This week’s expanded Japanese software sales are as follows:
01./00. [PSV] Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F 2nd
02./01. [3DS] Mario Party: Island Tour
03./00. [PS3] Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F 2nd
04./08. [3DS] Yo-kai Watch
05./02. [PS3] Samurai Warriors 4 #
06./03. [PS3] Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes
07./00. [3DS] New Love Plus+ #
08./04. [PS3] J-Stars Victory Vs #
09./05. [PSV] J-Stars Victory Vs #
10./00. [PSV] Hakuoki SSL: Sweet School Life #
11./09. [PSV] Samurai Warriors 4
12./00. [PS3] Winning Post 8 #
13./10. [PS3] Dark Souls II
14./07. [PS3] Pro Baseball Spirits 2014
15./13. [PSP] Pro Baseball Spirits 2014
16./17. [3DS] Kirby Triple Deluxe
17./18. [3DS] Fossil Fighters: Infinite Gear
18./06. [PS4] Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes
19./00. [PSV] Winning Post 8 #
20./00. [PSV] Atelier Ayesha Plus: The Alchemist of the Land of Twilight #
Will Mario Kart 8 feature voice chat? Right now at least, the answer seems to be “no”.
Mario Kart 8 already has a listing up on the eShop. Online multiplayer, leaderboards, and Miiverse are all included in the “Supports Online Play” sub-category. Voice chat, however, is nowhere to be found. Typically, “Game Chat” is listed if a particular game supports the feature.
This isn’t exactly an official confirmation from Nintendo, though right now I wouldn’t expect the functionality to be included.
There’s a lot to like about the Game Boy Advance Virtual Console for Wii U. For instance, each game comes with the title’s original instruction manual. As shown above, this even includes old advertisements… like one for the Game Boy Player!
German website Nintendo-Online has researched the development of Super Mario Land and Super Mario Bros. Here’s a summary of the site’s report passed along to us:
Super Mario Land:
– Development was handled by a team consisting of eight R&D1 members; noone from the Super Mario Bros. development team – not even Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto – was involved.
– The core development team – producer Gunpei Yokoi, director Satoru Okada and designer Hirofumi Matsuoka – had worked together with Intelligent Systems on Famicom Wars before Super Mario Land. Famicom Wars was released in August 1988. That means that development of Super Mario Land started around August 1988 and did take approximately six to nine months.
– Compared to Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World, the development time was short. Also, the development team did not have experience developing a Mario game. These two points caused the game to be glitchy, short and a bit weird.
– Yokoi and Okada were also the main engineers working on the Game Boy. Super Mario Land might have started as a kind of intern tech demo.
Super Mario Bros.:
– It is often claimed that the development team of the original Super Mario Bros. consisted of the following six people: Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka (designers), Koji Kondo (composer) and Toshihiko Nakago, Kazuaki Morita and Yasunari Nishida (programming).
– While there are sources proving that Miyamoto, Tezuka, Kondo, Nakago and Morita were involved in the project (e.g. Iwata asks), there is now such proof for Nishida.
– The operator of the website Kyoto-Report.wikidot.com that deals with the history of Nintendo confirmed to us that Nishida was in fact not part of the development team.
– We believe that this misconception derives from a misinterpretation: The pseudonym “Yachan” which is listed as a programmer in the credits of The Legend of Zelda was interpreted as “Yasunari Nishida”, but in fact the Nintendo programmer Yasunari Soejima was behind that pseudonym.
– Because of that, the development team of Super Mario Bros. only consisted of five developers, and Yasunari Nishida was not one of them.
Mobot Studios is working on a Wii U version of the iOS title “Gears”. It’ll be hitting the eShop sometime this spring.
In Gears, players navigate a ball across three unique worlds. Here’s what’s being changed for the Wii U version:
Complete graphics overhaul for the big screen
New higher res textures
Real-time lighting and shadows
New Gamepad functionality
Gears will support tilt and touch control schemes from the iOS version as well as analog and button inputs.
A few more NES Remix 2 details have been pulled from the game’s Japanese website. You’ll find them rounded up below.
– Over 150 stages
– 100 new stickers based on the later era Famicom and Famicom Disk System titles
– Miiverse integration
– 250MB worth of content
– Features classic titles such as Super Mario Bros. 3, Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link, Kirby’s Adventure, Kid Icarus, Punch Out!! and more
– Will be out in Japan as a physical release in the form of Famicom Remix 1 + 2 on April 24 for 2,858 yen
– Digital version will go for 1,429 yen
Although there hasn’t been an official announcement yet, it’s safe to say that Tomodachi Collection is heading west. There have been plenty of signs (and straight up evidence, like this survey) pointing to an overseas release.
When Tomodachi Collection does launch in the west, it may carry the name “Tomodachi Life” based on a listing from Walmart Mexico. Nintendo did recently trademark that very name, so that would certainly make sense!
