Add a bow and it's Hello Squiddy.

I used to write games in QBASIC but I think for portable development I'd rather use my phone, there's a full Java IDE available on Android.

Took me a while to realize what that logo reminded me of but it's the evil Eyeborgs from Gotcha Force!

I'm pretty sure Janitor Simulator was Rondomedia's april's fools joke last year.

These simulators are multiplying like crazy and they're crap so I'm surprised that they're putting a demo out there that lets everybody see that this isn't Harvest Moon with tractors.

It's a cult favorite and there was talk that especially the developers at Capcom are huge fans of the game. They were hoping to turn it into a toy franchise but with the low sales that never happened.

Looking at eBay I'm glad I bought it for 30€ back then.

It's available for cheap on iOS but that means playing with a virtual d-pad.

The game's kind of a mixed bag, the difficulty is on the lower end (takes a long time to ramp up to anything challenging and even then the jumping is VERY forgiving, even the tiniest platforms are easy to land on) and the boss is fairly lame (he's repeated for every world, just getting a few more attack patterns) but there are also some really cool things in there.

The framework of fighting games is used so restrictively and rigidly that there's not much possible innovation outside of piling on more incomprehensible systems. Almost no devs are willing to challenge the established tropes in the way Nintendo did with Smash Bros. Well, maybe it's just the rigidity of the definition of a fighting game, when somebody makes something different like e.g. the combat-related EA Sports games they're no longer considered fighting games.

These fighting games always have intriguing stories (but maybe that's because they're not being told properly so you just can't tell that they're weak) but I just can't get into the mindset required for one on one melee combat. The fighting game I liked the most was Scarlet Weather Rhapsody because the story mode was made of proper boss battles instead of even one on one fights and relied a lot on pattern recognition and other such classic traits.

Sounds like Jetpack Joyride and its ilk.

Meh, I'm getting my big guns and big bugs from Earth Defense Force instead.

The disappearing block sections get brutal, especially in the second Wily stage.

Honestly considering Nintendo manages to sell more copies of some games at 50$ than smartphone devs can sell at 1$ I think that stance is justified.

Malstrom loves quoting an earlier interview where Aonuma admitted he couldn't even deal with the octoroks.

I've seen them at Gamestop in Germany already but no other stores. My guess is that the other stores like the old points cards more as they have no real value written on them so the store can overcharge for them.

Makes sense, the 3DS is at roughly the power level that Monster Hunter has previously used (PSP and Wii) and considering power was the main reason for those two platforms the 3DS is a much better fit than the PS Vita. Since the new generation is a blank slate they can decide now where they want their fanbase to go. The Vita won't be much cheaper to dev for than the PS3 and costs were the reason the PS3 didn't get MH3.

The naysayers, sure. Nintendo's problem are the ones who don't care.

Looks a lot like Earthworm Jim to me, including the "it doesn't make sense" aspect.

Wow, how did Nintendo approve this obvious attempt at misleading consumers?

I'm not too worried about eShop releases until they finally bring the point cards to Europe.

That's not the Sandlot developer that's behind the Earth Defense Force games, right?

I have to press down pretty hard to select things with my thumb on the 3DS touch screen, that's gonna suck for games that want to use both the buttons/sticks and the touchscreen.

Awww, Kirby is the most adorable thing in the world.

So is this a port of the PS1 Frogger 3D?

No. Physical media are mandatory in today's world. As Iwata said, customers do not want download-only devices. They may in 10 years, nobody can say that but today, no. A hardcore gamer may be happy with download-only games but the vast majority of people don't want to pay 45€ without getting a physical medium in exchange. If 3DS games were like 1-2€ a piece, sure, that would work but it would be totally incompatible with Nintendo. The pricing of games is because they can charge that much, not because they have to. Movie DVDs can sell for 6€ a piece.

They removed the game mode from RE4 here, will this game get released in Germany at all?

"Behind the scenes improvements" is Nintendo-speak for "anti-piracy measures". Don't bother with updates like that, the best you'll get out of it is no change, in the worst case it might brick your system like the boot rom update for the Wii did to many people.

No surprise. You sell a souped up tech demo, you get what you deserve.

My mother has been waiting for the DSiWare release of PvZ.

Blood for the blood god! Skulls for the skull throne!

Kinda expected. They've been cutting the translations down more and more with every iteration, you can see it on the European versions. The language options got fewer and fewer until Investigations only had English left, now they've cut even that for Investigations 2...

So is it better than Steel Diver?

Japanese indies make a lot of virtual on (or gundam arcade which is similar) clones.

I've never been hit by invisible enemies. Sometimes they fade in right on top of me but I'm pretty sure that's because they spawned, not because of the draw distance. Maybe you were hit by an arrow or bullet? The camera near distance is also pretty far so you won't see much of what's between you and the camera. However I never had hitting L reset my combat stance, during an attack you can't block anyway so it doesn't cancel any combos.

The ally AI isn't the issue, the game simply simulates battles that aren't within drawing distance with less fidelity. You'll see them kill stuff (or get killed) much faster when you're near them because then combos can be used. Basically that means you have to do the fighting yourself but in the end this is an action game so the orders are more for positioning your dudes so you can quickly take part in different battles. Unattended characters can be used to stop enemy movement but they won't defeat much without manual control.

Ignoring missions leaves the enemy morale high which means the final enemy will be deep inside a morale zone and extremely dangerous (on the order of three hits killing you). Disabling those morale zones makes enemies much more fragile and deal much less damage. The grunts are fairly harmless outside of the zones but they can be dangerous inside them (especially the monks and wrestlers).

I'm playing on Hard, if that matters.

The monstecca demo seems worthwhile.

Eurogamer had retailer comments on the issue some days ago, this story is true.

Glad to hear the thing isn't flopping, with all the supply still on shelves I was worrying about it but it seems like I might be able to get some more street tags soon.

Also cyan system FTW.

Captain Sub: A cheap alternative to Steel diver?

Tell me, how many copies did Angry Birds sell? At what price? Now look at New Super Mario Bros, that sold over 20 million copies at 40€ a piece.

Galcon is a scourge upon RTS games for portables...

The blue shell is especially frustrating when you're playing singleplayer and get nuked just before the finish. I liked the original Mario Kart the best, items were the least fire and forget there.

Sneaker: Good thing you didn't buy it because the game is awful.

The problem with BASIC is that it's awfully slow and on embedded systems it's asking for trouble.

The sales of Extraction were notorious, it had a first week of 9000 sales.

You'd think the abysmal failure of Dead Space Extraction would have scared publishers away from rail shooters but it looks like instead they're making MORE rail shooters.

On the iPhone people wait for a sale if the game costs 3 bucks. That's the mentality that race to the bottom has created. The game developers adapt, producing low budget shovelware that lies about its real cost by nickel and diming you with IAPs. Nowadays the big buzzword is "Freemium" which means a free base game and expensive stuff to actually play it well (not that the latter is constrained to free games, mind you). This creates specific game designs that maximize the opportunity to sell items for real money, just like arcade games were designed to suck quarters out of your wallet. Practically all freemium games are low grade rubbish that's just a minimal framework around selling you stuff, going as low as charging real money to get continues or a level skip feature.

iPhone devs don't make it up in volume either, while 3 million sales for Fruit Ninja may sound impressive that's 3 million dollars minus the chunk Apple takes out of it (30% I'd guess). That's a major hit. Even a mediocre seller can make more money than that on a real console, the big hits go orders of magnitude higher.

Nintendo is a company that has sold more copies of a 50$ game than iPhone devs have of a 1$ game.

I've seen the game in a store on Wednesday.

Also there's a Captain Tsubasa DS game available here but I doubt it's any good.

Ah yes, the first game I bought for the Game Boy. It was funny how the sprite flickering made the Gladiator (first boss) easier because his tail would glitch out instead of colliding with you. I think Bomba and the battleship boss were much harder than in the original though because they could only be beaten by force-cheesing them and Bydo never enters the instakill phase (in the arcade version those indestructible balls start homing in on you after a fixed amount of time and Bydo stops opening his weak point).

The freaking Baldo Gardens (level 4 in this version) were brutal. Took me forever to memorize all the patterns.

Also there's a cheat to play Conway's Game of Life, something like up+B+select when the highscore table is shown. The Game Guide mistakenly called it a drawing program...

I think I got both of these VC games from a Capcom arcade classics collection for the PS2. Outside of those it's a really meh list, not even Glory Days.

Rayman 2 gets ported to absolutely everything.

I'm expecting 250€. That seems in line with how Nintendo prices things. More than that isn't happening considering it's 250$ in the US.