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A decade under the ocean

This week marked the 10th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker’s European release, a title that’s equally one of the most beloved and controversial titles in the entire Zelda franchise. Launched on the GameCube between 2002 and 2003 worldwide, The Wind Waker had a troubled launch, due largely to a...

The power's on the wrist

These days we take gaming portability for granted. We may kill time playing a bit of Angry Birds on our smartphones while waiting for the next bus to arrive or waiting for our dental appointment. Back in the early ’90s you could carry around a Game Boy or Atari Lynx, but neither was particularly pocket friendly. The...

Doubling the bits for Super power

We think it's safe to say that the past two generations of Nintendo home consoles — Wii and Wii U — haven't overly concerned themselves with raw graphical power; now its all about concepts and experiences. It wasn't always so, with Nintendo responding the the SEGA Mega Drive / Genesis — which enjoyed a spell...

We can dream, can't we?

Following on from our sister site Nintendo Life’s great article regarding the ten Sega Genesis / Mega Drive games that they want to see appear on the Wii U’s Virtual Console, and the news that the classic 16-bit game Flashback is getting a HD makeover, we thought we’d kick off our new regular weekly feature with a...

They skipped Wii VC, so now their time has come

Earlier this week we were rather pleased the share the news, based on a couple of sources, that Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse looks set to come to Wii U. It's unclear whether it'll be a straight-up re-release (on the Virtual Console) or a remastered port, but whatever the case it's a SEGA...

"Video gaming is an important medium that reflects our time"

Video games and art regularly collide with spectacular results, but the work of Swedish artist Per Fhager is one of the most surprising examples of this fusion of interactive entertainment and the world of visual crafts. Fhager's work has been displayed all over Europe, and manages to...

Let's begin at the beginning

One thing you may have noticed, if you're a regular visitor to Nintendo Life, is that we're more than happy to wear our retro-enthusiast, rose-tinted spectacles as often as possible. A merger with VC-Reviews in April 2009 is an important part of our history, and we often share entertaining blasts from the past and wax...

Emotion Engine

It's a common misconception that the Nintendo Super Famicom and Sega Mega Drive were close rivals in their native Japan. In reality, Sega was in fact third in the pecking order, and it was NEC's PC Engine which fought so bitterly with Nintendo for domination of the sales charts. A collaboration between hardware manufacturer NEC an

Clone alone

The medium of video gaming has arguably witnessed some of the most ridiculous story lines in the history of humankind. Let’s face it, if you went to a literary agent with the concept of a portly Italian plumber giving up hunting giant apes and travelling to a land filled with talking mushrooms to save a princess from the clutches of...

Ready

With SNES classic F-Zero coming to the end of its spell as the 30 cent/30 pence Famicom Anniversary promotion on the Wii U eShop, some of us in the Nintendo Life team thought that it was the perfect time to talk about the franchise. With just four main releases — include the GBA title but discounting the arcade unit — it's not been...

Fire Emblem's old rival deserves a second chance

As you dig yourself into Fire Emblem: Awakening’s monstrously addictive campaign, spare a thought for some of the other turn-based strategy RPGs which haven’t been given the chance to impress an entirely fresh generation of players. Like Langrisser, for example. Chances are, unless you really...

The genesis of Sega's superstardom

It's fitting that the first non-Nintendo entry in our Hardware Classics series should be the Sega Mega Drive. This sleek 16-bit powerhouse remains Sega's most commercially successful console, having shifted around 40 million units globally. Famous for being the first console to challenge Nintendo's dominance in...

Still super after all these years

To many, it's the greatest video game console ever made. The Super Famicom — or Super Nintendo Entertainment System as it is more commonly known outside of its native Japan — is host to some of the finest pieces of interactive entertainment ever made. It was on this console that Nintendo refined so many of the...

The lengths we go to

If you want to play a bit of multiplayer in most games nowadays, and you don't have a friend nearby, it's as easy as selecting a menu and waiting for strangers to appear as competition. Online multiplayer can perhaps be a bit more personal than that, of course, with the ability to meet up with friends and have a blast, as we...

This is how you redesign a console

Let's be brutally honest here — the original DS design was ugly. Quite what Nintendo's designers were thinking when they came up with it we'll never know, but the dumpy, two-tone casing hardly got pulses racing, even back in 2004. It felt like a system that was rushed out of the door purely to meet a deadline,...

Give the dog a bone

The Nintendo Entertainment System — or NES, for short — is arguably the console on which Nintendo's current lofty status was built. Launched in Japan as the Famicom, the 8-bit platform is home to an almost endless list of solid-gold classics, including Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Metroid,

Are you ready?

During the arcade boom of the early 1980s, Donkey Kong was doing great business for Nintendo. To capitalise on this popularity, miniature versions of the arcade game were released. First, there was Coleco’s Donkey Kong tabletop, followed by Nintendo’s Game & Watch Multi Screen version. We decided to pit these ‘portable’...

Looking for co-op partners

Last year we brought you a collection of dating profiles we happened to find online, which belonged to some of our favourite video game heroes! You wouldn't expect lightning to strike twice, but since it's Valentine's Day and miracles do happen, we thought we'd spend some more time combing through the darkest recesses...

Monochrome masterpiece

The Nintendo DS may be the biggest selling handheld console of all time, but you could argue that this is only the case because of the vital groundwork laid down by the Game Boy. The original monochrome brick was pushed onto the market in 1989 in the wake of Nintendo's popular Game & Watch range, and would go on to sell...

The Triforce is strong in this one

Nintendo's Game Boy Advance is one of the company's most beloved handhelds. It had a hard act to follow, coming after the blockbuster successes of the original monochrome Game Boy and the Game Boy Color, but it managed to shift almost 90 million units globally. However, in typical Nintendo fashion, it took a...

Majora's Mask 3D, anyone?

The recent announcement of The Wind Waker HD for Wii U was met with a great deal of excitement not just here on Nintendo Life, but across social networks and other websites. It's a title that has a passionate, loyal following, and the prospect of an enhanced version prompted plenty of conversations about just what...

We explain why this 2D classic needs another shot at glory

In the first of a new series of features, we take a look at a game that is badly in need of a remake on a Nintendo system. Princess Crown might sound like the kind of game you’d expect your little sister to play, but it’s actually the first release from the team that would eventually...

A multi-screen masterpiece

Before the Nintendo DS, Game Boy Advance and even the Game Boy, portable gaming was all about Nintendo's Game & Watch series. The brainchild of Nintendo engineer Gunpei Yokoi - who apparently came up with the idea after seeing a Japanese businessman playing around with his pocket calculator during his journey to work...

A license to thrill

While film tie-ins are expected these days, few games can attest to having their origins found in novels, and fewer still can claim to have outgrown those origins and become a success in their own right. But that is exactly what the James Bond franchise has done. What initially began as a series of novels by Sir Ian Fleming,...