Book Club

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Book Club, Reviews | 0 comments

Authors: Austin, Jack, Laura

As many of you know, the podcast crew here at NintendoEverything has just wrapped up their first ever Book Club (for Video Games!), completing Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars in five weeks. This week, we unveil the final piece of this puzzle: The “Group Review”, where the three of us will write a brief summary of what we thought of the game, tied with a simple thumbs up or thumbs down.

Just a note: These aren’t necessarily meant to be totally objective, but rather a simple subjective summary of what we thought during our playthrough. Don’t hastily make a purchase based on them.

Hit the break for the reviews.

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Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Book Club, Features, Site updates | 0 comments

edit: An incredibly close race has ensued! Only one vote separates the current leader from the second place contender!

So there you go. We conquered Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars for our first ever NintendoEverything Book Club, and now it’s time to start thinking ahead! We won’t be playing the next game until next weekend (and we won’t be discussing it until two weeks from now) but today we need to get the voting part out of the way!

You’ve got six games to choose from this time around, all of which are hand-picked to suit a shorter play session compared to the 20-odd hour Mario RPG since we want to wrap up Book Club #2 by the time E3 rolls around. Your options are as follows:

– Mole Mania (GB/3DS VC) follows a mole named “Muddy Mole” whose wife and children have been stolen by the farmer, Jinbe. Muddy has to go find his wife and children by finding his way through puzzle based worlds. Cost: $3.

– Zombies Ate My Neighbors (SNES/Wii VC) is a run and gun video game developed by LucasArts and originally published by Konami for the Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis consoles in 1993. The object of the game is for one or two players to take control of protagonists Zeke and Julie to rescue the titular neighbors from monsters often seen in horror movies. Cost: $8.

– ActRaiser (SNES/Wii VC) is a 1990 Super Nintendo Entertainment System action and city-building simulation game developed by Quintet and published by Enix (now Square Enix) that combines traditional side-scrolling platforming with urban planning god game sections. Cost: $8.

– Pokémon Snap (N64/Wii VC) is a first-person rail shooter and simulation video game developed by HAL Laboratory with Pax Softnica and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64 video game console. The objective of the game is to take pictures of Pokémon, using items such as apples and “pester balls” to achieve better shots. After each round, players are judged based on the quality of their screenshots. Cost: $10

– Luigi’s Mansion (GCN) is an action-adventure game published by Nintendo for the GameCube. The game takes place in a haunted mansion when Luigi wins a contest that he never entered. He told his brother to meet him there to celebrate his victory. Luigi is searching for his brother Mario, who came to the mansion earlier, but went missing. Cost: $50+

– The Starship Damrey (3DS eShop) is a mystery and survival horror game designed by Kazuya Asano and Takemaru Abiko. The game throws players into a suspenseful environment with no tutorials or hints to guide them. Cost: Probably ~$10.

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Book Club, Features | 3 Comments

If you want to play along and discuss during the week, check out our forum thread here. If you missed out on the first week but you still want to participate, you’re looking at a total of about 20 hours of game-time this week to catch up!

Onwards to the end of the game, everybody! Regardless of where you ended up last week, we’re powering through to the very end and we’ll do our discussion on the podcast this coming weekend. Best of luck! Be sure to share your thoughts via forums or email.

Also, please do not send us emails discussing portions of the game beyond where the book club is. We want to avoid spoilers and we don’t want to feel unable to answer your questions/respond to your comments, so if you’ve gotten ahead of everyone (which is fine!) do your best to only talk about the parts that we’ve all agreed upon. :]

Hit the break for info on how to participate in a discussion, plus other ‘Frequently Asked Questions’!

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Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Book Club, Site updates | 0 comments

Just a quick note for those playing Super Mario RPG alongside us for the NintendoEverything Book Club: We’re only going to be getting the sixth Star this week, so if you’re struggling to try and get the seventh, you may cease! The reason for this is two-fold:

1) The sixth one takes a really long time to get.

2) The seventh is tied to the final boss, which we want to do on a separate day.

Thanks!

~Austin

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Book Club, Features, Site updates | 0 comments

If you want to play along and discuss during the week, check out our forum thread here. If you missed out on the first week but you still want to participate, you’re looking at a total of about 11 hours of game-time this week to catch up!

Since last week we obtained the fourth and fifth Stars (out of seven!) in the game, this week we’re just going to gather up the last of the seven stars! Don’t beat the final boss yet though– we’ll do that last section and a post-mortem on the game next week!

Also, please do not send us emails discussing portions of the game beyond where the book club is. We want to avoid spoilers and we don’t want to feel unable to answer your questions/respond to your comments, so if you’ve gotten ahead of everyone (which is fine!) do your best to only talk about the parts that we’ve all agreed upon. :]

Hit the break for info on how to participate in a discussion, plus other ‘Frequently Asked Questions’!

Read More

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Book Club, Features, Site updates | 0 comments

I think this week is going to be the best one so far, because the discussions we had on our latest podcast episode really kicked me into gear for thinking more intellectually as I play, and noticing more things I hadn’t initially. If you want to play along and discuss during the week, check out our forum thread here. If you missed out on the first week but you still want to participate, you’re looking at a total of about 8 hours of game-time this week to catch up!

Since last week we obtained the second and third Stars (out of seven!) in the game, this week we’ll do our best to get Stars #4 and #5! You should stop as soon as you get to a save point after Star #5. I’m guessing this will take about 3 hours or so. Maybe a little more, so get crackin’!

Also, please do not send us emails discussing portions of the game beyond where the book club is. We want to avoid spoilers and we don’t want to feel unable to answer your questions/respond to your comments, so if you’ve gotten ahead of everyone (which is fine!) do your best to only talk about the parts that we’ve all agreed upon. :]

Hit the break for info on how to participate in a discussion, plus other ‘Frequently Asked Questions’!

Read More

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Book Club, Site updates | 0 comments

Are you sad because it appears as though the Wii outsold the Wii U for yet another month in a row? Well, here’s something to cheer you up: Anyone participating in the ‘NintendoEverything Book Club (for Video Games!)‘ can take part in discussions about Super Mario RPG in our forums right this second. We’re on week 2 of this whole shin-dig (catch up if you need to!), and people are just now getting where they need to be, so the discussions are finally “heating up” as they say in all those cool sports that people watch. Or in Pokémon Stadium.

You can also send your thoughts on this section– which encompasses such magical locations as the Kero Sewers and Mole Village– to [email protected]. If you say things that are nice and interesting/important, we’ll read them and discuss them on the podcast!

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Book Club, Features, Site updates | 0 comments

Alright, so we made it through week one. Not bad, everyone! Hopefully folks are still enjoying things and finding a lot to discuss in the forums, and if you’ve made it through section 2 of the play-through you can head there right now to talk about it. If you missed out on the first week but you still want to participate, you’re looking at a total of about 4 hours of game-time this week to catch up!

Since last week we obtained the first Star (out of seven!) in the game, this week we’ll do our best to get Stars #2 and #3! You should stop as soon as you get to a save point after Star #3. I’m guessing this will take about 2 hours or so. Maybe a little more, so get crackin’!

Also, please do not send us emails discussing portions of the game beyond where the book club is. We want to avoid spoilers and we don’t want to feel unable to answer your questions/respond to your comments, so if you’ve gotten ahead of everyone (which is fine!) do your best to only talk about the parts that we’ve all agreed upon. :]

Hit the break for info on how to participate in a discussion, plus other ‘Frequently Asked Questions’!

Read More

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Book Club, Features, Podcast | 0 comments

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Book Club, Features, Site updates | 0 comments

Okay, time for a bit more of an informal post than I’d usually put together:

I just opened up the week one discussion thread of Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars for those who are planning on participating in this week’s NintendoEverything Book Club (for Video Games!) discussion. It can be found by clicking right here.

You do have to make an account with NintendoEverything in order to partake in this half of the discussion, but I’d make the case that it’s worth the effort! It means you can comment on news stories every day as well instead of having opinions that you keep bundled up inside yourself, AND you can take part in our (hopefully) intelligent discussions of video games every week with the NEBC!

You have until the podcast’s recording (usually Friday or Saturday) if you want to send in your thoughts on the game to [email protected], but you can take as long as you’d like if you only plan to follow along and discuss in the forum. The deadline is merely so we have time to screen all of the submissions before sitting down to record on podcast day. This week all of us will be getting from the beginning of the game to the place where we obtain the first “star piece”. You’ll know what that means when you get a ways into the game, but I’m guessing we’re looking at a small 2-hour time commitment this time around.

If you need more info on what exactly the NEBC is or how to participate (as well as other information you may want), please click here.