Mario Fan Gabrielle Douglas Teams Up with Nintendo to Compete for a Different Kind of Gold in New Super Mario Bros. 2
–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Nintendo:
WHAT:
As part of her first major product endorsement since the 2012 Olympic Games, Gabrielle Douglas will make a public appearance with iconic video game character Mario at New York’s Nintendo World store on Sept. 25. Fans who arrive early enough will have a chance to meet Douglas and get an autograph.As a Mario fan, Douglas leaped at the opportunity to work with Nintendo for its new Nintendo 3DS “Play As You Are” campaign, which is designed to show women and girls that you don’t need to be gamer to enjoy Nintendo 3DS. Nintendo offers games and features suited for a wide range of interests and personalities. Gabrielle will appear in broadcast advertising and compete for a different kind of gold in New Super Mario Bros. 2, a new hand-held adventure that challenges players to collect mountains of gold coins. More information about the game is available at http://newsupermariobros2.nintendo.com.
This week’s Japanese eShop update is as follows:
3DS Downloadable Titles
Fun! Fun! Minigolf TOUCH! – 500 yen
Denpan Ningen no RPG 2
Virtual Console
Wrecking Crew (Famicom) – 500 yen
Sarada no Kuni to Tomato Hime (Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom, Famicom) – 500 yen
Video Content
Nintendo Wii U Launch Presentation and the Nintendo Direct Wii U preview videos
Denpa Ningen no RPG 2 trailer
Girl’s Mode fashion commercials
Warriors Orochi 3 Hyper is on display at the Tokyo Game Show. Eurogamer reports that it features a slower frame rate and fewer on-screen enemies compared to other Dynasty Warriors games.
This can be attributed to the Wii U’s CPU. Dynasty Warriors producer Akihiro Suzuki says that its power “is a little bit less” compared to the technology in the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and “the performance tends to be affected because of the CPU.”
“One of the weaknesses of the Wii U compared to PS3 and Xbox 360 is the CPU power is a little bit less. So for games in the Warriors series, including Dynasty Warriors and Warriors Orochi, when you have a lot of enemies coming at you at once, the performance tends to be affected because of the CPU. Dealing with that is a challenge.”
On the other hand, Hyper features overall improved visuals compared to what is offered on other consoles. That’s because of the Wii U’s high level of RAM.
“Developing on new hardware in itself was a challenge, and also making that launch date was a challenge. But from a visual standpoint, based on the performance of the Wii U, we knew the game had the capability of having much better graphics than games on PS3 and Xbox 360. Make no mistake, from a visual standpoint, it is able to produce better graphics. So our challenge was to make a higher quality graphics. We were able to meet that.”
Suzuki promises that the development team will be touching things up before launch. The game is scheduled to arrive alongside Wii U in November, so the staff only has a couple of months left to improve performance.
“While the visuals are great, as is being able to improve them, we had to deal with the lower CPU power and how we can get around that issue. Actually, we’re still working on that. If you see the demo on the show floor and you try it, you’ll probably feel it’s not up to the PS3 level. But we’re working on it!”
Again, all of this comes back tot he Wii U CPU. It’s new, and the team is inexperienced with this particular piece of hardware, “so there are still a lot of things we don’t know yet to bring out the most of the processing power.”
“For the PS3 it has multiple CPUs and an SPU, so you can calculate the various motions of the characters on the CPU so overall it runs smoothly. The Xbox 360 CPUs are formulated so they can spread out the processing power so things run efficiently. With the Wii U being new hardware, we’re still getting used to developing for it, so there are still a lot of things we don’t know yet to bring out the most of the processing power. There’s a lot that still needs to be explored in that area.”
On Wii, the Virtual Console ran through the N64 era. Now that we’re entering a new generation, might we see GameCube games come to the VC service on the upcoming console?
Nintendo of America president would like to see it happen. However, he can’t confirm that Nintendo has any plans in the works to bring GameCube titles to the service.
“That is a great question. And personally I would love for that to happen, but we have nothing to announce right now.”
The Wii U won’t be compatible with GameCube discs. So the only way you’d be able to play classics such as Wind Waker on the system is through Virtual Console releases.
I wouldn’t worry too much about this, but Level-5– when asked by Kotaku– said that none of their games have been confirmed for western releases. Professor Layton specifically has always managed to make its way stateside/Canadaside/Europeside, so I wouldn’t put too much thought into the idea that no one will publish their games.
Wii U often sees comparisons to a number of technologies. For instance, following E3, people were quick to bring up the similarities between the console and Microsoft’s SmartGlass.
The PlayStation 3 and Vita have also been compared to the Wii U. That’s because you could essentially have one experience going on the television while the Vita provides a secondary experience through cross-play/cross-control.
Sony’s John Koller has no issues with the comparisons, and believes that the company’s console/handheld can “easily” match what Wii U brings to the table.
“We tell our PlayStation fans all the time that what the Wii U is offering is something that Vita and PS3 can do quite easily.”
