Nintendo Okie

Well howdy howdy everyone.  We’re back once again to take a look at the events that have shaped Nintendo’s past.  This first week of February is a little light on the events that took place, but we have a couple of high profile game releases to tide you over until next week.

Our first release of the week is for Nintendo’s first handheld “system” the Game & Watch.  This line of handhelds saw numerous releases throughout the early 80’s and on February 1^st, 1982 Nintendo released Turtle Bridge, which was a part of their widescreen line of games.  The object of this game was to get your character from one side of a river to the other by hopping across on the backs of turtles.  Most notable about the game was the fact that it launched with a leaflet that corrected an error that was printed in the instruction manual.

February 2^nd in the United States is Groundhog Day where we get to find out if winter is close to its end or if it will stick around for a while.  The same goes for the inhabitants of Animal Crossing.  In the game on February 2^nd you can take part in the events of Groundhog Day near the wishing well and since there are no groundhogs in the world you’ll instead be treated with Mr. Resetti determining if winter is closing.    Once the ceremony is over you can talk to Tortimer for a special prize, the Flower Model.

February 2^nd, 2009 was Virtual Console Day in America and on that day Sonic Chaos was released.  The game was originally released in America in 1993 for the Game Gear.

February 4^th, 2008 was Virtual Console Day, yet again, and on that day there were two games released for the Virtual Console; Operation Wolf for the Nintendo Entertainment System and Columns III: Revenge of Columns.

RPG fans rejoice!  February 5^th, 2001 was the release date for Paper Mario on the Nintendo 64.  Bowser has captured the Star Rod and it’s up to Mario to save the Princess yet again by retrieving the 7 Star Spirits that can offset the affects of the Star Rod.  This was the first game in the Paper Mario series of games and saw Mario take two dimensional gaming to a whole new level.  This game saw Mario as a paper thin character that could use abilities that he acquires as well as a large cast of characters that assist him on his journey.  Each of these characters has unique abilities that you must combine in order to progress through the game’s story book style plotline.  The game takes place on a 2-D plane where contacting enemies sends you into a turn based fight where you use the Nintendo 64 controller to enhance attacks and keep you involved in the action.  Paper Mario met with mixed, but generally positive reaction with many people praising the unique take on the RPG genre, with others saying that it was too simple and boring.  Never the less, the series has become one of Nintendo’s most popular franchises and there have been two sequels to the game using the same paper theme.

One of the most popular games in the role playing genre was released on February 5^th, 2007.  On that date Final Fantasy VI was re-released for the Game Boy Advance.  This game was originally released in 1994 for the Super Nintendo in North America under the title Final Fantasy III.  There were a number of additions and changes in this release of the game that were not in the original SNES version.  Among those were a new dungeon, The Dragon’s Den where you can fight as the Kaiser Dragon, who was in the SNES code, but never fully implemented.  There were new items for each character, a new Soul Shrine and new Espers; Leviathan, Gilgamesh, Cactuar, and Diablos.  The translation was also redone to make it more similar to the Japanese original.

Also that date, February 5^th, 2007, was Virtual Console day in America where three games were released; Vigilante for the Turbo-Grafix 16, Gain Ground for the Genesis, and Super Mario World for the Super Nintendo.

So there you have it folks.  That’s the week that was in Nintendo’s past for the first week of February.  As always, if there’s anything coming up that you know about and would like to see included in the article please feel free to let us know.  You can email me at tonymiller@nintendo-okie.com or leave us a comment below.  Until next week, we’re history.