a game like this. Shows Battle Royale, some sort of showdown between two groups of toys, and a boss battle with Zekrom. Same deal as WiiWare then.

Gen 5 Pokemon aren't the the only species to be on Super Pokemon Scramble- it would be otherwise limited and boring. Shown here is a Lumineon.

The charge battle! Looks like rapid button pressing.

Miis are now official. They're the owners of the Pokemon toys you control.

Boss battle with Zekrom, equally as chibified as everyone else.

Battle Royale, the Smash Bros.-like main attraction of the game where you're dumped into a closed arena and beat the crap out of everything till a clear winner is announced.

Monday, June 13, 2011

Legendary Wars and Plants vs. Zombies Updates

Hello there all, DG is here again to talk about two popular mobile games which have both just received huge updates.

I'll only touch on Legendary Wars for a second, because I'm going to give this game the spotlight in my next article. Suffice to say, this game is pretty great. It's just received a huge update, but my app store is behaving rather oddly so I can't comment on it beyond how great it sounds. If you're a mobile gamer, I recommend you look into this title.

(This is a PC screenshot, but you get the idea!)

The other game to recently receive a noteworthy update is Plants vs. Zombies. Yes, everyone knows about this game, but this is worth talking about, and here's why. On your iPod or iPhone is THE way to play this game. For one thing, it is much cheaper than it is on the PC, only $3 compared to $20, and that deal is as good as it sounds because the recent update added basically everything the PC version has that the mobile version didn't. The recent update introduced the last feature supported by the PC version and not the mobile version, which is the Zen Garden, a passive minigame where you take care of plants and get money for it. The update also added a lot of fun new minigames, which you must purchase from Crazy Dave's shop. Did I mention Dave's shop has two new pages of things to buy, one each for new minigames and the zen garden? It does. These, along with a bunch of new achievements, give PvZ a lot of new replay value, so if you haven't got it yet, you have absolutely no reason to wait any longer, and if you already have PvZ, a lot of new gameplay is available to you.

Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword offscreen footage

I have to admit, the trailer looked really jaggy to me, but I'm really pleasantly surprised at how vibrant and fluid the game looks in motion. Definitely a far cry from the deathly black and brown Twilight Princess, for the better.

Kirby Wii- gameplay videos

This game gets cuter and cuter the more I see of it! From these two you can catch some co-op gameplay and a few of the stages in more detail. New abilities too- like the Monster Flame ability very early into the second video. Very, very nice.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Super Pokemon Scramble boxart

By far, one of the best boxarts for a Pokemon game I have ever seen. Look at everything so big-headed and cute...aww. Doesn't have a release date yet, and the only things we know are from the two pre-release screenshots below, and that the gameplay is the same as the WiiWare version. WWell with this box we know it's a retail 3DS game, and that it has lots of battle modes and supports SpotPass.

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Online Wii U gameplay

Note that this is a very, very early indication of what Wii U can do, and that we're still over a year away from release. Things could change drastically by then!

New moderator!

http://z6.invisionfree.com/N5S/index.php?showtopic=3199

TheFreakyManga, one of our most active members since last year, has been promoted to be part of our N5 team! You can always count on him to lighten the mood in any forum topic. He won't be joining the blog team for the time being but that's a story for later.Click on the link to go congratulate him!

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Super Pokemon Scramble

Is this the 'new Pokemon game'? Either way this is a Gen 5 sequel to the spinoff title on WiiWare, Pokemon Rumble. 2 pre-release screenshots above- not even CoroCoro has featured the game yet! (by which time there will be a lot more details).

Also, there's going to be Miis in the game. Miis fit almost anywhere, don't they?

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 coming to Wii?

Found on a display at E3, image from GoNintendo.com.

Well this is weird. Modern Warfare has never been on Wii before. There's a lot of story to cover, and the graphics will definitely be scaled down anyway, so why? Not that I'm complaining.

Fiery Red 3DS and gold Wiimote Plus

New colors for our Nintendo hardware!

The Fiery Red 3DS will join the blue and black 3DS on July 14th of this year. And no, it's not a limited edition color nor a Mario 25th anniversary gift- it's a permanent addition to the lineup.

The gold Wiimote Plus, emblazoned with the Skyward Sword logo we've actually heard of during the early parts of Nintendo's E3 press conference. From observation alone it's possible that this could be bundled together with Skyward Sword when it is released come year-end.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

E3 2011 Showfloor- Nintendo Wii U

The announcement trailer for Wii U, seen in the press conference, complete with motion control and screen interactivity tricks. It's hard to explain, just watch the trailer and you'll understand better how the controller's screen works with the TV. The games being played are Nintendo's own tech demos and not actual games.

The controller has symmetrical four-button setup and dual analog sticks. Not nubs, real sticks. It has speakers like the Wiimote, a gyrosensor, and an in-built camera. Rechargeable batteries are used in favor of AAs. The detailed console specs are still unknown, only a general overview was given. However we do already know Nintendo is going hi-definition with this one, supporting full 1080p output...finally! I'm not a graphics whore, but having the option is nice. And it also means 3rd parties will develop games for it without complaining about graphical limitations!

There were tech demos and a few minigames on show to allow people to get to grips with the new controller and see what games would look like, which Reggie called the 'Wii U experiences' in the press conference. The graphics demos were also here and could be interacted with, meaning they are not pre-rendered cutscenes but represent what gameplay footage would look like on Wii U, which is amazing.

Graphic Demo 1 (bird and trees)
Graphic Demo 2 (Zelda HD)
Chase Mii (to show usage of controller screen as a second screen, much like DS)
New Super Mario Bros. Mii (to show basic button controls, controller duplicating as TV screen)
Shield Pose (to show how the controller's screen matches up with the TV)
Battle Mii (to show controller's gyrosensor and controlling two things at once)
Measure Up (to show controller's pressure-sensitive touchscreen)

List of announced Wii U 3rd party games (in the order they appear in the trailer below). The footage shown are of the PS3/X360 versions (ironically) of the games and do not represent Wii U graphics.

Other announced titles from the roundtable or through statements:
Pikmin
Smash Bros 4 (together with 3DS version)

Expect to see Wii U sometime in late 2012 after Wii has exhausted its last legs.

E3 2011 Showfloor- Nintendo 3DS

Nintendo's latest handheld, finally getting a strong showing with new footage and gameplay of most of last year's announced titles that haven't already been released. No new games were actually announced save for Luigi's Mansion 2, but Nintendo already have enough on their plate as it stands.

Metal Gear Solid 3DS. Thank god no one forgot about it, though it doesn't look like it'll be released anytime soon. Watch for bonus Yoshi!

Hey, didn't know Paper Mario got a trailer as well. Finally shows some real gameplay, though the paper effect is less impressive than that of Super Paper Mario on Wii...but who am I to compare a handheld to a console?

Mario Kart 3DS with added things like customizable karts, underwater stages and gliders. For some reason a lot of classic tracks are shown here. Veterans of Mario Kart Wii and DS should pick them out easily.

Animal Crossing 3DS, which again, everyone thought was a no-show at E3, also has a new trailer. Aside from being generally better-looking than Wild World, you can now hang furniture on walls (saving space in the process), and swim in the water. Looks like the exact same gameplay to me, though there probably are even more things we don't know about AC3DS yet.

One more trailer for Kid Icarus: Uprising. Hopefully this is close to launch, being the very first 3DS game to be shown and all

Super Mario 3DS' first gameplay trailer, which looks bright and colorful. Whether it achieves Galaxy-like success and imaginative level is another issue, but enjoy the footage! Also, return of the Tanooki Suit!

E3 surprise Luigi's Mansion 2, a follow-up to the Gamecube original all the way back in 2001.

E3 2011 Showfloor- Nintendo DS

The handheld cousin to Wii, and the more successful of the two, both in sales and in reception by gamers, is also reaching the end of its run thanks to its successor, 3DS. But hey, all DS games can be played on the new handheld, right? No reason to worry.

Just 2 games of note were shown. Noticeably absent is any mention of a US translation of Japanese Level-5 RPG game Ninokuni. Hopefully in Level-5's own event sometime later.

Atsumete! Kirby gets a trailer! Or, I should call it by its US name now, Kirby Mass Attack. Logo is eerily similar to Kirby Wii, like they couldn't hire a better designer for this. It's fine and all, but why are the sound effects and music so primitive, like they came straight out of a GBA game? Oh well, we'll have to make do.

The other game that got people peeved because it wasn't highlighted at the press conference. Professor Layton and the Last Specter was released in Japan last year, and although it doesn't have a concrete release date yet, we'll probably be seeing this by the end of 2011

There was a third game. Remember the Zelda 25th anniversary announcement? Zelda Four Swords is coming to DSiWare. Unfortunately no footage of that exists yet.

E3 2011 Showfloor- Nintendo Wii

Ah, to finally reach the end of Wii's life cycle. The past five years haven't been easy. Although hailed as a revolution in gaming at first, it was and still is treated like a baby's toy by most people wanting better graphics and more mature games. Didn't stop Wii from being the top of the pack this generation in terms of sales, but at this point in the Wii's life, you can see where their worries stem from.

This year, the showfloor had six Wii games worth looking at, all from Nintendo (the rest being your typical shovelware). Kirby Wii which you can see in the post below this, Zelda: Skyward Sword, Rhythm Heaven, and unrevealed at the press conference but was on showfloor, Mario Party 9. Also present at the show were Mario and Sonic at the London 2012 Olympics and of course, Wii Play: Motion.

Gameplay is identical to the Rhythm Heaven released for DS and GBA (Japan only), with an art style reminiscent of Wario Ware Smooth Moves from all the way back at launch day.

Seeing Kirby Wii in action finally made me so happy I could almost cry. How long has it been since the last proper Kirby console game? (and no, Epic Yarn doesn't count even though it's awesome in its own way) Though I'm not fond of the logo- I really hope this isn't the final name...

Flying on islands in the sky? Final frontier for Zelda in terms of transportation- at first there were horses, then there were boats, and now Link rides on birds! Land, sea, sky! Looks like a long way down if you let go. I'm glad they ditched Twilight Princess' dark graphics for something with more vibrant color, which just adds to the excitement.

And yet again another Mario Party game. We never get tired of this stuff, don't we? It's up to its ninth game, for chrissakes

Mario and Sonic, with a lavish opening cutscene like the one from four years ago. There are screenshots if you're willing to hunt them down- or I might just bring them over here in a bit! There's also a 3DS version.

Wii Play Motion, showcasing six different minigames out of the 12 available. Where's the ice-cream game? I wanna see that.

Nintendo E3 2011 conference/Wii U- My thoughts

This is actually my first time catching a live stream of an E3 conference. Traditionally I'd leave everything till later because the conferences start at exactly midnight where I live! This makes it, under normal circumstances, impossible for me to watch, as this means sacrificing my beauty sleep, which I really like, by the way. This year however...lots of free time, I'm on holiday, I don't have to wake up early the next day, what's stopping me? All the Wii2 rumors were driving me absolutely nuts, from the extended 3rd party support, to the HD graphics, to the queer new controller with a screen on it. And then there were 3DS games to see. And then the final batch of good 1st-party Wii/DS games. My body was ready.

Nintendo reveals new titles at E3 2011!

Wii:

- Kirby Wii (Trailer here)
- Mario Party 9 (Trailer here)

3DS:

- Luigi's Mansion 2 (Trailer here)
- Super Mario 3D (Trailer here)
- Mario Kart 3D (Trailer here)

Nintendo didn't confirm any specific games for their newly announced Wii U console, but Iwata insisted that Super Smash bros. is indeed in development for it, as well as the 3DS.

Wii U

So, WII U has been announced at E3 today, and it looks awesome! The game demos looked great, and you can have up to 5 controller (1 WII U controller the rest WII motion plus). There are 2 analog sliders and a 6.2 inch touch screen! If someone comes in and wants to watch some TV while your playing the WII U, then just pick up your WII 2 controller and carry on playing with high resolution screen with ZR and ZL triggers (weird names!).
Here are the announced games:
Darksiders 2
Batman: Arkham City
"Tekken"
Assassin's Creed
Lego City Stories
Ghost Recon Online
DiRT
Aliens: Colonial Marines
Metro: Last Light
Ninja Gaiden 3: Razer's Edge
Here is an image of the controller:

E3 Live

Wizzer10 and I are doing a live chat for E3 with all of the big news. Go to Nottoolikely.co.uk for the live chat, and other news and reviews on games.

Pokedex 3D Japanese trailer

It's known by a different name there, but it's the exact same thing.

Final Project Cafe rumor sheet

Not for 3DS, so don't expect the below post to talk about any new 3DS games. It's only a few hours to the conference anyway. From someone by the name of 'Round Cactus'. who apparently leaked the 3DS specs and was accurate to boot. Whether you want to believe him or not is up to you.

-Skyward Sword remains on Wii?
-New console to be called 'Nintendo Current'?
-Mario, Kirby, Pikmin and Smash Bros?
-Lots, and I mean lots of 3rd party support?

Click image below. We'll match up Round Cactus' predictions with the real deal in a few hours' time.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Bowser's Galaxy Generator on piano

The epic final boss stage music for Super Mario Galaxy 2, on piano. Beautiful.

Shiny Hydreigon and Golurk events

Pokemon movies have come a long way- so much so that now there's even two versions of the same movie! Reshiram and Zekrom, the Gen 5 legendaries, are getting the same movie reskinned with different locales, Pokemon and slightly different story (the only constant being Victini). To commemorate the launching, owners of Japanese Pokemon Black/White will be getting a shiny Pokemon corresponding to the Pokemon that appears in their respective movies! Black, which has Reshiram, will be getting a shiny Hydreigon, which appears in the Reshiram version of the movie, while White gets a shiny Golurk (which is also white, by the way).

Both will be downloadable in McDonalds for a month from June 17 to July 17. Wait, so we can't get them? Ah, but fret not- importers will be able to get them through Wi-Fi Mystery Gift for another two months after that!

Nintendo servers hacked with no side effects

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/06/05/nintendo-servers-hacked.aspx

It was a hacking attempt by a group called LulzSecurity. Looks like they apparently wanted to help Nintendo by spotting a loophole and telling them to fix it. "We're not targeting Nintendo. We like the N64 too much - we sincerely hope Nintendo plugs the gap. This is just for lulz.

Nintendo's pre-E3 site

And here we go. Tomorrow the world will know another year's worth of Nintendo games and consoles to drool over. Given how awesome E3 was last year, and the gaming drought this year, and 3DS not getting any good games at launch, and rumblings of Project Cafe...to address these things would be nothing short of an avalanche of news.

This is the link to the Japanese E3 site.

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n10/e3_2011/index.html

And in English.

http://e3.nintendo.com/

June 7th, 9 am PDT. Be there!

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Multiple trailers for 3DSWare and Virtual Console

Beofre I get to that though, the US and European 3DS eShop will only feature one original title from the beginning, that is Pokedex 3D (unless you want to count the limited time freebie Excitebike 3D, which is basically the old NES game updated with 3D frippery). The remaining three are Virtual Console games, Super Mario Land, Alleyway and Tennis. These are Game Boy games that can either be viewed in black-and-white, or the original display of gray/green for nostalgic purposes. And of course, no 3D graphics here!

Hey, I remember this game. Good times.

Excitebike. Just like the NES game, but with 3D! Shame we can't see it from here.

Oh god, this thing. Where the ? boxes and coins are tiny small and the Goombas are little walking triangles with no faces on them. Still, classic.

3D Xevious, only for Japan eShop at launch. No word on a US release yet.

Talk about Zelda 25th anniversary at E3 confirmed

Thanks to Masahiro Sakurai (well that's an unlikely figure to talk about Zelda if I've ever seen one) who used his Twitter account to show his E3 badge to his followers. See the lanyard? There's definitely going to be some Zelda buzz going on next week!

Oh Sakurai, you and your obsession with cats...

New Zelda game at E3?

The director and designer of Zelda, Eiji Aonuma, said on a television program in France with the news about a 25th anniversary Zelda game! And what's more it may be on Project Cafe, but its too soon to tell. There will be more news at E3 as said by Eiji Aonuma, I think it may just be a game like Mario All Stars 25th Anniversary, but hey, its another Zelda game! To watch E3 live click here (this is the Nintendo coverage of E3), and wait and see if there really is another amazing, breath taking, Zelda game on the way!

Kid Icarus Uprising gameplay video

Nintendo eShop and 3DS Internet Browser, finally coming out

After not showing up at launch, then delayed again from its initial release on May 1, the much-awaited worldwide update for all 3DSes is finally coming out on June 7 in Japan (which would be the night of June 6 in the US) and the update includes the grand opening of the Nintendo eShop, which has two components- 3DSWare and a handheld Virtual Console for GB and GBC games.

From the get-go, Japan gets six games on Virtual Console:
-Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge
-Kirby's Dream Land
-Baseball
-Avenging Spirit
-Downtown Special: Its Kunio's Period Piece Assemble Everyone! (a popular old character in Japan who has starred in a wide variety of genres)
-Super Mario Land

And three on 3DSWare:
-Mystery P.I.
-Breakout 3D
-3D Classics: Xevious

The lineup for US' 3DS Virtual Console has not yet been revealed, but we already know one 3DSWare game that will be out at launch- the free application Pokedex 3D.

Excitebike 3D will be given out free in a short promotion period from the time of the update until July 31 in Japan and July 7 in the US. No one knows yet how much each game costs yet, but we'll see at launch day, shall we?

Other things the update brings to the table are also sorely needed things- the ability to transfer DSiWare, music and photos from a DSi/XL to 3DS, but this is of course a one-way move/copy between systems. DSiWare is deleted from DSi after the transfer. No one has clarified yet on whether backing up the games in an SD Card will preserve the DSi copy of the game. Also, the Nintendo 3DS web browser! Hopefully better than DSi's browser, which was admittedly, complete garbage. Doesn't support Flash, which is a bummer, but really, any web browser is better than DSi's at this point, so I'm not complaining.

Japan gets the best Nintendo Points cards

Before, all the Nintendo Points cards used to be all in sterile white. Now it appears Nintendo are taking a page from cellphone prepaid cards with designs on them and are finally making cards that aren't boring to look at! 1000 point cards feature retro Mario, 8-bit game characters of the Famicom/NES, and a really adorable picture of Kirby on a Warp Star, which is entirely new art. A Zelda-themed card is worth 2000 points. The points are of course, compatible with Wii, DS and 3DS.

Well these are cards I'd definitely be keeping long after I've redeemed the points on them!

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Pokedex 3D

A new Pokemon game has been announced but you won't be finding it in any shops, but on the 3DS' eStore (When the update comes). The game will be based on Unova region Pokemon (Black and White) and will take full advantage of SpotPass, StreetPass (you can trade your Pokemon) and Augmented Reality.

When you first start playing the game, you start off with 16 Pokemon, to unlock more you scan QR codes and get them via SpotPass (3 a day) or trading. The AR feature will allow you to place your Pokemon in the real world, like the pre-packaged AR cards, and take pictures in 3D (the outer 3D camera)! I'll certainly be getting this freebie when its available (not long now!).

Some screenshots from Pokebeach.com. Basic info like the Pokedex entries from both versions are given, together with type, breeding group (yes!), detailed moves lists, and others. Shame about the stats information being so basic- it would have been awesome to have their exact numbers to make team planning a whole lot easier. Not to mention the other competitive bits like EV values, Dream World abilities and egg moves, but hey, it's free.

See the adorable 3D Pokemon? ALL of them can be placed in photos! Even if you've already memorized the entire Unova Dex to its last detail, this feature makes the whole app worth it.