Site updates

Posted on 10 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Site updates | 5 Comments

Surprise!

All the way back in July, Nintendo Everything’s weekly podcast “Here’s a Podcast” ended abruptly with a strange-yet-totally-normal episode about, among other things, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. In a few weeks, all three podcast crew-members are going to be back together in the same city, and they all felt like it would be appropriate to record another episode as a parting gift to you all until further notice. Now, I smashed my finger under a couch earlier so it hurts to type, which means I am going to make this brief:

If you were a fan of the podcast, we’d love if you would do us a solid and send us some listener questions mail to [email protected]. We’ll need some for the show, after all! You can include parting words if you like– maybe some favorite moments from the 102 episodes prior– or just a regular old question; the future of the podcast looks at least semi-hopeful, but just in case… you may want to consider these your last emails ever!

I’d expect the podcast to be put up either the weekend of December 6th or December 13th.

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Site updates | 34 Comments

Update: Max has now passed along the winners! Congratulations to amtom, Adrian Brown, and Granpapá Oso. We’ll be in touch shortly with your codes.

Another week, another giveaway! This time around, we have three Tetrobot & Co. codes to hand out (thanks Max Criden!). Unfortunately, this is for North American Wii U owners only.

For the Tetrobot & Co. giveaway, we’d like you to talk about your favorite unusual uses of technology in a game or your favorite puzzle games. We’ll give extra consideration to those who put a little effort into their submissions. It’s only fair, right? Feel free to link to screenshots, videos, or even soundtrack samples!

We’ll let the Tetrobot & Co. giveaway run through Thursday. Winners will be announced soon after.

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Site updates | 167 Comments

Update: Winners are in! We’ll be emailing codes shortly. Take a look at the winning entries below! And thanks to all who entered!

North America

“me”:

my childhood has 5 stages: NES, SNES, N64, PS1, and PS2 because my family got them hand-me-down each one after another each about a year apart. My first games were mario 1 2 and 3, duck tales 2, duck hunt, TMNT, and some other crap NES games. Then came the super nintendo and the glory of Donkey Kong Country and Super Mario World. Saving in a game was amazing to us.
Then we got the N64 and put in Mario 64 and it was like…3d…what even is this?
After messing around with mario i dug into the bin of games (must have been 4-5 at the time, preschool) and pulled out the one with a sword on it. So we put that game in and it had cut scenes (totally un heard of for us). Navi flying through Kokiri forest….wow.
We spent like 2 years trying to beat the deku tree until i finally did one day by myself (must have been first grade because my friend had windwaker on game cube and he told me about it and it confused me because i thought ocarina would be about a boat and stuff)
a year later we got the ps1 as a hand me down as well and i got spyro. loved that game so much. then we got a ps2 from charity cuz we were poor. I experienced almost 20 years of gaming in 5 years because of this, and i have an appreciation for older games because thats what i grew up on.
And I’ll never find anything to replace ocarina of time in my heart, because to someone who couldn’t read the game was limitless. i didnt know what i was supposed to do so i did whatever i wanted and when i did something that triggered the story to progress i was so happy

“Tylos”:

Castlevania: Cirlcle of the Moon.

I’ve played many of the classics: OOT, Mario 64, F-Zero, etc.

But I think my most memorable childhood game and my favorite old game overall is Castlevania: Circle of the Moon on GBA. Where’s was born and lived a major part of my life we didn’t have much money: my GBA was sent to me from my uncle who lived in Canada and My Father couldn’t use up much of his money for gifts so I had few games. I had a Spider Man game, Super Mario Advance and Castlevania. It was apparently a PAL version of the game as it didn’t have the full name.

But Castlevania was the game I’d play the most. It was fun, and at the time challenging as I was quite young. It was my most valuable game: we would have small trade offs amongst friends in which we’d lend games to each other in exchange for another game. That was the only way I could play more games like Mario Kart, Super Mario World, Fire Emblem and Zelda.

I didn’t have a pokemon game till Emerald and those two games ended up being my most cherished.

They were the two games I wouldn’t lend to anyone but my closest friends.

“LinkFloyd”:

In 1990 my favorite uncle left the country. That same year he sent my brother and I a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toy. In 1993 he sent us a SNES and in 1994 he sent us Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV Turtles in Time, and thus, my short, young, little life was complete. There were videogames and there were Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, what more could I ever want? The real world be damned, I wanted out of it. We lived the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, they were our lives, mine, my brother’s and my cousin’s. My brother’s nickname in middle and high school was Turtle and people who knew him back then still call him that to this day. We had toys, posters, underwear, backpacks, fannypacks, we watched the movies and cartoons on VHS with an almost religious fervor, pretended that we were the Turtles and, at least on one occasion, dressed up as them (there’s a picture of this, my only attempt at “cosplay” thus far, but let me try to keep one last sliver of dignity, please). But above all that, first and foremost, we played Turtles in Time. Over and over, without rest, in Normal, in Hard, in Animation, in Comic. We’d get to the credits, reset, pass the controller and start all over again without rest. I was Michelangelo, my brother was Leonardo, my cousin was Raphael, always. We know all the music by heart, we know all the sounds by heart, all the voices, pixels, backgrounds, sprites. We know this game.

In 4th grade I met someone who seemed to know what I was talking about for the first time. We played with He-Man toys (he had the old one, I had the new one), we played Game Boy together, and, most of all, we played Turtles in Time on an almost infinite loop. By the time we were in 6th grade he’d turned from best friend into bully and tried to make my life worse than I wanted it to be. After that we went to different schools and didn’t see each other as much until he left the country for Germany, although we sort of made our peace with each other somehow before that, helped by time and infrequency.

There were a lot of things going on in my country and my family back then, and there still are to some degree. In 1994 my other uncle, my cousin’s father, was sent to prison for political and ideological reasons, and no one knew where he was for sure. We didn’t think much about any of this when we were children but these couldn’t have been particularly fun times for adults in my family, even though they did a marvelous job of keeping us children out of it, specially my cousin. The real world was a scary place and my brother, my cousin and I would much rather be in Big Apple, 3 AM.

My cousin died of cancer almost a decade ago. Politics, life, decisions made by complete strangers to us, and 90 miles of shark infested waters kept us apart for the last 10 years of his life. Last I heard about my friend he had spent seven years in a prison in Germany; I don’t know what for and I can’t and don’t want to think about what he must have gone through. He’s got the right ingredients for a being a good person and I hope the hole in him hasn’t gotten any bigger. At some point I made the mistake of exchanging Turtles in Time for another game but I’ve since managed to find another copy. It’s not the same cartridge and not everyone is here, but the game is the same and my brother and I still play it. It doesn’t do much discernable harm and it certainly makes everything a bit more tolerable.

Europe

“Beta”:

Hmmm… That’s a toughie, tbh. Between Minish Cap. Fire Red, the Battle Network series, Kirby… I think I’ll go with Fire Red. The revelation of actually finding out there was Pokemon games when I was a little kid after watching the anime every day in the afternoon after school was just.. epic! I can remember to this days my first minutes and entering Oak’s lab and hearing that music and picking my soon to was lifelong companion, Charizard… It gives me goosebumps to this very day!

“Simo”:

Metroid II: return of Samus.
First time I saw the cartridge, it was already inserted in my beautiful emerald green “Play it Loud!” Game Boy model, which made me suspect that my father secretly tried to play it before me. For me as a little child, nothing was more charming than the dephts of planet Zebes. I just wanted to explore every narrow passage, bomb every wall, blow up every door. Shooting doors was actually one of the best things I could think of: why couldn’t it be that way in the real world? Written text was almost totally missing, and so everyting was up my imagination. I fancied the story as I proceeded deeper into the planet. I was a glorious robot killing Metroids, the most horrible creatures on earth. Even if Zebes was not Earth. Then I got curious and even bothered to read the instruction booklet. All of a sudden I turned into a bounty hunter, and a female one. Who cared, Samus was still the best of both worlds. I told my father: did you know? That robot is a girl. And girls had just got cooler. When I’ll have a girlfriend, we’ll go metroid hunting together.
(Signed: an European Bounty Hunter)

“timZ117”:

Well since we’re talking about storybooks here, i feel that yoshi’s story on n64 needs to be mentioned.

Sure it wasnt the best game ever made, but i had a ton of fun with that game back in the day, and it’s still beautiful today. I can still remember the song of the yoshi’s on the title screen, and will never forget it.

Tengami is out today on the Wii U eShop. To celebrate, we’re holding a giveaway for both North American and European fans.  

The rules are simple. We want you to leave a comment below about a favorite game you played as a child, given Tengami’s whimsical storybook quality. Also be sure to specify which region you’re entering for.

We’ll let the giveaway run for three days, though this may vary slightly depending on the amount of entries. Winners will likely be announced on Sunday.

We have a total of six codes to hand out – three for North America and three for Europe. To sweeten the deal, all North American winners will also receive a code for Tengami’s soundtrack on Bandcamp.

Get those comments in! And huge thanks to Max Criden for working with us on this!

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Site updates | 48 Comments

Our anniversary is pretty much over now, but I wanted to give this a quick bump to the top of the page. I’m so, so humbled by the comments you guys left! They mean a great deal to me. Oh, and we’ve surpassed 50,000 published posts now!

It’s Nintendo Everything’s anniversary today! The site has now been around for seven years. Let’s party!

I don’t have a long-drawn-out out post like last year. No new site redesign, sadly. I can at least share a little factoid with you guys: with this entry, we now have 49,969 published posts. I imagine we’ll reach 50,000 tomorrow!

I also want to take a moment to thank those who make Nintendo Everything possible. Austin and Patrick have been around for a few years now and have contributed regularly. Jonathan and Kirara have been doing a bang-up job with our night shifts, and Vincent is off to a great start with his reviews. Scott’s content isn’t always on the site, but he does a lot of behind-the-scenes things that help us out immensely as well.

And of course, I’d be terribly remiss if I didn’t mention YOU GUYS. I don’t always have the opportunity to say it, but all of the folks who stop by – even if it’s just once – are incredibly important to me. Seeing discussions on the site, kind-hearted emails, and other things of that nature keep me going! What would I do without all of you?!

That’s all I have to say. Thanks so much to those who have supported us throughout the years!

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Site updates, Wii U eShop | 71 Comments

Update: Here are our winners!

Main site: ToMario, Alejandro Vasquez
Twitter: DarkRegulus

We’ll be in touch soon with your codes!

We usually tend to hold most of our giveaways on Twitter, but there’s no reason why we can’t share the love on the main site from time to time… right?! And so that brings us to our latest giveaway: Paper Monsters Recut.

There are two ways to win this snazzy-looking Wii U eShop game. We’ll be giving away two copies right here on the site, and all that’s required of you is to leave a comment in the post below. We’re also giving away one copy on Twitter – make sure you’re following us and re-tweet this message!

That’s all. This will be a pretty quick giveaway, so all winners will be chosen tomorrow. Please keep in mind that these codes were specifically made for US Wii U console owners. 

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Discussing Everything, Site updates | 7 Comments

One last bump, since Sunday is the big day! We’ll make a post just a short bit before 4 PM ET / 1 PM ET. Countdown here.

I’ve been taking a look at the feedback you guys left in last week’s Discussing Everything announcement post. After going through the different comments, it seemed like choosing Saturday/Sunday for the live chat would be best option.

And so we’ll be kicking off the first Discussing Everything this coming Sunday at 4 PM ET / 1 PM PT. By doing so, we’re hoping to accommodate people in the most relevant timezones while fitting the feature into my own schedule. I’m actually thinking of going with Saturdays (at the same time) more often than not, but I do want to see if a Sunday afternoon will work well. I’ll be sure to provide an update each week in any case!

As for how Discussing Everything will play out: this will be your opportunity to interact with the staff (myself, Austin, etc.) and (potentially) other readers on the site. You’ll be able to ask us any question/comment on anything that’s on your mind – be it Nintendo-related, gaming in general, or something else entirely. You’ll be able to submit questions/comments in real time as we’re discussing various topics (like recent news). We decided to implement things this way simply because a regular chat could become chaotic with comments flooding in, and we’re aiming for something a bit more organized. We may, however, add a secondary chat option or change the format entirely in the future depending on feedback.

Also, I do want to mention that you will not need to register for any sort of account to participate in Discussing Everything.

Still confused? Just show up next week! In the end, this is simply an opportunity to hold a live chat of sorts with you guys. I do seriously hope that some of you will join us as I’m looking forward to upcoming discussions and being able to chat with you directly. It should be a fun time!

One last piece of business to take care of. It’s time to announce the winner of our Mighty Gunvolt giveaway! We asked you guys to leave a comment in our Discussing Everything post, and after choosing a random entry, the lucky winner is Za23. We will be in touch shortly with the code. Thanks to all who participated!

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Discussing Everything, Site updates | 28 Comments

If you’ve been visiting Nintendo Everything for a long time, you may have heard about something called “Game Nights”. Each week, we hosted game events where the community and members of the staff could gather/play various titles online together.

Things just never worked out with Game Nights the way we originally intended though. Organizing people into groups was never easy. Visitors showing up at the last minute or halfway through the event also became troublesome. It was sometimes difficult for people to be interested in just one game as well. The feature just isn’t at a place where it can run smoothly at present!

Having said that, one element I greatly enjoyed about Game Nights was being able to interact directly with you guys. The discussions and comradery were two things I really looked forward to! And now we’re hoping to bring that back… but in a different form.

That’s where “Discussing Everything” comes in. What is this exactly? To put it simply, each week we plan on hosting a live chat directly on the site. You guys will be able to interact with us (and maybe each other – more on that in the future) in various discussions – be it news, a featured topic, or questions you have for us. I’ll be there every week, and other staffers like Austin will be around regularly as well. It’s really something that we’re leaving open-ended. Once we kick off the first Discussing Everything – which we hope to do soon – all will become clearer. One thing I can say is that I’m absolutely committed to making this a long-term feature on the site, and it will hopefully evolve as time goes on.

Before we get started, we would greatly appreciate input from you all. Which day of the week would work best for you guys? Do you have a particular time preference (please specify timezone as well)? Discussing Everything will probably be an hour each week depending on how things go, so keep that in mind! We want to try and come up with a day/time that will work best for most people.

That’s all on Discussing Everything for now. I do hope that some of you will end up joining us for some of these chats. And if you are interested, please leave a comment below or send us an email about which day/time would be best for you. All input will be considered, and we’ll hopefully have an update to share next week.

Now for some other quick news! Right here on the site, we have one North American code to hand out for Mighty Gunvolt. Simply leave a comment below (brownie points for those of you who give us input on Discussing Everything!) and we’ll choose a random winner in a week’s time. There are also two Smash Bros. 3DS demo codes (North America) up for grabs on our Twitter account – check out this message. We often hold giveaways on Twitter as opposed to the main site, so make sure to follow us now and in the future!

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, Site updates | 0 comments

Our LEGO Ninjago: Nindroids contest has come to a close. We greatly appreciate all who participated!

Unfortunately, there can only be one winner. And that winner is Avi Lekowsky after choosing a random entry! We’ll be in touch shortly to arrange delivery of the game.

Keep track of the main site and Twitter for more giveaways. It’s something we hope to do more of in the future!

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Site updates | 37 Comments

LEGO Ninjago: Nindroids launched in North America this past Tuesday. To celebrate, we’re holding a giveaway on Nintendo Everything.

Here’s how it works: we want you to mention your favorite LEGO game in the comments section below with a tiny (or large if you prefer) explanation about your choice. I know I’m partial to LEGO Island myself having played the game for countless hours during the late ’90s!

So long as you’re based in the US, you’re eligible to participate in the giveaway. We’ll pick a random winner to receive LEGO Ninjago: Nindroids in a week’s time and then send out a copy.

And while we’re on the topic of giveaways, we have five European codes to hand out for Ice Cream Surfer (see here). Winners for will be chosen tomorrow afternoon and announced on Twitter.

That’s all for now. I hope to see some of you getting involved with these giveaways!

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Posted on 10 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Site updates | 0 comments

Hey guys, it’s Austin with just a small update: Due to reasons, we’ll be skipping on doing the podcast this week! Really sorry for those that were looking forward to it– if you sent in listener mail (which several of you did!) we’ll get to it on next week’s show. If you just HAVE to hear people talk about video games this week, I recommend checking out Just a Chat, where Austin and Brian from this website right here talk about stuff in video games.

Sorry again. We’ll be back next week, and I think Jack might be with us!