Nintendo Okie

Howdy Howdy everyone.  Well, it’s the new year, but history never sleeps.  I hope everyone had a safe and happy New Year’s Eve.  I spent mine with about 20 teenagers locked in a church shooting each other with NERF guns.  Fun was had by all.  What does 2010 have in store for us?  Well we don’t know, but I can tell you this week in the past we had game releases, console announcements, and price drops.  Let’s jump right in and see what’s happened This Week in Nintendo History.

Sonic is know best for his ability to run to the right very fast, but on January 4^th, 2004 Sonic Battle for the Game Boy Advance let everyone know that the Blue Blur could fight as well.  This was a fighting game that took place inside a 3D arena with up to four players at a time.  The story of the game revolved around an ancient weapon known as Gizoid that was discovered by Dr. Eggman, but after being unable to get the machine to work he abandoned it.  The machine was then found by Sonic and the crew who were able to bring him to life.  There were a few who knew of his real potential and attempted to claim, or reclaim him for those purposes.  Sonic Battle used a combination of attacks that were fairly deep despite the few buttons available on the GBA.  Defeating opponents and advancing through the story unlocked six different mini-games that could be played.

The Consumer Electronic Show has been a staple in the electronics and technological industry for a long time.  Back in 1985 the Winter CES was held on January 5^th in Las Vegas, Nevada.  During the show Commodore introduced a new computer, the C128 with a massive 128k of RAM and an LCD portable for well under $1000.  It was also announced during the show that the Famicom Disk System would be coming to America and that it would hit stores under the new name, the Nintendo Entertainment System.  It was unknown at the time, but that system would revive the flagging game industry and begin a new revolution in the world of video games.

Way back on January 5^th, 2009 Konami released Sandy Beach on WiiWare.  This was a sand castle simulator developed by Frozen Codebase and featured two modes of play.  The first was a free form castle building area where you could build whatever you could imagine.  The second mode was a tower defense game that saw you defending your sand castle from hordes of curious crabs.  You would use the Wii Remote to slap the crabs away and would have time to repair your castle between waves. 

Sonic the Hedgehog gets his second release of the week with Sonic Heroes for the GameCube released on January 6^th, 2004.   This game was a unique platformer in that you didn’t control a singular character, but rather you controlled teams of three different characters that had different abilities, such as speed, flight or power.  You would use these different team members to traverse different parts of the levels taking advantage of the differing abilities.  At the beginning of the game Dr. Eggman announces that he’s going to take over the world in three days and it was up to the player’s team of characters to stop him.  There were four different teams initially that you could choose from; Team Rose, Team Sonic, Team Dark and Team Chaotix and each team had a unique combination of characters. 

Nintendo would make another big console announcement on January 7^th, 2003 with the revelation that they would be releasing the Game Boy Advance SP.  This new version of the Game Boy Advance would feature a clamshell design with a backlit LCD screen and it would be on sale at its launch for $99.  The most unusual aspect of the new handheld’s design was the lack of a headphone jack.  The system would eventually hit North American retailers on March 23^rd of that same year.   

January 7^th, 2008 was Virtual Console day in North America.  On that day Nintendo released Star Tropics for the NES and The King of Fighters ’94 for the Neo Geo. 

The 1993 Consumer Electronics Show brought together the Japanese Nintendo Campus Challenge Winner Yuichi Suyama, and the American Campus Challenge Winner Jeff Hansen to see who would win the title of World Champion for that year.  The competition took place on January 8^th, 1993 and in the end, the American Jeff Hansen won and was declared the Nintendo World Champion. 

January 8^th 2007 was Virtual Console day again in America.  On that date Gradius for the NES was released alongside Soldier Blade and Dungeon Explorer for the Turbo-Grafix 16. 

Fast forward one year to January 8^th, 2008.  On that date Harvey Birdman Attorney at Law would hit store shelves in North America for the Wii.  This game, released by Capcom was based on the Adult Swim cartoon of the same name.  The game play is very similar to another Capcom property, Phoenix Wright, but with a distinctly different feel for the humor and situations.  All of the TV show’s voice talent, with the exception of Stephen Colbert were present for the game giving it a very authentic feel for fans of the series.  

Also on that date, yet another Sonic game, Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity for Wii hit retail.  This was the fifth racing game in Sonic history and featured game play on hoverboards.  There were eighteen different playable characters that each had personalized gear unique to them.  The game also featured three modes in addition to the main story mode; Survival, Survival Relay and Survival Ball, which is essentially a high speed game of soccer.  There are sixteen tracks in total that can be raced on and many feature sharp 90 degree turns that require the use of gravity to safely navigate around.  New to the game was an upgrade system known as Gear Change.  This allowed players to customize their racer by using Gravity Points that you would gain during the course of your career.  Despite this game being superior to its predecessor it was still generally criticized loose controls, lack of online play and a generic story.

January 9^th, 1992 saw Nintendo dropping the price of both the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Game Boy. 

January 9^th, 2003 saw both Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis.  These games were identical to the Playstation versions of the game featuring the Dual Shock control scheme moved over the GameCube’s controller using both analog sticks for movement and aim.  The game’s did feature a few improvements over the previous versions of the game including skippable cut scenes and higher frame rates dues to the more powerful processors available to Nintendo’s system. 

Nintendo released Electroplankton on January 9^th, 2006 exclusively through their website.  The game had players interacting with plankton to create music based on the different species of plankton.  There were two different modes available for play.  The first was known as performance and was the main mode in the game. This is the mode where you would go to create your own musical themes.  The second was audience which simply allowed the player to set the system down and listen to music created through the game.  The different plankton had different motions that needed to be performed.  For example the Tracie had you tracking a line on the screen while the hannenbow had you moving leaves around and the note would be different depending on where the plankton hit the leaves.  In total there were 10 different plankton that would be used to create you musical pieces.  The game has been featured since as a playable stage in Super Smash Bros. Brawl and was also broken up and sold in parts through Nintendo’s DSi Shop.

So there you have it folks.  The first week of 2010 is in the book and it was a pretty good one after the drought at the end of the year.  If there is anything coming up you’d like to see featured in the article feel free to leave a comment or send me an email and let me know.  As always don’t hesitate to leave a comment letting me know what you think of the article.  We’ll be back again next week with another look at Nintendo’s history.