NintndoNik

@Yorumi Yep, you're right. After 2 failed attempts at doing anything meaningful with the CD-ROM format, they had to cut and run. At least that's my opinion. I also think Nintendo were terrified of their games being pirated. But that's another story entirely.

I actually believe that the decision for Nintendo to stick with cartridges for the N64 was an unfortunate fallback plan. Nintendo wanted to move forward with the CD-ROM format as evidenced by their relationship with Sony. But when that relationship went south, I don't think they had enough time or confidence to secure another deal with another manufacturer without severely holding up development of the N64. So, they opted to go with what they knew. Obviously no company is going to say, "well, we wanted to one way, but it fell apart and so we decided to play it safe..."

@Filmoreo I had the same idea... And then when you play through 100 mario challenge, you can filter out levels you don't like (ie auto) and filter in levels types you do.

I think this game also brings to light the fact that the vocal minority of good mario players is far far outweighed by the people who aren't that good. So while I consider myself quite decent, something challenging for me would be damn near impossible for the average Super Mario fan. It should also silence these people screaming for harder or more challenging Mario games.

When playing other people levels, I'll give them at least 10 play throughs, but if I still can't beat it because there are 100 different things being thrown at me, or I have to memorise 10 different blind jumps, forget it - I'm moving on. That stuff just isn't fun. The handful of levels I've uploaded are pretty tame for my standards - no blind jumps, and just a moderate difficulty spike at the end of each course. I've also tried to add one thing to think about in each course.

If anyone is interested here's my latest one:

P-Switch to Purgatory
8153-0000-004F-12E3

@FLUX_CAPACITOR my fiancée has hijacked my Wii U too! I have to wait until she ready to fall asleep before she hands over the GamePad haha. Then I'm up till about 2am. It's been fun though

@DrawingPower I think you absolutely nailed it

"I star levels liberally. If a level is functional, at all clever, and/or remotely fun, I'll star it."

This comment should be plastered on the box art. I'm exactly the same, and I think people should hand out stars more frequently - if I think the creator has put any sort of time and/or thought into their creation, I give them a star - even if I'm not that challenged by it.

You sound like a sensible person, so I'll definitely check out your levels when I get home.

For anyone that's interested in fairly traditional and accessible levels, here are a couple of mine -

Koopa Mechanics ★
(7622-0000-0037-DD52)

Stoopid Koopa Troopers
(8C0D-0000-0046-804B)

I love these 3d classics. M2 have really talented people there. Much respect.

I wish SEGA would get M2 to do some Alex Kidd... I would literally die of nostalgia.

Even though Michel Ancel's games are published by Ubisoft, I don't really consider his games 'Ubisoft' games. They're always more polished - design-wise, than the standard Ubisoft stuff. One of my all time favourite games - Beyond Good and Evil is his creation.

This is exciting stuff. Kind of wish he was doing more than one level

Did the devs say anything about GamePad functionality? I'm interested, but lack of time is definitely a factor... Seriously considering the VC release of Xenoblade Chronicles :/

I think the post limit may have something to do with the concept of "grooming".

So what if you can't have extended conversations with random people on Miiverse? Who cares. If you know them, and are friends, it's quite easy to switch to one of the myriad of social media platforms to continue your conversation.

I'm really liking the new redesign.

There's a lot of talk about animal crossing coming to wii u. But the creators of that series are have been invested in splatoon for a while now. I wouldn't get my hopes up.

My small prediction for E3 is a remake of Metroid II for wii u alongside Retro's new Metroid reveal. Currently you can buy every Metroid game (apart from 'that' one) on the wii u except the game boy game. I expect that to change after the event.

I'm pretty sure Australia is in the process of going to an automated rating system for independent developers along the lines of what apple does. This should alleviate some costs releasing down here.

@RedYoshi999 It's 8am, not 6am down here. Pretty good way to wake up on a Sunday morning I think. With the pricing, I generally assume Wii U games will be AU$80. Any cheaper and it's a bonus. Better than Sony and Xbox, which generally launch at AU$100. (The Witcher 3 is launching at AU$109.95!!)

@ghostjoshu haha I remember getting NBA Jam around the time it released for the Mega Drive too and it was $120! It's seems cheaper to game now than what it was 30 years ago. How times have changed...

Also for anyone in Australia, the TESTFIRE is Sunday morning, 8am AEST.

I think there may be an interesting secret surrounding the announcement of this Nintendo World Championships. In the film The Wizard based loosely around original 1990 competition, the final round had the contestants playing Super Mario Bros 3 that no one had ever seen before. It was an ingenious way of revealing a new game before the advent of the Internet and social media. I would harbour a guess that we could possibly see a reveal of a brand new game as the final round of this World Championships. Anyone want to throw some guesses out there as to what it might be? New Mario game anyone? Either way, this has me excited even though I can't participate.

I actually enjoyed black ops 2 a great deal. I'm not really into the multiplayer aspect of CoD and so after the 6 or so hours of the single player I didn't really feel the need to go back and do anything further. I'd love to see some more replay value in the single player campaigns of CoD, perhaps objective based gameplay that has more things to do on harder difficulty settings and adds more to the story. Something different than just running from one set piece to the next... But I digress. I do like Treyarch's offerings and would probably pick this up if it came to Wii U

@MadAdam81 affordable space adventures has already been rated in Australia (http://www.classification.gov.au/Pages/View.aspx?sid=uNQYLdCtXlPowcQHrGRlGQ%3D%3D), so it should launch around the European date, unless there are issues.

Interestingly it says "multi platform" but that could just be something incidental with the forms or knapknok possibly future proofing this ip to not have get it re classified.

On the price point, if the US is paying $19.99 you can probably bet we'll be paying about $24.99... I don't mind though. I've had my eye on this game for a while and it looks pretty damn good.

I'll admit I don't find Toki Tori that appealing. From all the talk about the game, I'm pretty sure it plays really well. But there's just something about its presentation. If I only had more spare time... I can relate to the developer and how he describes trying to appeal to everyone and ending up alienating a majority. When I first saw Rive, I was impressed. And after seeing their latest trailer, I fully intend to purchase the game as soon as it's released. It looks great. This says a lot about targeting a specific market - it's much easier when the target market is based on your own personal tastes, and also much more fun to be creative. Obviously, there will be people who will not like the look or play style of Rive ("you can't please everyone"), but the gamers who do like the genre, will buy it in droves. Hopefully this will be a financial success for them.

Just generally, I'd like to throw my 2 cents into the conversation regarding the oft criticised character models. I actually think it's a financially smart artistic choice. And I actually don't mind my game characters looking like game characters sometimes. Not every game has to look photoreal. When you think about it, 90% of the game you're traversing the gorgeous environments looking at your characters back and focusing on the detailed enemies. Would it be nice if these characters were Pixar quality in cutscenes? Sure, but a line has to be drawn somewhere, and sacrifices have to be made in every game (even the ones with a half a billion dollar budget). It easy to say something like, "they should make it look better," but much harder to implement on such a massive scale. I actually like the art direction of face models - could probably use some sub surface scattering to alleviate the "flatness," but that's a little expensive on a console and also who cares. It's the hair on some of the characters I wish they could improve - especially Elma. Bodies and armour models look great and the mechs look awesome.
But when it's all said and done, everyone will remember this game for how it plays and no one can comment on that just yet. Monolithsoft does have a good track record though.

Photorealism is overrated. As a 3d artist who is pushing the bounds of photorealism in CG images on a daily basis, sometimes I long for the creative freedom to create fantastical worlds seen in Xenoblade X. I for one can't wait to get lost in it.

I have a black leather City Slicker case and I can attest to its awesomeness. The quality is impressively good. Dealing with the guys at Waterfield was also a pleasure. Definitely recommended.

@darthllama I don't know if I would call it flawed per se. The problem with many games dropping in price so rapidly, and the thousands of ios/android games for as little .99c is slowly teaching gamers to devalue games. I for one have no issue dropping full RRP on a Nintendo title day 1, because I know that 3 years from now it will probably be the same price. On the other hand, I generally never buy Playstation titles within the first 6 months because I know they will drop in price, and by that stage I may have moved on...

In any case, years ago, here in Australia, the RRP on Nintendo games used to be $99.99, now they are $79. Games on other consoles still retail $99.99 now. I don't know what it's like/been like elsewhere in the world but glean from that what you will.

@Quorthon, I'm fairly new to this site, but find it quite funny that even in a short amount of time, every time I read an article now, I scroll through the comments first looking for your name and what stupid negative thing you've got to say this time. Then I laugh your passive troll attempt and what must be a pretty sad life. Seriously, why the negativity and backhanded slaps every time you feel the need to add your 2cents to a Nintendo fansite? Who do you work for? Sony? Microsoft? EA? Activision? Definitely someone with an axe to grind. For me, your comments have become meaningless propaganda against Nintendo. It's quite obvious your not a Nintendo fan, so just piss off from this site..... Troll, troll, troll and on and on

@outburst lol.

Who are these writers that didn't vote for Wave Race!? Blasphemous! They need to think hard about their choices in life. But in all seriousness, I'd love an updated Wave Race 64 (not necessarily Blue Storm) on the 3ds with a few extra courses (even as added dlc). I've watched a heap of let's plays on my 3ds imagining how good it would look and feel... That and an F Zero on 3ds would be a magnificent swan song.

As for a Pokemon Snap - I'm not a pokemon player at all, but could definitely get into a large scale open world photographic based game on the wii u as I'm an avid photographer. Think of a world like xenoblade x inhabited with pokemon to photograph and document using the GamePad's gyro as the camera. Using bait to attract pokemon types, luring pokemon to each other to photograph while they fight and acquiring different zoom lenses and such.
I think that could be kind of interesting and be a massive (system) seller too.

This looks very awesome, and is a definite buy. But as aaronsullivan mentioned, I do hope if we're dying a lot, the levels are short and sweet... If not, I'd love to see an option where we could drop our own spawn point. That could potentially do away with some repetition and put the onus on the player to figure out where they're repeatedly dying.

I don't really get into the whole 'who's winning' crap that tends to dominate forums. What I took away from reading this, is the interesting fact that Metacritic dropped its amount of games, to qualify as a large publisher. Granted it was only by 1 game, but 1 game could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for the publisher. It's something I've been seeing for a while now - that big budget games, with the quality that's become expected, are getting bigger and taking longer to develop. It's a trend I see not only continuing, but also becoming more prevalent. Just look at how many 'big' games were delayed in 2014 into 2015. I don't think those delays will be an isolated incident due to developing for new hardware. I think publishers will adjust the expected time frame of big budget releases.

Interestingly, I saw the remasters of both GTA5 and The Last of Us as a sort of testing ground for both of those developers to see what developing for the PS4XB1 was like, how long it could take, and what the system could handle etc. learning invaluable knowledge for their future heavy hitters. I would put money on there being only be 1 original GTA game this gen, and Naughty Dog having half of their 3 Uncharted's + Last of Us production.

@JaxonH I also have that "release" and listen to it almost daily (plus a few other gems). Needless to say Tropical Freeze has my vote. I would purchase this soundtrack twice over, it is that good. Everyone who hasn't heard this OST directly, Amyss Abyss & Grassland Groove - go listen.

I already have the Club Nintendo 3d World OST and have the Link Between Worlds OST on the way, but I too would love if Nintendo gave us the opportunity to buy these albums directly from them.

..and smash bros OST is cheating. It's like a greatest hits album - the best music from the most memorable games, how can it not win?

Hi guys,
I have 3 codes I'm not using. I'm from Australia, so not sure if they work everywhere. Happy hunting.

A0786SSM1BV74JL5
A0783HMA2SN8PR5U
A078A7210CPHKKEL

@conman2012 you bought a new nintendo 3ds with Fire Emblem. Well done my friend. That is one hell of a purchase.