Real Revolution News!

In a recent European interview with Meristation.com (online Spanish magazine), Jim Merrick from Nintendo of Europe has let a few things out about the Revolution:

LAN Play
It is now confirmed that, in addition to being able to play online, you will also be able to play some Revolution games over a local area network (LAN). The LAN games will work a lot like DS games currently do, many of which only require a single copy of the game!

Worldwide Launch
Often times, consoles are launched in Japan first and don’t make it to the USA for a good 6-9 months. No longer. Nintendo already launched the DS in the USA first and this time they will launch the Revolution across the world within the span of 14 weeks. Europe, Japan and USA will all get the Revolution roughly around the same time!

Improved N64
Nintendo 64 games, when played on the Revolution through the ‘virtual console’, will receive a frame rate boost, making the games play more smoothly than ever before. Even better than the originals!

When you see the games, you will say ‘WOW!”
Jim Merrick went on to say that the graphics produced by the Revolution will look great compared to those seen on the PS3 or Xbox 360!

Thanks to Gaming Age Forums for the news

GameBoy Advance Micro Faceplate Mockups

Check out these sweet GameBoy Advance Micro Faceplate mockups. They have one for the Game Gear, the PSP, Neo Geo Pocket Color and original GBA. They even have a mockup of the MegaMan inspired PET devices.

Super Pumpkin Mario World

Happy Haloween Everyone!

Feel free to link to your own pumpkin pictures in the comments section!

Revolution - Pumpkin Flavored!

Amyheartsjapan has created a pumpkin revolution with her rendition of the Nintendo Revolution controller, jack-o-lantern style.

Nintendogs Can Get You Laid

In Great Britain, the act of 'toothing', using your Bluetooth to find people with which to have sex, got a lot of press.

Nintendogging can be used for pretty much the same thing, only Nintendoggy style. Now, the same thing is happening with Nintendogs' wireless 'Bark Mode.'

The site Nintendogging.com is used to find other people with witch you can swap data. The site advertises, "Swap pups! Do tricks for others! Soap up a friend!"

Entries on the site include suggestive themes such as:

"Wet and willing -Betty the Labrador"
"Bitch wants sausage. - Lady Daschund"
"Need OBEDIENCE lessons? - Miss Lead-Lash"

Who ever said that Nintendogs is just for kids is missing out on the puppy love.

Homestar Runner Mario Paint

The Brothers Chaps made their first Homestar Runner cartoon in Mario paint for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System way back in 1996. Their recent cartoon takes the characters back to their roots. Instead of appearing in Flash, as they normally do, their new cartoon was created entirely in retro Mario Paint. It is downright amazing! Check out what a little time and imagination can do with a cool tool like Mario Paint.

More about Mario Paint can be found in Wikipedia.

Watch the new Mario Paint-creation here.

Rave: The GameCube Fighting Import

Here's a link to a 4-player GameCube fighting game similar to Power Stone on the Dreamcast. I've had it for a number of years and the game is a blast to play, especially at parties! Now I'm auctioning it off on eBay.

Rave: The Groove Adventure is now difficult to find.
Import stores sold out years ago.

If you are interested in importing games, Rave: The Groove Adventure is a great place to start. Most of the game is in English. You can also find a helpful translation for the rest of it here, although I never used it (Picking up a large red orb with a lighting bolt symbol in it means your opponent is gonna get screwed no matter what language you speak.
). If you need help playing import games, check out this guide to mod your cube or just pick up FreeLoader to play any import games on your system without modding.

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Mad Gamer Alert!

The recent Mad Gamer article over at BuzzScope is in and boy is he MAD! This time, the article is all about the reasons EB Games sucks the big one.

Here is the summary:

1) EB trains employees to force-feed games upon consumers.

...the corporate scumbags actually pay people to spy on their employees. They call these spies "secret shoppers". If an employee is witnessed not completing the long list of crap to force a sell down someone's throat then they will face disciplinary action.

2) Employees can't tell the truth

...they really aren't allowed to tell you if they think a certain game sucks. If they ever told you that Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects sucked ass, they would face disciplinary action.

Should an EB employee tell you that a game or accessory is awesome, do NOT believe them. It's probably associated with the "Vendor of the Month" program also known as V.O.M. I actually had to lie to customers and tell them that Mad Catz made great accessories.

3) Positively STEALING

All too often and conveniently, the scanner will not register a game trade-in or two. It will still beep though and you'll think you got credit for what was just scanned. Not! This little practice is called creating "positive inventory". "Positive inventory" is often used to offset any losses the store may incur over time. Please keep in mind that these employees are not taking your games, but the company is.

Personally, I don't shop at EB games. I find their employees dim-witted and their trade-in prices insulting. It is good to know I'm not the only one.

Thanks Celsdogg

PSP in a Pickle

It has recently been announced that Sony will be promoting a PSP bundle entitled, the PSP Giga Pack. The new promotion is priced even higher than the standard PSP price at $299 and includes the 2.0 firmware update making it difficult-to-impossible to play homebrew software or emulators on the PSP.

Now, let me ask you a little question. If you were on the fence about picking up a PSP before, maybe because there wasn't really anything in the library to motivate you, would walking into a store and seeing a new higher price be enough to spur you on and reach for your wallet?

There is reason to suspect that the new higher price is to compete with Apple and their new video-playing iPod. Sony has said time and time again that the PSP isn't a video game machine but a multimedia device. Well, they are partially right, it isn't a video game machine; not when the library is so devoid of original ideas and compelling gameplay. As a multimedia device, it barely passes the test of MP3 player and video playback is a joke unless you employ 3rd party tools (which are better than ANYTHING offered by Sony) or choose to purchase UMD movies.

If Sony LOWERED the price, it would have more units in the hands of consumers who would then buy games for it. Games are where Sony makes the money. (Sony makes tons of money off of UMD movies too, but I'll give the general populace the benefit of the doubt and pretend that people overall are too smart to buy such trash.)

As it turns out, Sony CAN'T lower the price any more. They are already throwing money away with each unit and moving production to China to cut costs.

Now they've got themselves in a pickle: can't lower price, GBA and DS are kicking it's ass on the games front, Apple scooping up people interested in mobile video. That leaves the PSP in an awkward situation with very few strengths except a bunch of old PS2 ports.

The F is for FUN!

I started playing F-Zero for the Nintendo 64 the other day. Having never owned a 64 before, I was interested in what all the fuss was about.

The very first thing that ran through my head was how goddamn primitive the game looked. It was downright awful! How could I play something that looked like it came from the polygon dark ages?

Not even 5 min into the game, I didn't even see the graphics. I was too worried about hitting the boost pads and drifting around corners. The controls are tight and responsive, the action, FAST!



A great game causes graphics to melt away. Who has time to appreciate pretty graphics when 100% of your attention is focused on gameplay?

Sure, graphics attract people to a game (or turn them off of it) but it is the gameplay that keeps people coming back. And a great game shouldn't be left behind because there are fancier ways of playing. If something is still fun, then play it. If it isn't fun any more, start looking for something that IS fun.

Novelty, Nostalgia Hint at Nintendo Success

Kikizo Games has a great little article looking at the recent Japanese sales chart, and the future.

"The Japanese charts tell of the decline of the home console in that country and the subsequent takeover by handhelds. Where previously you would be hard pressed to find anything but PlayStation 2 games on the weekly Japanese sales, the latest Top 10 is populated by no less eight portable games.

The big winner in all this is Nintendo, which is banking on both the popularity of its rich past and the novelty of the DS and the games on it. The success of this strategy on its handhelds is not only good news for the company right now, but it bodes well for its biggest leap of faith: the Revolution. "

Nintendo DS Games Galore!

The skies have opened for the rainy season of games. As we ramp up for the fall/winter torrent of games, a little forecasting allows us to look at what comes next.

A whole slew of new games were recently announced for the Nintendo DS along with a huge batch of screen shots. Check out the collection of screen shots below or click through to see even more!.















































Thanks to Nintendo Gal and GameWatch.

Nintendo Multimedia Channel - Thoughts

This Audio Blog entry explores multimedia possibilities of the Play-Yan, GameBoy, Nintendo DS and Nintendo Revolution. We look at ideas for bringing them together and the possible reasons why Nintendo has yet to release the Play-Yan in the USA.