Remember when Nintendo randomly pulled the Donkey Kong Country games from the Wii Shop Channel? Well, now they’re back! All three Donkey Kong Country titles can be purchased on the digital Wii shop once again. I suppose their return has something to do with the recent Wii U Virtual Console releases.

Thanks to Jake for the tip.

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Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King devs on the game’s origins

Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii Shop Channel | 0 comments

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King was one of the notable titles to have been released on the Wii Shop Channel as a WiiWare download. Siliconera now has an interview with developers Fumi Shiraishi and James Margaris, who discussed the game’s origins. Here’s what the two shared:

Fumi Shiraishi, Co-founder of Dark Roast Entertainment: My Life as a King started with trying to come up with a cool game that would still work within the downloadable size limit. I think we’ve seen RPGs before that had elements of city and hero management, especially Romancing Saga 2, so thinking about how to make the game work came very naturally to everyone. I remember when I pitched the idea to Tsuchida-san, our producer and creator of Arc the Lad and the Front Mission series. He loved the idea right away, saying he had wanted to work on a game like this also.
A side story is that I was sitting next to Kawazu-san, the creator of Romancing Saga 2, during the launch party for My Life as a King… and I didn’t have the guts to tell Kawazu-san that his game was the original inspiration…

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Latest Nintendo shop maintenance taking place on Tuesday

Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS eShop, News, Wii Shop Channel, Wii U eShop | 2 Comments

It’s been awhile since the last round of Nintendo shop maintenance, but it’s that time once again! On Tuesday, the Wii U and 3DS eShops, Wii Shop Channel, and DSi Shop will be down for a few hours. Service will be affected between 3 PM ET (12 PM PT) and 7 PM ET (4 PM PT).

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Club Nintendo Japan updated with new rewards

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

Club Nintendo is coming to an end, including in Japan. Nintendo updated the rewards service for a final time today with another batch of rewards.

Members can obtain a Yoshi case, small Kirby blanket, storage case, and a handful of Virtual Console titles. The lineup of classic titles is as follows:

3DS

Alleyway
Super Mario Land
The Legend of Zelda
Ice Climber
Metroid
The Mysterious Murasame Castle
Trade & Battle: Card Hero
Balloon Fight GB

Wii U

WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$!
Mario Pinball Land
Marvelous: M?hitotsu no Takarajima
Mario vs. Donkey Kong
F-Zero for Game Boy Advance

Wii

Joy Mech Fight
Kid Icarus
Sutte Hakkun
Super Mario Kart
Famicom Bunko: Hajimari no Mori
1080 Snowboarding
Sin & Punishment

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January 2015 downloadable rewards now available on Club Nintendo

Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS eShop, General Nintendo, News, Wii Shop Channel, Wii U eShop | 10 Comments

This month’s digital rewards on Club Nintendo have gone live. Members can choose from the following games:

Super Mario Bros. 2 (Wii U, 200 coins)
Excitebike (Wii U, 200 coins)
Super Metroid (Wii, 250 coins)
Super Punch-Out!! (Wii, 250 coins)
Super Mario Land (3DS, 150 coins)
Donkey Kong (3DS, 150 coins)
Wario Land 2 (3DS, 200 coins)
The Legend of Zelda (3DS, 200 coins)

You can check out all of this month’s Club Nintendo rewards right here. They’ll be available through June 30.

Thanks to Mr. Johnson for the tip.

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Curve reflects on Fluidity – creation, Nintendo’s involvement, and more

Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS eShop, News, Wii Shop Channel | 1 Comment

Fluidity was a long time coming for Curve Studios. The company pitched various ideas to Nintendo since its creation in 2005, but it wasn’t until the 2008 Game Developers Conference that the WiiWare project began to take shape.

Curve’s design director Jonathan Biddle told EDGE this month:

“We had this idea for a game about water. We sat down with [Nintendo] and pitched a few things, and we didn’t think they’d liked any of them; they were quite po-faced about it, probably because they’d been sat in a room for a week listening to pitch after pitch.”

Nintendo reached out to Curve a few weeks later and offered to pay the studio to develop an “experiment”. As it turns out, it wasn’t too often that Nintendo accepted pitches.

More: Curve Studios, Fluidity, Fluidity: Spin Cycle, top

[Feature] Namco Roulette: An Introduction to Pac & Pals

Posted on 9 years ago by Patrick(@Patricklous) in 3DS, 3DS eShop, Features, Game of the Month, News, Wii Shop Channel, Wii U, Wii U eShop | 6 Comments

Author: Patrick

Part of the appeal of Super Smash Bros. to me is the history behind it all. With their large cast of characters, range of collectibles and obscure music picks, I always seem to be discovering new games with each installment. The original game introduced me to Earthbound, while Melee first brought Fire Emblem to my attention. This new Smash Bros.’ cast of newcomers are largely from games released in the last few years, but what I find interesting how Namco-Bandai’s involvement in development resulted in Namco’s history finding a way into the game.

Pac-Man is one of my favourite characters to play as in the new Super Smash Bros. and it’s partially due to his “Namco Roulette” taunt. This taunt involves Pac-Man summoning a bunch of old Namco sprites from the company’s golden age for a quick cameo, but there’s no trophies or anything to give context to these characters. With that in mind, let’s look at all these Namco icons as we take either a trip down memory lane. Namco have a legacy of creating incredible arcade titles that still persists to this day –I’ve been hooked on Mobile Suit Gundam Extreme Vs. Full Boost lately- and it’s great to see it represented in Smash Bros. in some form. So let’s start by traveling thirty-five years back in time…

More: Dig Dug, Galaga, highlight, mappy, Namco, Pac-Man, Super Smash Bros., top, Xevious

Dan Adelman – Nintendo of Japan makes final decisions, Reggie thoughts, indie limitations and suggestions for Nintendo

Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS eShop, DSiWare, General Nintendo, News, Wii Shop Channel, Wii U eShop | 21 Comments

NintendOn has conducted a new interview with Dan Adelman, Nintendo of America’s former boss on all things indie. The discussion tackled topics such as how Nintendo’s Japanese division makes final decisions, suggestions for the company’s indie program going forward, and more.

Read on below for a few excerpts from the interview. You’ll find the full talk here.

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Another look at Retro City Rampage’s sales

Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS eShop, News, Wii Shop Channel | 1 Comment

Vblank Entertainment added a new post to its site today that examines the sales of Retro City Rampage.

While Wii makes up a tiny fraction of the game’s sales, the 3DS version appears to have done quite well. Vblank says this edition “has the healthiest tail of all platforms.” Retro City Rampage continues to move units on 3DS despite never having received a price drop.

Here are Vblank’s full comments about the title’s sales on 3DS:

Nintendo 3DS has the healthiest tail of all platforms. Released nearly 10 months ago, it has never been discounted and still boasts a strong weekly tail. It was a great fit for the platform and market and received great promotion from Nintendo at launch. RCR released on 3DS 15 months later, but had it been released simultaneously with the others it’s possible that it could be the best selling out of all eight platforms. Again, this would vary widely on the type of game, but RCR was a perfect match for 3DS.

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