General Nintendo

Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Videos | 0 comments

The latest episode of Nintendo’s Japanese show Nyannyan Neko Mario Time has now gone live. We’ve included it below.

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

Nintendo Inquirer managed to get its hands on stock numbers for upcoming amiibo. Given data obtained from New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis and Milwaukee, it appears that Lottie will be receiving more than double the stock compared to the other Animal Crossing characters. This suggests that Lottie will be a Target exclusive in the United States.

Stock numbers are also in for Mewtwo. It’s expected that there will be around 12 units for smaller stores whereas larger ones will be loaded with 24-48 amiibo.

Source

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 2 Comments

NES designer Masayuki Uemura has offered quite a bit of insight into the console’s controller. Here’s what was shared with USgamer:

“There were, as you can probably imagine, a lot of difficulties we faced in doing things for the first time in building this hardware, but one of the most difficult was, ‘What shape and layout will the controller have?’ This has a touch of coincidence about it, too, but some of those people who had gone to work with Gunpei Yokoi’s team eventually found their way back to our team. So one of the ideas that came up because of that was, ‘Well, we’ve got this Game & Watch multi-screen Donkey Kong that uses the controller format of a plus control pad and buttons.’ So we hooked that up and got it working.”

“At the time, we were prototyping various ideas for the Famicom hardware, as well as controllers. When we took this idea that had been used for controls with the Donkey Kong Game & Watch and got it working on the Famicom prototype with that same style of controls, we immediately knew, ‘OK, this feels right; there’s something good about this.’ That means that there are actually a few people who can claim that they invented the controller for the Famicom!

“I think that the biggest reason that we liked the controls this way was just how good the original Game & Watch Donkey Kong, which was on multi-screen, felt. To expand on that a little further, with this prototype… the multi-screen format of the Donkey Kong Game & Watch means that you have a screen on top and a screen on the bottom, with the controls down below. When we hooked up the prototype, it meant that you were no longer looking down there [at the controls], but up here [at the screen]. Yet we suddenly realized, kind of mysteriously, that you didn’t need to look at the controls while you were playing the game, and it still felt right!

“And up to that point, we had tried a big variety of control styles and they had all had some sort of something that didn’t feel quite right about them, but this was something that no matter who tried it on our team, they could tell right away that this worked. So that’s when I decided to put my foot down and make the call that this is what we would be going with.

“I may have made the decision, but in the end, it’s something that whoever worked on the Game & Watch for Donkey Kong had a hand in, whoever brought the idea to try out the prototype had a hand in it—it was really a team effort.”

“You know, we didn’t patent that technology (crosspad design) at the time. Once it was established, you kind of started to see it pop up everywhere, and now it’s kind of become a standard for controls in games.”

USgamer has much more with Uemura in its piece. You can read up on the full article here.

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 5 Comments

Game Freak, developer of the Pokemon RPGs, has acquired Koa Games. The mobile studio created titles such as Labyrinth RPG, Erunea Kingdom, Legendary Legion and Road Roller.

Koa Games had been suffering from financial losses, which prompted the takeover from Game Freak. As for the actual studio, Koa will be disbanded and absorbed into Game Freak. The acquisition itself took place in August.

Source, Via

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Videos, Wii | 2 Comments

Liam Robertson dug deep into the development and troubles surrounding Project H.A.M.M.E.R. earlier this year.Today, Robertson published a new report that sheds even more light on the cancelled Wii game.

Here are a few highlights:

– Shigeru Miyamoto wasn’t happy that NST spent over $1 million on lavish CGI sequences which were ordered the game design was concrete and before the game’s reveal in 2006
– Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis also featured cut-scenes from Silver Ant for a high sum of money
– This all caused the person in charge of budgetary concerns on both H.A.M.M.E.R. and Mario vs Donkey Kong 2 getting a slapped wrist from Miyamoto
– Miyamoto branded the investment in CGI “superfluous”
– This ended NST’s relationship with Silver Ant
– Katsuhiko Kanno was the person in charge at the game’s inception
– Kanno was apparently “difficult to work with”, “rude” and “uncooperative”
– Around this time, is is thought that a large number of NST staff left the company under their own volition
– Staff count at NST dropped from 50 to about half of that
– To steady the ship staff were moved onto the project from elsewhere in Nintendo’s North American network
– Metroid Prime level designer Jason Behr was brought on to bring things back on course
– Behr found himself singled out as a scapegoat for the game’s shortcomings
– Behr stayed on until around 2008, and would leave NST to join Monolith Productions
– Senior staff at NST finally spotted the friction between Kanno and his team
– He was removed from the project in 2007 and replaced by Masamichi Abe (Pikmin 1 and 2 director)
– Metroid Prime producer Kensuke Tanabe joined in a supervisory role towards the end of the project
– He didn’t have much of an impact, and only visited NST’s offices a handful of times
– Project H.A.M.M.E.R. would be re-tooled as Wii Crush, a casual title aimed at the Wii Sports audience
– Would have supported MotionPlus
– Project cancelled entirely in 2009

You can see the latest report on Project H.A.M.M.E.R. in its entirety below.

Source

More: NST, Project H.AM.M.E.R., top

Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

Yesterday, Nintendo announced that the Green Yarn Yoshi amiibo would be leaving the Yoshi’s Woolly World bundle next month. Walmart has followed up on the news by opening pre-orders for the plushie. You can reserve the amiibo right here.

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 80 Comments

SEGA has taken some heat with the Sonic series as of late. In particular, Sonic Boom admittedly led the gaming franchise astray and resulted in a large amount of criticism.

Speaking with Marketing Week, SEGA Europe marketing director Jon Rooke promised that new games in the series “will be more inspired by how it played in its heyday.” He also acknowledged the difficulty in bringing Sonic into 3D.

Rooke said:

“Sega has publicly apologised to the fans as the quality of console games in the Sonic franchise hasn’t been acceptable over recent years. It’s been tough translating that iconic side scrolling 2D experience from the 90s into 3D but Sonic is still huge for us so the new games will be more inspired by how it played in its heyday.”

Sonic Generations actually felt like a step in the right direction to me. And Sonic Colors, while not perfect, definitely had some redeeming qualities. It kind of makes you wish SEGA could be more consistent with the franchise!

Source, Via

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, General Nintendo, News | 3 Comments

GameSpot has posted an interview with Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma and Tri Force Heroes director Hiromasa Shikata. Between the two, they commented on the inspiration behind the game’s communication features, item ideas that were scrapped, consideration for two-player support, interest in using amiibo in future Zelda games, and more.

We’ve rounded up the various comments below. You can also read up on a few extra comments from GameSpot here.

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 2 Comments

Earlier this year, Runnerguy2489 completed the first three dungeons in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time blindfolded. He’s since stepped his game up by finishing the entire game using the same method.

You can take a look at Runnerguy2489’s playthough of the ending below. To complete Ocarina of Time, he spent roughly 103 hours.

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More: fan video, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

Next month, the green Yarn Yoshi amiibo will be leaving the Yoshi’s Woolly World bundle in North America. Nintendo announced on its Twitter account today that the plushie will be sold as a standalone item starting on November 13.

Here’s the relevant tweet:

Pricing for the amiibo will be set at $16.99.

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