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Nintendo unexpectedly announced a new piece of hardware this week. Rather than being related to Switch, it was instead a new version of the 3DS – the new 2DS XL.

“We believe this is a key addition to the line,” Reggie said of the system while speaking with The Verge. He added that it’s “a very important platform. It’s something that we’re going to continue to drive this year [and] next year.”

Next, on the topic of 3DS’ future, Reggie noted:

Dragon Quest VIII is arguably one of the more important entries in the series. This was in part due to the game’s world, which was quite huge at the time.

Speaking about Dragon Quest VIII in this month’s issue of Game Informer, series creator Yuji Horii said:

“If you can see a mountain in the distance, you can run to that mountain and climb up it. Nowadays, this is pretty commonplace technology, but when Dragon Quest VIII was first released, this was groundbreaking.”

“I thought that laying out the story as a guiding path would make it possible to adventure and have fun in the world. While we have provided that path, we also intended for it to be possible to diverge from the path and enjoy the game freely.”

Nintendo currently has two big products on the market: Switch and 3DS. Things were made more complicated last night when the 2DS XL was announced, which is another product for consumers to consider.

That being said, Nintendo of America Reggie Fils-Aime stressed to The Wall Street Journal that the “experience is a bit different.” Ultimately, “the decision to buy one Nintendo device over another likely will come down to price.”

As Reggie explained:

“The gaming experience is a bit different. The Switch is more powerful than the 2DS and 3DS machines, and has other hardware differences. A key one: a DS is smaller than the Switch tablet, making it easier to fit into a pocket or backpack. For many consumers, the decision to buy one Nintendo device over another likely will come down to price. At $299, a Switch costs about double a new 2DS XL. Having multiple Switches is expensive.”

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Nintendo has once again reaffirmed its commitment to 3DS. If last night’s reveal of the New 2DS XL wasn’t enough, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime promises that more game announcements are in the pipeline – including some for E3.

Reggie told IGN:

“We will certainly be announcing new titles for the 3DS platform, and we’ll do that continuously. Some things that will be announced at E3. There will be some that we announce after E3. For us, E3 is an important event but it’s not the one defining moment. Obviously with Nintendo Direct, we’ve created means to speak directly to our consumer base. We want to provide news and information when we believe it’s most relevant.”

The NES Classic Edition was tough to find ever since it launched towards the end of last year. Nintendo didn’t help the situation by announcing its discontinuation. In light of that, The Verge asked Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime about how Nintendo determines how many units of a product to make.

He said:

“We create a plan, we build our programs against that plan. But based on what we see in the marketplace we make adjustments, and we go from there.”

Regarding Switch, Reggie confirmed that Nintendo did indeed increase production following the early response.

In a recent interview with Gamespot,  Tekken series producer Katsuhiro Harada commented on the possibility of Tekken 7 arriving on the Nintendo Switch. When asked about what the future would hold for Tekken 7 fans on the Switch, Harada had this to say:

“Officially, we can’t really comment on that because our company has strict policy about which titles we talk about for Switch. But personally, we’ve been so busy with trying to master up Tekken for the current platforms that we haven’t really had enough time to study the hardware. We couldn’t even buy it–it was sold out every time we went to look for it.”

Unfortunately, it seems like the possibility of Tekken 7 coming to the Switch is far in the future, at best. You can read the full interview here.

Awhile back, we heard about an unreleased Fire Emblem game for Wii. Fire Emblem series veteran Toru Narihiro noted how “you would take a large group of people with you much like Pikmin” – in other words, it sounded a heck of a lot like a real-time strategy game.

Nintendo series producer Hitoshi Yamagami elaborated on the cancelled project with Dengeki Nintendo this month. It was planned following the completion of Radiant Dawn, but never saw the day of light.

Yamagami said the following about the game, as translated by Kantopia:

“It had me as the producer, and Mr. Kusakihara as the director. It was going to be a real time strategy Fire Emblem game with all sorts of interesting departures from the norm. But, as we approached a finished product, the incredibly picky Mr. Kusahara was not content with it as it didn’t fit the image he had in mind when he played it. While it was incredibly amusing watching him try the product, I don’t think I could’ve reached such a decision so quickly based on that alone. It did show just how passionate he was about the real time system though, but, in my experience, Fire Emblem was always about minimizing casualties as much as possible and thinking about things carefully by the turn. To put together a real time experience in a short time without these considerations and make a judgement based on that was a little premature in my opinion. So, in the end, development froze.”

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia is a remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden, the Japan-exclusive Famicom title. Using that “Echoes” name may not just be a one-time thing.

A new developer quote (probably from Nintendo Dream or another similar Japanese magazine) has one representative from Intelligent Systems saying that “Echoes” would probably be used again with another Fire Emblem make – if one were to be made.

The person stated:

“We put a lot of thought into a title like ‘echoes’ that can let older games ‘echo’ with the modern players. We were very pleased with it, and, if there were to be more remakes, we would likely use the “ECHOES” title again.”

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia launched in Japan last week. It’s due out on May 19 in North America and Europe.

Thanks to Brian for the tip.

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In a recent interview with ComedynGaming, Kaiji Tang shared some details about his experience being the voice for the Fire Emblem: Awakening character Owain and Fire Emblem: Fates character Odin. Many subjects are touched on in the interview, as the interview covers many of Kaiji Tang’s roles outside of Nintendo properties. We’ve collected the quotes relevant to his role in the Fire Emblem series below. Minor spoilers after the break for Fire Emblem: Fates.

On how Tang got his role in Fire Emblem, and any similarities he sees between him and his character:

“I got the role of Owain like any other actor! A studio was having auditions for the game, I popped in and boom! Some sword hand talk later, some bit about time travel and they deemed me memey enough to become the fervent voice of Owain. I love the guy because we’re both huge, huge nerds who aren’t ashamed to let their geek flag fly. If I had special attacks, I think I’d come up with some pretty edgy names for them too. I absolutely have a blast!”

Developer Lizardcube’s lead programmer, Omar Cornut, spoke at length about the history of Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap in a recent interview with Siliconera. Several topics were discussed, such as the transition of going from fan to developer and what the team behind the game wanted to change in the remake of the title.

Omar on his history with the title and how the project got started:

I’ve been tackling emulation of the Master System since 1999, and was always involved with hacking and reverse engineering games of this era. So, I built up that knowledge over time. A few years ago, I decided to use my spare time to start studying the code of the original game ROM. My desire, at the time, was to unearth unknown secrets. It is a game with lots of subtle secrets and behaviors. Players found and published lots of them, but nobody was quite sure that we had found everything. So, I started researching that from a low-level perspective, and eventually I understood enough about the game engine to consider making a remake from the angle of being extra faithful to it.

In 2014, I left my job at Media Molecule, and with that spare time I toyed around with loading data from the old game into a new engine. This was when I got in contact with Ben, who I had worked with years ago on Soul Bubbles (DS). I knew he was a fan of the series, and together we started experimenting with prototyping what a new version could be, and finding the right art style for it. Michael Geyre also joined us early, and he experimented with recreating the soundtrack.


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