QBertFarnsworth

@Quorthon How many games does one need? Of the 70 or so PS4 exclusives you cite, how many are ports of games like Limbo where they're not really exclusives? For me personally, with work and family, and with movies, shows, books, and sports I want to follow, even saying I could buy and play 12 new games in a year would be a stretch. Mileage may vary by person. What good is 70 games if 65 of them are sub-par?

It's as simple as this. Nintendo offers games you can't get on other systems, and while those games will be less frequent, you can rest assured that when the new Zelda launches, it's not going to need a Day 1, 20 GB download so it functions at an adequate level. If you want a complete gaming experience, you're going to need to buy the Nintendo systems and one of the other options (XBO, PS4, or PC). Xbox and PS4 are at this point the exact same thing, and neither has enough content to justify a purchase. Everything on them is a slightly prettier version of what is on the previous generation or a port. Right now the game that is selling best is GTA V. Frankly, I'm not sure what anyone is playing on them right now.

I foolishly put off looking for the New 3DS on the first two days of its US release because I did not have time those first two days. On day 3, I struggled to find one anywhere within a drive-able distance from my home. I lucked out when I had to make a quick run to Walmart at 10 pm on that Sunday night as they had started unloading the truck for the next day, and I was able to snag one. Even just calling and driving around for one day reminded me that I'm glad I'm not trying to collect Amiibos where I could have that experience every week.

@ikki5 As stated above, the New 3DS has better 3D. I've been playing Majora's Mask nonstop for the past week, and I honestly don't know how people are playing it without the C-nub.

I firmly believe some sites will post an outlier score to get the backlash and attention, and therefore the page views of people clicking on their Metacritic score, and going to that website to complain. Nintendo World Report's 75 on Mario Kart 8 as well as GameSpot's 60 on Donkey Kong Country Returns come to mind immediately. Going in, I think everybody thought MK 8 would be mid to upper 80s for the composite score. It scored an 88, and I think the only things you can dock it for would be battle mode (probably worth 10 points on a 100 point scale, and its characters (probably a point or two). Other than that, it's the best made Mario Kart game to date. If you're a Nintendo-themed site, you can boast about your independence and enjoy the page views as it was the first major Nintendo game in three months at the time. Without knowing ahead of time, I'd say most people would know what they're getting into with a new Retro Donkey Kong game. At worst, it would feel like more of the same, but it would still be better than most platformers. If you had to guess, you'd say it would score in the low 80s. It did. Gamespot gave it a 6/10 which implies a game with some serious flaws. It might not have been revolutionary, but the game was not flawed.

I vastly prefer what Kotaku has taken to doing which is "Should You Play This Game?" with a Yes or No response. I'd take it once step further and have them add a second clause, "Should you buy this game?" Some games are no-brainers for purchasing like Mario 3D World, Mario Kart 8, etc. Others are worth playing but may or may not be your thing like Wonderful 101 or ZombiU - hence, play before you buy would be good advice. Some games are excellent games, but the content might be off-putting like GTA V. Again, play before you buy would be a good idea.

Siskel and Ebert were not the most famous movie critics for nothing. They offered a simple, thumbs-up or thumbs-down. That's all game reviews need. Otherwise with the current system, a polarizing game that some people love (Wonderful 101 or ZombiU) gets a Metacritic score that makes it look like an average game when the fans of those games think they games are extraordinary.

If this had button controls, than that and 60 FPS would make it a no-brainer. Since it doesn't, I'll sacrifice frame rate for better controls and keep using the 3DS version.

My issue with Club Nintendo in the US is that we rarely had great physical gifts in stock such as a 3DS XL Charging Cradle or the Luigi's Mansion statue. That stuff was gone in minutes. We got the free digital games, but if you're a dedicated enough Nintendo fan, you had the game already, and if you wanted to play it on the Wii U, it was even more of an inconvenience. For example, this month Super Metroid is one of the games. That was a day 1 buy when it came out on the Wii's Virtual Console years ago. Let's say you somehow missed it. You can use your 250 coins to get Super Metroid for free, but it downloads the Wii version, and then you need to pay an additional $1.50 for the ability to play it on the Wii U Game Pad. In typical Nintendo fashion, it ends up over-complicating things. I hope they come back with a program where if you spend a certain amount on physical and digital products, you can become a Club Nintendo member and receive say a 5% discount on digital purchases. If you reach another level of spending, then maybe you become a Club Nintendo Elite Member and you get a 10% discount. In short, if I spend a lot on Nintendo, I want to receive discounts on new stuff that I don't have rather than digging through the rewards and thinking, "Well I have The Legend of Zelda on the Wii U Virtual Console, but I don't have it on the 3DS."

Also, Wonderful 101 might be worth $21 (30% off of $30), but I don't know if its worth the 10 GB size if you don't have an external hard drive.

For those in the US, Best Buy is running a 15% off sale on eShop Cards on Black Friday, so if you wanted say Luigi's Mansion, and it's 30% off its $39.99 price bringing it down to $27.99. You can get $30.00 worth of eshop cards for $25.50.

If they announced GameCube Virtual Console, I'd grab the adapter and some GCN controllers in a second. Until then, I'll learn to play Smash on a Pro Controller.

Awesome. While I'll always keep copies of the original 8-bit Mario games to preserve history, I've always preferred the updated graphics of All-Stars/Advance. Guess I'll be buying Super Mario Bros 2 yet again.

If you are a Nintendo fan who does not own a Wii U, and you do not grab one bundled with one of the two best games on the system, you deserve to be punched in the genitals.

@schizor I might be in the same boat. Detractors like to rail on Nintendo for re-using the same IPs, but those IPs tend to have distinct games. There's a clear difference between Link to the Past and Wind Waker, or Mario 3 and Mario 64, but each iteration is pretty unique (outside of New Super Mario series). If they ceased making hardware, I could easily go back and play through their classic libraries and keep myself busy for years.

@Grumblevolcano Watch Dogs is probably so far off the vast majority of Wii U owners' radars, I'm not sure it matters. In fact, that game was more or less knocked out of the spotlight by Mario Kart 8.

@outburst I think a side-scrolling, 2D, HD Mega Man is a very realistic possibility as either an exclusive or a timed-exclusive. With his appearance in Smash, the deluge of Mega Man VC games, and perhaps to take out the legs from the Mighty No. 9, I can see this happening.

@ikki5 I didn't say you were stupid. I was just agreeing with you.

Thousands of years from now when future archeologists study the 21st century, I think one of the most confusing behaviors would have to be why people would waste time trying to design fake leaked info for movies, TV shows, or video games. Nobody is getting money, getting a job, getting laid, or getting respect because they correctly guessed that a new Star Fox game is coming out.

@ikki5 The Star Fox video is fake in the same way that Kotaku pointed out ways to spot fake "leaked" E3 press releases (blurry, shot at an angle, easily photoshopped, etc.). I mean, really, you, random YouTube user, got your hands on an unannounced game that would excite millions. You've taken it upon your brave self to leak footage to the public, but you cannot hold the camera still? You cannot press the start button to show us the game? Just a shaky title screen that flashes "demo" because demos always flash demo, right?

In my home, my children and I each have our own 3DS systems with all of the required games. Between the Virtual Console on my 3DS and Wii U, plus my PS3, I have some of the greatest games of the past 25-30 years available. My daughter spends all of her time playing Minecraft on her iPod Touch. I don't get it, but I think it would be a good thing for the system.

When I first saw the concept of the DS, I thought, that's stupid. Then I played the system and loved it. I immediately got and loved the idea of the Wii Remote, but sadly few games used it in the ways I had hoped. With the Wii U, my thought was "Huh? Oh well, they convinced me with the Wii and DS, let's do it."

Sadly, while I love offscreen play (especially for Virtual Console games), while I love how the controller looks and feels, if I wasn't an early adapter, and if I had the option of buying a $300 Wii U with a GamePad, or a $200 Wii U without, I'd lean towards the lower price point. Outside of ZombiU and Nintendoland, and outside of how it improved Wind Waker, there's been little to no proper use of it. The hardware is great, but the software just hasn't bonded with it yet. I hope E3 changes my mind.

They'll delay releasing it, I'll delay buying it. I hope the delay results in a polished game that makes unique use of the Wii U's capabilities. But it's a 3rd party game being releases several months to a year after the other systems. It will be full price, few will buy it, and the price will come down. If I have to wait 7 months for the game, what's another 3 months for the price to drop $30?

Any guesses on the file size of MK 8? I'm not sure I can cram both this and a new game on my Wii U hard drive

@TheWhiteFalcon Get it. The Pikmin games are great. I would wholeheartedly recommend paying for it, but now you don't have to.

Since it's pretty apparent Nintendo is doing this whole Wii U thing without major 3rd parties, they need to get on the ball with the Virtual Console, and more specifically, the GameCube VC games. It's been too long since I've played Double Dash.

Seems like a wasted opportunity on the Wii U given that the GamePad would have allowed people to put fine touches on their creations using touch controls, and having two screens would have allowed one of them to be used for modding and the other to give you an overall view of your creation.

@Kyloctopus I've always said if Skyward Sword with Wii Motion Plus would have been how the system worked at launch, the Wii would have dominated last gen. Instead, there was a huge sugar rush at launch, and then it died down. 100 million units is nothing to dismiss, but it could have been in PS2 territory. Now, if the Wii had 1:1, HD, and a killer Zelda at launch, it would have been game over.

@Emblem Bingo. The last three games I've played on the Wii U have been Super Luigi U, Rayman Legends, and Super Mario 3D World. As good as DKCR: TF might be, I'm just ready for a breather from platformers. I can buy this game now, or I can wait for the new South Park RPG on the PS3 in two weeks. I'll probably get this game during the non-Watch Dogs, pre-Mario Kart drought.

It's so frustrating because it just seems like the same list. Super C was released on the 3DS a few weeks ago, and now it's released again on the Wii U. Ninja Gaiden was released on the 3DS in December, and Wii U last week. I tire of the double dipping when there is a huge back catalog of great games. I have no problem with Super C and Ninja Gaiden - both were great back in the day, but release them on both systems at the same time.

Delayed means cancelled. Regardless, I'm predicting that the final product comes in at a quality far below the hype. If the game was shaping up to be great, we would be reading article after article about how revolutionary it is, how great it plays, etc. Instead, it's been mostly silence about the game since it was delayed before the holidays. It will not be a disaster, but I'm betting review scores are in the 7/10 range - high enough that some people will give it a try, but "some people" would mean sales in the low millions on the PS3 and 360, but sales in the tens of thousands on the Wii U. By cutting out the Wii U, they can save money on debugging it, DLC updates, materials costs, etc.

@NbaJunkie If you've played other Zelda games, it probably doesn't matter as many of the things that made LTTP great have been used since then. In fact, I'd consider spacing them out so it doesn't feel too much like playing the same game.

The 3DS sold lower than Nintendo had anticipated, but that's probably more an error in their budgeting than a knock on the system. For the most part, cell phone games are not taking away from portable gaming because playing an endless runner or Angry Birds is not the same experience as playing Zelda A Link Between Worlds or Mario Kart 7.

The old saying is you buy a Nintendo system to play Nintendo games, so in many ways, Nintendo is competing against itself. I've had several friends ask over the past year if they should buy a 3DS or Wii U, and the answer is hands-down the 3DS. It's cheaper, and it has more games. The reason the DS and the Wii worked as a pair is because each offered something you could not do on the other system. You couldn't play Nintendogs or Brain Age on the Wii, and touch screen gaming had yet to take off elsewhere. You couldn't do motion controlled gaming on the DS. Meanwhile, other than graphics, most anything you can do on the Wii U can be done on the 3DS, and outside of 3D, anything you can do on the 3DS can be done on the Wii U.

It seems pretty obvious that the next generation for Nintendo should take the next step beyond the Wii U. It should be a console that can hook up to your TV or become a portable. Right now, if I want to play all of the Zeldas or all of the Marios, I have to spend $470 on systems. If there are a ton of 3DS games coming out, I might have a dry spell on the Wii U, and vice versa. Instead of pumping out 10 first-party published exclusives on the 3DS and 10 on the Wii U, why not just put them all out on one system?

Overall, this is still the gold standard Mario game. When I play a new Mario game, I'm always asking if it makes me feel like Super Mario 3 did. Super Mario Galaxy did. I think 3D World is getting there. The New Super Mario Bros series, not so much.

@Spoony You're right about the side bar. They used a few cheats to get the game to work on the NES without slowing down and minimizing the flicker of too many things on the screen at one time. One cheat was the more invasive scoreboard on the bottom, and the other was the flickering bar on the side. The flickering bar was mostly covered by the TV screens at the time which had a rounded edge and often cut off corners. It became easier to see once we had flat screen, TVs with 90 degree angles in the corners.

So if I have some points built up on the Wii U Digital Deluxe Promotion for buying a launch 32 GB with Nintendoland, can I redeem those points for eShop credit and use that for 3DS games? Will 3DS downloads count towards the DDP points as well?

I wish these levels would have made it into the mission modes of the game. I love the game, but all three Pikmin games have been very nature-oriented in their environments, so to be in a factory setting or Christmas tree would have been a nice change of pace for a level or two.

Galaxy might have been my favorite Mario game ever. G2 was great, but didn't give me that sense of surprise and amazement that I had in the original. I'd be fine with Galaxy 3, but I would prefer an all new 3D Mario in the Mario 64/Galaxy style. If they wanted to throw in a level or world with gravity puzzles, I would be cool with that.

@jasonbra I agree. I have no problem paying $5 for something like Super Mario 3. You are owning one of gaming's masterpieces. Nobody, not the biggest NES fans, not the biggest baseball fans, has ever said that "Baseball" is their favorite NES game. Anybody who owned baseball and maybe enjoyed it immediately renounced their love as soon as RBI Baseball, Bases Loaded, Tecmo Baseball, or Baseball Stars came out.

There should be a section of free to play games that you can mess around with for 10 minutes here or there, and it should include games like this, Ice Hockey and other bare-boned experiences.

@AlmightyDerek, maybe I just bowled on Wii Sports with a style that was perfectly suited for Wii Sports Resort so I didn't notice a difference when I switched over.

Will Motion Plus actually do anything on these games? To me, I didn't see any noticeable difference on bowling between Wii Sports and Wii Sports resort.

@Anclation There were a few games in Nintendoland that were fun, but for the most part, it lost its charm quickly. On the other hand, if Nintendo had set up its Wii U demo units with a Nintendoland Demo (Luigi's Ghost House, Mario Chase, and Balloon Fight) and if it attached some Wii Remotes for asynchronous game play, it would have served its purpose of showing people what the Game Pad can do. Most people "get" the Wii U after playing Nintendoland. The problem is, there is nothing that convinces people they need to get Nintendoland.

The system is almost a year old. What's the hold up on getting some N64 games, and perhaps some GameCube titles?

@KeithTheGeek Your issue with the graphics is why I love playing Virtual Console games on the Wii U Game Pad. Playing games that were made to be played on the TVs of the 80s (with their 240i or whatever their resolution was) on huge modern 1080p TVs makes the graphical flaws stand out. Playing on the game pad helps soften the flaws a bit.

@SanderEvers They should give everything an HD remake. They can keep the original aspect ratios so the game play remains exactly the same, but if they could make say Super Mario 3 look as good as the new Rayman, who wouldn't buy it?

@galetyler If they really want to split hairs, they could say they offered us $41 worth of games for $2.10 with the 30 cent Virtual console promo, but I suspect that most early adapters had to pay $2.10 for games they likely already owned and/or only bought because they were 30 cents (Balloon Fight, Yoshi).

Wii U Party announced: (yawn)
Wii U Party with controller: Sold!

To the untrained eye, the problems are brand confusion and price. The trained eye either has the system or is waiting on a price drop and/or more games. The games are coming, so a price drop gets the educated gamer waiting to jump in.

Now the target becomes the untrained eye or less-educated consumer (moms, grandmas, etc. buying this as a gift). If you drop the Deluxe to $300 and get rid of the basic, that's one Wii U SKU that comes with a game and a tablet for $100 less than the cheapest next gen system. The untrained eye sees a system that is $100 more than the cheapest XBOX 360, but they also see it comes with a game, more memory, and a tablet. It's slightly more expensive than the PS3 bundles, but again, it features the table controller. The untrained eye will see it as the system that comes with its own iPad. There is enough there that the uneducated consumer can see a value.

The only other challenge to perception is the Wii itself, so it's time to retire the Wii. If the untrained eye sees a Wii for $125 or a "Wii with an iPad" for $300, he or she will buy the cheaper one. Eliminate the cheaper one, eliminate the confusion. Send decals to retailers to put on their display cases that say "White Packaging = Playable on Wii and Wii U, Blue Packaging = Playable only on Wii U." If the consumer can't figure it out, he can ask a sales clerk. I firmly believe that last Christmas when there were stories about the Wii outselling the Wii U, it was because confused relatives bought the wrong system.

I'm thinking (hoping) that it's announcing a North American deal like Europe and Australia received: 30% discount on W101 if you download this and Pikmin - which would suck if you lived in an area already receiving the discount, but it's good for the U.S. and Canada

Having to transfer SD cards between the 3DS and Wii U seems archaic. If you can transfer Miis between the systems, it seems like you should be able to transfer Animal Crossing pictures, avatars, etc.

@AcesHigh Wii U sales aren't low because the content isn't violent enough, the problem is there is no content. The 3DS offers the same type of Nintendo-brand content, and that's moving just fine.

@AcesHigh I'm not saying there is anything wrong with blood thirstiness. I do think American gamers tend to dismiss a game's quality based on its visuals.

What's one of the common things the online gaming community says about Nintendo? "I outgrew Nintendo." As if you can outgrow some balls-to-the-wall challenging gameplay like that found in the green star levels on Mario Galaxy 2. I think a lot of people dismissed Wind Waker the first time because of the cartoonish graphics, yet it had one of the most violent endings of a Zelda game. Alluding to that ending ought to satisfy those who would dismiss this game based on its appearance. I like the cover above, but I'd be willing to bet the Wind Waker itself is replaced with a sword when it comes over here.

@Warruz Why not go all out and show exactly where Link jams the Master Sword on the North American cover? That should be action-oriented enough for the blood-thirsty American crowd.

If the U.S. gets the Pikmin/W101 30% off deal, then I'm buying digital.