Nintendo Okie

During the Nintendo Direct press event today Nintendo revealed that three of the biggest names in the video game industry are working together to create a game.  Those three companies are Sega, Capcom and Namco Bandai.  What could they be making?  Who knows.  Capcom and Namco are working on making fighting games together.  Maybe this could be another one of those collaborations.  All we know is that it’s going to be coming to the 3DS.  What is is is anybodys guess.

If you’re my age then back in the late 80’s and the early 90’s you played games like Mega Man or Contra for a really long time. It wasn’t that the games were long. It’s just that they were insanely difficult. You would spend hour after hour and life after life trying to figure out the disappearing block sections of a Mega Man game and you liked it because it was all you had. You have fond memories of those games and the challenge that they posed. You also probably think that games have gotten easier as the years have gone by. Mutant Mudds is here to fill that role in your life. It’s a game that unapologetically hard and you either love it or hate it because of that.

What You Need to Know

Mutant Mudds stars a young boy named Max (this is the third game in a week that I’ve played that starred a young boy named Max). He’s hanging out at his Grannie’s house playing video games when an asteroid crashes into the earth. This asteroid brings along with it mutant aliens made of mud. Max figures the best thing to do would be to stop playing games, strap on a water gun and save the world.

What follows is a classic platforming game that feels straight out of the NES/SNES era, complete with punishing difficulty, simple control schemes and a good deal of replay value. Each of the game’s 16 levels has hidden bonus areas that are themed around classic Nintendo handhelds like the Game Boy and the Virtual Boy giving you more than 40 levels to play through overall.

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Anyone that had a Dreamcast probably remembers Seaman.  This was a game that used a microphone and had you taking care of the titular “pet”.  It was a huge thing over in Japan and was popular among North American gamers as well.  It even had Leonard Nimoy doing narration.

Nikkei in Japan is reporting that the game will be returning to life on the 3DS later this year.  That’s not all.  According to the same report Nintendo has plans to revive and number of other third party titles in an effort to strengthen the library of games even more than it already has.

No word yet on when the game will be hitting stores, or what other titles will be involved.  We’ll keep you up to date.

In years past, fighting games haven’t always had their best showing on handheld systems. With limited online capabilities, physical buttons, and technical horsepower, it’s been difficult to capture the console and arcade experience while on the go, but some recent titles on the 3DS, including Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition and Dead or Alive: Dimensions, have started to break the mold. Namco now takes advantage of many 3DS capabilities to deliver its long-running Tekken series in the form of Tekken 3D: Prime Edition.

What You Need to Know

For those not familiar with the series, Tekken is, in most cases, a one-on-one fighting game where players select a character to battle against an opponent in a 3D arena. You wouldn’t know it from this title, but the main series revolves around a martial arts tournament called the The King of Iron Fist Tournament. In fact, Tekken literally translates to “Iron Fist”, and you can even see the Japanese Kanji characters for “Tekken” in the game’s logo. Read more…

(Editor’s Note: Shannon received his 3DS after the system had been out almost a year.  These are his impressions based on the system after the software lineup had increased, the Ambassador Program had concluded.  It’s an interesting look at a newcomer’s perspective to the system after nearly 12 months.)

So my wife surprised me this last Christmas with a 3DS and there was something that I’ve noticed… Most of the reviews and impressions I’ve read about the system came from last year when the system was still a whopping $250 and the game library was minimal to lousy. This is going to be my take on the system with the purchase price being $170 and the game library including the eShop and other retail releases not out at the system’s launch, enjoy…

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The internet scares me sometimes.  Not just that but people frighten me too.  I don’t know where some people get all their free time.  Like I said to Tony the other day, “leave monkeys in a room long enough and you’ll get Shakespeare.”   Anyway, somebody dug through the ESRB listings (which is like 875 pages by the way) and found two Game Gear games have been rated for the 3DS.  I think this finally means we will see some GG games on the Virtual Console.  The two games are Sonic The Hedgehog: Triple Trouble and Shinobi.  I haven’t played either of these games so I have no idea what to expect.  I only have a few Game Gear gam… wait… do I have Triple Trouble?  *checks iPhone* Huh, I guess I do.  Funny how I don’t remember a single thing about it.  That’s probably not a good sign.

My daughter saw this picture in my email earlier today and freaked out.  She’s now attempting to save her money to buy her own pink 3DS.

Nintendo announced today that this new system will hit stores on February 10th for $169.99.  In true Nintendo fashion it’s not just pink, but Pearl Pink.  According to the company this is the perfect gift for your Valentine this year.

My problem with this system is that’s it’s not purple.  When is Nintendo going to release that sexy purple system that they showed off at E3 when they announced the system?

Demos do a lot to make or break people’s opinions about a game. They’re designed to get people excited about a new release and give you just a taste of what to expect if you buy the full version of the game. Nintendo just began offering demos for retail 3DS games as downloads through the Nintendo eShop. The first did available did a lot to make me interested in picking up Resident Evil: Revelations. How does the demo for Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games do in making me want to buy that game?

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Don’t you love game announcements that come with absolutely no fanfare whatsoever?  That just happened.  During all this financial talk Mr. Iwata announced a new game.

…Although there is no logo here, we are planning to release a totally new side-scrolling action Super Mario in 2D as a key title for the Nintendo 3DS in the next fiscal year.

So, new side scrolling Mario for the 3DS?  With the news I just posted could this be a downloadable title, or another game in the New Super Mario Bros franchise?  Could it be something else altogether?  We’ll have to wait until E3 to find out.

The Iwata Asks features and Mr. Iwata’s comments after investor’s meetings are always full of all kinds of information, some of which you don’t really expect to hear someone from Nintendo saying. One of the things that caught my eye in all of this talk was a comment about Nintendo and their future in the digital market.

The company has been going on and on about how they feel that the digital market is a huge place where they can expand to and they’re working very hard to establish their presence in that space and make it a viable option for Nintendo going forward. Sony is going full force into this space by making all of their retail games available day and date as digital downloads as well. That just means that any game that you want to buy you can either get a physical copy from a retail store or download it straight from the Playstation store.

The following comment shows that Nintendo is also setting themselves up to have the same thing happen for Nintendo systems, potentially the 3DS, but more likely with the Wii U.

For the digital sales of the content, we are also considering the future possibility of digital distribution of packaged software, which is often referred to as “software download sales.” This concept was built into the design of the Nintendo 3DS, and we already have the necessary infrastructure. We will prepare the same infrastructure for the Wii U. However, we have not decided the concrete timing of when we will start it. The decision must be made by taking into consideration such factors as the relationship with the wholesalers and retailers, and the best way to be embraced by consumers, as well as the environment surrounding the market and consumers, such as the required memory capacity on consumers’ SD memory cards. However, as an option for the future, the significance of this business field will increase.

So, even Nintendo realizes that the digital market is where the industry is heading and that they know if they want to be able to survive they’ve got to get into that space full force. I can imagine buying a Wii U and being able to access the Nintendo store to download games and the space options are available to do the same on the 3DS. Nintendo has said that the Wii U will be able to have external storage hooked up so the space issue won’t be a factor for that system and the games on the 3DS are still small enough that you could end up with a lot of them before needing to expand memory options in some way.

I’m glad to see that Nintendo understands the market and where things are heading. It makes one hopeful for the future.