It’s no secret that Nintendo and the Wii U will have a ton of competition this holiday. Two new consoles will be making their debuts: the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Yet, despite this, Nintendo of America Reggie Fils-Aime believes that the narrative of Microsoft vs. Sony with Nintendo being left out on the side is “inaccurate”.
“It’s a very inaccurate narrative. In fact, that was the narrative in 2006. That was exactly the narrative. I think by the end of this holiday… we’re going to be in a very good position.”
Nintendo’s Hideki Konno was recently asked if there is any sort of hope for a new Ice Hockey game. Konno’s response was terse. He said: “We’ll think about it.”
Something tells me that Nintendo won’t be pursuing Ice Hockey anytime soon. Then again, you never know! Reggie did hint yesterday that Nintendo is considering revivals of some of its older franchises.
As many of you know, Super Mario Bros. 2 wasn’t intended to be a Mario game. Doki Doki Panic morphed into Super Mario Bros. 2 – otherwise known as Super Mario USA – due to the difficulty of Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels (the “true” Super Mario Bros. 2).
Shigeru Miyamoto impacted Luigi’s jump in Super Mario Bros. 2 that was explained by Hideki Konno in a recent interview. According to Konno, it was Miyamoto who suggested adding in Luigi’s flutter movement. That same movement was used in future Mario titles.
When we made this game, the mother figure, who later became Luigi, since this is a really old game, was made with cel animations. They made this mother figure to jump with gravity not influencing her as much as Mario [Imajin], so Luigi had a really slow jump.
When Mr. Miyamoto came through and evaluated it, he said it doesn’t feel right, let’s add something with his legs, maybe they can each shake like this (making a fast back and forth fluttering movement with his index and middle fingers), and adding in that one element, made it feel just right. Then, later on, that became the mechanic that he was known for.
Batman: Arkham Origins’ initial announcement was met with a great deal of skepticism. Understandably, most of the series’ fans questioned Warner Bros. Montreal’s ability to build on Rocksteady’s success with the first two entries.
Creative director at WB Games Montreal Eric Holmes is completely fine with the widespread doubts, though feels like people’s opinions will change as soon as they get their hands on Origins.
“I would say that people have the right to be cynical; they have the option to be cynical. Come and play the game at one of these events where we bring the game. And I think as soon as you’ve got the pad in your hand, you’re going to see that this game is authentic and uses the same underpinnings and core mechanics of the previous Arkham games.”
Origins introduces a number of gameplay elements and a story that will be “great”, according to Holmes.
“And I think we have a great story…I can’t tell you to much about…but I can tell you I’m really excited about our story,” Holmes said. “I think it’s a very important Batman story and I think fans are going to love that probably more than any other thing in the game.”
A new 3DS project based on the Mushibugyou manga will be coming to Japan in September. The title follows the original story and has gamers playing as main character Jinbei Tsukishima – at least at the start. More characters will be unlocked along the way, and you’ll be able to experience the story from their side.
Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara won’t be out today on the Wii U eShop after all, it would seem. Capcom’s launch announcement states that the digital title will be coming to the platform “soon after” the other versions, which will release over the next couple of days.
You can find a launch trailer for Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara above.
Shigeru Miyamoto considers Pikmin 3 to be one of his best games. What about his worst?
Although he won’t say it’s bad necessarily, Miyamoto told Kotaku: “I think we could have done more with was Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.”
“I wouldn’t say that I’ve ever made a bad game, per se, but a game I think we could have done more with was Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.”
“When we’re designing games, we have our plan for what we’re going to design but in our process it evolves and grows from there. In Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, unfortunately all we ended up creating was what we had originally planned on paper.”
“I think specifically in the case of Zelda II we had a challenge just in terms of what the hardware was capable of doing.”
As far as what Miyamoto would have liked to do with Zelda II, he said:
