General Nintendo

Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 3 Comments

Last week, we heard that Shigeru Miyamoto would be attending the Japan Expo in France. Those plans have sadly since been scrapped.

Nintendo of France announced on Twitter that Miyamoto won’t be at the expo for person reasons. Specifically, his absence is due to the health of his father.

We regret to announce that Mr Miyamoto will not present at Japan Expo for personal reasons related to the health of his father.

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 12 Comments

Earlier this month, Nintendo launched something called “Nintendo News” on its Japanese website. Think of it as a weekly online magazine in a way.

The latest issue, posted a few days ago, features some comments from Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma who reflected on the series. Aonuma spoke in one part about how discovering treasure is one of Zelda’s most enjoyable aspects.

On the topic of finding things when you go on an adventure, Aonuma said:

My son is in elementary school, and he asked, “What is so fun about Zelda anyway?” I tell him, “Finding treasure is the most fun!” Even if it is only one rupee inside the treasure chest, I think (laughs). Whenever you find a treasure chest, there is always a “Yes! I found it!”-sense of accomplishment, and when you open it, it is just so fun to hear. To discover a new item, I think I find pleasure in both the surprise and the opening.

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

For those unaware, Nintendo released an arcade version of Super Mario Bros. back in the day titled “Vs. Super Mario Bros.” When exactly the game came out is unclear. Some have even said that the arcade version of Super Mario Bros. came first, with the NES/Famicom version following later.

German website Nintendo-Online recently looked into the release date origins of Vs. Super Mario Bros. Here’s a summary of their findings:

? It is widely believed that Super Mario Bros. first launched in Japan on September 13th., 1985, on the Famicom. In 1985 or 1986 it was released in North America and 1987 in Europe on the NES.
? Later it was ported to arcade. This version is known as Vs. Super Mario Bros. and was launched in North America in 1986.
? But Nintendo-Online found four trustful sources claiming that Super Mario Bros. was originally released as an arcade game.
? The first source is a review SMB in a 1987 issue of the German video game magazine Happy Computer. Here, Heinrich Lenhardt – a famous German video game journalist – wrote what translates to “Arcade visitors might already know this game, that is now available in a nearly identical implementation for the Nintendo Videogame [sic]“
? In 1994 the famous video game historian Leonard Herman wrote in Phoenix: The Fall & Rise of Videogames: “[T]he home version of Super Mario Bros. looked and played exactly like its arcade counterpart.”
? The most detailed reference to an arcade machine that preceded the home console version of SMB comes from video game historian Steve L. Kent. In his 2001 book The Ultimate History of Video Games, he wrote “Super Mario Bros. did very well in Japanese arcades and attracted some attention to the failing U.S. arcade industry. By the end of the year, Nintendo engineers succeeded in creating a home version of Super Mario Bros. for the Famicom. […] Although the home version of Super Mario Bros. was not identical to the arcade game, it was an extremely close approximation.”.
? In 2009, Kent repeated the basic information in a blog entry (http://sadsamspalace.blogspot.de/2009/08/okay-now-that-i-haveofficially-looked.html) where he stresses that this mysterious arcade game is not identical to Vs. Super Mario Bros. and was released a year before the Famicom version: “[A]n arcade version of the game predates the NES version and the well-known VS version. The original arcade version shipped in 1984.”
? In 2011, Tony Mott, editor-in-chief of Edge magazine, notes in his book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die that Super Mario Bros. has been “originally an arcade game”.
? So there are four video game journalists and historians that mention such an arcade game. But it seems that until now no major website has taken note of this evidence. Nintendo-Online tried to further investigate on this matter, but unfortunately did not really succeed. Also, they tried contacting some of these authors, which was also not successful.
? Concludingly the site has to say that it is not sure what to think of these references. There is no obvious evidence for the existence of an arcade port preceded the home console version of SMB. After all, if that would be the case, we would have real proof for that. But on the other hand, it is quite unlikely that all of the four sources are based on misconceptions. So Nintendo-Online could not clarify this mystery. But at least we could point it out and could conclude that the existence of such an early arcade port is very unlikely.

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, General Nintendo, Videos, Wii U | 0 comments

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 14 Comments

“I really think there needs to be a Nintendo genre,” legendary video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto has said.

Speaking with the LA Times, Miyamoto stated:

“Nintendo isn’t one simple element of an overall gaming industry. I really think there needs to be a Nintendo genre, that’s almost its own entity.

Miyamoto later spoke of designing games as making performance art. As opposed to making “games seem really cool”, the folks at Nintendo enjoy laughing at themselves and he believes the company is almost like a group of “performers.”

It’s not that I don’t like serious stories or that I couldn’t make one, but currently in the video game industry you see a lot of game designers who are working really hard to make their games seem really cool. For a lot of us at Nintendo, it’s difficult to decide what cool is. In fact, it’s a lot easier for us to laugh at ourselves. It’s almost as if we’re performers. Our way of performing is by creating these fun, odd and goofy things.”

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The Pokemon series has continued to grow, including the amount of creatures. There have been over 700 Pokemon created thus far.

Game Freak naturally has a daunting task in keeping all of the Pokemon’s strength balanced in each one of their games. How do they go about that?

Battle director Shigeki Morimoto explained:

We start off with an idea in mind, like “How would this little fellow have to be used to be able to beat that guy when it’s about this strong?” Keeping that in mind, we assign stats to each Pokémon. After that, we do all kinds of playtesting among ourselves and adjust areas where the balance seems off as we go along. Even so, after the games are released, we find that they are still sometimes used in ways that we never imagined. There is still room for customization by deciding moves and Abilities, and so it’s really interesting to see what trends develop on the battle scene after the games’ release.

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 6 Comments

At the company’s Annual Shareholders Meeting, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata was once again re-elected to the board of directors. That means he’ll retain his position within the company.

It’s unclear what sort of approval rating Iwata earned. In 2011, Iwata’s rating came in at 92.9 percent, but dropped to 77.3 percent last year.

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