The Top 6 DSiWare Titles
Posted on 10 years ago by Patrick(@Patricklous) in DS, DSiWare, Features, Reader Poll | 3 Comments
The big (only?) selling point of the DSi was the existence of DSiWare, a collection of downloadable games available for purchase. From cheap, simple titles like Pyoro and other re-released WarioWare games to larger titles that were a bit too niche for a retail release like Wayforward’s Mighty Flip Champs, there was a fair bit worth playing on the service, so I thought it was worth highlighting the best it has to offer – or at least the games you readers claimed to be the best. I personally have minimal experience with DSiWare, only discovering a handful of games through the 3DS eShop, which is why other editors, namely Austin, are giving me a hand in writing this up.
I had initially planned to do all these lists as a “top 10” since it’s the tenth anniversary of the Nintendo DS, but since the DSi has only been out for six years let’s streamline things a bit. Yes, that’s the reason that only six games are on it and not because there were only a few entries that completely dominated the poll.
More: best of ds, Cave Story, dsiware, flipnote studio, highlight, nintendo ds, photo dojo, shantae, top
[Giveaway] Tetrobot & Co.
Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Site updates | 34 Comments
Update: Max has now passed along the winners! Congratulations to amtom, Adrian Brown, and Granpapá Oso. We’ll be in touch shortly with your codes.
Another week, another giveaway! This time around, we have three Tetrobot & Co. codes to hand out (thanks Max Criden!). Unfortunately, this is for North American Wii U owners only.
For the Tetrobot & Co. giveaway, we’d like you to talk about your favorite unusual uses of technology in a game or your favorite puzzle games. We’ll give extra consideration to those who put a little effort into their submissions. It’s only fair, right? Feel free to link to screenshots, videos, or even soundtrack samples!
We’ll let the Tetrobot & Co. giveaway run through Thursday. Winners will be announced soon after.
The Top 10 Most Visually Appealing Nintendo DS Games
Posted on 10 years ago by Patrick(@Patricklous) in DS, DSiWare, Features, News, Reader Poll | 14 Comments
One of the big selling points of the Nintendo DS was its ability to render things in both 2D AND 3D. Wow! I mean sure developers could pull off polygons on the Game Boy Advance, but they probably shouldn’t have.
Like the jump from the 16-bit to 32-bit/64-bit consoles, the games on the DS contained a mix of art styles that don’t all hold up particularly well, but there are certain titles that overcome the low resolution of the console and deliver an experience that looks pretty darn nice. Consider this the top 10 least ugly games on the console, as voted by you:
Discussing Everything #7 – full replay
Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Discussing Everything | 0 comments
Update: Now over, but you can find the full replay below.
This week’s Discussing Everything will begin at 4 PM ET / 1 PM PT as usual. We’ll be talking about the latest news, and you’ll have the opportunity to bring up any other topics/questions.
Note that you can log in with Facebook/Twitter, but these are optional. You can choose a random username as well!
[Interview] The voice of Shulk talks working on Xenoblade and Smash Bros.
Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, Interviews, Wii, Wii U | 24 Comments
To be the main voice in a strange Japanese RPG that seemed fated for nothing but cult status in the west probably wasn’t the most notable credit on actor Adam Howden’s resume at the time of recording. Indeed, he did the beloved voice of Shulk in Xenoblade Chronicles on Wii – and by proxy, Smash Bros. – but has also lent his voice to things like Assassin’s Creed and The Old Republic, and it’s more or less chance that the 2011 (or 2012… or 2010, depending on your region…) ended up being his most renowned role, at least among the Nintendo-focused.
For some strange reason – being the talent that he is – Adam agreed to answer a few of our questions about Xenoblade, Smash Bros., and voice acting in general in an email interview we did. You can read all of what he had to say after the break!
Discussing Everything #7 tomorrow
Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Discussing Everything | 0 comments
The seventh Discussing Everything will be held tomorrow. If you want to talk with us about the latest Nintendo news (or anything else really!) come join the chat at 4 PM ET / 1 PM PT. Those who live in different timezones can be find a countdown timer here.
[Giveaway] Update: Winners announced – Win a copy of Tengami
Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Site updates | 167 Comments
Update: Winners are in! We’ll be emailing codes shortly. Take a look at the winning entries below! And thanks to all who entered!
North America
“me”:
my childhood has 5 stages: NES, SNES, N64, PS1, and PS2 because my family got them hand-me-down each one after another each about a year apart. My first games were mario 1 2 and 3, duck tales 2, duck hunt, TMNT, and some other crap NES games. Then came the super nintendo and the glory of Donkey Kong Country and Super Mario World. Saving in a game was amazing to us.
Then we got the N64 and put in Mario 64 and it was like…3d…what even is this?
After messing around with mario i dug into the bin of games (must have been 4-5 at the time, preschool) and pulled out the one with a sword on it. So we put that game in and it had cut scenes (totally un heard of for us). Navi flying through Kokiri forest….wow.
We spent like 2 years trying to beat the deku tree until i finally did one day by myself (must have been first grade because my friend had windwaker on game cube and he told me about it and it confused me because i thought ocarina would be about a boat and stuff)
a year later we got the ps1 as a hand me down as well and i got spyro. loved that game so much. then we got a ps2 from charity cuz we were poor. I experienced almost 20 years of gaming in 5 years because of this, and i have an appreciation for older games because thats what i grew up on.
And I’ll never find anything to replace ocarina of time in my heart, because to someone who couldn’t read the game was limitless. i didnt know what i was supposed to do so i did whatever i wanted and when i did something that triggered the story to progress i was so happy
“Tylos”:
Castlevania: Cirlcle of the Moon.
I’ve played many of the classics: OOT, Mario 64, F-Zero, etc.
But I think my most memorable childhood game and my favorite old game overall is Castlevania: Circle of the Moon on GBA. Where’s was born and lived a major part of my life we didn’t have much money: my GBA was sent to me from my uncle who lived in Canada and My Father couldn’t use up much of his money for gifts so I had few games. I had a Spider Man game, Super Mario Advance and Castlevania. It was apparently a PAL version of the game as it didn’t have the full name.
But Castlevania was the game I’d play the most. It was fun, and at the time challenging as I was quite young. It was my most valuable game: we would have small trade offs amongst friends in which we’d lend games to each other in exchange for another game. That was the only way I could play more games like Mario Kart, Super Mario World, Fire Emblem and Zelda.
I didn’t have a pokemon game till Emerald and those two games ended up being my most cherished.
They were the two games I wouldn’t lend to anyone but my closest friends.
“LinkFloyd”:
In 1990 my favorite uncle left the country. That same year he sent my brother and I a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toy. In 1993 he sent us a SNES and in 1994 he sent us Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV Turtles in Time, and thus, my short, young, little life was complete. There were videogames and there were Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, what more could I ever want? The real world be damned, I wanted out of it. We lived the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, they were our lives, mine, my brother’s and my cousin’s. My brother’s nickname in middle and high school was Turtle and people who knew him back then still call him that to this day. We had toys, posters, underwear, backpacks, fannypacks, we watched the movies and cartoons on VHS with an almost religious fervor, pretended that we were the Turtles and, at least on one occasion, dressed up as them (there’s a picture of this, my only attempt at “cosplay” thus far, but let me try to keep one last sliver of dignity, please). But above all that, first and foremost, we played Turtles in Time. Over and over, without rest, in Normal, in Hard, in Animation, in Comic. We’d get to the credits, reset, pass the controller and start all over again without rest. I was Michelangelo, my brother was Leonardo, my cousin was Raphael, always. We know all the music by heart, we know all the sounds by heart, all the voices, pixels, backgrounds, sprites. We know this game.
In 4th grade I met someone who seemed to know what I was talking about for the first time. We played with He-Man toys (he had the old one, I had the new one), we played Game Boy together, and, most of all, we played Turtles in Time on an almost infinite loop. By the time we were in 6th grade he’d turned from best friend into bully and tried to make my life worse than I wanted it to be. After that we went to different schools and didn’t see each other as much until he left the country for Germany, although we sort of made our peace with each other somehow before that, helped by time and infrequency.
There were a lot of things going on in my country and my family back then, and there still are to some degree. In 1994 my other uncle, my cousin’s father, was sent to prison for political and ideological reasons, and no one knew where he was for sure. We didn’t think much about any of this when we were children but these couldn’t have been particularly fun times for adults in my family, even though they did a marvelous job of keeping us children out of it, specially my cousin. The real world was a scary place and my brother, my cousin and I would much rather be in Big Apple, 3 AM.
My cousin died of cancer almost a decade ago. Politics, life, decisions made by complete strangers to us, and 90 miles of shark infested waters kept us apart for the last 10 years of his life. Last I heard about my friend he had spent seven years in a prison in Germany; I don’t know what for and I can’t and don’t want to think about what he must have gone through. He’s got the right ingredients for a being a good person and I hope the hole in him hasn’t gotten any bigger. At some point I made the mistake of exchanging Turtles in Time for another game but I’ve since managed to find another copy. It’s not the same cartridge and not everyone is here, but the game is the same and my brother and I still play it. It doesn’t do much discernable harm and it certainly makes everything a bit more tolerable.
Europe
“Beta”:
Hmmm… That’s a toughie, tbh. Between Minish Cap. Fire Red, the Battle Network series, Kirby… I think I’ll go with Fire Red. The revelation of actually finding out there was Pokemon games when I was a little kid after watching the anime every day in the afternoon after school was just.. epic! I can remember to this days my first minutes and entering Oak’s lab and hearing that music and picking my soon to was lifelong companion, Charizard… It gives me goosebumps to this very day!
“Simo”:
Metroid II: return of Samus.
First time I saw the cartridge, it was already inserted in my beautiful emerald green “Play it Loud!” Game Boy model, which made me suspect that my father secretly tried to play it before me. For me as a little child, nothing was more charming than the dephts of planet Zebes. I just wanted to explore every narrow passage, bomb every wall, blow up every door. Shooting doors was actually one of the best things I could think of: why couldn’t it be that way in the real world? Written text was almost totally missing, and so everyting was up my imagination. I fancied the story as I proceeded deeper into the planet. I was a glorious robot killing Metroids, the most horrible creatures on earth. Even if Zebes was not Earth. Then I got curious and even bothered to read the instruction booklet. All of a sudden I turned into a bounty hunter, and a female one. Who cared, Samus was still the best of both worlds. I told my father: did you know? That robot is a girl. And girls had just got cooler. When I’ll have a girlfriend, we’ll go metroid hunting together.
(Signed: an European Bounty Hunter)
“timZ117”:
Well since we’re talking about storybooks here, i feel that yoshi’s story on n64 needs to be mentioned.
Sure it wasnt the best game ever made, but i had a ton of fun with that game back in the day, and it’s still beautiful today. I can still remember the song of the yoshi’s on the title screen, and will never forget it.
Tengami is out today on the Wii U eShop. To celebrate, we’re holding a giveaway for both North American and European fans.
The rules are simple. We want you to leave a comment below about a favorite game you played as a child, given Tengami’s whimsical storybook quality. Also be sure to specify which region you’re entering for.
We’ll let the giveaway run for three days, though this may vary slightly depending on the amount of entries. Winners will likely be announced on Sunday.
We have a total of six codes to hand out – three for North America and three for Europe. To sweeten the deal, all North American winners will also receive a code for Tengami’s soundtrack on Bandcamp.
Get those comments in! And huge thanks to Max Criden for working with us on this!
Have Your Say! The 10th anniversary of the Nintendo DS
Posted on 10 years ago by Patrick(@Patricklous) in DS, DSiWare, Features, Reader Poll, Reader Poll | 16 Comments
It’s hard to believe it’s been almost a decade since the Nintendo DS hit store shelves. From its humble beginnings an experimental “third pillar” to the existing GameCube and Game Boy Advance, the DS grew to become both Nintendo’s most successful console in terms of sales and the best-selling handheld of all time. The two screens and stylus controls might have been initially dismissed as a gimmick, but thanks to a great lineup of games everyone from existing fans to casual users seemed to be sold on that touch screen. Predating the boom in mobile gaming, software like Brain Training and Nintendogs helped to bring a new audience to the console. Heck, even my Grandma owns a DS!
What started as a truly terrible launch lineup (well, Super Mario 64 DS and Feel the Magic: XX/XY were okay) grew to an absolutely massive library of titles with something for everyone. Sure, there was a lot of shovelware, but it seemed like everyone from Atlus to Zoonami were backing the console. Nintendo’s New Super Mario Bros. and Pokemon games might have dominated the sales charts, but the DS became home to a number of more off-beat series like Phoenix Wright, Trauma Center, Etrian Odyssey and Dementium. I’d argue the Nintendo DS had the best third-party support of any Nintendo console since the NES, and this time Nintendo weren’t bullying publishers with oppressive, restrictive contracts!
But let’s get down to business; we’re running a bunch of DS-related features throughout the month and we need your feedback. If you remember our Big Huge NintendoEverything Wii Send-Off from 2012, you can expect something along those lines, with a series of top-arbitrary-number lists and other things. So please fill in our handy dandy voting form and help us in celebrating the best the DS had to offer.
More: best of ds, highlight, nintendo ds, top
[Just a Chat] Nov. 2014 Nintendo Direct reaction – Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D and more
Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News | 4 Comments
The latest Just a Chat is all about the new Nintendo Direct! Austin and I discuss The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D, Splatoon, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, and more.
Check out the discussion below:
Discussing Everything #6 – full replay
Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Discussing Everything | 0 comments
Update: Now over, but you can find the full replay below.
This week’s Discussing Everything will begin at 4 PM ET / 1 PM PT as usual. We’ll be talking about the latest news, including the new Nintendo Direct (Majora’s Mask 3D, anyone?!)! You’ll also have the chance to submit any random questions/comments towards the end of today’s event.
Note that you can log in with Facebook/Twitter, but these are optional. You can choose a random username as well!
