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Game & Watch titles included

Fans of the old handheld games like the ones in the Game & Watch series are in for a treat when they find that several in said series ― as well as others not related to Nintendo ― have been "digitised" and put on the Internet for all to enjoy. Games like Donkey Kong Jr., Mickey & Donald, Merry Cook (also known as Chef), and Space Bridge are just a..

3DS's granddaddy featured

You might be getting all geared-up for the new 3DS, but it's not the first dedicated 3D console from Nintendo: that honour belongs to the good old Virtual Boy, the now notorious machine that launched in the mid 1990s. Now is the perfect time, with 3DS just around the corner, to revisit the machine's creation, games and its...

Missed weeks? What?

Remember when we said NLFM was going to be weekly? Well, we kind of fudged that for the past couple of weeks. Sorry! But we're back with a fiery fever in this episode, where gangsters are punched, pianos diddled and dinosaurs remembered. 1. MONSTER! MONSTER! — Penny Arcade2. Yuzo Koshiro — Go Straight (Streets of Rage 2, Genesis/Mega Drive) 3. Naoki Kodaka — Aflorious..

The doctor, the teacher and the saucier go head-to-head

1,090,400 points. That's the record to beat, set by the cheerful Dr. Hank Chien just last week. Now the New York plastic surgeon joins the double-decade champion and hot sauce tycoon Billy Mitchell and the mild-mannered schoolteacher who toppled his throne, Steve Wiebe, to duke it out for Donkey Kong dominance. What will happen today at Richie..

NES classic gets sequelised

NES brawler River City Ransom is showing its age a little now, though it's still a fun little title, with fans of the game no doubt hoping the newly-announced sequel will feature the same quality playability. Miracle Kidz has proudly announced River City Ransom 2 is in development for home consoles this summer, with a development team including staff members from the..

Join us for live coverage

You've seen the movies. You've read the interviews. You've designed the shirts. You've cheered for the former champion. And to top it off, the bar just got raised by 20,000 points. This weekend is what it's all been building up to: The Kong Off.

We investigate the troubled genesis of one of the finest SNES RPGs in existence

We're big fans of pen-and-paper fantasy role-playing games here at Nintendo Life. In fact, we were the first to pour out a little liquor when the legendary Gary Gygax passed away not so long ago. The reason for our love comes not from every human's natural attraction to...

The high score just got higher

To be the best you have to beat the best, even if that means beating yourself. On 27th February, current Donkey Kong champion Hank Chien did just that. Nearly a year after he originally broke the record for the highest score on a Donkey Kong arcade machine, the New York surgeon has surpassed his best score, making Steve Wiebe, Billy Mitchell and others' task of..

Every English-language game to get its own custom artwork

With the extensive catalogue of games that the NES has to offer, the collectors out there understandably try to get themselves a copy of each and every title. For artist Campbell Whyte, his mission is to paint every single one of them. Based in Perth, Australia, Whyte is in the process of producing one painting a day in his 8 Bit Dreams art..

Hideki Konno explains the importance of its inclusion

We can't expect franchises to stay the same forever, but when the crowd-dividing Blue Shell was introduced to the Mario Kart series back in Mario Kart 64, maybe not all of us expected it to stay through to the modern day instalments. Hideki Konno is one of the main players behind the series, having served as director for Super Mario Kart and..

Former 1UP staffer fills us in on what he's up to now

The humble fanzine harks back to an era when the net didn't exist and the most bits you could possibly hope for from a games console was 16. It's hard to appreciate this now, but back then these crude pen-and-paper creations were the ancestors of sites like the one you're reading right now; unofficial, unhindered by overbearing publishers and..

In this installment, Gaijin explains their carefully laid plan for game four's runaway popularity, go through BIT.TRIP hell and reflect on the end of the series.

Be sure to read Part 1 and Part 2 of our look at the history of BIT.TRIP and Gaijin Games. EYEBALL REVOLUTION: The team somewhat jokingly chalks RUNNER’s popularity, apart from being very...

A smashing shirt

Around a month ago, Nintendo Life and Donkey Kong world champion Dr. Hank Chien teamed up to challenge you, the readers, to design the official Team Chien t-shirt. The response was overwhelming, but Dr. Chien was able to cut through the entries with surgical precision and pick a favourite. The winning design was submitted by user...

64-bit baby in depth

With Bomberman Hero arriving on Virtual Console today in Europe, the N64 is firmly back in many gamers' minds, while for some it never went away. This month's issue of Retro Gamer magazine is ideal for both, as it's a special collector's edition detailing Nintendo's 64-bit beauty in all its glory. Taking a look through the system's most collectible games as well as its..

It could make all the difference

Thanks to the wonders of the Virtual Console, many Nintendo gamers have been introduced to the wonders of Sega's Shining Force and Shining Force II games, but sadly the series hit hard times during the Sega Saturn days, causing developer Camelot to part ways with Sega, and the series has never recovered. Several campaigns to reunite the two companies have fallen on..

What could have been...

N64 adventures Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo Tooie made plenty of fans back in their 64-bit heyday, but they never appeared on the GameCube. A threequel was planned but never released, but now unreleased game-finders par excellence Unseen 64 have posted a short video of the project. Shown off at Spaceworld 2000 before the...

We catch up with Alexis and Hank at the film's Brooklyn premiere

The saga over high scores in Donkey Kong is no longer a tale of two dudes. While most of us came to know the world of modern day Donkey Kongers through the epic rivalry between Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchelll, it wasn't long before a third player emerged out of left field. Hank Chien, a plastic surgeon from New York, shattered both of..

Get a peek at pre-development mock-ups of the first five games

Seeing how games develop over time is always of interest to us here at Nintendo Life, which is why we badgered BIT.TRIP developers Gaijin Games for an exclusive peek at some of their development documentation and how we wound up with these target renders for the first five games. These renders were all created in the earliest stages of..

One hit KO

We already know it's possible to play Super Mario Bros. on Kinect, but what about something a bit more suited to the sensor's purpose? While Rare did an admirable job of translating the sweet science in its Kinect Sports boxing mode, coder Dan Dockery has brought classic NES fighter Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! (also known as Punch-Out!!...

How to give your Wii and classic hardware a new lease of life

While the relentless march of progress ensures that modern gaming consoles — and the televisions upon which they are played — are able to offer pin-sharp HD picture quality, it's worth sparing a moment to consider where this leaves older machines, as well as the humble Wii — which has yet to break through the 480p barrier, much to..

Like a robot

Over the years we've seen people play Super Mario Bros. in some crazy ways: you can play Mario with Kinect, play Mario with your eyes and even, believe it or not, play Mario with your hands, like a baby's toy. They've all required some sort of human interaction, but not this latest Mario-related chicanery, which uses a robot to replace...

Hard to believe

25 years ago this very day, the very first Legend of Zelda game on NES hit Japan, starting one of the most-loved gaming series of all time. Recently, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata discussed the possibility of a Legend of Zelda 25th Anniversary collection, though there have been no announced plans to celebrate Link's special day in the manner similar to last year's Super Mario..

The feel of gorgeous hardware is one thing the Virtual Console can't emulate

Thanks to the wonder of the Virtual Console, we've seen a few choice slices of Neo Geo goodness on the Wii. Titles such as Metal Slug, King of Fighters '94, Magical Drop III and Samurai Shodown II are true classics of video gaming history, and when you consider how incredibly expensive these games were back when they were..

Hint: it's not a hatred of gorillas

Plenty has been written about the ongoing action at the top of the global Donkey Kong leaderboards, but what inspired plastic surgeon Dr Hank Chien to take up the challenge? Chien, whose score of 1,068,000 is just 3,500 points above nearest rival Steve Wiebe, is the subject of a new independent documentary called Doctor Kong, which reveals the Doctor's motivation..