This Week in Nintendo History: February 21st to February 27th
Howdy Howdy everyone. Welcome to our weekly look back at the annals of history. We all love Nintendo or else we probably wouldn’t be here discussing the events of their past. First let me apologize for the article being a day late. There was an issue with the delete button that I’d rather not discuss. [=^) Without further delay, what happened this week?
Well we’ve got a couple Game & Watch games to talk about to start things off. The first, Helmet, was released to the public on February 21st, 1981. This game tasked players with getting Mr. Game & Watch from the house on the left side of the screen to the house on the right side of the screen. That sounds simple enough, until you throw in tools falling from the sky that must be avoided. The game was re-released in the Game & Watch gallery replacing Mr. Game & Watch with Mario and adding Lakitu and the culprit throwing tools at the hero. It was also featured as a playable stage in Super Smash Bros. Melee complete with the tools falling from the sky.
The second Game & Watch game to discuss was released on February 21st, 1984. That game was called Crab Grab and was one of only two Super Color games, the other being Spitball Sparky. In this game players had to move their character at the bottom of the screen left and right between four different colored columns. There were crabs falling from the top of the screen in each of these columns and you had to push them away so that they would not pinch you. When the game was released in North America it featured unique box art that wasn’t present on the Japanese version of the game.
February 23rd 2009 was download day in North America. The Virtual Console received three titles on that day. These also happened to be the first three titles released on the service for the Commodore 64. They were International Karate, The Last Ninja and Pitstop II.
The WiiWare service received its first FPS on February 23rd, 2009. That date saw the release of Onslaught from Hudson Soft and developer Shade. In the game you played as a member of a team that has been sent to investigate the disappearance of a group of scientists. The game featured 13 levels, comprised mainly of long corridors with a few open spaces and used many of the controls familiar to first person shooters. Motion control was used to reload weapons and throw grenades and there were different weapons, such as shotguns and automatic that could be changed quickly to suit the situation at hand. There was even a multiplayer mode that you could play to challenge friends to high score competitions while playing through the campaign. There was no competitive multiplayer featured in Onslaught. The game received mixed reviews with many praising it for being unique to the WiiWare service, while others considered it dull and boring.
February 25th, 2008 was Virtual Console Day in North America. That date saw the release of Psychosis for the Turbo-Grafix 16 and Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards for Nintendo 64.
Nester took some time away from Nintendo Power and the comics he starred in to hit the lanes on the Virtual Boy. On February 26th, 1996 Nintendo released Nester’s Funky Bowling for their portable 3D system. This was an exclusive bowling game for North America, and was different from Japans Virtual Bowling. The game featured 3 game play modes: Practice, Bowling and Challenge. Practice allowed you to set up the pins in any way you liked. Bowling, is a pretty self-explanatory ten pin game of bowling. Challenge sets the pins up in increasingly difficulty patterns and you get one ball to attempt to knock them all down.
Virtual Console Day in 2007 took place on February 26th. On that day Fu-Man Chew for the Turbo-Grafix 16, Bio-Hazard Battle for the Genesis, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64 were all released.
Our last game release of the week took place on February 27th, 2007 and was known as SSX Blur. This was a skiing/snowboarding game developed exclusively for Wii by Electronic Arts. In the game you participated in races, trick competitions and slalom events to progress up three unique mountains. The Nunchuk and Wii Remote were used together to control speed, direction, and when in the air, tricks. It also featured a meter, known as the Ubermeter that, when full, would allow for extremely special tricks worth significantly more points. SSX Blur was received fairly positively with a few outlets saying that the game’s difficulty might be off putting for most, except the extremely hardcore fans of the series.
So there you have it folks. I’m extremely sorry for the delay and will strive to keep my finger away from the delete button next week and get back to posting on time. I hope you’ve enjoyed this look back at Nintendo’s history for the past week. As always, if you know of anything coming up you’d like to see featured in this article, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Send us an email, leave us a comment or head over to the forums and let us know there.
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This article misses the point.
I knew about that release, but did not include it because we have not covered many items from outside North America. The reasoning behind that is because the article would get very repetitive if I wrote about every game every time it came out. I’ve had a couple people talk to me about releases outside of North America.
We have mainly focused on North America, but have included big releases and events that took place outside of North America in the past. If it’s a game release we generally wait until the North American release date to discuss it because it’s more relevant to the general audience.
I do have some ideas for including foreign releases that we’ll begin next week so make sure to check back then and you can see what we’ve got planned. It won’t be anything grand, but it will begin to include those releases as well.