Infendo
Nintendo’s perfect week
I think this week is a great opportunity to reflect on Nintendo’s future. There was the megaton press events in Japan and San Francisco that showed more new content than I think even the big media rags were prepared to see. There was the exhaustive list of third party titles that Nintendo fired off on Thursday to showcase the fact that yes, third parties had signed onto this Wii thing, and t...
Nintendo in the Arcades: Rhythm Tengoku
Between F-Zero and the Mario Kart series, Nintendo is getting a bigger chunk of the arcade market here in Japan and their latest joint release with Sega is starting to pop up in arcades all over the country. It’s actually an arcade port of… a GBA game?
IGN plays Smash Bros Brawl – gets butt kicked by nostalgia
IGN’s Mark Bozon, Matt Casamassina, and Craig Harris wrote up their initial hands on impressions of Super Smash Bros Brawl. It’s a nice little piece and includes a few things we haven’t heard about from the Dojo site. Bozon mentioned the use of assist trophies that we’ve heard of (Excitebike), but also new ones from Drill Dozer and Advance Wars. This led to my favorit...
This is not your father’s Mario Kart
Game trailers has a video up of Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata talking about Wii’s Mario Kart trick system and also the inclusion of bikes in the game. The footage isn’t great but it’s exciting to see some of the new game-play elements, and in the end of the video Iwata does confirm a spring 2008 release.
Carnival Games – surprise hit?
I was checking out the weekly sales article from Gamasutra to see what the kids are playing these days when I noticed that Carnival Games for Wii has been number one for three weeks. I have to admit, the game looks like it could be fun. Skee-ball is always a blast and some of the other minigames look like fun, too. It’s a budget priced title (well, $40), so that may have spurred sales. Anyon...
Chibi-Robo Park Patrol – review from Hooked Gamers
One of my favorite GameCube titles was the original Chibi-Robo. Now he has a new adventure on DS. I was going to review this game for Infendo, but this excellent (if a little lengthy) review at Hooked Gamers covers everything I would say. They do make an excellent point about the game not being for everyone, but fans of the original Chibi-Robo or Animal Crossing should give it a look. [Thanks, Fal...
Nintendo reveals 1rst, 3rd party lineups
The Nintendo press wire just dropped what can only be described as an exhaustive list of Wii and DS titles into the Infendo mailbox. And this isn’t all 1rst party IP, but ALL IP scheduled from here until Q1 2008. Rather than pontificating about whether or not these are decent titles or not, I’m going to just cut and paste the lists below the fold. See if you can pick out any surprises....
Will Smash Bros. Brawl delay spread to U.S.?
Will Super Smash Bros. Brawl be delayed in North America too? That’s the question greeting Nintendo fans as they awake from their Nintendo press conference megaton-induced hangover this morning. Why? Because, as we learned yesterday, Japanese gamers will not be getting Brawl until Jan 24, 2008. Ouch. On its face, if the delay migrates over the oceans and into North America, things look very ...
Wii Fit: How much is too much?
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata told the world yesterday that Wii Fit would descend upon Japanese fitness aficionados on Dec. 1 for about $75 (8,800 Yen). First of all, having a release date and price in hand is a great thing. Next stop, U.S. and Europe,pricing and dates, please. But there’s the rub, at least for me–what are we Yanks willing to pay for the Wii Balance Board and Wii Fit...
G4TV’s Sessler pans Corruption controls
While the tension of Samus Aran’s latest battle with the Mother Brain is still tantalizing the gamer nerve, and while the epic conclusion of the tale of universal phazon corruption is still fresh in the memory, dust off that GameCube controller and give the original Metroid Prime a spin. Really, go ahead. Loaded up? Wonderful. Now blast through the introductory space station for a moment; if...
Monster Hunter 3 is Wii-exclusive, PS3 version canned
It’s a sign of the times: a big name publisher/developer moves an incredibly successful game from a failing environment to one with both proven promise and latent potential, all because of spiraling out of control production costs. Today, it’s CAPCOM and a signature franchise in Monster Hunter (4.5 million sold to date). The game will be a Wii exclusive when it launches sometime next y...
Female gamers dominate Nintendo systems
I went back into the Nintendo press conference notes for a second look this morning and found something that surprised me. And it’s about girls, so I hope you’re sitting down. What I found was that according to a Nintendo survey in Japan (so take it with a grain of salt), for each household the DS has 3.0 users and the Wii has 3.5 users. The DS has a 53% female user base and the Wii ha...