And here at the List we all wish our beloved creator of Mario, Link, Pikmin and of course, Wii Music Shigeru Miyamoto a truly wonderful birthday. Just think: By the time the next presidential election rolls around the guy will actually turn 64!
Well that isn’t a very nice attitude to have now is it 8-Bit Vader? The truth is that me and my pals here at the List have been invited to help put the final nail in the coffin provide our old friends over at Nintendorks.net with our invaluable insight and expertise on all things Nintendo (and maybe even some other stuff) from now on. Now what does this mean for you my dear, faithful reader? Well…nothing really. We aren’t going anywhere and I’ll continue to update regularly until the police find my lifeless, nude corpse at my computer desk surrounded by empty bottles of discount I.P.A. You can look forward to the same high quality self indulgence that we’ve blessed the internet with these past few years only now under both the Shigeru’s List url and the legendary banner of Nintendorks. In fact, I’ll probably be cross posting all of the larger pieces such as news and reviews on both sites but keep the random little mini updates exclusive to my little baby here.
I know, I know. It all sounds too good to be true but please, try and contain yourself. You’re embarrassing us.
R.I.P.
*Cough*
“Thank you all. Please be seated. *Ahem*. Ladies and gentlemen, like many of you here today I came across Nintendo Power at a very young age. For me personally, it was the third grade and I was eight years old when I first heard whispers of a magazine that was all about Nintendo and filled with maps, special codes and strategies. These rumors spread like wild fire across the black top during recess but that’s all they amounted to at first: Rumors. Some kid knew a guy from another school who’s brother supposedly had described some book he’d seen as having the small clay Mario you see beside me plastered across the cover. More words were spoken of free pull-out posters and comic strips as well as contests that gave away prizes like t-shirts, toys and most importantly: Nintendo Games. It all sounded too good to be true of course and these second hand (third and fourth even) stories were all I had to tide me over before the truth of the matter would finally be revealed to me. It was a cold, overcast October afternoon when this kid I knew opened his backpack to reveal the beautiful image of a grown man in full body armor holding the decapitated head of Dracula by his hair.
I was hooked.
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More like BA-SICK!
Coming this Thursday [EDIT: actually, July 19th, error mine] to DSiWare (and thus also to the 3DS), Petit Computer promises to have everyone partying programming like it’s 1980. The program lets users laboriously type in commands using the touch screen keyboard to program in a version of the BASIC programming language to do… well, pretty much whatever the BASIC language is capable of, I suppose. There are several sample programs included to give an idea of what’s possible, including, apparently, an old-school RPG and a scrolling shooter, as well as several non-game applications and demos. Perhaps the greatest feature, and the one most people (especially lazy ones) will likely be interested in, is the ability to share programs as QR codes, letting users download programs simply by aiming the 3DS/DSi cameras at an image of the code in the now-familiar way. There’s a trailer behind the break.
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Sit tight. This could take a while.
In case you hadn’t heard (which is likely judging by sales), a brand new Rayman game subtitled Origins was recently released across all 3 home platforms. Now what the hell is a “Rayman” you may be asking yourself? Well, it’s a long running series of mostly action/adventure platform games starring an armless, legless Frenchman as he runs and jumps around beautifully designed worlds killing bad guys and collecting stuff. If the thought of that doesn’t rivet you, then I guess you probably wouldn’t be reading this website to begin with. I’m sorry for making things awkward.
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Let It Begin. again.
This is it. Nintendo’s long awaited eShop for the 3DS goes live this evening! Kicking off the service, owners of the new portable can now download several vintage Game Boy games as well as a (free for the next month) 3-D enhanced version of Excitebike for the NES. If that weren’t enough, there’s also access to most (but not all) DSi Ware games, an internet browser and even a fancy (and also free) interactive Pokémon character and stat viewer.
Oh yeah, and tonight also happens to be the eve of that tiny little E3 press conference thingie. Y’know, that event where a new Nintendo home console and all of their major software for the next year will be announced. It starts tomorrow bright and early at 9am PDT, so go ahead and save this link to finally see an end put to all of this bitching/speculation about the new controller.
Well, maybe not the bitching part.
Or at least all of the cash that I’ve been tossing into your backyard for just about my entire life. After buying and downloading a ridiculous amount of games over the past year (and sometimes even playing them), my reward from Club Nintendo arrived in the mail today! The big surprise was the slick question block box that it was shipped in. That’s just fucking awesome. Also, I’m not gonna lie. I’m curious how much this bad boy ends up going for on Ebay.
On the bright side I still have the Bit. Trip games to download should I feel the urge. I played a bit of Runner finally and it’s tits.
Also, he smells funny.
Even after resolving only to talk about the releases I personally find interesting (because, after all, the news itself isn’t that hard to find,) and even with the Virtual Console actually seeing a new old title released last week, I failed to mention anything at all. I could blame the shock of Nintendo’s stellar E3 lineup, but their conference didn’t take place until Tuesday. (I’ll blame Microsoft’s blatant Wii-cloning audacity instead.) Here’s a look at the downloadable games that caught my eye for the last two weeks.
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VB Wario Land manual scan by Planet Virtual Boy, http://www.planetvb.com
Blame Wario for turning MBF into WBF.
That’s a joke, you see. Really I’m just lazy, and no Virtual Console game came out this week, and regardless of what else may have come out that’s always a quick way to get me to not care.
Anyway, here are the things that caught my eye on DSiWare and WiiWare this week:
In a lovely coincidence with today’s airing on Turner Classic Movies of a bunch of Clint Eastwood films, the Virtual Console sees the re-release of the SNES game Wild Guns, an Old West With Robots-themed third person shooting gallery game that I’d never heard of before but looks quite appealing. Somewhat like the Base levels from the original Contra, and similar to the arcade games Cabal and Blood Brothers. I can definitely dig it. It’s also 2 player simultaneous, with the two player characters being “Clint” and “Annie”- no prizes for guessing where those names came from.
And then there’s a whole mess of DSi- and WiiWare, and I’m going to talk about some of them but not all because that’s how I roll and the press release will be linked if you really care and okay hit the jump already.
Art Style: light trax is definitely the highlight this week, as the first Art Style game to come out on WiiWare in a while it seems. It’s a remake/update of Dotstream from the progenitor bit Generations series of games on the GBA, with the slight twist of the playfield moving around in 3D. Basically it’s a racing game with a couple different styles of play, and I came in dead last just now on my first try so I’m looking at the operations guide. It’s 600 points like the previous Art Style games, unlike Bit.Trip Runner which I mistakenly assumed was 600 because the previous Bit.Trip games were 600. BTR is actually 800. My bad.
Sorry, Metal Gear ate my week. Go figure, because the Virtual Console finally returned this week!
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Once again, no Virtual Console releases this week, although that doesn’t mean no old games came out. “Wait, what?” you might have just said. What I meant is: highlights this week include one port on WiiWare and one on DSi Ware of previously released games.
“In the world of downloadable video games, this week’s forecast calls for nonstop showers of awesomeness.” So begins the weekly downloadable game news release from Nintendo. So, you think so, do ya NoA? We’ll just see about that.
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