General Nintendo

Posted on 12 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

Not Enough Shaders has conducted interviews with the three founders of Crash Lab – Steve Ellis, Martin Wakeley and Lee Musgrave. All three worked at Rare for a lengthy period of time.

Some of the more important tidbits from the interview can be found below. There’s a lot of talk about rumors from the past, cancelled projects, and more.

– Crash Lab is interested in any device that makes sense for games
– Free Radical was working on TimeSplitters 2 HD in 2008
– Jet for Gemini for the Game Boy Color was being worked on by Bits Studios
– Rare never worked on a Timber 64 game
– Pro-Am64, which featured Timber, turned into Diddy Kong Racing
– Rare’s move to keep its handheld division was made so that the team would be experienced if Microsoft ever made a handheld
– DS team essentially phased out since resources were needed for Xbox/Xbox 360 games

Musgrave on Donkey Kong Racing…

“Ha! – yes, I made that video! . . . Donkey Kong Racing was obviously pretty heavily tied to Nintendo as a franchise, and as Rare approached the finalization of a buyout deal with Microsoft it was clear that the game had no future, at least with the ape’s as characters. We switched it around to be a Sabreman game, and there was a great early Xbox prototype – but someone, somewhere decreed that it was a little too old-school for the kind of ‘revolutionary gaming experiences’ that the Xbox was capable of delivering, and so it started down a path of meandering changes, updates and ‘evolution’ that finally saw it run out of steam and fall over. There were some great ideas in the game as it developed though, and I still look back to the early racing game design and think we could have done something great with that.”

Musgrave on Donkey Kong Racing’s gameplay…

“It was a pure racing game, the underlying software mechanics were actually based on car physics, but it also incorporated the idea of riders jumping between different animals mid-race, to always be riding the ones that were bigger or faster . . . we had some awesome gameplay in place, and it was lots of fun – we even had a multiplayer version working – and when you fell off, you had to tap-tap-tap (HyperSports style) to run on foot and catch up with an animal. Fun, but it lost some appeal without the DK universe around it, and Microsoft were unsure of its potential with Xbox gamers I think.”

Be sure to check out all of the interviews here. There’s lots of interesting stuff!

Thanks to John Stemen for the tip.

Posted on 12 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News, Wii U | 0 comments

Power-ups are some of the most important elements in a Mario title. Super Mario Bros. 3, for instance, wouldn’t be nearly the same without the inclusion of the Super Leaf or Tanooki Suit.

You might be wondering: how does Nintendo approach the power-ups? How does Nintendo decide which ones to bring back?

Nintendo’s Takashi Tezuka was asked about this in the latest issue of Game Informer.

He responded with the following:

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Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

“We respect Nintendo as a highly successful competitor. Of course we will watch what they’re doing with interest. It’s a very interesting product they’re bringing to market. I don’t have a clear view on how successful it will be. And to a large extent it doesn’t matter what I think. It matters what the great British public think. So we will see.

They certainly laid a broad church in terms of the list of features hopefully trying to have a broad appeal in the device. I don’t think there will be huge volumes in the market this side of Christmas. I think they will pull in early adopters. It’s probably one to be concerned about far more and watch more carefully into next year. But we feel very confident that in the PlayStation and we won’t be going after the same niche early adopter market they’ll be going after this Christmas. I think we’re sitting in separate camps at this stage, so it won’t be head to head.

If they gain real traction next year it becomes a more important factor in the mix. They’ve been a very key player in the market overall as you well know in recent years. So we have to respect that, watch that and do our best to compete with that.” – Sony UK’s Fergal Gara

Is it just me or is Sony really upping their respectful banter lately? I don’t think I’ve heard them berate Nintendo at all over the last few months, save for when they say that Vita+PS3 = Wii U. But that’s not berating or being disrespectful- it’s more of a political move, if you will. I think Mr. Gara definitely makes some great points in this statement. Wii U is going to sell out for the first few months because that’s what always happens with new consoles (well… mostly), and the folks buying it right away aren’t really people Sony is competing for.

Via Eurogamer

Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Nintendo, News, Wii U | 0 comments

“If you look at the upcoming Christmas market, the Wii will be selling in very low volumes – it’s on its way out – and the Wii U will arrive, but it will bring in a relatively small number of early adopter consumers. We see ourselves well positioned for the casual market who won’t buy Wii U on day one. We’ve got a wow moment, we feel. I remember when people picked up the Wii controller for the first time, that was a big moment, it was a casual market breakthrough, but we thing we’ve got a casual market breakthrough as well with Wonderbook and the lowest priced PS3 yet.” – Sony’s Managing Director of PSUK, Fergal Gara

Whoa, I completely forgot about Wonderbook. If that’s what Sony is banking on to help them win the casual market… yikes. Don’t get your hopes up, Sony! Of course, they also had some nice words for the Big N when discussing casual markets:

“If you look at the casual market overall in the last few years, there’s no doubt that the kings of that market has been Nintendo, they have done a great job with a great product.”

Via CVG

Posted on 12 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Videos, Wii U | 0 comments

There’s lots of Assassin’s Creed III footage and a bunch of details to check out in the video above, for those who weren’t able to watch the show earlier today. Reggie’s interview bits are towards the end.

Source

Posted on 12 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

Update 2: Both presentations are 3DS-related and will have a smaller focus. There’s some speculation that this will be about just one game.

Update: George claims in other tweets that a Japanese broadcast will be shown at 8:00 PM PDT / 11:00 PM EDT. The English event should be soon after this, but “may or may not be tonight.”

Out of the blue, Nintendo of America has apparently confirmed that it will host its own Nintendo Direct tonight. It looks like this will be a NA-specific broadcast as Nintendo’s Japanese/European divisions haven’t announced anything on their end.

Strangely, the upcoming Nintendo Direct isn’t mentioned on NoA’s Facebook or Twitter accounts. We’re only hearing about this through IGN’s Rich George.

If this is really happening tonight, we should have more news very soon.

Source

Posted on 12 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

The tenth episode of Nintendo TV can now be viewed on the European eShop. Games highlighted include Pokemon Black/White 2 and WWE ’13.

Posted on 12 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News, Wii | 0 comments

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Posted on 12 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Wii U | 0 comments

Here’s a sneak peak of Geoff Keighley’s interview with Reggie Fils-Aime that will be featured on tonight’s episode of GT.TV:

Source

Posted on 12 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

Ninja Gaiden III got absolutely panned when it came out. Critics and series followers alike were incredibly disappointed with the final product.

To say the least, developer Team Ninja wasn’t anticipating that kind of reaction.

While speaking with Gamasutra, director Yohei Shimbori said that “everybody at the studio was pretty shocked”:

“…everybody at the studio was pretty shocked. It really made us take another look at the game and why that reaction was there. One of the things that I learned was the power of having a series behind you, and what it means to be part of a series. There are existing fans out there, and you have to think about the people who have supported the series for so long, and you want to make sure that the game that you make appeals to them first, and satisfies those fans first.”

Team Ninja is hoping to fix things with Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge. The new edition features dismemberment, tougher AI, a new playable character, new weapons, enemy types, online co-op, and more.

Source