After the blowout celebration that was episode 100 we considered just ending the podcast. It would have been a good one to go out on but we decided to record another one. Did we make the right choice? You decide. This week we are joined by Shannon and he delivers his magical bargain sense live on the show. We talk about some games and some news and we laugh a lot. It’s been 100 episodes, you should know all this by now.
episode-101
Starring – Tony, Micah, Shannon, Shelby
Run time – 1:25:39
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I play music by ear a lot. It’s time consuming and actually kind of hard. The only alternative is a Google search for some sort of tab. Most of the time those are made by people who are tone deaf or live too close to an airport. I suppose if you look hard enough you may find some sheet music. Like these for example. These four sheet music collections have been supervised by Nintendo so I bet they are pretty accurate. Take your pick of Mario or Zelda, guitar or piano, easy or intermediate. Each book contains over 30 classic songs. I just realized this post sounds like an infomercial. So I’m going to stop now and just give you the link.
Alfred Music Publishing – Nintendo
Anybody that reads my articles or has heard me talk knows my problem with digital distribution. I don’t like the idea of games as a service instead of games as goods. While I understand the advantages of digital games I don’t feel like the infrastructure is ready to support the whole industry. I’m not completely against 
all services. Steam has a proven track record of providing games to their customers while not falling into the pitfalls of a digital store front. However, Xbox Live, PlayStation Network and Nintendo’s multiple stores are yet to be proven. That’s where I have a problem.
Someday your 360 will not be able to access Xbox Live. Someday your PS3 will not ping the PlayStation Network. How will people react when they can no longer access hundreds of dollars of content? How would you feel if you could no longer play $300 worth of games because there is no server on the other end? I would feel pretty upset. This is a question that console makers have to be asking right now; at least I hope so. Nintendo is working on the Wii U while Microsoft and Sony are working on their next systems. Backwards compatibility isn’t a sure thing. The 360 will only play a select few Xbox games. The PS3 will play PS1 games but only some PS3s will play PS2 games. Will XBLA, PSN and WiiWare games work on the next generation of systems? And even if they do, how many systems do we go through before they don’t? It’s only a matter of time before these games will be unplayable. When that happens, when people lose hundreds of dollars of content, will we see trust in digital distribution sour? Read more…
Remember all those WiiWare demos Nintendo put up for a few weeks and then took down? We all wondered why they didn’t just leave them up right. Well the demos are back. All of them. If you want a WiiWare demo now is your chance to download any of the 50 that were ever on the Wii Shop channel. You probably better jump on this because it may be some sort of mistake. Nintendo didn’t make any sort of announcement about this as far as I know. Maybe somebody hit the wrong button.
The end of the year is a time where I like to reflect on a lot of things; all the games I have played, all the games I missed out on, all the games I am looking forward to in the coming year. However, one thing I haven’t been looking forward to is how accurate my predictions of this year have turned out. I went back and checked on the list a couple of times and things looked more grim for me with each passing day. Thankfully I wasn’t the only one making bold predictions, some of us making more outlandish predictions than others, and now the time has come to assign a grade to our Nostradamurry.
Shelby
1. 343 Industries will release their first Halo game in September. 343 recently released Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary for the 360. Unfortunately for me, it was released a little too recently; November. When I made this call, Gears Of 3 was set for the middle of the year. I also didn’t think of the ten year anniversary. I only get a half point.
2. Game Gear games will be added to the 3DS Virtual Console by the end of 2011. Nintendo announced in March they would add Game Gear games to the eShop but it still hasn’t happened for some reason. Odd since GG games are available on the Wii Shop in Japan. The emulator is already built so what’s the hold up? There aren’t a lot of standout GG titles that I can think of so I guess nobody is in a huge hurry. I don’t think anyone will dispute me getting a half point here.
3. The Last Guardian will be delayed again but will come out before the end of the year. Well, The Last Guardian was delayed again; what a surprise. But it’s not going to make release before the year is over. In fact, with recent news coming out, the game may end up getting canceled. I wouldn’t be surprised at this point since it has been in limbo for the past three years. What could possibly be happening over there? Another half point but a heart full of sadness. Read more…
Nintendo has said that there will be paid DLC coming to games on the 3DS in 2012. There have been no announcements as to what games would see any of that paid content, but no rumors are swirling. Nikkei reports that Fire Emblem, published by Nintendo and rumored to be set for a March release will be the first game to feature for pay DLC. The report also suggests that third parties are gearing up for paid content to start rolling out over the summer.
To go along with this there is also talk that the same system will be used for the Wii U when it launches later in the year. You will be able to use pre-paid cards or add currency with a credit card to purchase this content.
No details have come out for Fire Emblem, but Nintendo is getting the title back into player’s minds with the release of Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones. Nintendo is set to hold another video conference later tonight where it’s thought that more details for the game and the DLC will be announced.
PopCap is the master of addictive games. With all their games they follow the structure of ‘simple to play, hard to master.’ I imagine everyone has heard of 
Bejeweled by this point as it has been sold millions of times on pretty much every platform. Back once again to prove match three is all you need, PopCap has released Bejeweled 3.
What You Need To Know
It’s a match three game. That isn’t so much what you need to know as it is something you already know. As match three goes, the more gems you match the higher score you earn. Since this is on DS, you can use both the stylus and the d-pad to move gems around. The game will also give you hints on demand when you can’t find any matches on screen. While it is a simple match three game, it’s well made and gives you a good amount of options to customize your experience.
Fun Variations
PopCap is really good about justifying every release/re-release of their games by giving them new modes or by bundling in other games. Bejeweled 3 comes with several variations on the simple match three formula. Such modes include a poker game where the matches you make are assigned to cards which you then have to make a poker hand from. As you can imagine, a full house is worth more than two pair. Another mode has you matching gems towards the bottom of the screen to Read more…
The holiday season has been pretty good to Nintendo. They’ve seen record sales for the Wii and the 3DS, along with a number of big name titles. They’re going strong into 2012 and today they’ve announced the release dates for a number of titles that they expect to continue that trend.
Obviously the 3DS is seeing the greatest momentum, building off of the success of Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7. Resident Evil: Revelations sets the stage in 2012 for the new handheld and will be released on February 7th.
Nintendo’s biggest 3DS title to hit in the beginning of next year is Kid Icarus: Uprising, which launches on March 23rd.
The Wii has a small selection of titles listed with three from Nintendo, including the newest entry into the Mario Party franchise and a new Rhythm Heaven game. WiiWare has the lightest release schedule with only one game on the list, La Mulana.
Curiously absent from the Q1 release schedule is Luigi’s Mansion 2, which seems to keep getting pushed farther and farther back. Head past the break for the full list of games on all platforms.
Read more…
While I was messing around in the eShop tonight I noticed a message about the 3D camera feature coming soon. The first thing I have to say about that is, the camera doesn’t look all that great. It’s definitely not going to be something you pull out in 20 years to remember the good ole days, but it’s going to be a feature that some people do some interesting things with. The things that really caught my attention was a message about that feature, and a small portion of the message, which I will reprint here:
The 3D video recording feature will be available with the next Nintendo 3DS system update by December 8th instead of November as originally planned.
So with this delay Nintendo confirmed that the update was supposed to happen this week, even though they failed to mention it to anyone. Now, though it’s been delayed until next week. More than anything, though I want to know when the Ambassador games will be available.
Black Friday is called that because retailers supposedly get “in the black” in terms of yearly sales. It’s the biggest shopping day of the year in North America and a lot of game publishers look to that day to catapult some of their yearly outlooks. Nintendo is no exception and, according to some reports, it was a good day for Nintendo.
The 3DS didn’t take off quite as fast as Nintendo had hoped, but it’s still doing better than the DS was at the same point in its life. Sales of the 3DS for the week of November 20th – 26th more than tripled the previous week’s sales. That week before was the launch of Super Mario 3D Land and during that week sales of the system has risen by more than 49% of the previous week. Since that game launched on Nov 13th it has sold more than 500,000 units and has become the fastest selling portable Mario game in Nintendo’s history.
The Wii also had a good holiday, despite the general internet population saying the system is dead. Nintendo announced today on Black Friday alone that the Wii sold more than 500,000 units, much of this could probably be contributed to the launch of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, which has sold more than 535,000 units to become the fastest selling Zelda game in the franchise to reach that mark.
Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime is understandably happy about these results:
“What this has been able to do is drive our Nintendo 3DS business in only eight months to surpass the full first year volume of the original DS and we still have the bulk of the holiday to go, and we still have the launch of Mario Kart 7 (out Sunday, Dec. 4) to continue driving our full-year sales on Nintendo 3DS. We know that Black Friday and that entire week is a key selling week and it is important for products like ours to have a jump in momentum and we were fortunate to see that. For us, it really was driven by unique and powerful software and what gives us confidence is that we still have more software to launch in the balance of this holiday period.”
Nintendo is less than half a million units away from breaking the sales numbers set by the DS in its first year of life and the system has only been out for nine months. There’s no doubt in my mind that number is going to be shattered on the back of the solid line up that the company has available for the holidays. So you can talk all you want about how the 3DS has been a failure for Nintendo, but it’s building a solid foundation ahead of the launch of the Playstation Vita, which won’t come out for another three months here in the States.
After the blowout celebration that was episode 100 we considered just ending the podcast. It would have been a good one to go out on but we decided to record another one. Did we make the right choice? You decide. This week we are joined by Shannon and he delivers his magical bargain sense live on the show. We talk about some games and some news and we laugh a lot. It’s been 100 episodes, you should know all this by now.
The Great Friend Code Exchange
