Several notable characters were represented in the closing ceremony of the Rio Olympics this past weekend as the transition was made to the next event Japan will be hosting in 2020. Mario and Pac-Man were just two of many that appeared in a pre-made video. There was, however, one huge Japan-made IP that was conspicuously absent: Pokemon.
As Buzzfeed Japan reports, the site heard from a Tokyo Olympic/Paralympic Committee member that preparations started in January, well before Pokemon GO launched and became a huge success. The timing was just not considered right as Pokemon isn’t as well known worldwide, and the Mario franchise has also sold more games – 320 million compared to Pokemon’s 200 million.
Nikkan Sports has an article up about how the obvious pun of “Mario” and “Rio” from “Rio de Janeiro” was too much for the Japanese Olympic Organizing Committee to pass up. We can thank committee president and former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori for the idea.
[a]listdaily has gone live with a new interview featuring Nintendo of America Reggie Fils-Aime. Naturally, NX came up multiple times throughout the discussion, with Reggie saying how the company has “a strong concept” and talking about lessons learned from Wii U that can be applied to NX. Mobile, merchandise, and the Universal partnership were other topics that were discussed.
Continue on below for notable excerpts from the interview. You can read the full thing here.
The Legend of Kusakari made its way to the North American and European 3DS eShop today. Find some direct-feed footage below.
Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting, Street Fighter Alpha 2, and Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers were all added to the North American New 3DS Virtual Console today. We have a trailer for the first one below.
With Super Mario 64 DS coming to the North American Wii U Virtual Console today, GameXplain has taken a look at the download. Watch over 45 minutes of footage below.
A new PixelMaker update can now be downloaded for Wii U in Europe. For those in North America, it should be ready to go tomorrow.
Here’s what the update entails:
– Exporting of PNG images to SD card.
– Six new fonts for adding text.
– Scaling and outlining of inserted text.
– Option to hide the user interface.
– Left-to-right interface flip for left-handed users.
– Option to scale TV image to full display size.
– Selection and use of colors from image that are not in the palette.
– Text entry of color RGB values.
– Auto-sizing of color palette to fit available space.
Nostatic Software has plans to bring PixelMaker to 3DS soon, but there’s no release date just yet.
Additional footage has surfaced of the Wii U / 3DS indie title Noitu Love: Devolution. Watch gameplay from Stage 4 (with its boss) below.
NintendOn recently posted a translated version of their interview with the developers of World to the West, Rain Games.
Most of the interview goes into the story and setting of World to the West, which will act as a sequel to Rain Games previous title Teslagrad. On the subject of gameplay and how each of the four unique characters will play, Rain Games had this to say:
Every character has different abilities, and dedicated levels. At a certain point they will all meet, and from that point on it will be possible to choose which character to use, and it will be possible for the player to clear every level with every character, using their different abilities. Playing as a character you will meet the others as NPCs, and their plot will continue.
You can read the full interview below.
Nintendo has released a new episode of their Play Nintendo series. The subject of this episode is Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, with the hosts sharing some tips for newcomers to the game. You can find the video below.
We got a small look at the North American SteamWorld Collection boxart when Image & Form confirmed the package for North America a couple of weeks ago, but now we have a better (and full-sized) look. See the image above.
