Nintendo Okie

Howdy everybody and welcome to our weekly look at the events that make up the history of Nintendo. The week seems to be short on game releases, but we have the 1 year birthday of Nintendo’s handheld this week, one of the hardest NES games ever made and the third entry into one of my personal favorite franchises.  Let’s not waste any time and find out just what happened this coming week in Nintendo’s history.

Up first we have Rhythm Heaven, which was released for the DS on April 5^th, 2009.  This game had been released over a year earlier under the name Rhythm Tengoku Gold in Japan and is the third game in the franchise based on the GBA game Rhythm Tenkogu.  The game is a music/rhythm game where you use different motions on the touch screen in time with the music that is playing to achieve the best rank possible.  The music in the game was composed by former lead singer of the Japanese band, Sharam Q, known as Tsunku as well as Masami Yone.  Rhythm Heaven was almost universally applauded for its creativity and gameplay, but some people felt there was a bit of imbalance in the difficulty of some of the stages.  A demo for the game was available for a period of time on the Wii’s Nintendo Channel. 

April 5^th marks the one year anniversary of the Nintendo DSi which launched on April 5^th, 2009.  This was the third generation of Nintendo’s most recent handheld and added a few features to the system that weren’t seen previously; those being the two camera’s that were now included on the system and the inclusion of the DSi Shop.  This allowed players to download original software straight to their systems much like the WiiWare Channel on the home console.  The biggest omission from the system was that of the GBA slot which had been removed meaning there was no longer any backwards compatibility with Nintendo’s previous handhelds.  The system was officially unveiled to the public at a conference in Tokyo on October 2^nd, 2008.

April 6^th, 1992 saw the release of Contra III: The Alien Wars for the Nintendo Entertainment System.  The game was the third game released in the Contra franchise behind the previously successful Contra and Super Contra games.  The story took place in the year 2036 and saw players taking on an alien threat previously thought defeated that had returned.  Contra III was very well known for its extreme difficulty and unlike previous versions of the game it did not have the ability to enter the Konami code to gain access to 30 lives.  Instead you had the option of choosing either three, five or seven lives and based on the difficulty level chosen a varying number of continues.  There were also multiple endings available to players based on which difficulty setting was chosen; the hardest giving you the true ending to the game.  Contra III has been re-released on a number of systems including the Game Boy, Game Boy Advance and Wii’s Virtual Console.

April 6^th, 2009 was Virtual Console day in North America.  On that day Uncharted Waters: New Horizons for the Super Nintendo was released. 

Equilibrio hit the North American WiiWare service on April 6^th, 2009.  This game uses the Wii Remote to rotate the game world in order to propel a ball through a maze.  The game uses different types of material for the ball, such as rubber or stone, which varies the game play style.  There are numerous obstacles and traps to avoid.  Falling too far will cause the ball to be destroyed and you’ll have to go back to the nearest checkpoint.  There were five different types of ball and 60 different levels, in addition to a four player mode. 

April 7^th, 2008 was Virtual Console day, yet again.  That day saw the release of Bases Load and Yoshi’s Cookie, both for the NES.

Baroque was a role playing game originally developed for the Sega Saturn, ported to the Playstation and eventually released on the Nintendo Wii on April 8^th, 2008.  The world of Baroque takes place after a cataclysm which occurred in the year 2032.  The Earth is now populated by Meta Beings, humans who have lost their heart and soul to Baroque’s living inside of them.  Featuring gameplay very similar to Rogue, it was best known for its very high level of difficulty.  Unlike the game that inspired it all movement was done in real time, rather than different turns.  It also featured a hit point gauge as well as a Vitality gauge.  The latter which would deplete during normal gameplay and if it disappeared would begin draining your life.  One very interesting aspect to the game was the reveal of the plot.  Death was a major component of this and many elements of the story would not be revealed until the players had died.  Baroque was criticized for its convoluted story and extreme difficulty, which many players found off putting.

One of the most popular puzzle franchises released by Nintendo has been the Dr. Mario franchise.  Dr. Mario 64 was released for the Nintendo 64 on April 9^th, 2001 and changed up the gameplay of the popular franchise.  In addition to the traditional single player puzzle game; this new game included a story mode that had Dr. Mario and Wario attempting to retrieve Megavitamins which would help ward off the flu plaguing the Mushroom Kingdom.  The story mode followed these two “heroes” and the gameplay was based off of a series of battles against opponents who inhabited the play area.  The battles consist of familiar Dr. Mario gameplay where players would try to remove viruses from a pill bottle by lining up 3 or more medicines of the same color against the virus. 

April 9^th, 2007 was the day that Super Paper Mario was released for the Nintendo Wii.  This third installment in the popular RPG franchise had Mario team up with his brother Luigi, Princess Peach and longtime rival Bowser to stop the villainous Count Bleck from destroying the universe.  The Count had forced Bowser and Peach to marry which brought about a prophecy told in the Dark Prognosticus.  This forced marriage opened up a rift known as “the Void” which would grow to envelope the entire universe.  The new cast of heroes also has help in the form of the Pixl, a race of creatures who have different abilities that will help Mario along the way.  The game uses a combination of the previous games’ RPG elements and the side scrolling gameplay of the original Super Mario Bros.  The Wii Remote was held on its side and the pointer could be used to reveal hidden areas of a level.  Each of the game’s eight worlds, set up in a similar fashion to Super Mario Bros, held a Chaos Heart.  This heart would reveal the location of the next world.  The biggest new feature to the gameplay was the ability for Mario to flip between 2D and 3D gameplay.  This flip would reveal new ways to traverse previously blocked levels and was often used in solving many of the game’s puzzles. 

Our last Virtual Console releases hit the downloadable store on April 9^th, 2007.  That day saw the release of Galaga for the NES, Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle for the Sega Genesis, and Bravo Man for the Turbo-Grafix 16.

Our last retail release hit stores on April 10^th, 2006 with Odama for the Nintendo GameCube.  This game was a war gaming style pinball game.  In the game young general Yamanouchi Kagetora has control over the Odama which is a gigantic ball capable of destroying anything it rolls over.  The most unique feature of the game was the use of the GameCube microphone that would be used to direct troops out of the way of the Odama.  Odama was generally very poorly received.

So there you have many of the events that made up the week in History for April 4^th to April 10^th.  I hope you’ve enjoyed this trip down memory lane.  If you know of anything coming up that you’d like to see included in the article or let us know anything we missed feel free to leave us a comment and let us know.  We want to make sure we include everything that should be included.  Before we leave though here are the events that happened in other countries around the world. 

April 6th

2001: Pokemon Gold and Silver (GBC, Europe)

          Conker’s Bad Fur Day (N64, Europe)

April 7th

2000: Pokemon Stadium (N64, Europe)

April 8th

2004: Metroid Zero Mission (DS, Europe)

April 9th

1998: Yoshi’s Story (N64, Europe)