Author Profile
- Username
- JonWahlgren
- Articles
- 591 (178 reviews)
- First Article
- Mon 4th, May 2009
- Avg. Review Score
- 6.3
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News Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 Steals an OFLC Rating
Greed is great
It's a big day for the Game Boy's Mario Land series. The rather splendid Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins became available on the 3DS Virtual Console, and its follow-up has taken the first step towards the same fate thanks to Australia's OFLC ratings board. Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 marks the first leading role for...
Podcast NLFM Episode 20: It's Alive!
Thanks for hanging on to those RSS feeds
Had you going there for a while, didn't we? Weekly. Ha! Sorry for the absence, fearless listeners, but Nintendo Life's chip and game music podcast NLFM is back on track after a too-long hiatus. And boy do we have some doozies for your ears! 1. Shiryu — The Goddamn Batman (Shiryu’s Arcade vol. 4)2. Yoko...
News Kid Icarus: Uprising Suffers Worldwide Delay
Pit's wings clipped until 2012
Kid Icarus: Uprising had already got pushed back to 2012 in Europe but looked to be on course for a Japan and North America release this holiday season. Sadly, that doesn't appear to be the case anymore. During today's 3DS Conference in Japan, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata announced that the game has been pushed back in...
News Fire Emblem Strategising Its Way to 3DS
All-new adventure slated for next year
Among the plethora of games new and old shown during Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata's presentation during the 3DS Conference, a new entry in the fan-favorite Fire Emblem franchise was revealed for release next year. The final name is not known at the moment, but it is confirmed to be an all-new adventure and will...
News SEGA's Rhythm Thief Stealing Its Way West
Possibly into your heart
SEGA's new 3DS rhythm game with the rad name is officially hopping flights from Japan to North America and Europe next year under the new moniker of Rhythm Thief & the Emperor's Treasure. Playing as the thief Raphael, you attempt to unravel the mystery of what happened to your father through stealing, puzzle solving and,...
News Wrap Your Brain Around These CRUSH3D Screens
What a twist!
Sega's excellent Crush may have gone overlooked on PSP, but hopefully the same fate doesn't befall CRUSH3D on 3DS as it looks like it's shaping up to be one of the platform's more interesting puzzlers. Protagonist Danny has something of an insomnia issue and your task is to help him get a good night's sleep as you flit between 2D and...
News Chain of Pandora's Tower Shots Show Big Weapons, Bigger Explosions
Just in time for your summer BBQ
Along with today's confirmation that Japanese RPG The Last Story and the more action-focused Pandora's Tower will release in Europe sometime next year comes a meaty chunk of new screenshots for the latter title. The game centers around the chain-equipped Ende and his journey to rescue Ceres from succumbing to a curse...
Review Pac-Man & Galaga Dimensions (3DS)
Waka waka waka
Pac-Man and Galaga have provided 30 years worth of entertainment, coin shortages, hit songs and waka-wakas across the world, and to celebrate Namco has cooked up a number of presents for fans. One such present is Pac-Man & Galaga Dimensions, a six-layer cake iced with 3D. But instead of a tasty bakery delight, some dead bugs have...
Review Kirby's Dream Land (3DS eShop / GB)
Is Kirby's debut adventure worth getting sucked into?
Kirby's debut adventure has been around the block a couple of times now, having been remade and mechanically enhanced for both Kirby Super Star on SNES as well as the DS version of that release called Kirby Super Star Ultra. Stripped down and monochromatic in comparison, this original Game Boy...
Is it hip to be square?
The first generation of games for new hardware is a funny batch. Titles that may go overlooked once the software library is defined and rolling full-steam ahead get their chance to shine, partly because there isn't much else out yet and partly because people want to justify all that money just spent by not letting their new...
News Looks Like That Red 3DS is Releasing in Japan
Score one for late adopters
Underwhelmed by the shimmery Aqua Blue and Cosmo Black launch colors of the 3DS? Perhaps you were holding out for a handheld with a little more fire on the outside? Nintendo is set to kill two of your birds with one color by making official the new 3DS colour dubbed Flare Red. The new colour will launch in Japan on 14th...
News Ubisoft's Wii U Exclusive is Chock Full of Space Freaks
New IP for new console
The very first Wii game revealed by a third-party studio was Ubisoft's original first-person shooter Red Steel, and it looks like the company is getting in on the FPS ground floor again when successor console Wii U launches in 2012. Revealed during E3, Killer Freaks from Outer Space centers around the battle between man and an...
Review B Team - Episode 1: Dust & Steel (DSiWare)
Run and gun and not so fun
Run-’n-gun shooters usually wind up one of three ways: either they’re totally crazy awesome with intense action, really really boring, or rock-solid efforts that do no real wrong but regardless fail to spark much of anything in players. B Team - Episode 1: Dust & Steel is the heart-breaking latter kind of game. It...
Talking Point What's in a Console Colour?
Hardware colour is crucial in getting your message across. What will Café don?
In today’s gadget-obsessed world, design is key. How a new piece of tech looks and feels communicates wonders about what type of product it is and the experiences it hopes to bring to the table. Form is important, but colour makes the most immediate impression:...
Review Big Bass Arcade (DSiWare)
Nice catch
Big Bass Arcade seems to be as good an adaptation as DSiWare can reasonably offer the sport. We say that not in a back-handed way, but knowing that whatever potentially horrible type of fishing game could have been released on DSiWare, Big Bass Arcade manages to break on through and be kind of fun anyway. True to its name, Big Bass is as...
Maniacal. Deadly. Killer.
If we had to sum up Interplay's MDK2 in one word, we would choose "old-school." With a silly sense of humour, unforgiving difficulty and enough bullets to take down a small country — or in this case, alien invasion — MDK2 is a "game for gamers" through and through. And while it shows its age a...
News DSi Firmware Gets an Update
System Menu cranks to 1.4.2
Nintendo has been pretty mum on the firmware update front for quite some time, but today broke that silence by quietly rolling out an update to its DSi line. Nudging the ticker up to version 1.4.2, the update description appears utterly unspectacular at face value by declaring that it brings along behind-the-scenes...
Review Anonymous Notes Chapter 2 - From The Abyss (DSiWare)
Second verse, same as the first
Anonymous Notes Chapter 1 - From the Abyss turned out to be a mechanically sound albeit slightly aimless dungeon crawler with a couple of interesting ideas up its sleeve. Save for a different main character, this is the exact same game as before. Not that we were expecting anything else — both games selectively pull...
Nothing funny rhymes with "Ubongo"
Ubongo is a board game that's won its fair share of awards in continental Europe, and came to WiiWare via a not-so-great adaptation. Shrinking the game to the DSiWare platform doesn't do it any favours either, sadly, and comes with a host of new problems. As opposed to the four-player original board game and...
It'll take more than a new lick of paint to save this franchise
When High Voltage Software first decided to enter the Wii first-person shooter space, competition wasn’t exactly something they really had to worry about. Sure, there had been a few half-hearted ports of popular franchises, but The Conduit was the first proper FPS developed...
Interviews Monster Tale - Dreamrift's Peter Ong
DreamRift's co-founder spins us a tale of two screens
Even though its successor released last month in Europe and North America, the DS was never going to go down without a fight. A new Pokemon generation dominated the handheld's last days as top dog, but right under the radar flew Majesco and DreamRift's excellent platform/pet RPG Monster Tale...
Review Anonymous Notes Chapter 1 - From The Abyss (DSiWare)
Non-stop grind
There's nothing quite like a good dungeon crawler to waste away an afternoon. All that hacking and slashing and magicking and looting and leveling — when these gel together, why, yes, please. These are all traits found in Anonymous Notes Chapter 1 - From The Abyss, but sadly the glue keeping the game together lacks a very vital...
Review Combat of Giants: Dinosaurs 3D (3DS)
Hold on to your butts
Indisputable fact: dinosaurs are awesome. Giant, majestic beasts who would just as soon munch a twig as rip your face off with their crazy teeth, they really have few equals on this planet in terms of sheer cool. Dragons and giant sharks are pretty rad too, but neither of those girls are clever enough to figure out a door...
Review Bust-A-Move Universe (3DS)
Burst bubble
Bub and Bob may have started out capturing foes with their crazy dinosaur bubble breath by day and moonlighting as arcade puzzle game stars, but the latter of which we can only imagine to be the more lucrative field as it morphed into their full-time job. It's easy to see how this happened: Bust-A-Move/Puzzle Bobble is incredibly fun...
