It’s a Mario double today and Sakurai gave us a look at a New Super Mario Bros. cameo:
Here’s a new Wii U stage, Mushroom Kingdom U! It brings to life the worlds of New Super Mario Bros. U.
The stage will be a transforming one and apparently we’ll see more of it in a couple of weeks:
When Kamek casts a spell, the stage transforms drastically! That said, this is not what you would call a moving stage… …By the way, this stage will be playable in the demo version of the game for E3, a game expo that starts on June 10 in Los Angeles.
The folks over at Cubed3 also have a couple more shots on there Instagram, which you can check out here and here
System: Nintendo Wii U
Release Date: May 15th, 2013 (NA, EU)
Developer: Dakko Dakko
Publisher: Dakko Dakko
Author: Jack
I hate it when people label things incorrectly. It makes me very sad and upset. I can’t tell you how much compound irritation I’ve had to repress when, say, someone would write the wrong name down on an online order at work and offer me the duty of rectifying the situation over the phone with Mrs. Jihnson and her missing mail-order appliance, or when a past roommate not-to-be-named would intentionally label the cat food ‘dog food’ just to try to make me sick the next day.
This is why I possess such a vitriol for relatively new Welsh developer Dakko Dakko and their latest attempt at capturing the burgeoning Wii U indie scene (think Mutant Mudds, Cloudberry Kingdom, and all of the other titles I’ve referenced way too much in writing and on the podcast), Scram Kitty and his Buddy on Rails, a 2D shooter with strong open-world platforming elements. The ‘On Rails’ signifier at the end there implies imprison-y, limited bounds and pointed, one-dimensional gameplay design, whereas Scram Kitty, in its comparative sense of freedom to the recent litany of top-notch platformers we’ve seen reach the eShop, feels anything but. Scram Kitty, though confusing in name, scratches an itch not satiated fully by its contemporaries on the platform. By not being as singularly masterful in its level design elements as, say, VVVVVV or Mighty Switch Force!, Scram Kitty feels a little less uptight and neo-retro, yet crucially still achieves the same level of “old-school hardcore” as those luminaries do. I will not use any cat puns in this review.
ON THIS EPISODE: The first half hour of the show is dominated by talk of two masterful games that Jack played: Katamari Damacy and The Last of Us, followed by some talk of Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box and Child of Light from Laura.
PLUS: Did you think we’d forget about Mario Kart 8? Heck no! We talk for a solid 45 minutes about the game, so skip to the 48 minute mark if you just can’t wait to hear all about our thoughts on it.
AND: Since what we played took so long (due to the big release!) we don’t talk much about the Gamecube controller port for Wii U, so listener mail on a variety of subjects rounds out the show for a two-hour-long bonanza.
This Week’s Podcast Crew: Austin, Jack, and Laura
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A quick heads up about the recently-released Wii U eShop title Gravity Badgers. The game takes up 344.8MB of space, which seems quite manageable. You shouldn’t need to reserve much space fortunately!
Unity has been running on Wii U for some time now, but the tech behind it doesn’t sound entirely up to snuff. The developer behind Nihilumbra, for example, has been encountering “some technical issues” in bringing the game over to Nintendo’s console. This has resulted in a longer-than-expected wait for the eShop release.
BeautiFun Games told DQTechNews:
“The game should be available on the market already, but we are having some technical issues with Unity port for Wii U that are delaying the release.”
4Gamer recently caught up with Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed producer Steve Lycett with the game having been released in Japan last month. We already heard that Lycett had hoped to include Ristar as a playable character, but as it turns out, this wasn’t the only franchise he hoped the game would represent.
Lycett stated:
From three big SEGA classics, I think, “Space Harrier”, “OutRun”, and “After Burner”. Because these three are so popular around the world, I was thinking I wanted to find a way for them to work somehow. For “After Burner”, since there is no emerging main character, both it an “OutRun” both got full courses. But unfortunately, “Space Harrier” only got a song in the soundtrack on one of the stages. Even though it wasn’t convenient to include the hero of “Space Harrier”, we just couldn’t abandon the recording.
Lycett continued by elaborating on his interest in featuring Space Harrier one day:
Well, the truth is, I wanted to include the running character riding the dragon. But I won’t give up! If I ever get the opportunity, I absolutely want to see this happen.
Below are the latest titles that can be currently pre-ordered at retailers:
Wii U
LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham (new) – Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop
Falling Skies: The Game – GameStop
Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures 2 – Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop
Skylanders Trap Team – Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop,
How to Train Your Dragon 2: The Video Game – Amazon, GameStop
Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark – Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop
Watch Dogs – Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop
Bayonetta 2 – Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop
Super Smash Bros. – Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop
Yarn Yoshi – Best Buy
3DS
Story of Seasons (new) – Amazon, GameStop
LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham (new) – Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop
Pokemon Omega Ruby – Amazon, Best Buy
Pokemon Alpha Sapphire – Amazon, Best Buy
Scooby Doo & Looney Tunes Cartoon Universe: Adventure – Best Buy, GameStop
Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures 2 – Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop
Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Curtain Call – Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop
Skylanders Trap Team – Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop
Cooking Mama 5: Bon Appetit! – Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop
Tomodachi Life – Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop
One Piece: Unlimited World Red – Amazon, GameStop
How to Train Your Dragon 2: The Video Game – Amazon, GameStop
LEGO Ninjago Nindroids – Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop
Farming Simulator ’14 – Amazon
Tenkai Knights: Brave Battle – Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop
Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark – Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop
Super Smash Bros. – Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop
Putty Squad – Amazon, Best Buy
Thanks to Jake for the tip.
According to a Bandai Namco representative, there are no plans to bring Tales of the World: Reve Unitia to the west… at least for now. Perhaps that’ll change in the future? Bandai Namco has been more consistent with Tales localizations over the past few years, so maybe a western launch will happen one day.