The Switch sold 906,000 units in the United States during March, Nintendo has revealed. Today’s information comes straight from the NPD Group.
According to Nintendo, Switch is “one of the fastest-selling video game systems of all time.” It also comes “in a nontraditional month for a console launch.”
The infamous NES series Ninja Gaiden may be primarily known for its unforgiving difficulty, but it also had an excellent soundtrack. While much of the music for the series was never released, the entire soundtrack has now been restored and is available for listening.
Called “Ninja Gaiden The Definitive Soundtrack”, the digitally restored album is split into two volumes, each of which includes 59 restored songs. The first volume covers the soundtrack from the original game’s NES and arcade versions, while the second covers both Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos and Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom.
According to Bravewave page for the album, each song has been rerecorded and restored to sound exactly the same as they did upon the release of the NES titles. Furthermore, the entire restoration process has been overseen by the original composer for the series, Keiji Yamagishi.
For the first time ever, the soundtracks for Ninja Gaiden on NES and Arcade and Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos are available exactly as intended by the composers originally and true to the original releases. This also marks the first time ever Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom has received an official soundtrack release in any format and in any territory.
The soundtrack will also be available in vinyl and CD formats. You can buy the digital release through Bandcamp here.
It seems the New 3DS eShop will be graced with another strange exclusive – featuring a character based on the legendary musician Alice Cooper, no less.
Releasing today, Scoop’n Birds is a New Nintendo 3DS exclusive which tasks the player with – you guessed it – scooping birds. Players will run a pet store and scoop birds to sell them to would-be bird owners. Due to being created in Unity, it’s locked to the New Nintendo 3DS as the original 3DS unfortunately lacks Unity support. Players will work under the owner of the store, Alice Scooper. Clearly meant to evoke Alice Cooper with his appearance and name of the character, developer TwinSky Games has a bizarre story behind the inclusion of the musical legend.
In an email to Polygon, Tim Winsky of TwinSky Games said this about the inclusion of Alice Cooper:
“I had previously met Alice Cooper (or Vince, as he’s known IRL) when visiting my artist’s church,” he said. “Later, when agonizing over the character that should own the bird store and guide the player, the character Alice Scooper came to me. When we approached him about this, he fortunately thought it was funny, so it’s been smooth sailing.”
It seems the best things in life really don’t make any sense. You can find the release trailer for Scoop’n Bird below, and can check out the full article from Polygon here.
Our video coverage of Mr. Shifty has mostly come to an end, but we’re sharing one last, lengthy gameplay video. Watch an hour of footage below.
Update: As expected, Nintendo has responded to this month’s NPD report – specifically Switch and Zelda sales. See their comments here.
Original: Preliminary data is beginning to be reported for March 2017. In the United States, we’re hearing that Switch was the top-selling platform, beating out the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The system sold over 500,000 units in North America during its first week alone.
Nintendo previously confirmed that Switch experienced the best first 2-day sales in the Americas for any system in its history. Records were outpacing the Wii, and continued to be broken.
Nintendo may have more to say about Switch’s sales within the next week.
tinyBuild goes in-depth about bringing Mr. Shifty to Switch, should be patched to improve frame rate
Mr. Shifty made it to Switch today. The game itself has been fairly well received, but some players have been reporting issues with the frame rate, which can be irregular at times.
After some confusion surrounding the situation, tinyBuild CEO Alex Nichiporchik has promised to personally oversee “the patch submission process”. When an update is made available, players should hopefully find an improvement with the frame rate.
Nichiporchik went in-depth about bringing Mr. Shifty to Switch in a Reddit post:
Nintendo is ending shipments of the NES Classic Edition, the company has confirmed.
In a statement to IGN, Nintendo writes that the final shipments will be sent out to territories across North America throughout the month. Then that’s it – no more shipments this year.
The full statement from Nintendo reads:
“Throughout April, NOA territories will receive the last shipments of Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition systems for this year. We encourage anyone interested in obtaining this system to check with retail outlets regarding availability. We understand that it has been difficult for many consumers to find a system, and for that we apologize. We have paid close attention to consumer feedback, and we greatly appreciate the incredible level of consumer interest and support for this product.”
Thanks to Jes T for the tip.
I Am Setsuna received the Temporal Battle Arena today as free DLC. Check out some footage of the update below.
Over on Reddit, developers from Vertex Pop have been conducting an AMA about its recently-released Switch game Graceful Explosion Machine. Initial sales, potential plans for more content in the future, how the team implemented HD Rumble, and more were all discussed.
Notable responses from the AMA about these topics and more are below. You can catch up on the full AMA here.
