It’s the Christmas that comes in June! In advance of the Monday E3 roundup, here’s a delectable trailer for your consumption: Nintendo came out swinging this year, abandoning franchise conventions and mixing things up. Nowhere is this more immediately visible than Kirby Epic Yarn. The Wii installation in the hoary old series (18 years! I’m…really [...]
Kirby Epic Yarn Trailer
June 16th, 2010 No Comments
Tags: E3 · kirby epic yarn · Nintendo · Wii
Review: Super Mario Galaxy 2
June 2nd, 2010 1 Comment
There haven’t been a lot of direct sequels to Super Mario games since the late eighties, so Mario’s latest outing is something of an oddity. However, Mario hasn’t lost that sequel magic and comes through with a game that feels comfortable and novel at the same time.
Tags: Nintendo · Review · Super Mario Galaxy 2
2010 Will be Good to Nintendo
February 24th, 2010 No Comments
Dust off your Wii, because 2010 is the year that Nintendo remembers that they’re a development house. The Nintendo Summit took place today (via 1up), and the developer/publisher/console manufacturer announced a whole slew of release dates. The biggest by far is Super Mario Galaxy 2, which will arrive on May 23. Nintendo released a new [...]
Tags: 1up · And Yet It Moves · Art Style Light Trax · Cave Story · DSi XL · FlingSmash · Max & The Magic Marker · Metroid: Other M · Monster Hunter Tri · Nintendo · Picross 3D · Rage of the Gladiator · Sin & Punishment 2: Star Successor · Super Mario Galaxy 2 · Super Meat Boy · WarioWare D.I.Y.
The Apologist: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Super Guide
December 21st, 2009 No Comments
Nintendo hasn’t betrayed the hardcore gamers they created.
There, I said it and I’m glad.
However, it can be hard to reconcile Nintendo’s culture of accessibility with that position. It seems like every game gets a little easier and steals a little more agency from the player. Even the ridiculous fantasy that Nintendo’s games would play themselves has come true in New Super Mario Bros. Wii with the Super Guide. What’s a gamer to think when Nintendo picks up the controller for us and does all the hard stuff? Well, choke on your pride for a minute and listen to why the Super Guide might be a good thing.
Tags: New Super Mario Bros. Wii · Nintendo · shigeru miyamoto · super guide
The Wii Isn’t Kiddie, It’s Girlie
November 27th, 2009 No Comments
Reggie Fils-Aime gave a presentation earlier this week at the BMO Capital Markets meeting where he claimed that the Wii accounts for 80% of female “primary players.” Put another way, Nintendo just laid claim to 80% of female console owners (though the stats don’t include PCs or portables). The president of Nintendo of America went [...]
Tags: casual · female · gamesindustry.biz · Nintendo
Review: New Super Mario Bros. Wii
November 23rd, 2009 3 Comments
There’s been a gradual upsurge in oldschool 2D gaming recently, albeit on the sly. The burgeoning casual and portable markets have converged with increasing visibility for indie developers and digital distribution. Set it all against the recession as a backdrop, and suddenly the cheap simple games of yesteryear start looking pretty good. Nintendo can smell these things coming like sharks smell blood in water, and so we have New Super Mario Bros. Wii, the first AAA 2D console platformer in ages.
Tags: New Super Mario Bros. Wii · Nintendo · Review · Wii
Hands-on: The Legend of Zeda: Spirit Tracks
October 5th, 2009 No Comments
Nintendo brought the E3 demo for Zelda: Spirit Tracks to PAX, and it feels awfully familiar. Players of Phantom Hourglass will recognize the cel-shaded art and the draw-to-interact mechanics (and perhaps the faintest whiff of reheated ideas), but old is boring. The demo notably offered vignettes of a dungeon crawl and a train run.
Tags: Nintendo · Spirit Tracks · The Legend of Zelda · Zelda
Rumor Mill: Wishful Thinking Edition
August 26th, 2009 No Comments
The rumor mill has been running overtime this week, with patents, trademarks, and offhand developer mutterings flying everywhere. You’d think that with BlizzCon only just passed and PAX coming in hard on its heels there’d be other things to talk about. However, I suspect that the gaming press has a deep-seated need to manufacture news. [...]
Tags: 1up · Capcom · Clover · Gamasutra · Nintendo · ps4 · Square Enix · Wii
Tingle Loves the Ladies
June 24th, 2009 No Comments
That’s right! He’s single, Ladies! Following up on the Tingle teaser seen in Famitsu two weeks ago, Nintendo has announced that the fairy-obsessed mapmaker from Majora’s Mask is getting a second game. It seems that Nintendo is trying to emphasize that Tingle doesn’t solely follow around little boys, because his upcoming game is entitled Irozuki [...]
Review: Punch-Out!!
June 22nd, 2009 No Comments
Punch-Out!! is an excellent franchise retread, if a merely competent game. The attempt to integrate the Wii’s gestural controls will do little to entice casual gamers past the first handful of fights as the steep difficulty curve was clearly designed with a controller in mind. All in all, it’s game that’s low on content, but high on nostalgia.
Tags: next level games · Nintendo · Punch-Out!! · Wii
