News - January, 2014

Friday31st Jan 2014

Thursday30th Jan 2014

Tuesday28th Jan 2014

Wednesday29th Jan 2014

Tuesday28th Jan 2014

  • Talking Point Is There A Future For The Wii U Without The GamePad?

    Could sacrificing the console's main selling point be the way to success?

    When the Wii U was first announced, the confirmation of the GamePad controller — complete with a second-screen bursting with tantalizing asymmetrical gameplay possibilities — caused quite a stir. The reaction from the industry and general public was mainly positive, and...

  • Guest Blog Shut up! Nothing is Wrong With The Nintendo Wii U!

    Goodbye Galaxy Games' Hugo Smits speaks his mind

    The last few weeks there has been a lot said about Nintendo and its products. It seems every analyst out there is keen on sharing his doom scenario. Most of them seem to think that Nintendo could solve all this by simply moving their software over to other platforms (mainly mobile) and some seem to...

  • Review Mario Bros. (3DS eShop / NES)

    Subpar Mario

    Mario and Luigi’s adventures have been nothing short of fantastical over the years, to the point where you could be forgiven for questioning their occupations as plumbers. But despite the brothers’ incredibly varied employment history as doctors, sportsmen and racing drivers — in which they’ve rarely called upon their supposed...

  • Preview Japanese Gamers Get Their Free Super Mario Bros. Deluxe Download

    Can't grumble at free, right?

    European gamers have to wait a few weeks longer yet, but lucky Japanese 3DS owners should have already received their free download codes for this fondly-remembered port of a gaming legend. First impressions of Super Mario Deluxe aren't, however, particularly good – the VS. game mode and print options simply don’t...

  • News The Nintendo Phone Almost Happened A Decade Ago

    Ex-Danger employee reveals how Game Boy games nearly came to mobile

    Everyone seems to be telling Nintendo to get its games on mobile phones these days, and yesterday's news that the company would be announcing some kind of smartphone strategy seems to suggest that it is listening to such advice. However, a former employee at Danger Research — the...

  • Matters of Import E.X. Troopers Brings The Heat To 3DS

    Capcom however, remains frosty

    Capcom’s E.X. Troopers may not be the latest or biggest Japanese 3DS game around, but it’s certainly no less worthy of inclusion here than any other game we’ve previously covered on Matters of Import and — as this and its high-resolution PS3 port are the only E.X. Troopers games so far — it is sadly still the...

  • Review Brilliant Hamsters! (3DS eShop)

    Not quite brilliant

    Nintendo revived the pet simulation genre with its hit Nintendogs series, and since then there have been plenty of other pet sims hoping to catch the animal-loving gamers' hearts. Bergsala Lightweight's eShop title Brilliant Hamsters! is a competently crafted pet simulator that simply doesn't present enough variety to sustain...

  • News Nintendo States There Are "No Plans" to Bring Mini-Games to Smart Devices

    Satoru Iwata's Corporate Management Policy Briefing will reveal more

    The Nikkei, a prominent business newspaper and website in Japan, recently published an article outlining its understanding of Nintendo's upcoming smart device strategies, highlighting its expectations of what will be announced later this week when Satoru Iwata provides an investor...

  • Video This Senran Kagura Burst Euro Trailer Will Put A Spring In Your Step

    3D brawler is bursting out next month

    Senran Kagura Burst might be seen by some individuals as a plague on gaming thanks to its cheap titillation and scantily-clad female fighters, but it's got just as many fans for those very same reasons — it's also a pretty decent game as well, as you'll know if you've already consulted our review. The...

  • Weirdness An Album You Can Remix On Your Game Boy Advance

    Making music with an old friend

    The charming blips and scratching synth of chiptune soundtracks has never really lost its appeal among gamers and musicians alike, with many examples of retro sounds being used in new projects even today. From Anamanaguchi to I Fight Dragons, there's plenty out there to discover, and now electronic pop maestro Doctor...

  • News 3DS Hardware Sales Pass 15 Million Units in Japan

    It took 153 weeks

    While the 3DS may not have sales tracking alongside those of the DS family of systems, it's achieved a great deal after a poor start and — as most would agree — performed well in an increasingly crowded, volatile market. Nintendo had hoped for better, naturally, having revised its yearly target down just recently, but that's...

  • Video Capcom Celebrates 10 Years of Monster Hunter

    Epic

    This is a big year for the Monster Hunter franchise, and Capcom has every reason to be happy with its current status. Monster Hunter 4 cruised past the company's sales targets for Japan, and in the process won't have done any harm to Nintendo's chances in retaining exclusivity of the franchise. In the Japanese market MH counts for a lot, so its...

  • News Monochroma Release Delayed on All Platforms

    Nowhere Studios provides an unofficial new release window for Wii U

    Last year we directed your attention to Monochroma, a successfully crowdfunded project that promises much with a 1950s dystopian setting and attractive visuals. A puzzle platformer with four chapters weighing in at around 90 minutes each, it scraped past its target to secure...

  • News The Tetris Company's Co-Founder Explains How He Brought The RPG Genre to Japan

    A tale of fantasy

    RPGs are often considered as a foundation block of the Japanese development industry, with the region's studios still producing a high number of these titles on a yearly basis. Whatever systems you own there are likely to be RPG titles available that were developed in Japan — especially if you have a DS or, increasingly, a 3DS...

Monday27th Jan 2014

Sunday26th Jan 2014

Saturday25th Jan 2014

Friday24th Jan 2014

Thursday23rd Jan 2014

Wednesday22nd Jan 2014

  • News Netflix Wii U App Update Goes Live

    Spot the differences

    Gone are the days of slotting in a cartridge and simply playing a game, as consoles have become multimedia devices for surfing the web and watching slightly different TV. The Wii U's Netflix app does a pretty decent job with the service, happily handling the HD streaming and being nice and functional all around. But still,...

Tuesday21st Jan 2014

  • News Listen To This Awesome Street Fighter II Rock Opera

    An epic six years in the making

    What started as a throwaway joke between friends has now concluded as something much, much more; a fully-fledged rock opera extravaganza. In 2007, Texan indie group Man Factory got together and decided that there was enough referential material in the Street Fighter series to knock together a garage rock album telling...

Wednesday22nd Jan 2014

Tuesday21st Jan 2014

Monday20th Jan 2014

Sunday19th Jan 2014

  • Review Unepic (Wii U eShop)

    Not ungood

    So you know how it goes: you’re playing a tabletop RPG with your friends. They poke fun at you because you, the Modern Gamer, want to try something that tends to work on a screen but doesn’t jive with the “realism” of high fantasy. Whatever. You excuse yourself to 'observe nature', but the lights go out and suddenly you’re not...

  • Review Hot Wheels: World's Best Driver (Wii U)

    Lead it Away

    It’s wonderful to think about the toys of our childhood and how they’re being brought back to life as video games. Through gaming, new generations of youngsters can enjoy the same things that older gamers did in their youth, but in a completely different way. It’s safe to assume that many of you reading this grew up building with...

  • Weirdness When Publicity Pictures Aren't Worth It - Aaron Paul With Wii Fit U

    Wii Fit U, B****

    Aaron Paul is all the rage right now. Although an actor with a highly respectable career over a number of years, he's shot to prominence in recent times due to his role as Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad; he's now appearing in the lead role of the upcoming Need for Speed movie, for better or worse. So he's hot stuff, winning awards...

  • Video James Farr's Awesome Star Wars and Nintendo Mashup Continues

    This time it's The Empire Strikes Back

    Back in October we shared the latest animation from James Farr, Super Smash Wars: A Link to the Hope, which had already followed thoroughly entertaining efforts that combined Nintendo franchises with those such as Ghostbusters. The good news is that the animator has returned to give his spin on the second Star...

  • Feature Monster Hunting With Kerry: Taking Baby Steps With Great Jaggi

    Warning: Article contains gross incompetence

    Hello! Kerry here, your inept but endlessly enthusiastic guide through the dangerous and thrilling world of Monster Hunter 4. At the behest of the kind and gracious Nintendo Life overlords, I've been locked away in a small room for days on end and tasked with playing as much of the Japanese version as...

Saturday18th Jan 2014

Friday17th Jan 2014

Thursday16th Jan 2014

Wednesday15th Jan 2014

Tuesday14th Jan 2014

Monday13th Jan 2014

Sunday12th Jan 2014

Saturday11th Jan 2014

  • Feature Nintendo Games We'd Love to See in 2014

    Newcomers and some triumphant returns

    If you cast your minds back to this time in 2013, it would have been tempting to wonder what games were coming for the rest of that year and into 2014. Long-term line-ups were a mystery, though educated guesses could be made, and then Nintendo blew away some of the obscuring smoke in a January Nintendo Direct...

  • Review Monster High: 13 Wishes (Wii U)

    Make it stop

    Monster High: 13 Wishes is garbage. There's no getting around it. Don't play it, don't buy it. Just don't. Spend your cash on something more worthwhile. Buy a Monster High DVD if you must. Invest heavily in dogecoin if you're determined to do something crazy with your money. Just, not this. Anything but this. In a nutshell, Monster...

  • News A Third-Party "Secret Developer" Gives an Inside Story of Working on Wii U

    "We would be lucky to make back all the money that we had invested"

    One regular topic that can worry or frustrate Wii U owners is the issue of third-party support, particularly with retail content. While the Wii struggled to maintain third-party parity with its rivals — albeit with some excellent exclusives over its years — there was some hope...

  • Review CastleStorm (Wii U eShop)

    Always in another castle

    Zen Studios, known mostly for its pinball titles, has created a promising new IP in CastleStorm, a tower defence / real-time strategy game with easy-to-learn, difficult-to-master gameplay and a tongue-in-cheek story filled with humour and personality. Playing a bit like a hybrid of Swords & Soldiers and Angry Birds, it's...

  • News A Link Between Worlds Early Japanese Sales Surpass Ocarina of Time 3D

    Yet don't reach glory days of Phantom Hourglass

    The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds arrived in Europe and North America on 22nd November last year, but it was 26th December before it arrived in Japan. It's had a decent performance in the charts, too, claiming top spot in its début week before falling back to third place in its second week...

Friday10th Jan 2014

Thursday9th Jan 2014

Friday10th Jan 2014

Thursday9th Jan 2014

Wednesday8th Jan 2014

Tuesday7th Jan 2014

  • News 3DS Hack Removes Region Locking For Retail Cartridges

    Plays legit cartridges only

    It's no secret that some gamers would like Nintendo to drop its region locking policy, especially in light of major rivals doing just that with their latest systems. It's not a simple argument, as Nintendo has legitimate reasons and the demand for playing games from other regions is probably, when all is said and done,...

  • News Pokémon Bank Remains Offline in Japan as Nintendo Apologises for Issues

    An economic crash

    During the festive break the Nintendo Network encountered issues for over two days, with a number of new system owners combining with Christmas Day Pokémon Bank gamers in Japan to cause major problems. The downtime of the eShop platforms in particular was damaging in such a busy period; yet while the online stores have been back...

Monday6th Jan 2014

  • Review Knytt Underground (Wii U eShop)

    An abstract adventure

    Knytt Underground is unlike anything else on the Wii U eShop; it's the work of Nicklas Nygren (better known as Nifflas), a developer that's produced some intriguing download titles on PC — including this game's predecessors — as well as the critically acclaimed NightSky. The fact this game stands apart from its eShop...

Tuesday7th Jan 2014

Monday6th Jan 2014

  • News Nintendo Ordered to Pay Royalties on 3DS Sales For Patent Infringement

    1.82% of the wholesale price

    Last year we told you about the ongoing patent dispute between Nintendo and Seijiro Tomita of Tomita Technologies USA. The case dated back to 2011, with Tomita arguing that the use of glasses-free 3D — in particular the 3D camera option — utilised his patented technology. Tomita had presented this technology to...

  • Video Xbox One vs. Nintendo 64

    There's a reason why the classics are referred to as classics

    A new comparison video by Jeff Rubin, in which he pits the Xbox One against 1996's Nintendo 64, has proven what many of us have known all along: the Nintendo 64 is hands-down the superior system. The short tongue-in-cheek video (see below) actually makes a pretty compelling case as to...

  • News Masahiro Sakurai Confirms Separate Super Smash Bros. Trophies for Wii U and 3DS

    Even more of them to collect

    Masahiro Sakurai took a short break from posting daily Super Smash Bros. screens over the festive period, but has today made his triumphant return to the Miiverse Director's Room community. We'll be resuming our weekly summary from next week, but it may interest you to know that Sakurai-san has used his first post of...

  • News Nintendo Dominates Japanese Charts At Christmas

    Not bad

    Famitsu has released its multi-format sales figures for Japan, covering 23rd to 29th December. The title of this news post has given away who "won", but can you guess by how much? Wii U and 3DS games took eight out of the top ten positions, with the only non-Nintendo game to break it up being the Vita and Playstation 3 releases of Final...

  • News Dallas Tech Company iLife Thinks Nintendo Stole Its Idea For Motion Control

    Federal lawsuit has been filed by the firm

    A Dallas-based technology company has filed a federal lawsuit against Nintendo claiming that the Japanese video game manufacturer has violated six of its patents by including motion-sensing tech in its Wii and Wii U consoles. iLife Technologies and Solutions — which claims to invent "innovative...

  • News Prolific Video Game Box Art Illustrator Greg Martin Passes Away

    Created covers for Sonic, Duck Tales 2, Adventure Island and many more

    The name Greg Martin may not mean anything to most gamers, but if you've been playing since the days of the NES then you will definitely have seen — and no doubt appreciated — his work. Martin created the amazing western covers for plenty of Sega and Nintendo games, such as...

  • First Impressions 3D After Burner II

    GET READY!

    Japanese code-shop M2’s range of Sega 3D Classics consistently puts everyone else’s retro remaster efforts in the shade, and the time we've spent with the Japanese version of 3D After Burner II yet again shows that the studio simply cannot be beaten when it comes to getting an arcade-accurate port running smoothly on the relatively...

  • Feature Looking Back at Nintendo in 2013 - Part One

    It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

    We're already looking forward to the coming year here at Nintendo Life, picking some of our most anticipated Wii U and 3DS of 2014, while hoping for good times and another year of excellent gaming. Yet still, part of looking forward is understanding what's happened before, and as is our yearly...

  • News Microsoft's Phil Spencer Can't Say Enough Nice Stuff About Nintendo

    Thinks Nintendo's first party content is an "amazing asset"

    Remember the good old days when video game firms used to say all kinds of nasty things about their rivals to get the upper hand? It would seem the days Genesis does what Nintendon't are long past, as modern companies appear to be increasingly keen to praise one another. Microsoft and Sony...

  • Weirdness Snoop Lion's Latest Music Video References Pokémon and Retro Games

    DoggTales...

    Snoop Lion, for those unaware, is the current artistic name of the rapper many will likely know as Snoop Dogg. In recent times he's undergone a fairly major image change, with a shift in his music's themes, that new name and an even more chilled out style. Rather than hitting up the streets with Dr. Dre — or whatever — the most...

Sunday5th Jan 2014

Saturday4th Jan 2014

  • Review Wipeout: Create & Crash (Wii U)

    Primetime pratfalls

    ABC's Wipeout - transatlantic cousin to the BBC's Total Wipeout - is a long running television show that sees a motley crew of caricatured contestants enthusiastically flinging themselves through, over, and off of the real-life equivalents of foam-padded platforming levels. It's also had quite a few video game adaptations over...

  • Review EDGE (3DS eShop)

    A different side of the same cube

    We are already big fans of EDGE on the Wii U eShop, a release in which it was one-third of the Two Tribes Classics trilogy. Its arrival on the 3DS is as a solo flyer, and perhaps on a screen size that'll be more familiar to veterans of the mobigame title that Two Tribes has so effectively promoted to gamers of all...

  • Review Cubit The Hardcore Platformer Robot (3DS eShop)

    What’s in a name?

    We're often told that it’s not safe to judge a book by its cover. The adventures and perils that lie within those pages can often be very different than what is offered up by the image imprinted on a book's front, but we all do it anyway. Marketers and publishers know that we're drawn to book covers; it's the first thing that...

Friday3rd Jan 2014

  • News Luigi Nendoroid Figure Up for Preorder

    In this, the Eternity of Luigi

    That Luigi diorama offered on Club Nintendo is pretty sweet, but has having the coins or stars for it before preorders sold out been a pipe dream? Don't fret; other options exist. Cute options. A 10-cm (3.9-inch) PVC Luigi Nendoroid figure is currently up for preorder on J-Box. The Man in Green is posable and comes...

Saturday4th Jan 2014

Friday3rd Jan 2014

Thursday2nd Jan 2014

Wednesday1st Jan 2014

  • Feature The Biggest Wii U Games of 2014

    Some good 'uns are on the way

    A new year is here, and with it comes the opportunity for Nintendo and its partners to excite Wii U owners in the best possible way — with great games. We've decided to list some of the most anticipated and exciting games coming to the Wii U in 2014, all as a taste of what's to come. Our aim with this list is to...

  • Review SpongeBob Squarepants: Plankton's Robotic Revenge (Wii U)

    Best left in a pineapple under the sea

    Not content with his role as star of an immensely successful Nickelodeon cartoon and enviable position as the world's most popular anthropomorphized sponge, SpongeBob Squarepants also enjoys a prolific and presumably lucrative side-career in the world of video games. This latest release, Plankton's Robotic...

  • Talking Point New Year Resolutions for Nintendo

    We can all improve

    With 2014 now here, it provides an opportunity to take stock and consider ambitions for the year, as well as identify areas of improvement. We can all do better things and improve ourselves, but what of major corporations? The same rule applies to them, so below are some suggestions for Nintendo, which brought us so much to enjoy...

  • News Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon Figurine Spooked Off Club Nintendo

    Unfortunately they're all gone

    During Nintendo's latest European and North American Direct broadcasts in December, the company revealed a Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon figurine, making it available right away on Club Nintendo in Europe and as a pre-order in North America. Unfortunately, it appears that the collectable is now sold out on the North...

  • Video This Dr. Luigi Trailer May Be The Perfect Remedy

    Available now in North America

    It may have slipped the attention due to its release date, but Dr. Luigi arrived on the Wii U eShop in North America on 31st December 2013 for $14.99, with its arrival in Europe set for 15th January. It continues the popular falling block puzzling well-known with Luigi's brother, introducing some new modes and also...