The magazine will debut this month and will release new issues every four weeks. A total of 13 issues will be available per year. Future also plans to include a free Pokemon-themed gift each month.

The Pokemon Company International’s Heather Dalgleish commented:

“We’re delighted to be collaborating with leading publisher, Future. Their extensive reach in the market ensures that the Official Pokémon Magazine can be enjoyed by Pokémon fans across the United Kingdom.”

Thanks to Zack Wiliams for the tip.

Source, Via

Era’s Adventure dev was unaware he used Yoshi

Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

Era’s Adventure features Yoshi as its lead character. But Botond Kopacz, the sole developer behind the Android release, says that he was completely unaware that the model he chose was of Nintendo’s classic dinosaur.

“Actually this is an indie game developed by one developer, so due to the limitation of effort, I purchased a cute character from TurboSquid, one of the biggest 3D asset stores, without knowing the background story of the character Yoshi, since I’m not a Super Mario fan.”

Kopacz added that he began to realize the significance of the lead character he used after he received emails “from Super Mario fans that I stole Yoshi”. However, Kopacz feels that he did not infringe upon a copyright since “no assets are stolen from any Nintendo game or website and the Yoshi’s name is not present anywhere”.

“Once the game was released on the Play Store, after spending hundreds of hours in making the game, I started receiving ‘kind’ mails from Super Mario fans that I stole Yoshi, etc. So I started Googling and I realized that the character is really from the Super Mario series. Since no assets are stolen from any Nintendo game or website and the Yoshi’s name is not present anywhere, there is no copyright violation. [There would be] at least pattern violation if the 3D model is detailedly registered in the US pattern database.”

Yoshi’s appearance slightly, according to Kopacz:

“I know that, even if I modify the character a little bit, that this will still be a big problem for the Nintendo fans, but I’m making the game alone so I have really limited time to do some changes. And I still hope that many people will find the game great and many people will enjoy it.”

Source

A look at Activision’s canned Hero Mix project

Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

At one point, Activision and 7 Studios were kicking around an idea for something called “Hero Mix”. The “experimental music game” never saw the day of light, but designer Kylan Coats did post a series of images showing what could have been. Hit up the gallery above for photos.

Source, Via

Nintendo requires developers to partner with Japanese companies in order to release games in Japan

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories | 0 comments

If you’re a game developer who is solely (or majority) owned by folks who are not Japanese, Nintendo says you’re going to have to partner up with a Japanese company if you want to release your game in that region on one of their consoles. It’s an interesting rule to have in place, and one that doesn’t affect too many publishers– but indie developers get hit pretty hard when trying to bring their games overseas.

Various developers have chimed in on the subject below:

“Unless you own a Japanese company, you are required to partner with a Japanese company. This results in shared royalties, which is not ideal. Not all developers are willing to go through the hassle of releasing their games in Japan, which reduces the number of games available in that market.”

– Renegade Kid’s Jools Watsham

“Our opinion on the rule you talk about is honestly moot. We have no desire to tell others how to do their business, and if they require 51% of publisher’s stocks to be Japanese owned, we’ll work around that if we want to release in Japan; and will find a publisher who meets that criteria.

“Do we wish we could self-publish in Japan? Certainly. But we trust that they have their reasons for the above rule, and we will do our best to get our games to eager Japanese fans, whatever it takes.”

– Gaijin Games

“I think Toki Tori 2 is interesting for the Japanese market, but as I said before we have to find a good publisher first.”

– Two Tribe’s Shan Poon

Via NWR

Sakurai says fans shouldn’t worry about his injury and Smash Bros. development

Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories, Wii U | 1 Comment

Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai is dealing with a lot of pain at the moment. In this week’s Famitsu, he revealed outright that he is suffering from calcific tendonitis and several ruptures in the muscles. The pain itself is bad enough, but it’s also affecting his work on the next Smash Bros. games.

Sakurai does have a Twitter account and fans from all over the world have been writing in and wishing him well. He’s been keeping tabs on the various messages, but told everyone that they shouldn’t worry about his injury or the development of Smash Bros.

Thanks a lot of encouragement messages.Please don’t worry about my injury & SMASH BROS development.
— ?? ?? (@Sora_Sakurai) March 1, 2013

Source

Tsujimoto on increasing Monster Hunter’s popularity overseas, localization time, won’t make changes just for the west, more

Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories, Wii U | 0 comments

Monster Hunter is one of the biggest gaming franchises in Japan. But much like Dragon Quest, its popularity has never reached similar levels overseas.

Capcom hopes that it will begin to change the situation with Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate. On Wii U, users will be able to play with others online. The Wii U and 3DS versions feature save transfers. And in Europe, a Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate bundles will be released.

According to Monster Hunter producer Ryozo Tsujimoto, these were all steps taken to enhance the series’ appeal in the west:

“You’re right in terms of us intentionally doing this. It’s always been our wish to make a good start and we’ve always been saying we’ll do this at one point. Monster Hunter in Japan started and developed in a very different way to how it’s been in Europe so far, Japan being a rather densely populated place with a quite prominent culture of visiting each other’s places to play games together. You see kids carrying their consoles taking them to their friends. They already had this basis of playing games through local network, whereas it’s a bit more difficult in the US and Europe where your neighbour is seven miles away. With Wii U, which is online compatible, and with 3DS with its portability, releasing both of them together, we’re giving opportunity and options to consumers to really pick up the version they want and the one that suits them. By doing that we might be able to actually have a breakthrough. That’s definitely our intention.”

The Conduit HD confirmed for NVIDIA Tegra devices

Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories, Wii | 1 Comment

As originally expected, The Conduit is heading to Tegra-supported devices – including the upcoming Shield handheld.

The Conduit HD will be pretty much like the original Wii game, though it will sport prettier visuals. Players will be able to take on the first two missions for free and will need to offer up $7 for the remaining seven. There will also be an option to purchase levels 3-6 for $3 and levels 7-9 for the same amount.

It’ll definitely be strange seeing The Conduit on new hardware, but I guess High Voltage Software figured this would be a smart thing to do.

Source, Via

Renegade Kid working on “Treasurenauts”

Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories | 0 comments

A new trademark coming from Renegade Kid has been discovered in the USPTO. Siliconera detected the name “Treasurenauts”, which was filed by the Mutant Mudds developer.

As it turns out, Treasurenauts is one of Renegade Kid’s next games. The studio has confirmed that it will be making an announcement in the near future.

Source

Pwnee Studios says they’ve had few issues working with Wii U development, Nintendo has been very helpful

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories, Wii U, Wii U eShop | 0 comments

Developer of the upcoming Cloudberry Kingdom on Wii U “Pwnee Studios” told Aussie Gamer the other day that Nintendo has been great to work with relating to the development and publishing of their game on the Wii U eShop, and they were “pumped” when they got the chance to bring the game to Nintendo fans.

Nintendo has been great to work with so far! We were raised playing the NES and SNES, so when we got the chance to develop our game for the Wii U, we were pumped! We really haven’t had many issues with Nintendo, and they have been very helpful whenever we have had a problem.

In terms of getting the game onto the eShop, it has gone pretty smoothly. We presented the game to Nintendo, they liked it, and they said we should go onto the eShop. All we had to do was agree!

– Pwnee Studios’ TJ Lutz

One of the more interesting bits of information to come from this is how simple it was to get Nintendo to let them publish the game on the eShop! They simply show off their game (probably to some Nintendo representatives), and the Big N makes the decision themselves based on how cool the game is. I find that to be quite a refreshingly simple way to get a game put out!

Via Nintendo Life

All of EA’s future games will utilize micro-transactions of some kind

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories | 0 comments

After we heard that Dead Space 3 would give players the ability to pay a few extra bucks for upgrades to weapons, items, and armor in-game, a lot of people were concerned: If EA was bringing this trendy business practice into a truly core franchise like Dead Space, what would games like Madden and The Sims look like in the future? According to the mega-publisher, they’ll look awfully similar:

“The next and much bigger piece [of the business] is microtransactions within games. We’re building into all of our games the ability to pay for things along the way, either to get to a higher level to buy a new character, to buy a truck, a gun, whatever it might be, and consumers are enjoying and embracing that way of the business.”

– EA CFO Blake Jorgensen

I can’t imagine too many gamers are happy about this, but if history is any indication, these things will pass. Such things are trendy now– like social networking interaction– but they don’t represent the core of what the fun of games is about, and they can be ignored. Only when EA starts forcing you to participate in the micro transaction model should you be worried!

Via NowGamer