Nintendo Okie

Howdy Howdy everyone. Monday morning means it’s time for a bit of a history lesson. We’re taking to take a look back at some of the things that have happened during this week in Nintendo’s history. No major events really took place, but we do have a couple of high profile game releases to talk about.

Samus has been saving the galaxy for years now, but her adventures were never more popular than they were on the Super Nintendo.  Super Metroid hit store shelves on April 18^th, 1994 and many people consider this release to be the best in the series. Most of this game takes place on the planet Zebes and really began a new genre of game all it’s own. Many areas were visible very early in the game, but you could not access them until you discovered the proper power up needed to open the door to the new area. Exploration was the key to discovering all the hidden areas that could be found.

The DS has been home to dozens of puzzle games that use many different mechanics of gameplay.  Polarium was another puzzle game released for the system on April 18^th, 2005. In the game blocks would fall from the top of the screen towards the bottom and you needed to clear rows of blocks by flipping them to create rows of a single color. You could flip the tiles from black to white or vice versa by tapping on them with the stylus. There were four different games modes to choose from; Challenge, Puzzle, Versus and Lounge.

Excitebots: Trick Racing, while not a motocross style game, is the fourth game in the Excitebike series and was released on April 20^th, 2009. In the game you chose one of a number of vehicles that are designed to look like insects or animals and race through up to 25 different tracks. Races were graded on rankings from D to S and progress was achieved through obtaining stars. Performing different tricks and stunts rewarded you with between one and five stars. There were also a number of different mini-games you could play like poker or bowling while racing. It also featured online racing for up to six people and two player split screen racing.

April 20^th, 2009 was Virtual Console Day in North America. On that day Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair for the Sega Genesis was released.

Crystal Defenders R1 was originally released for cell phones and was ported to WiiWare on April 20^th, 2009.

Battle of the Bands was released for Wii on April 21^st, 2008. This game was different than the standard Guitar Hero/Rock Band style game in that it does not use any peripherals outside the Wii Remote. The game featured 30 licensed songs that were done as mash-ups of two of five different styles of music. Players would take turns performing actions and predetermined points in time and fight to have their style of music played more often. While it was a unique style of game play it did not fare very well critically or commercially with many people citing simple controls and repetitive actions as the biggest issues.

April 21^st 2008 was Virtual Console Day in North America. On that day Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom for the Sega Genesis, River City Ransom for the NES were released.

We’ve talked about Pokemon a lot in this article in the past and on April 22^nd, 2007 the fourth generation of Pokemon games began with the release of Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl for the Nintendo DS. Game play from previous installments of the game remained virtually unchanged. New additions to the series were the inclusion of the Poketch. This device used the bottom screen of the DS as a clock, calculator, step counter, drawing pad and map. It also allowed for some online connectivity through Nintendo’s Wi-Fi Connection to chat, trade and battle. As with previous installments in the series it proved hugely popular selling more than 5 million units worldwide.

April 22^nd, 2008 saw the release of The World Ends With You for the Nintendo DS. This was an action role-playing game developed by Square Enix’s Kingdom Hearts team. This game was heavily inspired by Japanese culture and art in Tokyo’s Shibuya district. The most distinctive feature of the game was the two screen combat system. One screen had you using the touch screen to use combat pins and the top screen could be controlled by the player or by the AI depending on how complex you wanted the combat to be. Both characters used the same health bar and one character taking too much damage could cause the pair to fall in battle. The game was very critically successful scoring very well among game reviewers and fared well at retail with over 300,000 units sold worldwide.

Virtual Console Day came yet again, this time on April 23^rd, 2007. On that day Gradius III for the Super Nintendo, Wonder Boy in Monster World for the Sega Genesis and Battle Lode Runner for the Turbo Grafix 16 were released.

There you have it. Those are the events that make up the current week in history.  If you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below or email me. If there’s anything you know of that we missed or you would like to see included in future editions of the feature please let us know as well. Before we go, though, we can’t forget about the releases that happened on foreign shores.

April 18^th

2008: The World Ends With You (DS, Europe)

April 20^th

2004: Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (GCN, Japan)

2006: Mother 3 (GBA, Japan)

April 21^st

1984: Duck Hunt (Fam, Japan)

1989: Game Boy (Japan)

2001: Hamtaro: Ham-Hams Unite! (GBC, Japan)

2005: Nintendogs (DS, Japan)

April 22^nd

2004: Mario Golf: Advance Tour (GBA, Japan)

2005: Yoshi’s Universal Gravitation (GBA, Europe)

April 23^rd

1995: Satellaview (Japan)