Which drives me up the damn wall because he’s been in some of my favorite games over the past 15-20 years. Not just the sports or mini-game collections either – Wario’s headlined his own series of awesome side-scrollers ever since he was introduced in Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins (now, that’s a great game).
Anyway, since I can’t seem to get away from that dude’s shit eating grin (and since the Virtual Boy I ordered arrived on my door step yesterday), I figured “What the hell?” Let’s keep this Wario Week rolling with a look back at his 1995 3D adventure, cleverly titled: Virtual Boy Wario Land.
Jupiter is in retrograde and Saturn is out with a case of mono, and that can mean only one thing: it’s time for Wario Week. All week long, or until I get bored, SL is going to do a bunch of (three) posts about Wario.
WarioWare D.I.Y. hits the DS this week, and with it comes WarioWare, D.I.Y. Showcase for WiiWare. Featuring 72 premade microgames (different from the 90 included in the DS game…. I think,) the real focus is on using Showcase to… well, showcase microgames made with the full DS game on a larger screen, which also makes sharing creations with a group of friends in your living room a bit more sociable than huddling around a DS or handing it off from person to person. It also lets lazy bastards who don’t think they’ll ever take the time to create microgames spend 8 bucks to be able to play the ones made by friends and whatever ones Nintendo decides to make available, rather than plunk down $35 for the cartridge. Right now there’s not much to it since the DS game isn’t technically even out yet, but it should be worth the 800 points in the near future when people start making things.
Ever since Nintendo announced their upcoming 3D portable system, I’ve become nostalgic for the company’s first attempt at the third dimension: The Virtual Boy. Yeah, the one that failed horribly and sent it’s creator and founding Nintendo designer, Gunpei Yokoi to an early grave (It’s o.k. Gunpei, I know that was no accident).
This week’s Something Awful Photoshop Phriday comes up with a whole host of bootleg NES games (and one Genesis one.) The results are pretty amusing. What’s more, there are even a few videos, one of which got me laughing out loud something fierce, and is embedded after the so-called “jump.”
Well, 15 years after taking the world by storm with the Virtual Boy, it looks like Nintendo is getting ready to dip back into that deep 3D profit well. According to a top secret insider (AKA someone who can read Japanese), the company plans on rolling out their successor to the insanely popular DS system next year.
No seriously, they mean it this time. This 3D is the real thing!
Oh, I know what you’re thinking. How the hell can this guy seriously think that Wii Sports is a better game than The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess? Well, here’s the answer: I don’t. I don’t even really consider Wii Sports a game (More like a really fun demo) It’s just that this indulgent little stroll of mine down memory card lane is all about reflecting on my favorite experiences of the last decade.
So what carried the most weight in 2006? A glorified remake of something that came out back in 1998, or the feel of bowling a strike and hitting a home run while using motion controls for the first time?
If you were there then you remember. Back when you didn’t ask a friend if they wanted to come over and play video games, you asked them if they wanted to come over and play Nintendo. Back when everything a kid could love: cartoons, comic books, sci-fi movies, happy meals and pizzas (!?) – everything eventually found itself crammed inside of an NES control deck, and they all had one thing in common…
Castlevania: Rondo of Blood is already on my Wii as I type this. I downloaded it before I even got dressed. Rated by the ESRB and subsequently announced for release a few weeks back, one of the hardest (if not indeed the hardest)-to-obtain games in the Castlevania series is now obtainable for 900 Wii points, what with it being an import PCEngine CD game and all that.
What’s that? Blazing Lazers isn’t made by Nintendo and wasn’t originally released on a Nintendo system so why is it being reviewed on a Nintendo fansite? Well, thanks to the Virtual Console, this fucking phenomenal shooter that was developed for the Turbo Grafx 16 can be played on Wii. Also, this is my damn website and I do what I want.
The highlights this week are the classic Final Fantasy II (which is really IV, but everyone knows that story at this point) for the Super NES on Virtual Console, which I don’t yet own in some form, and Max & The Magic Marker on WiiWare, which has you drawing objects to overcome obstacles in a platformer. There’s one more particularly interesting release as well, just ahead!
I know I’m really late to the party on this, but I finally saw The Wrestler a couple nights ago. With those words in this context you doubtless already know I’m going to talk about Wrestle Jam ‘88, the fake NES game that received a lot of attention on every game blog back when the movie was still in theaters. This is partly my blog, though, so you’ll excuse me a little indulgence if I want to rant a bit. Or simply stop reading, I suppose. No, wait, stop, please, where are you going? Come back!
