Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has some advice for fans preparing to pay outrageous amounts for the SNES Classic Edition. Relax and don’t pay more than the $79.99 list price. Speaking to the Financial Times, Reggie Fils-Aime said the company has “dramatically increased” production and that despite issues with pre-orders at retailers, there should be no shortage of stock.
“I would strongly urge you not to over-bid on an SNES Classic on any of the auction sites.”
Nintendo hasn’t actually said how many of the mini-consoles it will manufacture, but the company says it will be ship product from September 29th through the end of the year. Hopefully, we won’t see a repeat of the inflated prices the NES Classic saw during the holidays along with the abrupt stock sellout.
Nintendo has announced the imminent release of Star Fox 2. Originally developed by Nintendo and Argonaut Software, Starfox 2 was supposed to launch in 1995, but was cancelled due to scheduling and technical issues with the release of the Nintendo 64 console. Despite being a direct story sequel to the original game, Star Fox 2 featured gameplay differences from the original. Instead of a linear campaign, the player uses a strategic system map to select missions and defend their home planet. Unfortunately, only a handful of people ever got to see the game, and hope of a second chance was largely squashed throughout the years. In 2015, programmer Dylan Cuthbert formerly with Argonaut said the chance of the game being offered as a digital eShop title was low due to legal disputes.
Now, thanks to its upcoming release, at least a couple dozen more people will be able to experience this game. Sadly, the game will be tied to the SNES Classic Edition console in a forced bundle with 20 other SNES games. The SNES Classic Edition will hit a couple of store shelves on September 29th.
Nintendo once again declined to participate in the live stage awkwardness of E3, and instead broadcast a Spotlight video. E3 live stage presentations are a production boondoggle that Nintendo has wisely opted out of for the past few years. Safe-for-all-ages Mario and Pikachu just don’t cut it in an auditorium full of bloodthirsty gamers intent on chainsaw-shotgunning their way through hordes of zombies.
Nintendo of America’s Reggie Fils-Aime and other luminaries stressed the competitive experiences on the Switch console. It will have ARMS, and Rocket League, and Splatoon 2, and Pokken Tournament DX! The Switch is portable, so take it anywhere and challenge other Switch gamers. It’s not like the Wii U, so please get out there and fight it out.
Yoshi and Kirby made appearances in their games coming to the Switch, battling it out for eponymous supremacy. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Fire Emblem Warriors competed for the “Most JRPG Dialogue” award. Ubisoft popped in to remind everyone that Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle features combat of sorts. The upcoming DLC for Zelda: Breath of the Wild features a harder mode and a champions-focused prequel story. Super Mario Odyssey looks to be a platforming return to form for the plucky plumber.
Finally, we got a tease for Metroid Prime 4. More accurately, Nintendo showed off a title. A title that elicited orgasmic cries of glee from gamers.
Universal Studios amusement parks and Nintendo are teaming up to bring Mario to life. Super Nintendo World, a special Nintendo-themed area of Universal Studios Japan, was revealed on Twitter. The theme park area will feature “gameplay, heroes and villains” from Nintendo’s most famous videogames. The companies hope to have Super Nintendo World open for visitors in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. It will cost an estimated $430 million to build.
Nintendo characters and the worlds they inhabit will be re-created at the highest level of quality through the strong partnership between Mr. Shigeru Miyamoto, Creative Fellow at Nintendo, and Mark Woodbury, President of Universal Creative, renowned for creative and technical excellence.
Similar Nintendo theme park additions are planned for Universal Orlando and Universal Studios Hollywood, but no specifics have been given. The partnership between Universal and Nintendo was first announced in May.
The Nintendo NES Classic Edition mini console has gone on sale and it’s apparently the hot holiday item. It’s selling out quickly at every location as it becomes available. Despite the recommended retail price of $60, eBay speculators have driven the price up to $999 in some cases. That’s roughly $30 for each of the 30 games the hardware comes with. A steal!
You’re not supposed to know that Nintendo’s next home console is the NX. You’re definitely not supposed to know that it will launch worldwide in March 2017. Nintendo’s not exactly keeping the NX a secret, but unless you’re a fan of digging through a company’s quarterly financial results, you wouldn’t know that the launch date was ignominiously plopped onto page 3 of this public filing.
For our dedicated video game platform business, Nintendo is currently developing a gaming platform codenamed “NX” with a brand-new concept. NX will be launched in March 2017 globally.
And that’s all there is to it. We have a name and a month. When asked about it directly, Nintendo declined to give more detail saying only that everything was still provisional. When Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima spoke to Time last year, he assured them that the company was “not building the next version of Wii or Wii U” but that leaves a lot to the imagination. Last month, some enterprising hoaxers made some convincing fakes of the supposed NX development controller that got some notice among fans, but no one outside of Nintendo really knows what the system will be. Oddly, it doesn’t seem like Nintendo cares whether or not you care. They’re not even planning on talking about the NX much at this year’s upcoming E3. They are instead focusing on the next The Legend of Zelda which will be playable at the convention.
Nintendo is going to mobile platforms beyond their own hardware. In a stunning announcement for Mario fans, Nintendo confirmed that they will be working with DeNA, a major player in the Japanese mobile market, to create games for phones and tablets based on Nintendo’s established properties within the year. According to the investor copy, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata explained that while the company’s software sales remain strong on dedicated hardware, they could no longer ignore the mobile market.
Very simply put, it is structurally the same as when Nintendo, which was founded 125 years ago when there were no TVs, started to aggressively take advantage of TV as a communication channel. Now that smart devices have grown to become the window for so many people to personally connect with society, it would be a waste not to use these devices.
In the same announcement, Iwata offered proof that the company was not abandoning their hardware by revealing that they are working on a new home console, codenamed “NX”, but that it was too early to discuss details.
That’s a picture of Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto playing with the Wii U at E3. That image embodies why he isn’t a fan of projects like the Oculus Rift or Project Morpheus virtual reality headsets despite its many advocates. The famed creator and game designer told Time that although Nintendo is doing research into VR, they’re concentrating on finding ways to make it fun for the whole room and not be such a solitary activity.
“When you think about what virtual reality is, which is one person putting on some goggles and playing by themselves kind of over in a corner, or maybe they go into a separate room and they spend all their time alone playing in that virtual reality, that’s in direct contrast with what it is we’re trying to achieve with Wii U. And so I have a little bit of uneasiness with whether or not that’s the best way for people to play.”
The most cooperative gameplay the Nintendo Virtual Boy offered was when you smacked your friend in the back of the head during Mario Tennis.
E3 has come and gone. Attendees squint around in its wake, cobbling together a means of remembrance from the show. What were the themes? Was this the year of early access? When Battlecry is dated for “Beta 2015” it’s hard to think not. Maybe it was finally the unveiling of next-gen games? Maybe there were #trends to talk about. Sure, let’s do that. I feel like I’ve learned something. I daresay, even a few things.
Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One both can stream gameplay footage directly to Twitch. Console streaming has proven to be popular with gamers. Twitch revealed that 20% of their bandwith was being used by PS4 streaming as early as January. Hundreds of hours of console streaming is being viewed per day. Check Twitch on the launch day of a big console release and you’ll see multiple streams from people eager to show off their new game. Communities have grown up around popular streamers, and people have started to base their purchasing decisions on positive impressions from these broadcasts.
So where’s Nintendo in all this? Games like Mario Kart 8 and Wonderful 101 get limited streaming because the Wii U doesn’t have an official way to output content to Twitch yet. Some people use capture cards to stream their Wii U games, but the expense and technical know-how needed to do so has created a barrier that most people won’t bother to overcome. Without a native solution, Twitch streaming for the Wii U is far behind the other consoles.
Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime explained to Polygon that they haven’t implemented streaming because it just isn’t fun to watch.
“So for us, what we’re doing at the Nokia theater with the Smash Invitational, we loved that streamed because that’s where you are able to see how these players perform, the moves they make, you can learn something,” he said. “That has value to us. And you can expect us to do more of that type of activity, highlighting our games and providing a forum for players to learn how to play better.
“But that’s different than watching Joe Blow’s 30 minute stream, which may or may not have something that’s all that interesting.”
Nintendo says the internal conversations are centered on questions of how to make Wii U streaming meaningful and engaging and not just an exercise in capturing game footage.
With Skylanders and Disney Infinity making a mint of collectible figure money, it’s a no-brainer that Nintendo is finally going to offer synergistic toys of their own. In their digital event livestream, Nintendo revealed that Amiibo near-field communications figurines will be offered for sale that interact with Super Smash Bros. and Mario Party 10 on Wii U. There are even plans to add Amiibo features to Mario Kart 8. When placed on the Wii U gamepad, a chip embedded in the figure’s base can transmit and store data to and from the game. Amiibo characters can level up, gain special abilities, and can be transported and used on a friend’s console. I can’t wait to experience the crush of shoppers trying to hoard limited edition Amiibo figures.
Tom: Super Mario 3D World has more endings than the Lord of the Rings movies. Just when you think it’s over, it’s not because there’s more to do. And then you do all that, and you get to the end and…well, I’d rather let you discover that. Suffice to say that this game diary probably could have gone for another day or two.
But we set out to write up eight worlds, so let’s write up the eighth world in Super Mario 3D World.
Tom: So, okay World Six, not bad. You even took a few bits that I thought would be terrible — such as the constantly dropping level where you have to keep jumping up to survive, and the boss monster that keeps splitting into a thousand tiny pieces that swarm me — and turned them into something I liked by the time it was over. I was sitting there playing thinking “ugh, this is going to be awful” and then it was over and I thought “oh, that was pretty cool”.
But it’s time to talk about the elephants in the room. It’s time to talk about a couple of enemies that have a serious impact on this game. It’s time to talk about two of Mario’s arch nemeses.
