Tag Archives: Nintendo Wii

Nintendo officially confirms Xenoblade Chronicles for North America

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This morning a mysterious image of Gamestop’s release schedule featuring Xenoblade Chronicles, as a Gamestop exclusive to boot, popped up. Later Nintendo themselves confirmed that the long awaited Wii JRPG is finally coming to North America in April 2012! Nintendo is finally doing it! After all of the requests and complaints Nintendo is finally doing it! The bad news is that Xenoblade Chronicles will be exclusively sold at Gamestop, otherwise you have to order online from Nintendo themselves. Who cares though? The game is finally arriving and that’s that. Nintendo was even nice enough to show off a trailer for the game, featuring the English voice acting retained from the EU version.

Operation Rainfall must be feeling pretty good about themselves now eh? They’re campaign played a huge part in this, now people just have to buy the game. Lets hope Nintendo follows up with The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower if sales turn out well.

Via Nintendo

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METROID: OTHER M – Review

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METROID: OTHER M is a videogame developed by Project M, published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Wii. It was directed by TAKEHIKO HOSOKAWA, YUSUKE HAYASHI and YOSHIO SAKAMOTO.

Shigeru Miyamoto has had some pretty inspiring ideas in the past. The last genius idea attributed to him that I can remember was turning the third-person perspective of Metroid’s gameplay into a first-person perspective. The jump from 2D to 3D is a dilemma every classic, pixelated game eventually has to solve and Metroid’s case was particularly difficult. The franchise actually skipped the Nintendo 64 generation simply because Nintendo could not come up with any viable idea. Now, the first-person perspective solution made so much sense (thanks in large part to the sensitive efforts of Retro Studios) that it became hard to think of future 3D Metroid games in any other way. So that was my first interest when I approached Metroid: Other M: a game that was probably what most gamers had in mind for a 3D Metroid before Metroid Prime was created.

Directed by three people, Metroid: Other M is mostly Yoshio Sakamoto’s brainchild, who was also the game’s writer and producer. He was the …

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What Goes Up, Can’t Go Down

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Or: Why the Microsoft Kinect and the Playstation Move are doomed to fail*

Update 1:

I’ve realized I needed to make the definition of what ‘fail’ meant more explicit. In this case, ‘fail’ refers to catering to the non-gamer market. Considering the article is called “What Goes Up, Can’t Go Down”, I thought that was pretty obvious. If it wasn’t, I hope it is now. Monocle smile!

Update 2 (12/18/2010):

Well, according to VGChartz, Microsoft’s Kinect did in fact eventually reach the milestone of 4 million units sold worldwide (2.6 million units in the Americas) in the week that ended on Dec. 11. Of units sold, 40% of them bundled with a Xbox 360 console, which indicates that there actually was an expansion of the console’s user base. The PlayStation Move, which didn’t get all the marketing support the Kinect did, has sold just over 900 thousand units so far.

So yeah, I was wrong. Colin Sebastian was right.

Shit. I hate being wrong.

However, I still don’t believe Kinect’s success has enough legs for the long run, since the arguments presented in that article below are all still valid.

Now leave me alone while I enjoy my grudge for not having my MBA funded by Lazard Capital Markets.

But hey! On the other hand, I’m not unemployed anymore. I got an actual paid job! But what a beautiful coincidence!

 

 

And now, our featured presentation:

After a good while without writing any kind of analysis on the game industry, I felt the bug bite my neck. Now I can’t stop …

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NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. WII – Review

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NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. WII is a videogame developed by Nintendo EAD and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Wii. It was directed by SHIGEYUKI ASUKE.

This article contains the following types of spoilers:

Description of the boss system

Before anything else, let me say that New Super Mario Bros. Wii is a good game and you should play it if you can find it cheap.

Gamers who knowingly buy New Super Mario Bros. Wii (NSMBW) are going to get exactly what they expect: there are the Mario Brothers, on the Nintendo Wii with super powers. Only the New part of the title is misleading. Perhaps it was irony, I don’t know. There is nothing really new in it. This is a remake from the Nintendo DS game New Super Mario Bros. (NSMB), which is itself a remake of the original Super Mario Bros. (SMB) for the NES. It’s a turtle on top of another turtle and, if this “New” series continues, that turtle will be on top of yet another turtle. Eventually this will become a perpetually remade series – with Koopas all way down.

I call NSMBW a remake because this game is the equivalent to Gus van Sant’s …

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A Paean for the Old School Gamer

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Like a lot of games journalists, you sit down watching E3 thinking about what you’re going to write. You try to build it up as you go, and write the article in your head. Then, put it on paper.

With Nintendo, I had an initial thought, almost immediately: God, this new Zelda looks awful. The creator can’t even make it work, hell if I can. And it’s not coming out to 2011? Christ almightly, we’re going down disappointment alley, and all the thugs have their knives out.

I don’t know when my mind changed. As cool as it was (expect a whole post later!), Epic Mickey didn’t change my mind. I knew it was going to be cool, and while I didn’t know it would be quite so cool, it couldn’t change my mind. I don’t think it was at Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, which looked pleasant but inoffensive (kind of like Golden Sun as a whole). Kirby: Epic Yarn definitely…got me going, a little bit. But this isn’t a triple A title. This is a title I’d love, for sure, as a Kirby aficionado and a lover of Yoshi’s Story, …

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ACTRAISER – Review

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ACTRAISER is a videogame developed by Quintet, published by Enix for the Super Nintendo and by Square Enix for the Nintendo Wii’s Virtual Console. The Virtual Console version was played for this review. It was directed by MASAYA HASHIMOTO.

This article contains the following type of spoiler:

Game description

We from the Nightmare Mode would also like to spoil the following review and say that ActRaiser is a near-great game and you should play it if you can.

Rule of the thumb when trying to determine whether or not a game is great: wait 10 years. Then, when choosing between playing the old game or a new one, you end up selecting the old one, that game might just be great. That was the choice I had to make between ActRaiser and Bayonetta. As I’m writing this, you should probably already know that Bayonetta had to wait for her turn.

Videogames are allegorical by nature, but usually these symbols take the backseat. Not here, though. In ActRaiser, the protagonist is God. His antagonist is the Devil. This is obvious despite Nintendo’s attempt to throw a blanket …

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THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: TWILIGHT PRINCESS – Review

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THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: TWILIGHT PRINCESS is a videogame developed by Nintendo EAD, published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo GameCube. The Nintendo Wii version was played for this review. It was directed by EIJI AONUMA.

This article contains the following types of spoilers:

Game description
Names of some of the featured dungeons, characters and villains
Overall description of the game’s beginnings

We from the Nightmare Mode would also like to spoil the following review and say that The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is a good game and you should play it if you can.

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