General Nintendo

Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Rumors | 28 Comments

Retro Studios has worked on three Metroid games and two Donkey Kong Country titles. Could their next project be something entirely original? That’s what the latest speculation is pointing to.

Liam Robertson, who is known for digging up information about cancelled games as well as ones still in production, recently appeared on Gamnesia’s Nintendo podcast with some insight. According to him, Retro Studios tends to have three chances to pitch a project to Nintendo. If the concept isn’t greenlit after this, they’ll be assigned a project that NCL deems more likely to sell well.

Robertson went on to state in the podcast that Retro’s new game is something that they did indeed pitch. Pitches were submitted to Nintendo throughout 2014, one of which was eventually accepted by Nintendo.

Robertson ended with the following about Retro possibly working on an original IP:

“… And you were saying, ‘could it be an original property?’ I think, actually, the time is now for Retro to do an original property. They’ve done two established Nintendo franchises, they’ve done Metroid and Donkey Kong, and I think now is the time to let them take hold of the reins a bit more for themselves and do that. And I think if it is something that they pitched themselves, then that does make it more likely that they pitched something original.”

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 11 Comments

Nintendo is just a few hours away from its latest investor briefing. If you’ve been on the site before, you should probably know what to expect.

Over the past couple of years, these meetings haven’t really been the place for major game announcements. However, we’ll be seeing (or at least hearing about) Nintendo’s mobile title for the first time. The new membership service is also something that could be touched upon. And could we finally hear about Quality of Life again?

In any case, we’ll be covering the event as it happens later today. It should be held at roughly 9 PM ET / 6 PM PT, with the event lasting 90 minutes. I may create a live blog depending on how much coverage it’s getting from those who are attending, but we’ll definitely post any important news regardless.

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

Nintendo has sold 21 million amiibo worldwide, according to president and CEO Tatsumi Kimishima. This number indicates that around 10.6 million units were sold since March.

We also have some data specific to France. Journalist Chloé Woitier reports that over 800,000 amiibo have been sold in the territory thus far, including 70,000 cards.

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 28 Comments

Earlier today, we heard from Nintendo CEO Tatsumi Kimishima that at least one new Nintendo Direct will air before the end of this year. Another tidbit about the company’s plans for the presentations has since been made known.

During Nintendo’s financial results briefing, Kimishima mentioned that Nintendo Direct is currently being remodeled. In 2016, we’ll be seeing the new format. Specific details about what’s in store for Nintendo Direct in the future were not made announced.

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 17 Comments

It’s been several months since the last, true Nintendo Direct. But even though there hasn’t been a new presentation in quite some time, we did recently hear that the broadcasts will continue – despite the passing of Nintendo president Satoru Iwata.

Nintendo’s Tatsumi Kimishima also provided a brief update about the future of Nintendo Directs during a financial results briefing earlier today. According to the new company president, at least one presentation will be coming this year. That means we should be seeing something within the next couple of months.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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