ImDiggerDan

Nintendo really do need to listen to their developers. Being able to change game descriptions, screenshots, videos and the price are absolutely essential tools.

@14 - I really should watch that QI again that explained what punctualtion marks you should use to denote sarcastic text.

@1 - What? You'd rather have these than Oscar's Oasis!

I personally think the Zelda in this game looks a bit freaky. Unlike my new avatar! (Thanks, pixelman).

I'd rather have Wario Land 2, but I seem to remember that this first Wario game was pretty cool too.

@27 - Download only.

Got them all. Watched them all. They are all pretty much new (on the 3DS system at least) and they have useful icons now so you know which is which. Plus they all have SpotPass options so I'm assuming we can get game specific updates as long as you keep them installed.

Hmm, just noticed #7 posted pretty much the exact same info...

Anyway, me likey. Me buyey at least 4 of the 7 games.

@21 - There's plenty of evidence that Robin Hood was from Yorkshire. And he died and was buried a few miles from my house in/near Mirfield.

That history lesson aside, Nottingham is about an hour away for me, I'd be tempted to go if I wasn't 40 and hadn't already pre-ordered the game.

4 copies downloaded. Now I just need to hire some hookers to play it with me...

Nice review, shame it sounds like the game has suffered for the DSi hardware.

Now I just need to teach one of my cats to play Zelda then I can have some four player fun.

For those who say Nintendo are rich, so cost isn't an issue, well, the cost decision is based upon the extra money earned in sales for adding a feature compared to the costs incurred in adding the feature.

I suspect a huge part of the decision would come down to quality. Making the game work well over the internet would be pretty difficult due to lag. There may also be issues with raw grunt of the 3DS hardware - it has to do a ton of additional work compensating for lag and running prediction to try pretend that everyone is seeing the same thing in the game. With whatever else is going on in the game code, this might just not be possible.

And for anyone who thinks that because a game works locally it's dead simple to add online, that is simply not the case. When playing locally, it's possible to run at 60fps with pretty much guaranteed data transfers. With this you can simply send controls data round from each system and perform all the game processing on each system individually. If the link gets interrupted, you just freeze the gameplay for a frame and then carry on. This is what Mario Kart DS does.

When it comes to online, you're pretty much certain to miss packets of data, get packets in the wrong order and get packets very very late (in real-time gameplay turns). For this you need one machine acting as a host (even if the players don't know there's a host) running all the game logic and sending out info to the others. The data packets get bigger so the problems are multiplied. This is why in Mario Kart DS you can't bump other players. They might be next to you on your screen but on their screen they are probably in completely different places.

It saddens me to see how many people are quick to attack Nintendo as greedy and lazy. All they do is to try to make the best products for the majority of their customer base. Yeah, it means some people miss out on features that they'd prefer, but the majority don't care. If the online play was rubbish due to technical constraints, I'd rather it wasn't there at all.

2 days before I fly off to sunnier places. I suspect my wife will like this one for on the plane.

I hope the tricks don't involve shaking the 3DS (like they do for the Wii version). My son keeps shaking his 3DS when he plays MK DS and I fear the screen will break off.

Can't wait for this one. Hope it plays as well as the DS game.

What? No Digger Dan?

I'd have sent you a tenner if you'd asked...

To anybody who thinks this game is overpriced: Nonsense. If you think hours of gameplay aren't worth handing over £5/$5 for, there's something seriously wrong with you.

The only reason they can/do sell it for 69p/$1 on iOS devices (by the way, it's £1.50 for the iPad) is because those devices have a much bigger install base than the DS family and will sell enough copies to make them a nice fortune. If they priced it higher, it would put people off who would then go and buy a much worse product for their 69p.

Compare the quality of this game to other DSiWare games for the same price, and use that to determine if it's overpriced, not comparing it to the same game on other platforms which have much cheaper development and publishing costs.

I never played it first time round so am finding playing it now so difficult mainly because of how dated it is compared to the modern versions. If someone made a decent re-write of it that better used the available controls I'd give it a bit more of a go.

I'm going to suggest that the delay was down to localisation. Before you use the page you have to select a language. But yeah, pretty pathetic.

@13 - genuine lol and too right all in one. I really hope this is just for 1 game and no other games support it. Hold on, what do I mean "hope"? That's what happens with all peripherals.

*10 GBA games...

@4 - They could have easily made it 20 games released on one day, too. By waiting until they finish the work on the 20 GBA games and then releasing them all sometime near the end of the year.

Personally, I'm happy with the system of "work on them one by one, release in stages".

@1 They probably did need to launch a new app to enable the right people to get the Spot Pass notifications.

I suspect it's down to localisation costs. Which is rubbish. Why not include just the English language version since that already exists instead of making everyone miss out.

I seriously would have loved to make this game. I always wanted to work on a platform shooter after playing Metroid Fusion. Love the retro graphics, too. So glad they didn't make this in 3D after all.

Given that the episodes for the Kirby TV channel dry up in December, this is no great shock to me. I figured that channel was purely a marketing campaign for the new games.

I hope the Wii version is launched before Christmas, my son would love it as a present.

Somewhere in my distant memory banks I seem to remember that 6 Golden Coins is a great game. Never played a Metroid before Metroid Fusion, though.

@Link79 - Picross is brilliant, but get DS versions of the game. Much easier to play with the stylus.

@3 - The first section suggests what you say, but the 2nd section suggests that they will actively "mess with" your system if you have/do use a device to play copied games, including deleting your copied games (presumably from a dodgy flash card).

@64 - Advance Wars and Pikmin not strategy? (Never played Pikmin, so I may be wrong on that one!). Pokemon not an RPG?

Edit: Mario RPG & Paper Mario not RPGs?

Looks nice.

@46 - I agree with you about the quality of those PlayStation games. Funnily enough though, I've always referred to them as "Nintendo" games as they have a lot in common with all the great Nintendo franchises that I love.

In my mind, Microsoft don't actually have any 1st party software. 2nd party at best. Yes, they buy up studios and brand them as their own, something Sony is doing a lot more of too. In fact, do Sony actually have any studios that weren't originally other companies they bought up?

Not that I have a problem with Sony buying studios. If they buy the one I'm working for (they just signed us up for exclusivity), I'll be quids in.

OK, next question - Does the 3DS app have parental controls, or tie in to the controls of the console? I'd quite like to be able to put this on my son's 3DS but know that he can't find anything inappropriate.

I can't access the Netflix site in the UK, it just tells me that it's not available here yet. What exactly can you get for the $8 quoted above?

From our nearest equivalent, Love Film, I can get unlimited streamed movies and TV (not really sure how good the choice is) for £10 per month (which is about $16) which seems pretty steep in comparison.

I know NetFlix is popular, and I'm assuming that's simply because the service is good quality and value. I hope they do launch it over here. I'd be tempted to try it.

In my experience as a developer, Nintendo don't do concept approval whereas Sony do and I believe Microsoft also do.

To get developer status with Nintendo you have to submit an initial game design and show them that you are a real developer company staffed with experienced console developers, but this is to stop naughty people getting their hands on sensitive development equipment, not a quality control thing.

The problem with trying to extend the games that are already there is that not everybody will update their firmware and be running the latest version. They would have to deal with cases where people with the original version meet people with panels from pictures that their software doesn't even know exist.

An entirely new Streetpass game would make more sense, particularly if they could make it never ending.

Metal Mario (not technically a suit?) - but the graphic of it should reflect what the front facing 3DS camera is seeing, not the game scene.

Saw some footage of this at a conference yesterday, looks really nice.

Annoying your customers never increased sales. If this is done to combat sales of used copies, it will fail.

When I spotted this on the eShop, I couldn't tell if it was this brilliant game or just a conversion of the original Donkey Kong arcade game. The videos and screenshots on there don't help.

For anyone who's not played this, I'd definitely recommend it. Very much like Mario vs DK, another must-download VC title.

Whilst this game does have some slight annoyances (the same help pop-up for the millionth time when you touch an object without the right item equipped), it definitely deserves it's score here.

I've finished this game more times than I can remember yet I forked out the money to play it again without any hesitation whatsoever.

This was actually the first Mario game I really played as I never owned or played a NES.

I always loved this game, although looking back at it now, I do agree that the controls aren't the best, but it's still a great game and I always loved the audio, particularly the music when you beat the game. Looking forward to hearing it again.

@30 - Built into the games themselves. Run the game, look for an option called "Help" or similar.

Has anyone tried running it in original screen resolution? The 3D effect when you do is cool.

My understanding is that the eShop will (in comparision to the DSi shop):
Be faster to navigate.
Be better organised and therefore easier to navigate.
Have user ratings of content.
Have video of content.
Have demos of content.

If all this is correct, then I'll be happy.

Well, 400Yen = ~£3 in the UK, which doesn't seem too bad to me for GBA games.

I bet it turns out that 100Yen = £1.00 by Nintendo's own currency conversion forumla, though.

I'm assuming it's a worldwide thing. Hoping might be a better word...

I think the launch of the update is actually global, too. If you read the press release from NOA, it states it will go live in the evening of the 6th and the Europe one states the 7th. 12.01AM GMT is my guess for the launch time in all territories.

I hope they include something in the May update to live stream the show to the 3DS. Only the May update will arrive after E3...

I think these pictures are nonsense. For starters, if you're playing a split screen game looking at your controller screen, you might as well be playing on a handheld system. They might stick a screen on the controller, but there are so few games that could actually make use of that. They've sort of already done it - the Cube could use the GBA as a controller. Also, a relatively high res screen on the controller == expensive controller. People don't like forking out more than the base cost of the console in peripherals.

As for whether Nintendo's next home console will be like the Wii or not, what's to say that the Wii lives on for the "casual/everybody" crowd and this isn't a console specifically aimed at hardcore gamers? Nobody said the new console has to kill off the Wii.

Oooh, Middlesbrough... My office is there. Got a StreetPass hit yesterday when heading out for a sarnie.

@11 - Sadly, yes. By the bucket, too. Hence why there were sooo many of them on the DS. "My Pet Robot Dolphin Health Spa On The Moon 2 3D" is surely just around the corner.