Sean_Aaron

I suspect they say six because it looks like the bases are recessed into some kind of depression to me, meaning they won't just fall off. There is room to put one next to the flagpole, but no slot, so you know, it could fall off...it does look cool!

@jakysnakydx Absolutely. Though I am an older gamer and enjoy older games, a game that's basically a prettier or slightly enhanced version of something I've seen before doesn't interest me. If I want to play a game like Zelda or Mega Man, I'll play Zelda or Mega Man.

I think a lot of developers are coming out with too much "me too" and not enough original (and good) ideas or they're lacking in the design department - no amount of Nintendo promotion is going to help you with that.

That's a shame. I think Nintendo is doing what it can, but maybe releases just need to be spaced out more. I mean Swords and Soldiers II has a rather serious price point (for some) and is coming out a week before Splatoon - not great timing, though a different target market - and at the same time as Paper Mario and Kirby's Epic Yarn. Maybe Nintendo can help space out releases better (assuming they don't already) and that could improve sales?

A single ratings board is also long overdue, but the main issue is that different places have different restrictions on violent content. In the UK a head butt in a film can make a 12 into a 15 rating, just ask George Lucas; I rather doubt countries will give up their right to enforce stricter controls on content to suit local mores. Having said that I don't understand why PEGI isn't good enough to cover the EU - I mean why does it exist if everyone isn't using it?

Well I remember a time when all games were $40-50 a shot. Paying less than £20 for a console exclusive of some depth is okay by me. Honestly if you get buyer's remorse from buying something that goes on sale, you might as well stop buying anything because life will be an endless series of disappointments.

@MJKOP Fab, I think that will make her happy since she likes the Toads.

Got in a pre-order for Olimar, but I'll hold off on celebrating for a day lest I get a dreaded "sorry, we can't fulfil" email. Sooo lucky with Jigglypuff!

550 stars have u after thinking I'd registered everything. I doubt I'll be able to afford any of that cool merch, but I'll wait to get a Toad Home theme for my daughter's 3DS (I'm assuming I can do that despite her having her own Club Nintendo account linked to her own NNID) and Luigi ringtones.

I like Iwata-san; hopefully he's in a video presentation at least.

@Nintendo-64 Agreed. Gamepad in a stand would address the map/jump function whilst giving you superior camera control using the IR sensor on the remote. Gamepad tilt for up/down is great, but having to take your thumb off buttons to tweak left-right isn't as intuitive.

There's not too many buttons so remote+nunchuk is possible; hopefully we'll see that as an option by launch or in a future update. If there was a Miiverse group for the demo I'd already be asking for it!

If they're not on Wii U I don't care. Seems a bit odd given the Monster Hunter franchise has a home on 3DS; I was under the impression that 3G on Wii U performed better than expected as well. If anything these remasters would sell better, so I don't get why they're skipping.

It's a good idea if Nintendo could get it off the ground. I think the main thing for them would be how to get the player's Mii Fighter data in order to encode the chip, so some kind of update would be needed - maybe a special "amiibo shop" feature?

I never did try Epic Yarn, but it seems like a nice neighbour for Wooly World so I have to take advantage of the sale. Paper Mario and Swords and Soldiers II are also on the list. And then there's Splatoon next week! Too many games!

I skipped this along with every other N64 release bar Super Mario 64 on the Wii VC, which I didn't enjoy. This 2D RPG sounds pretty cool, though, so I'm down.

Reminds me of early vector games like Rip Off. Could be fun; if they don't do a European release I guess I won't find out...

By the time I get back from holiday we should hopefully have reviews up, but from what I've seen thus far Ultratron is looking like a must and possibly Nihilumbra as well.

That's good news since I have a Smash Yoshi, but I do want a yarn one - hopefully they'll make more!

Yeah I'd like a Shulk, I had it pre-ordered from Amazon.co.uk and BAM! Cancelled. Pac-Man I'm getting from Japan; in fact if you check Amazon in the UK most of the marketplace amiibo offerings are people selling from Japan!

I'll echo that just because they aren't making new games doesn't mean they'll sell off the IP when they can monetise it via licensing to others who might want to port classic titles elsewhere, e.g., Nintendo.

I'm not into the whole "build your own content" thing, so I thought this would be one to skip, but I think actually getting to play the levels other people would create could be a lot of fun.

Sin and Punishment I'll have as well as the amiibo Tap game. I never did finish the former - something about having them as downloads makes a lot of these old Wii games more appealing. I do hope we'll end up with the full first-party catalogue in the end.

Yes, please! Fire Emblem and Chibi Robo would be top of my list, but I'll consider anything they want to do.

I have three stars in all cups and all classes, but 200cc is on another level. I stopped using sponge tyres ages ago, but they looked really good on the P-Wing so...wow, car could barely hold a straight line!

I'll try the advice of starting the drift early and maybe switch to off-road tyres. It was a lot of fun in mushroom cup, but I was luck to finish in the top six - when I managed it!

Shulk would be nice, but yeah to echo others, having Mario Party 10 which is a game that primarily appeals to children and yet having ZERO amiibo available for it is really lame. If any figures should be readily available I'd think it was that series. We also haven't had announcements about the balance of the figures, but we're told Smash equivalents will work - those being as hard to find as the Super Mario series ones!

If they would allow Wii shop content to have its own channels, leverage more internal memory to use the Wii VC side-by-side with Wii U VC then a lot of grousing would go away. I'd like to see Wii U versions with the added bells and whistles, but in the meantime better access to Wii content would be nice!

ShopTo has a pretty dodgy looking website, though I've ordered from them years ago. With these pre-orders I'll believe it when it's in my hands. I was surprised I got my Jigglypuff pre-order in and that my GAME pre-order of Toad was fulfilled after I had what I thought was a safe pre-order of Pac-Man cancelled by Amazon, leaving me to pursue a pricier eBay pre-order from Japan which will supposedly post next Wednesday.

Yarn Yoshi seems like an impossible dream at this point!

Well I don't want a bundle, just the amiibo. Guess I need to get them elsewhere? GAME has placeholders, but not taking pre-orders yet. I put in my order for the two Splatoon ones as long as I was there.

Cool, that looks pretty neat. Gotta get back to Advance Wars and the Fire Emblem games. Nice to have so much turn-based strategy to play!

I like the enemy variety, looks pretty decent. I wouldn't mind seeing some classic Wii shooters from UFO in the eShop as well; especially ones that never made it to Europe like Castle of Shikigami III!

I've got the season pass, so Mario Kart of course, but that's a great deal on Tetrobot and I did have it on my watch list, so I'll get that as well.

Mario Kart 8 is in my mind the perfect entry to the franchise and the reason on top of the obvious stuff like HD making four player games playable in a way that I didn't find the Wii version, is DLC keeping the games fresh and meaning that nearly a year on my daughter and I are guaranteed to give it a go every time the Wii U is turned on - I can't say that about any other game on the system.

In fact if they keep the DLC train running I could see a Mario Kart-only Wii U as a perfectly sensible purchase.

I already got the Gameseek adapter which was not that far from the same price at £19.99 at Amazon so I'm not fussed.

Given these two games have been responsible for selling many systems by themselves, I think it would be foolish of Nintendo not to keep supporting them through the life of the Wii U. They have proven that Mario Kart certainly can be expanded and I doubt there's anyone who's spent serious time with that game that wouldn't buy more content for it if the quality is there, so why not?

@audiobrainiac that's really not the case, you just need to ensure your portable drive has adequate power either via a y-cable or a powered hub (I used to do the former; now I do the latter). The key with a hub is to make sure it's rated for hard drives - even many powered hubs are not (generally the cheaper ones).

And yes, you can hook up a second hard drive, but only for backup purposes and only after you've gone into data management section of the settings menu. I also wish the just supported two drive mirroring or least prompted you to connect the other drive rather than guessing. I'm going to put something in my blog for future reference I think.

@diastelo I moved the Crunchy Roll app to internal storage because I could only watch a couple of episodes before it would happen. Playing Earthbound was definitely a challenge - I got into the habit of creating new save points every 15-30 min. No issues since moving to the laptop drive (guess it doesn't sleep as quickly), but yeah, gotta turn this off, totally.

What the hell Nintendo, why is this hidden? I've had issues in the past with my old desktop Seagate that I'm sure are directly related to this: long VC game sessions and Crunchy Roll video watching resulting in an error stating the hard drive was disconnected (when it wasn't), presumably because the Wii U gave up waiting for the drive to wake up again.

I've since switched to using a desktop drive via a powered hub, the hub seems to keep the drive active, so no problems seen thus far, but I'm definitely getting another one for backup purposes, so I'm not fussed about a shorter lifespan (Seagate and Toshiba 1TB drives are like £45-50).

Referring to developers as "pretentious hipsters" and ranting in a comments section because they suggest voting for their character in a write-in poll is probably taking the whole write-in poll thing more seriously than the developers by a mile. Lighten up!

Looks pretty neat-o and the Gaijin guys are great. Looking forward to Whoa Dave on Wii U!

That's an interesting idea. To the people dismissing it because it's not a console, I would argue that a unique peripheral which is supported by Nintendo software (along with the possibility of a licensed API for third party support) would still fit the definition of "dedicated games platform." Nintendo would still control the interface via their own hardware for games sold on someone else's platform.

I would agree it's unlikely, but it's not impossible. Nintendo would certainly have the brand power to pull it off unlike an indepdent studio. It certainly couldn't be any worse than the majority of gamepads for mobile devices which are generally poor build quality and overpriced.

I broke down and ordered the Gameseek adapter from Amazon a couple of days ago and I should have it soon. Looks exactly like the Nintendo one and isn't far off the price at £19.99 so I'm covered.

Id say no to that price, but I just dropped £20 for a Japanese Pac-Man.

I'm looking at Olimar and Jigglypuff, but I'll wait for the Official UK Store offering before going to GAME. Not bothering with Amazon after having my pre-orders for Pac-Man and Shulk cancelled.

Ditto, hopefully they'll be easy enough to import or this is an experiment and they'll do the squid amiibo separately after release.

Now if we could only buy the things! Seriously annoyed at seeing Pac-Man amiibo suit for Mario Kart when I couldn't get one even with a pre-order at Amazon. Give us the cards or make more figures Nintendo!

I'm sure there's more content coming, but the lack of major third party support has only meant that I've purchased far more Nintendo games on Wii U than I did on Wii. I would like to see more Virtual Console games and more Wii downloads and that would be enough alongside some nice indie games.

The people who "know" Nintendo are abandoning this machine are forgetting the basics: whether or not it competes well with other machines isn't as important as whether or not the installed base is large enough to make it profitable to develop software for. Clearly the latter is true, because if this was a Virtual Boy-scale disaster Iwata wouldn't still be in that chair and Nintendo might well be done as a gaming hardware company.

Betting the farm on whatever the NX is might or might not turn out well. Market conditions will be no different than when the Wii U launched: mobile games are still massive, other console content continues to be moribund but selling to a dedicated crowd that probably won't care about Nintendo's unique offering and the economy is still stagnant (regardless of what politicians say). NX might truly be the end of Nintendo as a console maker or be some other game changer like see them exit some overseas markets in that space.

It will be interesting to see what happens, but regardless I'm keeping my Wii U!

Of course there's also a simpler explanation for delaying Zelda even if ready: maximise product sales. Since Nintendo is doing all the heavy-lifting, putting out two similar games in the same year might not seem to make as much sense to them. I did think having both Xenoblade - an open-world sci-fi adventure and the new Zelda game - an open-world fantasy adventure, release within months of each other was a bit odd. They are both event titles for an overlapping audience, so best give them time to breathe and sell as much as possible, no?

As much as I dislike dual stick controls I could have coped with that, but using two buttons for your default attack (and awkwardly at that) was a deal-breaker. Patch it to make it a simple single button press and I'd be there.

@Quorthon If there's a slippery slope, restricting sales of 18-rated games isn't it. Pick a battle worth fighting.

@Quorthon what a bunch of nonsensical hyperbole. This law is so far from your examples it's an insult to people who've suffered actual oppression to even make the comparison. There's a law against selling 18-rated games to minors here, just like many places make it against the law to sell them alcohol or pornography. No doubt you think all such places are also just like nazi Germany.

Sorry, but just because someplace isn't completely anarchic doesn't make it a fascist dictatorship...

I don't think the law presently supports this. Yes it is illegal for retailers to sell 18-rated games, but this is the first time I've seen any suggestion of trying to push that as a way to pursue parents for making these games available to children.

I can see this being open to all kinds of abuse, however I do think that too many parents take little or no interest in the activities of their children; the fact that we have a law against selling games to minors in the first place speaks to that.

What is being suggested here however isn't "taking children away from parents," but bringing parents to the attention of social work, though I agree you don't really want that. Solution: don't let your kids play 18-rated games when they're well under that age - I wouldn't regardless of my child's age (yes, I'm a parent, as if not being one disqualifies someone from having an opinion on this topic).

@faint ah yes I remember that about the extra levels. I did read a poker dice review here and it didn't sound too exciting; neither does a sequel to Block Drop U. It's hard to sympathise with sour grapes if you've soured them yourself!

I knew this would be quality. Now when is it coming to Europe?!?

I bought Block Drop U and I thought it was a decent puzzle game to play on the Gamepad - even showed it to my partner the other day.

I think it's a mistake to take interactions on fan forums and make that the basis of business decisions. Unless you've failed to even break-even I couldn't see abandoning a platform either, but hey I don't make games for a living...