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Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 5 Comments

A slew of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze details have emerged from this month’s issue of ONM. There are a bunch of noteworthy tidbits here, including the ability to upload times and full replays. The full roundup of information can be found below.

– ONM estimates that most levels will take about 10 minutes to complete on your first attempt
– 3-3 Frantic Field: set against a hurricane, with small tornadoes, and lightning as obstacles; eventually you reach the eye of the storm
– Next stage takes place in a forest, with sections on fire due to the previous levels lightning
– Need to use watery fruit to put out vine fires in order to progress
– Game includes tag barrels ala Donkey Kong 64, to switch between Kongs (could just be DK barrels)
– Multiple routes in the various levels
– 3 secret levels per world confirmed
– Time Attack returns
– In Time Attack, you can choose which character’s DK barrels will appear
– Upload times and full replays to show friends, and to help other players improve their own times
– There seems to be more emphasis on the background, which is constantly moving, which makes the world feel alive, and sometimes provides hints to what you’re going to encounter next
– When asked if there was anything the felt was missing from the game, Kensuke Tanabe said that he wishes they could have done more with the animal buddies
– Tanabe also mentions that there is something from A Link to the Past that he wanted to do, couldn’t, and used it in Link’s Awakening instead (ending of LA when the egg opens)
– Retro president’s favorite levels: 6-6 Cliffside Slide, “like jumping right into the middle of an action movie”, it’s a silhouette level. 4-4 Irate Eight, and underwater level which sounds like the giant octopus from DKCR is back. 3-3 Frantic Fields, which is challenging, but with a bit of comedy.
Tanabe mentions that World 4 is made of only underwater levels.
– Kelbaugh also mentions that he likes 4-4, and 3-6 Cannon Canyon, because of the dynamic 3D camera movement
– Animation quality has improved over Returns
– With David Wise, Kenji Yamamoto, and Scott Petersen, they have an amazing soundtrack, and special effects effort
– Tanabe was surprised that so few people in DKCR didn’t want to use the Super Guide once it appeared. He said that the difficulty of Tropical Freeze hasn’t been lowered, but that they have added some features that will give casual players an easier time.
– Difficulty hasn’t been lowered, but the new items, and Kong POW allow you to change the difficulty of the levels somewhat
– Miyamoto told Retro, when first working on DKCR: “This is my baby. Don’t mess it up.”
– Kelbaugh and Tanabe both worked on DKC, with Tanabe on the Japanese localisation, but never met.
Ten years later Tanabe met Kelbaugh, when he became president of Retro. He saw that Kelbaugh had a DKC jacket, and they learned that they both worked on DKC.
– A few years after that they both started on DKCR, Michael gave DKCR the codename F8 – fate.
– Retro was working on Mario Kart 7, and TF at the same time
– Tanabe, and his team at SPD is Retro’s primary contact at Nintendo, but the games are a collaborative effort throughout Nintendo
– If they found themselves on Kong Island Kelbaugh would team up with Diddy, and Tanabe with Donkey Kong, so that he could be carried around

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Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News, Wii U | 4 Comments

Update: Prices have been restored to their original amounts. Hope you got an order in if you were interested!

Original:

Nintendo’s UK store currently has huge discounts on a number of downloadable first-party Wii U and 3DS games. LEGO City Undercover: The Chase Begins is £6.95, Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Mario & Luigi: Dream Team are £7.95, and Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D, The Wonderful 101, and Pikmin 3 are down to £8.95 a piece.

Wow indeed. Thing is, those prices were likely initiated in error. I assume these “sales” won’t last long, so take advantage while you can.

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Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Rumors, Wii U | 2 Comments

We’re hearing – as reported in this month’s ONM – that Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze will offer three secret levels per world. In total, the game would end up featuring 60 levels if true.

ONM also apparently contains a quote from Retro president Michael Kelbaugh who told the magazine, “As for Tropical Freeze, there are a few more things I feel we could have done with the animal buddies”. Some are speculating that Kelbaugh could be hinting at more animal buddies included in the Wii U title.

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Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, Screenshots | 0 comments

Along with today’s screenshot, Sakurai passed along the following message on Miiverse:

Rosalina and Luma’s attacks are very different. This screencap shows Rosalina producing a Saturnian ring for her strong up attack.

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Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, Images | 6 Comments

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Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS eShop, News, Podcast Stories, Wii U eShop | 0 comments

This week’s European Nintendo Downloads are as follows:

Wii U Download

Dr. Luigi – €14.99 / £13.49
F1 Race Stars: Powered Up Edition – €24.99 / £19.99

Wii U Virtual Console

The Legend of the Mystical Ninja – €7.99 / £5.49

3DS Retail

Mario Party: Island Tour – €39.99 / £34.99 (available Jan. 17)

3DS Virtual Console

Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest – €3.99 / £3.59

Special Offers

Trine 2: Director’s Cut – €6.79 / £5.49 until Jan. 30 (was €16.99 / £13.99)
Dress to Play: Magic Bubbles – €0.99 / £0.89 until Feb. 6 (was €3.99 / £3.59)
Dress to Play: Cute Witches – €0.99 / £0.89 until Feb. 6 (was €3.99 / £3.59)

Source: Nintendo PR

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Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 29 Comments

In light of Eurogamer’s anonymous Wii U developer piece that went up over the weekend, Ping 1.5+ creator Christopher Arnold has offered his own insight into the console’s dev kit.

Arnold believes that the anonymous remarks are “aimed at pre-retail release SDK problems.” The post-release SKD kit, on the other hand, “do not contain any of the listed problems”.

You’ll find Arnold’s full comments below.

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Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 16 Comments

Retro Studios president Michael Kelbaugh and Nintendo producer Kensuke Tanabe commented on how the two companies cooperate in the development of projects in the latest issue of ONM.

To begin, Kelbaugh explained how the process is ultimately “a symbiotic relationship” between Retro, Nintendo SPD, “and other entities throughout the Nintendo family.”

He said:

“Tanabe-san and his team at SPD are our primary contacts at Nintendo. Please let me be clear: games developed at Retro Studios are a collaboration between members from Retro Studios, SPD and other entities throughout the Nintendo family. It’s a symbiotic relationship that consists of members from all over the world; we are very honoured to be working with such a talented team.

“When we worked on Mario Kart 7, we were working on Tropical Freeze at the same time. Part of the team was working on creating assets for Hideki Konno’s group, the Mario Kart team, and part of our team continued making progress on Tropical Freeze in conjunction with Tanabe-san and SPD.”

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Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 47 Comments

Eurogamer has put up an intriguing piece “from a respected third-party”, who shared his experience working with the console. The article covers Nintendo’s initial reveal to the developer up through the release of the company’s game.

Details rounded up from the post can be found below. I also highly suggest checking out the full thing right here.

Reveal

– Developer “worked on the hardware extensively and helped to produce one of the better third-party titles”
– Nintendo held a presentation, and said they wanted a console that is small like Wii and wouldn’t make noise
– This is so “mum wouldn’t mind having it in the living room”
– Point was raised in the meeting that the Wii U seemed significantly slower than the Xbox 360 in terms of raw CPU
– Nintendo dismissed it and said that the “low power consumption was more important to the overall design goals” and “other CPU features would improve the performance over the raw numbers”
– Devs communicated through emails after the reveal and the thought was “I like the new controller, but the CPU looks a bit underpowered”
– Some people started doing their own calculations to guess Wii U’s performance and some even built custom PC rigs with under-clocked CPUs to try and gauge performance of their code
– The thought was that it wouldn’t be powerful enough to run next-gen engines and could possibly struggle doing current-gen
– Despite their own tests, “management” decided to go ahead and make a game for Wii U

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Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Screenshots, Wii U | 3 Comments

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