News - 2014, Week 02

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...