Mario Kart 8

Posted on 10 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Features, Podcast | 1 Comment

ON THIS EPISODE: A great round of what we played this week! Much more talk about Mario Kart 8 to kick things off, Laura and Austin discuss the strange world of Tomodachi Life, and Jack and Austin praise 1001 Spikes! It’s a good thing.

PLUS: We talk about some brief E3 predictions, and halfway through we decide to start marking down our YES/NO predictions in order to check them next week and see how we did.

AND: Listener mail rounds out the day, as usual. We talk about how to review games (as usual), some E3 stuff, and whether or not you can use your 3DS in a sauna.

This Week’s Podcast Crew: Austin, Jack, and Laura

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More: 1001 Spikes, highlight, Mario Kart 8, podcast, Tomodachi Life

Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 3 Comments

Mario Kart 8 is off to a solid start in Japan. Nintendo’s racer sold 326,000 copies in its first week, with a 80.9 percent sell-through rate. While this is a bit less than Mario Kart 7 (420,000 units), sales tracker Media Create mentions that this could be due to the timing of release and the number of hardware units sold prior.

Mario Kart 8 experienced the best opening week of any Wii U game in Japan thus far by a significant margin. It surpassed New Super Mario Bros. U, which sold 164,000 units in its first week.

With Mario Kart 8’s launch, the Wii U sold about 20,000 units. That’s quite a bit more than the 9,000 units it sold the week prior, though it’s not the massive boost that some may have hoped for. Still, Mario Kart 8’s launch week was the first time Wii U was in the top spot since the console released with major titles. Media Create mentions that although Nintendo tends to release good titles throughout the year, new users might not be drawn to the Wii U until after summer vacation.

Source

More: Japan, Mario Kart 8, Media Create, sales

Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Just a Chat, Videos, Wii U | 8 Comments

Bumping this to the front page so that those of you who missed the video last night can check it out. I also forgot to mention that towards the end, Austin and I go over some of the feedback you guys left in the form we posted last weekend!

Now that Mario Kart 8 is officially here, Austin and Brian devote nearly an hour to talk about Nintendo’s new racer. Might this be the start of another new series on Nintendo Everything? That’s up to you guys!

More: highlight, Mario Kart 8, top

Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Random, Videos, Wii U | 15 Comments

Just when I thought I saw it all… well, this is certainly amusing!

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 42 Comments

Update: Here’s a quote from Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime, for what it’s worth!

“The early response to Mario Kart 8 demonstrates that the best days for Wii U are still ahead. This year’s E3 is just days away, and it will be all about the future games for Nintendo platforms. This milestone is a great place to start!”

In its first weekend, Mario Kart 8 managed to sell more than 1.2 million units worldwide, Nintendo has announced. That number applies to The Americas, Europe, and Japan from May 29 to June 1.

Nintendo of Europe president Satoru Shibata said:

“Such positive early feedback for Mario Kart 8 reinforces the great gameplay experiences that Wii U currently offers. With Nintendo set to showcase its future releases at E3 next week, this is a great milestone going into the summer season.”

Along with today’s announcement, Nintendo shared sales figures for previous Mario Kart entries. The seven older Mario Kart games have combined to sell more than 100 million total units, an average of more than 14 million units per title.

Source: Nintendo PR

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Posted on 10 years ago by Jarop(@gamrah) in News, Wii U | 8 Comments

Those wondering whether Mario Kart 8 was a system seller or not need wonder no longer, as Wii U Hardware sales have spiked 666% this week in the UK and 82% of that appears to be the Mario Kart 8 bundle landing it second behind Watch Dogs on the charts. Mario Kart 8 has had the series’ second biggest launch in the UK. Good news!

Source

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Posted on 10 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Features, Podcast | 4 Comments

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

Download this episode (click this link)

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More: Child of Light, highlight, Mario Kart 8, podcast

Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 25 Comments

Mario Kart 8’s items “are the most balanced in the history of the series”, according to developers Hideki Konno and Kosuke Yabuki.

While speaking with GamesMaster about the Blue Shells, the two developers said:

Blue Shells provide a certain level of tension that helps maintain the excitement right up until the very end of a race. Of course we pay particular attention to balance. Through literally thousands of races, we’ve made numerous adjustments to get it just right. In our opinion, the items in Mario Kart 8 are the most balanced in the history of the series.

I’d have to agree with Konno and Yabuki here. With the amount of time I’ve put into Mario Kart 8 thus far, I definitely get the impression that the items are very balanced this time around, especially compared to some of the series’ previous entries.

Thanks to joclo for the tip.

More: Hideki Konno, interview, Kosuke Yabuki, Mario Kart 8

Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Site updates | 19 Comments

Mario Kart 8 is finally available around the world. How are you all enjoying the game thus far? We want to know!

Austin and I plan on putting up a little feature about Mario Kart 8 in the near future, and we’d love to receive some feedback from you guys. Simply fill out our little form here and you’ll be good to go! If you have any additional comments, you can send them in via email or in the comments section below.

Thanks all!

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Videos, Wii U | 0 comments

Thanks to Jake for the tip.

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