He might be Mario’s less popular and less heralded brother but he still has a very nice place to live. While Mario, presumably, gets to crash at Princess Peach’s $950 million castle, Luigi has his own pretty cool and very expensive mansion that he lives in. Well, when he clears the ghosts out of there, he can live in there.
Blog Archives
Building (Critical) Consensus: Super Mario 3D World
For the last year, the Wii U has been struggling for respect as a console. People have been waiting for the console to get games or at least a must-buy killer app. It may have taken a year but it looks like Nintendo has finally come through thanks to the latest game in their iconic Super Mario franchise.
The latest game in the Super Mario series is getting massive praise from the critics and appears to be the killer app that the Wii U desperately needs. While it may not be quite as great as Super Mario 64 or Galaxy, it’s certainly much better than New Super Mario Bros. U. Maybe that one would have been a system seller if they took the original SMB trilogy and updated it to modern graphics and gameplay tricks.
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Building (Critical) Consensus: Pokemon X & Y
I have no scientific proof of this but I’m pretty sure that everyone from my age and younger (from, say, 25 down to old enough to play games) has been exposed to Pokemon at some point. Whether it’s the games or the anime or even the trading card game (which Wizards of the Coasts brought to America to try to get kids into TCG and move them onto Magic: The Gathering), everyone knows Pokemon. So, naturally, it’s massive news and a massive event when Game Freak releases a new Pokemon game that is the first major update to the formula that everyone loves.
While the basic underlying formula of the Pokemon franchise hasn’t changed, that doesn’t mean that reviewers don’t love the latest entry into the franchise. The worst review right now is 70% because of the current lack of an import feature from previous games and some framerate issues. The rest of the critics still love the classic formula and adore the new 3D art-style that Game Freak adopted for their first game on the 3DS. If you already have an opinion of Pokemon games from previous generations, it’s not likely that your opinion of this game will be any different.
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Building (Critical) Consensus: The Wonderful 101
Alright, here’s the review roundup you guys were looking for this week. I know you weren’t that interested in Greater Toronto Area V or whatever that other game is called. This week saw the North American release of The Wonderful 101, another Wii U exclusive that Nintendo hopes will convince people that there actually are games available for the Wii U. I won’t call it a system seller because those Mario Kart and Smash Bros. games in the pipeline will move consoles while a new IP isn’t likely to do that unless it’s a GOTY candidate.
Well, I guess that is unless you’re at Gaming Age who have deemed this a killer app for the Wii U. They’re one of three outlets to give the game a perfect score. Not all praise is that high. The scores bottom out at 55% and go all the way up to 100%. Reviewers agree that they like the charm and fun of the game but there are bugs and control issues that hold the game back.
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Nintendo Announces the 2DS
Microsoft followed Nintendo into the realm of motion controls and now Nintendo is following Microsoft in naming new consoles with a lower number than the previous one. The difference is that Nintendo’s new console name makes sense.
Launching on October 12th (the same day as Pokemon X & Y) is a 2D-only entry-level version of their 3DS portable console called the Nintendo 2DS.
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Red is Coming to TV in Pokemon: The Origin
We’ve probably all watched the Pokemon TV series that spawned off the Pokemon video game franchise. People who have played/watched both know that the original star of the game was Red (or Blue if you played the Blue Version) but he never appeared in the TV series. That honour went to Ash Ketchum.
Now, Red is getting his day in the sun. At a Pokemon event in Tokyo on Saturday, we saw the first official announcement of a new anime based on the original game starring Red called Pokemon: The Origin.
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GameStop Accused of Reprinting and Raising the Price of Xenoblade Chronicles
The one critically acclaimed Wii game that almost no one you know has been able to get a copy of is Xenoblade Chronicles. That’s because the game had a fairly limited print run and was only available through GameStop and Nintendo stores.
This week, mysteriously, GameStop stores seem to have been innundated with used copies of Xenoblade Chronicles and are selling them for $90 each. The problem is that people are accusing GameStop of shady practices saying that they aren’t actually used copies but reprints being passed off as used to justify selling copies at higher than the original $50 price.
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Building (Critical) Consensus: Pikmin 3
We’ve all been waiting for Nintendo to bust out that killer app that’s going to get people to start buying the Wii U. With third-party publisher support for Nintendo’s next-gen offering starting to dry up, it’s up to Nintendo to give people a reason to pick the Wii U over the rest.
I wouldn’t call the Pikmin franchise one of Nintendo’s biggest franchises, nor would I consider Pikmin a Nintendo IP that will sell scads of consoles. However, the critics really like this game. It might not be terribly innovative but it uses the Wii U Gamepad and that’s more than we can say about a bunch of current Wii U offerings.
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Nintendo’s Financial Results Show Wii U Worries
Nintendo’s first quarter results had some good news and bad news for the Japanese console manufacturer. On the plus side, they turned a net profit for the three months from April to June and scored their highest gross profit compared to sales in the last five years.
The bad news is that those good financial results were on the back of 3DS hardware and software sales. The 3DS managed almost nine times the console sales and eleven times the game sales of the Wii U as Nintendo’s next-gen offering limped through the quarter with only 160,000 consoles sold.
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Story Mode Dropped from Super Smash Bros. and YouTube is Blamed
Nintendo’s apparent war against YouTube has carried into what it’s going to put into one of its upcoming games. Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai has written in his column in Weekly Famitsu magazine that the next Super Smash Bros. game won’t include cutscenes.
et geekera 