Analyzing the art style of every Smash Bros. game
Posted on 2 weeks ago by Ethan in 3DS, Features, GameCube, Switch, Wii U | 0 comments
It’s been many years since the original release of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in 2018. There’s been no official announcement for a new game at the time of writing, but the wait between Ultimate and its eventual sequel is already setting a record. Indeed, the time between new Smash Bros. games has never been greater. But that leaves us with plenty of time to appreciate the titles we already have, and one aspect of them that often goes undiscussed is their art styles.
Despite being fairly similar to each other on a gameplay level, each Super Smash Bros. game winds up feeling distinct because of its art style. 64, Melee, Brawl, 3DS, Wii U, and Ultimate are all visually distinct from one another, and this is a trend we can expect to see when the next entry eventually does come out. In the meantime, today we’re analyzing the individual art style of each entry in the series and going over what makes each one charming.
More: highlight, Super Smash Bros., top
Analyzing the Year of Luigi and how Nintendo could do it better
Posted on 1 month ago by Ethan in 3DS, Features, Wii U | 0 comments
It’s no secret that Luigi is one of the most beloved characters in the Mario franchise. Mario is well-liked, too, but lots of Super Mario fans like Luigi better thanks to his deeper personality and his whole “living in his brother’s shadow” trait he has going on. To celebrate this, Nintendo hosted a special event all throughout 2013 called the Year of Luigi. The idea was that Nintendo would release games and merch featuring Luigi more so in 2013 than ever before, all to commemorate everyone’s favorite green-capped plumber.
That being said, while the Year of Luigi is an interesting part of Nintendo’s history, it wasn’t a runaway success. Today, we’re analyzing everything Nintendo released as part of the Year of Luigi, plus how they could do it better if they ever dedicate an upcoming year to a specific character (which, for the record, seems a bit unlikely).
The best Animal Crossing games, ranked
Posted on 1 month ago by Ethan in 3DS, Features, Switch, Wii U | 0 comments
Compared to other easily-ranked Nintendo franchises, Animal Crossing is a bit different. At the time of writing, there are only a handful of main series Animal Crossing games and even fewer spin-offs. Most of them are incredibly high quality and well-received by fans, with only a small number of exceptions. There also aren’t quite as many games in the Animal Crossing series compared to some of Nintendo’s other juggernauts – these games take a long time to develop, and we suspect it’ll be a while before we see a new Animal Crossing game on Nintendo Switch 2.
In the meantime, we’ve made our own subjective list of the best Animal Crossing games, ranked from worst to best. Do note that we’re not including Animal Crossing Plaza (which really had very little to it) or Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp; the former is defunct and we’re focused more on Nintendo platform games for this ranking. Here’s what we came up with.
More: Animal Crossing, highlight, top
Nintendo maintenance schedule – February 16, 2025
Posted on 1 month ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News, Switch eShop, Wii U | 0 comments
Nintendo’s latest maintenance schedule for the week of February 16, 2025 is now available.
A couple of sessions have been scheduled at the moment. Nintendo Switch, Wii U, and 3DS will all be impacted.
Below is the full Nintendo maintenance schedule for the week of February 16, 2025:
More: maintenance
Nintendo warns against using “unauthorized services” such as online Wii U replacement
Posted on 2 months ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News, Wii U | 0 comments
A statement was posted on social media today in which Nintendo is cautioning fans against using “unauthorized services”. Specifics weren’t shared, but the company acknowledged that there are ways to continue playing Wii U games online. Nintendo claims that using these services “may pose unexpected security risks.”
Online support for Wii U – as well as 3DS – was discontinued last April. But there are ways to circumvent that. The open-source project Pretendo was previously established for this very reason, offering online functionality via custom servers and “clean-room reverse engineering.” Users need to hack their device in order to use the service.
These are the strongest final bosses in Kirby history
Posted on 2 months ago by Ethan in 3DS, Features, General Nintendo, Switch | 0 comments
While we wait for the next entry in the Kirby series (and therefore the next galactic crisis Kirby has to stop), we figure it’s as good a time as any to rank the strongest final bosses that are most canonically powerful. Out of all of Nintendo’s big franchises, Kirby might be the one most famous for its dramatic final boss battles. The scale and scope of these clashes have only increased over the years, and it’s certainly reached a peak with 2022’s Kirby and the Forgotten Land. As new games in the series are released, more lore and story tidbits come out to help us better understand the incredibly dangerous world Kirby happens to live in.
The 10 best Legend of Zelda games, ranked
Posted on 3 months ago by Ethan in 3DS, Features, Switch | 0 comments
Today, we’re going over the best Legend of Zelda games of all time. More specifically, we’ve made a list of the 10 best entries the series has seen to date.
With most big name Nintendo franchises, it’s fairly easy to see which game is most popular among fans – not necessarily the best, but the most popular. For example, many Mario fans will tell you Super Mario Galaxy is their favorite entry – that doesn’t mean it’s the objective best, per se, but it does mean it’s probably the most popular. Pokemon fans at this point in time will probably tell you that Black and White or HeartGold and SoulSilver are their favorites. But things are more complicated for the Legend of Zelda series. Breath of the Wild, while a fantastically successful game, did sort of split the hardcore fanbase in two: those who prefer the new open-world gameplay style, and those who prefer Zelda’s more linear outings. In other words, it’s virtually impossible to put together an objective “best Zelda games of all time” list. But it doesn’t mean we can’t try!
So here’s our 10 favorite Zelda games in order, and along the way, we’d like to ask you to let us know what your own personal top 10 Zelda games are in the comments down below. There are no wrong answers! Before we continue, do be advised that we’ll be discussing spoilers for many Zelda games. Make sure you’re okay with that before you continue.
More: highlight, The Legend of Zelda, top
Paper Mario’s lost Nintendo 3DS trailer found after 14 years
Posted on 3 months ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News | 0 comments
It took fourteen years, but someone has finally managed to get their hands on the original Nintendo 3DS trailer for Paper Mario.
Before Paper Mario: Sticker Star became what it was, Nintendo and Intelligent Systems were seemingly going in a different direction for the title. Rather than what we got, the plan was to stick with more traditional gameplay that the series’ was mostly known for. That meant things like partners, a more standard RPG system, and more.
This is the best Nintendo 3DS console to play on in 2024
Posted on 4 months ago by Ethan in 3DS, Features | 0 comments
Throughout its lifespan, Nintendo released a lot of different 3DS models. You had the original 3DS, 3DS XL, New 3DS, New 3DS XL, the standard 2DS, and New 2DS XL – and that’s not even counting all the special editions of each individual console. With Nintendo’s next hardware on the horizon, we figure today is as good a day as any to go over all of the major 3DS revisions and determine which one is the best.
The Switch is certainly Nintendo’s most popular console, but the 3DS has seen something of a small resurgence lately. This is in spite of its online play shutting down earlier this year – indeed, a fair number of players are either discovering the 3DS’ library for the first time, or reliving their nostalgia from over ten years ago.
Pokemon Sun and Moon reveals tons of scrapped features and ideas
Posted on 4 months ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News | 0 comments
As part of the ongoing information leak from the Game Freak hack, more new details have been revealed regarding scrapped ideas and features for Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon. To say that there’s a lot here would be an understatement.
The first feature is about something called “Guardians”. This would have been in places of Z Moves, which were a big hook in Pokemon Sun and Moon. Pokemon would be able to change their type based on the “Miracle Stone” and a “Guardian” avatar would appear next to them with the same type. “Guardians” were also technically planned to be a fifth move.
Different effects were planned on the type. As one example, Electric Guardians make all Pokemon the field super effective to Electric moves while Water Guardians bring down the speed of opposing Pokemon. Players could visit “Miracle Mountain” to receive these stones.
