General Nintendo

Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 2 Comments

Mario is here to stay. As Nintendo’s biggest franchise – and one of the biggest in general – there are plenty of additional adventures in store for the future. Shigeru Miyamoto is unsure about where Mario will be taken down the road, though technology will play an important role.

Miyamoto was asked about where he sees the future of Mario going during the Super Mario Run event at the Apple Store a few days ago. He reflected on a poll conducted after Super Mario Bros. launched, and how Mario was more popular than Mickey Mouse. Miyamoto realized at the time that “Mickey Mouse was a character that had evolved with the evolution of cinema and animation, and so it was then when I felt that if I want Mario to continue to survive as a character, then Mario needs to evolve with technology and video games.” And so Mario’s future will depend on the technology Miyamoto stumbles upon in the future.

Miyamoto’s full comments:

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 19 Comments

Kirby is celebrating its 25th anniversary next year. In celebration of that, a new Japanese Twitter account is now open. Access it here. We should be hearing about plans for Kirby’s big anniversary in the months ahead.

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News, Random | 46 Comments

One teenager has been stopping by the Best Buy in Valley Stream, New York every day to play Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. Keeping in line with the holiday spirit, associates from the store’s Appliances Department chipped in collectively to get him a console of his own before Christmas.

The heartfelt moment was recorded on camera:

One of the Best Buy employees apparently offered to drive the teenager home so that he wouldn’t have to walk home alone with it. Even though the video has resulted in negative comments, it’s nice to see that there’s some good in the world!

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 143 Comments

Fans were able to submit a bunch of questions to Shigeru Miyamoto when he showed up for the Super Mario Run event at the Apple Store in SoHo a few days ago. At one point, he was asked if there was any character he wanted to develop or felt very passionate about that didn’t make it. He pointed to two franchises: Fox McCloud (Star Fox) and Pikmin.

Miyamoto said:

“Yeah, I always wanted Fox McCloud to be a bit more popular than he is. But I think one more would be Pikmin. So I think these two, I’ll need to put some more energy into.”

With Pikmin, we know that a new side-scroller is coming to 3DS in 2017. Miyamoto has also previously mentioned Pikmin 4 which one would assume is a different game.

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 25 Comments

There’s one additional excerpt from Glixel’s new interview with Shigeru Miyamoto that we wanted to give the spotlight to.

As part of the discussion, Miyamoto was asked if he’s playing games other than the mobile title Neko Atsume. This led him to speak about his enjoyment and respect of Minecraft.

Interestingly, Miyamoto told Glixel that Nintendo conducted “a lot of experiments that were similar to that back in the N64 days”. There were apparently “some designs that were very similar.”

Miyamoto’s full words:

“I do like Minecraft, but really more from the perspective of the fact that I really feel like that’s something we should have made. We had actually done a lot of experiments that were similar to that back in the N64 days and we had some designs that were very similar. It’s really impressive to me to see how they’ve been able to take that idea and turn it into a product.”

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News, Switch | 18 Comments

Glixel has a new interview up with Shigeru Miyamoto. But whereas most discussions with Nintendo’s legendary developer have focused specifically on Super Mario Run, this one is a bit more general.

While speaking with the site, Miyamoto spoke about working with his core team of four for thirty years, his role with development, inspirations and influences, relationship with Mario, and the similiarties between Apple and Switch. He also mentioned that younger staff “are taking the lead on Switch development”.

We’ve rounded up the notable responses from Miyamoto below. For the full interview, head on over to Glixel.

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Videos | 2 Comments

Back in October, Rayman creator Michel Ancel managed to uncover the original ROM for the first game on SNES after 20 years. Ubisoft planned to bring it to Nintendo’s old console at one point, but it wasn’t meant to be.

Since Ancel discovered the news about his discovery, a video actually surfaced. It may not be long and sound is absent, but it does show the SNES version in motion.

Ancel was also at IndieCade Europe late last month where he spoke about Rayman on SNES. Thanks to that, we have the off-screen image above.

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 5 Comments

In its issue last month, Retro Gamer published a large feature on Pokemon which takes a look back at the series’ earliest days up to the present. It included a number of comments from people with big connections to the franchise, including Game Freak’s Junichi Masuda and Ken Sugimori. Masuda is well-known as the producer at Game Freak while Sugimori drew the original 151 Pokemon.

Masuda in particular shared some interesting comments about the process in which Game Freak went to work on the original games, how the team was limited by the Game Boy hardware, and localization overseas. Sugimori talked about why each new Pokemon generation tends to see no more than 100 creatures.

We’ve included these statements from both Masuda and Sugimori below.

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 22 Comments

While playing Super Mario 64, have you ever wondered what the text says on the statue pictured above? You can find it in the courtyard inside the castle.

Fans had long debated about what the text on that statue had said. “Eternal Star” was one possibility. “L is Real” – or “L(uigi) is real February 4, 2001 in Paper M(ario)” – was another.

Reddit user b0nd18t shared a photo of a response letter received from Nintendo Game Counselor Michael D. Chandler way back in 1998. The staffer who wrote back apparently revealed the “meaning” of the mystery. You can read it in full below.

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 6 Comments

Universal Studios filed a series of patents between October and November. Five in total were secured, but we’re interesting in two of them in particular, as they could be connected to the company’s partnership with Nintendo.

Orlando Business Journal discovered the various patents. The drift racers and boom coaster filings have potential of being related to Mario Kart and Donkey Kong respectively.

Orlando Business Journal writes:

Drift racers: A two-rider, car-based amusement racing attraction with the ability to simulate drifting sensations. Two passengers, who could be in time/points competition with another car, will have control over some aspect of their ride vehicle: The driver would have a steering wheel and an acceleration and brake pedal to control the turning/drifting of the vehicle and speed; the rear passenger would have a control interface with buttons that could control the vehicle or bounce the ride vehicle, provide a boost to the vehicle during the race or affect the performance of another ride vehicle on the track, said the patent. For any Nintendo fan, that description brings to mind the video game company’s popular Mario Kart game series. In one version of the series, called Mario Kart: Double Dash, each car had two racers — including a driver and a rear passenger — who controlled the use of items during the race that could impact their car or others in the race.

Boom coaster: This is a unique arm that would attach to a ride vehicle to help enhance rides that appear to be on a track system, but are actually controlled by a separate arm. For example, the arm could be C-shaped connected to a secondary hidden track underneath the track guests see. As a result, rides that have story element breaks in the track — say like an upcoming jump from one track to another — could cause suspense. “Because the passenger may believe that the simulated ride surface controls a path of the passenger vehicle, the passenger may fear or anticipate that the passenger vehicle may crash or otherwise incur damage as a result of the elevated gap,” said the patent. This has many fans thinking it could also be related to Nintendo via the Donkey Kong Country video game series, which features areas with cars traveling through dangerous mines filled with jumps, dips and turns.

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