Consumers will be able to purchase a Limited Edition Blue Wii console in just a few weeks. Walmart will be offering the color variation, which comes with a $99 price tag, during Black Friday. A preview ad indicates that it’s a Walmart exclusive, so you won’t be able to find it at GameStop, Best Buy, or any other retailer.

The ad also shows a slight discount for The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword Limited Edition. If you purchase the package on Black Friday, you can save $10.

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This is the second “Mario spin-off” we’ve seen incorporate a tribute from the Super Mario Galaxy series. Fortune Street will feature elements from the two titles as well. It’s a neat idea if you ask me!

Did you know that the latest Zelda game took some inspiritation from Mario? Believe it or not, this was actually the case for Skyward Sword.

Producer Eiji Aonuma told IGN:

“In terms of deciding to use the sky theme and the bird theme, it really started with that idea that we didn’t need to have a big large field that you just simply move through to get to places. That’s not a compelling use of the land and the terrain. What we started to think about was the way that the Mario games are structured. You sort of have this simple map that you can move around, and then it opens up into the next level or the next course that you work your way through.

“One of our ideas was what if we have a means where you can very quickly get to the area that you’re going to be exploring? That should work great, but when trying to find a way to apply that to a Zelda game, where still you need to feel like you’re in a cohesive world. One of the things that we thought would be great is if you have this one area that you always continually go back to, and then from that area you’re quickly and easily able to get to the other areas in the world.

“In that sense it made sense to have that area be up in the sky, and then you would drop down from the sky to any of the areas below that you wanted to get to. But then as we were thinking about it more we thought well, it’s just kind of silly that you would just drop out of the sky and land down below and you need to have some kind of mechanism for travelling around and that’s where the idea of the birds came in.”

In other news, Koji Kondo took a few moments to discuss the importance of music in Zelda titles:

“What’s most important when creating music for a game is to look at the game itself and to really see what is that first impression or that first inspiration that you get from seeing the game in motion. Of course what’s great about that is when you have that strong first impression, it then becomes very easy to put your ideas into a song and you generally are very quickly able to create the music for that scene.

“What gets hard is when you look at the game and you don’t really get a clear image for what that moment is trying to convey. That’s when it takes much longer to create the music for those scenes. What I’ve found is that over the years with the Zelda series, as the game designers and planners are coming up with new ideas for the game itself, from an interactive nature, I’ve really kind of challenged myself to also come up with new ideas for how we use the music in the games. I’ve really felt that working on the Zelda series over the years has really helped to build a great deal of musical experience for me.”

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What’s changed in Super Mario 3D Land since the older 2D games? That’s what Nintendo shows in the video above.

Various Nintendo executives have acknowledged that the company made some mistakes with the launch of the 3DS. Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime was once again asked to share the lessons that the Big N has been learned when the system made its debut.

Fils-Aime told Brazilian gaming site “UOL Jogos”:

“The launch of the 3DS was very interesting: the portable earned great impressions at E3 2010, had excellent pre-order sales, and sold more than any portable system in its first week. So, we had many successes with the 3DS.

“But in terms of lessons learned, we need to ensure that we have a strong lineup of games when we release hardware – especially titles from Nintendo. And, looking back, we may not have offered the best lineup of games that we could have brought to the 3DS. It is also important that the digital resources of the hardware are available right away. With 3DS, this came later.

“And that’s why sales weren’t so great, which forced us to make some drastic decisions and reduce the price. Since we did this, and with the release of ‘The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D’ and the digital resources, our sales have been very good. And we have very high expectations for the 3DS this Christmas.”

Looking towards Wii U, the console’s launch should be much improved. After all, Satoru Iwata has said that Nintendo “learned a bitter lesson with the launch of the Nintendo 3DS”. Hopefully we’ll see a few top-notch first/third-party titles, along with the digital download elements on day one.

Thanks to Tim for the tip/translation!

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