Features News - Page 21 of 32

What’s a Tanooki, anyway?

Ever since Super Mario Bros. 3 landed on store shelves, when Nintendo fans hear the word “tanooki” they almost always produce an excited smile and start reminiscing about days spent flying through levels as Racoon Mario. If you were to utter this same word today around these same Nintendo fans you’d probably get a...

Were the motion controls worth the wait?

Very few games over the past decade have had the sheer level of hype and anticipation that The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has found heaped upon it. Not only has the game been in development for an extremely long time, but it's also been hampered by developmental challenges that, at one point, almost led to the game losing its trademark motion controls..

Shin'en knows shmups

Shin'en is certainly no stranger to the shoot 'em up genre, having already developed games in the Iridion and Nanostray series for Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS respectively, but after taking a few years to work on other projects, many shooter fans were beginning to wonder if the developer would ever get back to its shmup roots. Thankfully, fans were given the answer they..

Aiming down 3D sights

It's old news that first person-shooters are bigger business within the industry now than they've ever been. Since the advent of online play on home consoles, they have inarguably become the most played genre on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, with the latest Battlefield and Call of Duty titles dominating the market. However, FPS titles have remained relatively quiet on the..

Bask in its warm glory

2001 must have been a particularly good year for gaming: we just celebrated Pikmin's tenth anniversary, and now it's time to look back on the birth of RPG franchise Golden Sun. The original Golden Sun launched in North America on 11th November 2001, with sequel Golden Sun: The Lost Age following in early 2003. Created by RPG masters Camelot Software Planning — the team..

Mario’s gloves come off

If we were to summarise Nintendo’s year so far, we’d say that it’s been having a tough time. There have been moments of brilliance that have reaffirmed the faith of loyal gamers, but there have also been a lot of mis-steps, mistakes and bad publicity, some of which has been unjustified. In fact, despite the release...

Is there a catch?

Yuji Naka's Prope studio has been responsible for some interesting Wii titles over the past few years, including Ivy the Kiwi and the upcoming Rodea the Sky Soldier. So when the developer announced Fishing Resort, many gamers were left wondering just exactly how a game like this would turn out. And while its cute look and feel is...

Welcome, stranger

Released in North America a few months ago, today marks the European release of BlazBlue: Continuum Shift 2 on 3DS, the fighting series' first ever appearance on a Nintendo console (well, there was BlayzBloo: Super Melee Action Battle Royale, but that doesn't really count.) But what exactly is BlazBlue? With a pretty decent select...

A modern classic

The GameCube era is still a questionable time for Nintendo fans. While the console undoubtedly had its standout titles, there always seems to be a lingering question over how high — or, more to the point, how low — it would rank when gauged against Nintendo's other consoles. But wherever you fall in the debate, it's impossible not to acknowledge Nintendo's willingness to shake..

The future of Captain Olimar's intergalactic journeys

Last week marked ten years since the original Pikmin released in Japan. In the decade since we've had just a single sequel, but Olimar's adventures are far from over. The story of an alien who crash lands on a mysterious planet and must recruit tiny plants to work for him, like many of Shigeru Miyamoto's franchises Pikmin is inspired by a..

Better than monkey nuts

The night is finally here: Halloween is upon us. At the time of writing the world isn’t being taken over by zombies, werewolves or ghosts. Instead, the main horrors are the legions of children in cheap masks ringing the doorbell and demanding treats. Many can look forward to bags full of toffee apples, loose sweets and a pile of monkey nuts from less generous victims..

Moments of gaming horror

Halloween is almost upon us, with many gamers making plans for a night of terrifying gaming. Whether these are modern titles or retro, old-school goodness, there are plenty of scary games to enjoy. In the first part of our Fun and Frights feature, we gave a brief outline of how horror games have developed through the...

How horror has evolved

At this time of year, it’s no doubt common practice for many gamers to find their favourite scary game, turn off the lights and get into the Halloween mood. There’s something about frightful gaming experiences that's unique in the entertainment industry. Unlike horror movies or tense, nerve-wracking books, video game fear...

London, Eiji Aonuma, Koji Kondo, Zelda Williams, legendary

After a successful first show at the Pantages theatre in Los Angeles, The Legend of Zelda 25th anniversary symphony took in London's Hammersmith Apollo with a sold-out show that celebrated the series' captivating music. Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma took to the stage to introduce the concert, the audience lapping up his every sentence,..

How a stray cat, a passion for classic gaming and a dream coalesced into a DSiWare delight

A little while back, a little gem appeared as if from a cloud of smoke onto the DSiWare service – Go! Go! Kokopolo, from young indie developer Tanukii Studios. In speaking with Keith Webb, the company's founder, we discovered that he was also its only member. Indeed, he occupied just about every imaginable..

Not for the faint of heart

Halloween is now just one week away, while many horrors await: ghosts, zombies, children in masks demanding sweets and candy. Up to now we've focussed on Resident Evil and Castlevania, but now we're just looking for thrills to take us to the darkest night of the year. To get us started we decided to produce a list of...

25 years of memories

This week has been Castlevania features week. We’ve picked our top ten games from the series, reviewed an awful novelisation of Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest, and provided some tips for wannabe Dracula hunters. One thing that has become clear amongst the team is that this series is packed full of memories and nostalgia, as...

WiiWare gets weirder

QubicGames' Gnomz isn't much like other fighting games. There are no punches, no blocks and no health bars — instead it has gnomes, rainbow socks and reindeer with lights on. We recently grappled with a preview version of the game and came out (mostly) mentally unscathed. Played with the Wii Remote sideways, Gnomz is a single-screen platformer/fighting game that owes as much..

The old-school way

So far this week we’ve listed our top 10 Castlevania games, while also launching the Nintendo Life Book Club with the horrific Simon’s Quest novel. A common theme across the series is the quest to defeat Dracula, mostly by trekking through his unfeasibly huge castle. Should the unlikely ever occur and the world looks to you to hunt down the Prince of Darkness, who better to..

Learn more about the porcelain protectors

After the revelation of Gnomz yesterday we had to sit down with QubicGames' Michał Dys to learn more about the bizarre WiiWare fighting platformer. We'll also have a preview of the game coming up tomorrow, so don't miss it. Nintendo Life: The first question has to be: why gnomes? What is it about them that makes them good but under-used game characters?..

For all you bookworms

Here at Nintendo Life we do our best to keep you entertained with a diverse range of news, reviews, features, podcasts and music shows. We've been missing one thing, though: a Nintendo Life Book Club. There's a lot of game-based literature out there, so we thought that the bookworms out there would like to chill out with a novel when gaming becomes too much. Opening the doors..

Our favourite Dracula quests

As the dreaded night of Halloween continues to loom ever closer, we are now turning our attention to the Castlevania franchise, which recently celebrated its 25th Anniversary. All of this week there'll be features looking at the series, as we join the hunt to take Dracula down once and for all. In previous features...

Remembering the horror

This week we've been celebrating the Resident Evil franchise, a series of games that has set the benchmark for survival horror and is perfect for this spookiest of months. Before we move onto our next Halloween horrors, some of the Nintendo Life team have cast their minds back to their experiences with Resident Evil titles and what's made them memorable. Reminiscing on..

Playing from behind the sofa

The Resident Evil franchise has forged a reputation for inducing fear in the bravest of gamers. While the series has flirted with a more action-orientated focus, it's the survival-horror aspects that often stay in the memory. Features Editor Thomas Whitehead and writers/Resident Evil experts Zach Kaplan and Marcel van...