eza

@TrueWiiMaster @TeeJay again, this exploit cannot lead to piracy. a new different exploit will need to be found.
there's no way that an exploit which leads to user-mode access can be used to gain the kernel-level access which would be required to run roms.
this is due to the security measures put in place by nintendo, similar to UAC on windows, where only specific processes get to have root or administrator access to the system.

this is why NL are reporting this, but have never mentioned the gateway card, which is used for piracy by most of its owners.

@BensonUii region locking has affected me personally: between buying my 3ds and wii u, i moved to another country within the same region (europe).
this was fine to begin with: both consoles were linked to the same club nintendo email address and were in the same region, but my 3ds' eshop was in english and my wii u's in spanish. all was good.
then nintendo implemented NNID on 3ds, and with it also came country locking.
now i'm in the situation where i've been told by nintendo support that if i link my 3ds to my wii u's NNID then i'll lose all of my eshop games on my 3ds.
and if i link my 3ds to a UK NNID then it can't be linked to my club nintendo account.

it's a mess of a situation which only exists because nintendo want to prioritise their profits over customer satisfaction.
i still don't understand why a portable console should be region locked, especially when it wasn't necessary for the immensely successful DS (for which i imported many great games)

@BensonUii the thing is, this exploit only gives a limited level of access to the 3DS's internal workings.
to be able to be used for piracy, a new exploit would need to be found, an exploit like the one which is used by the gateway card and which was fixed by nintendo from firmware version 5.

and this is the reason that NL are reporting this exploit, but they've never mentioned gateway: smea's exploit sits in a remarkably clear legal situation where he's enabling you to exercise your consumer rights and tinker with an object which you paid for and own, while stopping you from downloading and running roms.

@Thearnaud44 @ECMIM @BensonUii you lot are hilarious. how exactly is a user-mode exploit going to magically get kernel level access and run roms?

i think that it won't be long after amiibo launches until apps come out for nfc-capable mobile phones which will emulate amiibo's functionality - allowing people to back up and restore amiibo data.
i imagine unlocking amiibo content in games will be as simple as going to a toy shop and scanning a display model with your phone...

yeah great game, but most people will have already got it on pc via humble bundle, so not sure who's going to pay full price for this.
same goes for all the other great indie games on wii u that have been available for a while on pc for less money - yeah they're great, but i'm not going to buy the same game twice, and if given the option then i'll buy the cheaper version, which always happens to be the pc version, with the added benefit of being able to play it on any pc, not just the one i bought it from.
so why buy the wii u version of anything that's not a wii u exclusive?

@ThomasBW84 "albeit likely including less figures" shoukd be "including fewer figures"

@article - good points, well made.
i can't see anyone buying amiibo who isn't either quite young or a die-hard collector. nintendo have placed themselves in an awkward position again.
it's a pretty transparent attempt to make money, and other developers are happily jumping on board: the recent announcement of 2012's ace combat being rereleased as a new game but with amiibo skins being the only new content is a glimpse of this brave new world.

waiting for @Kobeskillz to turn up and tell everyone to not buy it and just stop complaining...

@Kobeskillz people who don't own it can buy the original game for less money, or much less if they buy second hand.
People with more money than sense (which, right now, includes anyone thinking about buying into amiibo) can buy exactly the same game.
If you play AC 'properly' you play in cockpit view and never touch the auto-maneuvre button, so would only see the skins when watching a replay.

And it "pertains to" me because I've been looking forward to a new AC game for 3DS, and this is not a new game.

I can't believe people are cheering on this transparent money-grabbing scheme. It seems to me that a lot of the commenters just try to adopt the same tone as the article so that they don't actually have to think for themselves.

How is it a good thing that development time and money is being spent creating features that you won't see unless you pay more money to the publisher?
I would rather that time and money were better spent: for instance on creating new games, new stories... but no - you'd rather buy a piece of plastic which cost pennies to produce at a massive mark-up instead.
What's happened to gamers these days?

the ultimate in lazy game development: add some new skins and rerelease the same game. great.
i enjoyed the original 3DS ace combat, coming close to getting all of the achievements, but i'm not an idiot, so won't be buying the same game again but with the option to spend more money to unlock skins.

loved these 3D remakes, bought four of them and will get afterburner and outrun.
i really like the CRT display mode option - feels authentic and nostalgic.
i was thinking only last week how i'd like to see more sega remakes from M2 so this is great news

i'm not buying another console if it's region locked.
nowadays, for me, the 'nintendo difference' doesn't outweigh the extra expense and inconvenience.
also, now they've country-locked the eshop, i'm in an even worse position than when i was only region-locked.

i'm happier buying games for five euros each in steam sales and playing them on any computer i want to, regardless where it was made or which country i'm in.
i have over 500 games in my steam library, and it's no coincidence that i have a tenth of that number of games for nintendo systems, because they cost ten times as much.

their anti-competitive business practices have contributed to their irrelevance lately.
you just need to look at steam to see how it's done properly.

looks like a flagrant misuse of nintendo's copyrighted artwork - homebrew art, if you will - isn't that usually the sort of thing that gets everyone here up in arms?

@Sakura - Respectfully, I would argue that what you have described is exactly what a good journalist should do: to research the subject matter properly and to speak to experts in relevant fields, in order to report the news in a responsible manner.
I agree that the topic is a legal minefield, but all lawyers love to see their names in print, and to get a definitive legal standpoint for the jurisdictions most representative of the NL readership and report on it shouldn't be difficult.

@ZenTurtle sadly i think you're absolutely right.

amusingly, this comment i just read over on the linked techdirt article says:
"IN the European Union because there is no way to disagree with the EULA and to continue using the product REQUIRES acceptance, this renders the entire EULA null and void as no party may compel a change to a contract or terms without the compliance of the other party. (i.e. you can't FORCE people to accept changes or the person being forced is legally allowed to treat the contract as though it didn't exist in its entirety.)."
"ANd the fact that the EULA is identical doesn't change the EU situation. Because there is no way to DECLINE the EULA, the entire thing basically doesn't legally exist anymore...people are free to mod their consoles!"

which would be amusing!

such colossal levels of ignorance from a lot of the commenters here, it's quite sad to see.
"it's ok because i trust nintendo"
"violating an EULA is against the law"
"anyone who disagrees with an EULA is a pirate"
"homebrew is the same thing as piracy"
you make these statements as if they were true, and they simply aren't.

and to be completely blunt, @ThomasBW84 and the rest of the NL staff are fostering this attitude in their reporting of these issues. constantly footing around the issue, ostensibly to be seen as 'impartial' and 'opening the topic to debate', but it doesn't help to describe homebrew as a 'morally grey area' in a recent article, but neglect to inform readers of the actual legal realities.

how about an article on exactly that topic, @NLTeam, don't you feel that it would be helpful to inform your readers of the actual legal rights they have, even if the legal truth is inconvenient to Nintendo?

@bobbypaycheque I really don't see how you've made that particular mental leap.
I say "No one's asking for every game protagonist to be female - because that would be ridiculous"
And you tell me "You are trying to force an artist to design his games around a very narrow design philosophy that caters to your perceived entitlement to be able to choose gender when playing a game"

Nowhere have I said that. All I'm saying is to open your mind, rather than close it.

When I suggested a Princess Peach game, I wasn't suggesting a specific case, but giving an example to paint a general picture.

Here's another example: the remake of Battlestar Galactica. A central character, Starbuck, who was male in the original series, was female in the remake.
With a bit of imagination, the script writers made it work.

I wasn't even speaking specifically about this woman getting the community manager job, but speaking generally about sexism.
However I fail to see what qualifications one needs to be a community manager, apart from good literacy.
The job of community manager is to post press release on the forums and forward on the community's thoughts and requests. I can't imagine many people would be underqualified to do that job. A lot of companies make an intern do it, so their staff can focus on the real work instead of having to deal with insufferable drivel on forums.

@bobbypaycheque why couldn't Lara Croft be male?
It's an 3rd person action game.

"Lawrence Croft in a new action adventure! Shooting arrows and making things explode! Has a back-story that's all explained from the perspective of him being a man! Coming Summer 2014."
Why not?
Just the same as Metal Gear Solid (or seriously whatever as >80% of 3rd-person action games have male leads) could have a female main character.

All it takes is a tiny small iota of imagination of the part of the script writers. That's all. A really really tiny step.
All this "oh noes they'll have to change all the artwork and story and everything!" is complete bollox. All they have to do it work it in from the start.

No one's asking for every game protagonist to be female - because that would be ridiculous, and to suggest that that's the case is just as ridiculous.

All they really want is fair representation. They're not saying "don't make another Mario unless Peach is the main character", but more like "Hey as well as Mario, why don't you also make a game where Peach really shows what she's made of, using her Smash Bros moves, cos that would be really cool?!"

@HugoSmits oh I forgot to say, please read this from a couple of weeks ago: http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/12/2/5143856/no-girls-allowed
It tells a story of the history of marketing in games over time, and how originally there was no focused marketing: games were for everyone; and then describes how this changed over time.
It's a good read, and opens with a link to this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CU040Hqbas of a little girl in a toy shop who is asking WTF is this different toys for boys and girls all about?!
This 4 year old makes a great point that girls and boys want both things - they don't always want to have to play with the dolls, or with the action figures - that's just something borne out of conditioning, just like you've been conditioned to think this way.

Sometimes, boys want to play with dolls and girls want to play with action figures.
Shocking, isn't it? But get over it, and cater to it.

I see @theblackdragon has everything covered admirably, and I'd previously assumed he was just a SwearBot
So all I really have to add (whilst dodging the blatant trolls) is:
@HugoSmits I genuinely think that you're coming at this all wrong. What you said is quite telling "Getting good feedback is extremely hard because the tone of most discussions seems to be ‘men are wrong. You can either agree with us or you hate women’.
This is really unfortunate.
The general feeling that I get from all these discussions is that most feminist aim to make me feel guilty for being a man rather then find a sensible solution."

I think that this is the sort of reaction that someone encounters when they are stubborn and closed-minded.
As @Ren said earlier "Anyone talking about this weird made up junk like "feminazis" or "sexist feminists who hate men" is seriously lacking in basic knowledge about how the world works."

The only time you'll experience the reactions that you stated, is when you go in there with the attitude of "i'm a man, therefore my experience is that of a man. what d'you want me to do? slap lipstick on my character?"

That's aggressive, abrasive, and closed-minded. Surely you can analyse what you've said and see that?

Instead of "my experience is that of a man", what about "my experience is that of a person"?
Are you really unable to identify with a another human's experience at all?
If that's the case, then there's no wonder you can only think of male characters. Do all characters that you imagine just contain fantasy ideals of yourself? What you would like to be?

Because it doesn't have to be like that. You don't have to think that way, and it's damaging to think that way.
Look at all the energy you expend as hate on this subject (and not just you, there are others in this thread who are doing the same) that you don't need to waste. You could be thinking positively instead.

Because isn't that what you do when you make games? You're thinking up stories, imagining people, situations, and so on.
Isn't it a little bit restrictive as a creator of stories to only imagine male characters in stereotypically male situations?
Think of the world's the greatest authors: they didn't restrict themselves in this way. Why do you?

Also your comment of "And although woman do ask men out, it’s only a small percentage." is subject to regional bias. You're in the Netherlands. I used to live in the UK. All I can suggest is that you move south to warmer climes... I can attest that Spain has no such problems

@wombatkidd I had a similar situation myself once in the past. It was a very rude awakening!
But it was sort of funny really, to me anyway, because I told myself afterwards that I was "probably asking for it" by putting myself in the situation, which is weird because I would never think that of a woman in the same situation I was in.
However I believe that the act of rape, without going into detail, and with the disclaimer that I believe it's the most heinous crime that can be committed, is far more serious when committed by a man (upon a woman or a man) than by a woman (upon a man) because of the nature of the act.
(Unless your unfortunate friend was being internally violated, of course, in which case my previous statement does not stand)

That's not to say than woman-on-man rape is not a serious matter, but I believe that man-on-woman rape is by far the bigger problem. Especially when you take a global view.
(I really don't intend to diminish your friend's experience by saying this - it's horrible regardless of the gender of the victim)

@LittleIrves hi, I couldn't find the guides that I used to refer to. NTSC-UK is no more - their domain is up for sale and their forums have switched to a different provider. Their forums are still around though, but on a different domain now.
I did find this, which is similar to the guides I used to read: http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2012/02/05/how-to-play-japanese-games-and-rule-at-it/
However, the guy writing it does sound like he's pretty good with languages. Better than I am, at least. The best I can do in Japanese is to read "Nintendo" (or "ni - n - te - n - do" - check the characters that make up their name on their .co.jp website -you'll see the "n" character repeated)
I did try to learn a bit of Japanese, especially the writing, when I spent a little time there - but it really is a script that 'if you don't use it, you'll lose it'.
(Found this with the Chinese Kanji characters and the Hiragana and Katakana)

But ignore all that - all you need to know is "yes/no", and to stay away from RPGs because they're all about the text!
(Oh and another interesting thing about Japanese: I would often ask a Japanese friend of mine to translate what my games said for me, but he would rarely be able to look at something and translate it straight off: he'd always ask me for the context first. This made me think that it would be a very very difficult language to learn properly without actually living there and being immersed in it)

Anyway, as I mentioned, NTSC-UK have moved since I last looked at the site, but their 'first play' forum is now located here: http://www.bordersdown.net/forums/102-Import-Video-Games
(oops wrong link - that's the import games forum, but go up a level and you'll see the 'first play' one)

I enjoy these occasional articles - without them NL might just seem to be nothing more than a mouthpiece for Nintendo.
Anything that could be defined by Nintendo as an "unauthorised technical modification" always piques my interest

Thanks for the info - I don't have a Pi but do plan to get one when I have some spare time to tinker.

@Subie98 if I unfairly grouped you with the others then I apologise.
All I saw was:
"MrSRArter said: @Zael Don't get feminist confused with feminazi."
"MrSRArter said: @Zael Okay, Stop. We get it."
and then:
"Subie98 said: @MrSRArter oh be quiet. Women are in cod as playable characters."
"Subie98 said: @Romeo I agree with you and zael."

Maybe I missed a comment in between that was edited/deleted.

@Subie98 yeah I see you're not denying any women rights. After all, you can now play as a woman in Call of Duty, so that's pretty much the sexism in video games argument done and dusted, right?
(Yeah it was that comment along with agreeing with Zael and Romeo that did it)

I'm glad to hear that you don't see your wife as below you, but I would recommend reading the everyday sexism site. Not all of the accounts on it, obviously, because that would take all week, and maybe ask the women in your life if they've ever experienced situations similar to those described.
I think hearing about it from women that you know will shock and anger you, and maybe hopefully make you think that more should be done about it...

@HyperSonicEXE it has been a very political and abrasive comment thread, with people stating their viewpoints as if they are facts.
Your link to a third-rate tabloid article which is promoting one single person's point of view is worthless. It also reads like an advertorial for the guy's book.

The everyday sexism site that I linked to shows that sexism is a problem, and is a problem experienced by both men and women, but far more by women.
It's a problem that needs to be addressed by men and women.
Views like "it doesn't exist any more", "it makes me uncomfortable so people shouldn't discuss it", and "oh look a man somewhere felt discriminated against one time!" do not help.

"Because I don't know any of you, none of you may have ever done these horrible things, and this is a freaking video game site"
No one's accusing anyone on this site of doing horrible things.
But by denying that sexism exists, or saying it shouldn't be spoken about, you're becoming part of the problem and not the solution.

Computer games are part entertainment and part art - and like other works of entertainment and art there can be debate over them that extends beyond their function as video games.

Actually, all you sexism deniers out there - let's name and shame: @HyperSonicEXE @Subie98 @Romeo @Zael
Read this: http://everydaysexism.com/
Real-life up-to-date accounts of how your imagined utopian "there's no such thing as sexism any more" world really is.
Read some of those, and then defend your views...

...aaand regarding Kickstarter: if you donate to a Kickstarter project then you're helping to fund it, and your involvement ends right there.
Don't like it? Don't fund it.
And don't start whingeing, moaning, complaining about company decisions. Your $20 or whatever doesn't give you that right.

@Zael your views are blinkered. All of your beliefs come from your own anecdotal experiences which cannot be verified and are most likely completely false.

For you all - this is a good read from last week: http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/12/2/5143856/no-girls-allowed

I suggest you all read it. At least watch the video.

Nice article.
I was always a PC gamer until the Gamecube, so region-locking didn't exist for me back then.
I started with the DS. I stumbled across online recommendations, and eventually to the NTSC-UK 'First play' forums. The people posting there were very helpful: buying games the first day they could get hold of them and giving impressions of them from an importer's perspective.

I wouldn't bother with anything text-heavy because I don't speak Japanese.
But with games where the story isn't important, or is told mainly in pictures (like Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!) then you only really need to learn two words of written Japanese: yes and no, and the 'no' is the word that has two repeating symbols.
After a couple of times you recognise yes and no in Japanese, and then there's a little bit of trial and error. For instance, you press a button within what looks like an options screen, get asked to press yes or no. Press yes, and another yes/no box comes up, but this one's in red? Press no, because this is likely to be the 'are you really sure you want to delete your game?' prompt

I think my first import was Nintendogs, from the gone, if-not-forgotten, Lik-Sang.
After Lik-Sang got closed down by a Sony lawsuit, I got my imports from Play-Asia.
I have the Japanese release of Electroplankton, with the bundled blue headphones that I've never used.
Daigasso! Band Bros I bought immediately as I'd been following the developer's video updates and thought it was the most amazing idea for a game that I had ever seen. Then the expansion song GBA cart for it and Band Bros DX.
Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! and its sequel. (I Also later bought Elite Beat Agents but the songs weren't as good as the Japanese ones).
A great crazy drumming game, which came with two plastic drumstick-style styli to use with it.
And more, too many to list (or remember).

I still play them today, though some of my older and more-played games are starting to not work well: I think over-use has worn down the contacts on the cartridge; and I don't know how I can fix them.

Nintendo released a Japanese<->English dictionary for the DS, which saved me when I was in Japan and had to ask for directions!

I bought a Japanese DSi. My experience with the DS showed me that all the really cool quirky games would get released in Japan months or years before they would come out in Europe, if they would at all.
If I had to be region-locked, then I wanted that region to be Japan. And I knew all my old DS games would work.

But then my importing was brought to an abrupt stop with the 3DS

I really miss it, and have been thinking of getting a Japanese model when Nintendo do a hardware refresh of the 3DS.
However given their recent direction towards country-locking with the NNID, I'm feeling pushed towards using an "unauthorised technical modification" to enable region-free.

@ted-k I wholeheartedly agree. In fact, I said as much in an email to Nintendo. I wrote:
"In a world where international travel has never been faster or cheaper,
this policy is a step backwards which fails to recognise changes in
peoples’ travel habits.
I can just about understand country restrictions being placed on a home
console, but not on a portable one. My original DS never had such
restrictions: I travelled extensively with it, and happily bought and
played games from different regions in which I travelled."

I received a "We are sorry to hear you are disappointed with our region restrictions." email back

When travelling the world with my DS, I knew that any airport electronics shop would sell games that would work in my DS.
Now it's bordering on false advertising on Nintendo's part.
How is it possible that I can buy a Nintendo 3DS game and have it not work on my Nintendo 3DS?

If they're going to use region locking then they should rebrand for each region so as not to confuse and mislead consumers.

Imagine buying a CD and it not playing because your CD player isn't from a certain country. It's ridiculous...

@tripunktoj yeah, that's what I'm worried about. If I do that then I'll lose my downloaded 3DS games
I have a second NNID on my Wii U with the country set to UK, which in theory would be the correct one to link my 3DS to, but I'm holding off from updating for a while until the dust clears and there are no more "I lost all my games" threads on http://techforums.nintendo.com/community/3ds

And regarding changing the country on an NNID; last month I asked Nintendo if it was possible and they replied with: "In regards to your query, I can confirm you will be able to change the country for you NNID by contacting customer support team. Please bare in mind by changing the country setting this will wipe your eShop purchases that you may have on the console"

Best bits were:
Broken Age, No Man's Sky, the short film about a Donkey Kong championship (featuring a bodybuilder with a massive chip on his shoulder and a strange narcissistic arrogance), and the concert wasn't bad.
I was looking forward to some rapping after the horrible presenting, and the fact that it was billed as a GTA V concert meant the content came as no surprise to me.

Worst bits: every time that 'comedian' guy opened his mouth.
He came out with some seriously weird jokes. I did wonder whether that's the American sense of humour though?
The awkward moments when the concert's presenters had been told to fill time (probably while the presenters went to the toilet) and didn't really know what to say.

Mediocre bits: the shouty guys making jokes about stereotypes. I got what they were trying to do, but they weren't exactly subtle about it.
Nintendo's appearance: I felt really sorry for the poor developer who wasn't introduced. I would have rather the camera focused on him and let him speak, while the other three went off to do their fake jokey act somewhere else.

@ikki5 I thought that Steam only did that for games where the developers had signed exclusive publishing deals for a particular region?
Out of interest, do you know if your European friends would be able to see those games that are hidden to them in your library if you added them to Family Sharing? (Or maybe these games aren't compatible with it)
Or whether if you buy a game that's only available in your region, you'd be able to gift it or trade it with someone from another region?

And yes, my 3DS has always connected to the UK eShop no matter where I'm located, in the same way my DSi always connects to the Japanese shop.

One reason Nintendo can get away with it and Valve can't is that the PC is an open platform. If Steam started adding these sorts of restrictions then there's nothing to stop people from buying their games from other places.

I started off disliking Steam, and didn't play Half Life 2 for years because of the requirement, but I changed my tune because they've made it so convenient.
In my mind it's the best form of DRM that exists right now.

@XCWarrior yeah, I've emailed Nintendo customer services to get a definitive answer.
I emailed them about it last month when it was announced, but they replied saying they didn't know at that time.

Question: if the NNID on my Wii U has its country set to Spain, and my 3DS has its country set to UK, then what will happen when I try and link NNIDs?

@Einherjar Valve's Steam lets you authorise up to ten other PCs, belonging to friends or family, who can all access your games when you're not playing them.
They've realised that in doing this they will increase sales. Sure, my friends can play games they don't own without paying anything, but they're much more likely to buy a game they've tried and enjoyed.
In the last two months since they brought it out, I've already bought five games that a friend owns and I tried.
My two friends whose PCs I've authorised have bought two games each after playing them from my Steam library.

I really want the SteamBox to succeed (and if it doesn't then it will be Valve's first failure) if only to make the current three console manufacturers change their ways in order to compete.

@ikki5 Unfortunately for me, I'm one of that minority. I bought my 3DS in the UK. I then moved to Spain. Now I frequently travel between the two countries.

I like travelling and living in different places: I was in Australia when the Wii launched so I bought it there. I was in Japan when the DSi came out so bought it there. In the UK for the 3DS. And most recently I bought a Wii U here in Spain.
Who knows where I'll be when the next one comes out!

I agree that I'm an anomaly, but it doesn't make it any less frustrating for me that I'm being penalised by Nintendo for this.

I can just about understand region locking a home console, but really cannot see any reasonable justification to region lock a handheld console, let alone country lock it.

The end result is that I'm going to be giving a lot less money to Nintendo in future.

Oh, and I really hope that they don't start bundling enforced system updates on cartridges for new games! :-/

Take another very popular and successful online software store: Steam.
I have changed my Steam account's country setting whenever I've moved, and the only thing that changes is that I'm billed in a different currency.

I think the difference is that Nintendo know that they can get away with it, and their customers will just lie down and take it.
Steam would never try to pull a trick like that.

Grrrr...where's the article that starts off with:
"After years of not limiting 3DS owners to one single country, Nintendo have now made the draconian step of locking all 3DSes down even further. If you thought you had it good back in the days of the DS and DS Lite, then you're soon going to wish for the days of simple region locking after experiencing the latest that the great minds and Nintendo have come up with..."

This is really not the great system update that it's being made out to be.

I'm not updating to this. This update adds new restrictions to what I can do with my 3DS.

If you install this update and move between countries (even in the same 'region') then you're going to be very disappointed.
If you ask Nintendo Customer Services to update the country on your NNID then all your purchased eShop games will be lost.

It would be good of NL to point this out in the article, because I'm sure there are going to be a fair few people who fall foul of this.
It would be great if NL would research what alternatives are available for people stung by this update:
Is there a region-free hack yet, for instance?
What about one of those evil nasty flashcarts that we're not allowed to talk about much? (Just because one of their functions is to play pirated games doesn't mean that I would use that function)

I'm waiting and hoping for a talented team of hackers to work out a way around this problem, like they did for the Wii, and I'm leaving my 3DS on the previous system version until then.

No more eShop games for me until such a time I can be sure that I won't lose them!

Nintendo takes one step forward and three steps back

Reggie saying "quite well" doesn't fill me with confidence.
On the 'wellness scale', it's not up there with "really well" or "very well", it's more of a middling "well", (but better than "not well")...

And why the hate for the concert part of the awards? It was a good deal better than those inane fools making idiotic attempts at jokes for over two hours.

Why was a PS Vita game nominated for the "Best Nintendo handheld game" award?

I can't believe that I stayed up and watched the whole thing. Obviously I didn't have anything better to do last night.
The presenters were pretty bad - especially the tall American 'funny' one.
Reggie was just a corporate question-dodging robot.

But no one's talking about the two most interesting-looking games:
Broken Age looks absolutely gorgeous and I can't wait for it to come out.
No Man's Sky looks fantastically ambitious. I wonder how same-ey it'll be actually be in practice - procedural generated worlds can have that problem - but it really stood out for me.

Donkey Kong looked like, well, looked like what we've already seen before really. It'll be good. It'll get a metascore of 84 or 87. Yawn.

So has MH4 sold more units in Japan than the Wii U has sold units worldwide?

Nintendo's reason for region restrictions, as emailed to me:

"We are sorry to hear you are disappointed with our region restrictions.

The reasons for our restrictions is that there are many different regions around the world, and each region has its own cultural acceptance and legal restrictions, as well as different age ratings. There are always things that we’re required to do in each different region, which may go counter to the idea that players around the world want the freedom to play whatever they want."

I replied asking "What has changed in terms of cultural acceptance and legal restrictions between the time of the Nintendo DS and now?"

I'm still waiting for a response...

@Kaze_Memaryu
"region-locks are purely triggered by software and only detected by hardware, but the software itself could easily be region-free"
Yeah, all my old imported DS games work just fine on my 3DS.
I first encountered it with my Japanese DSi, when I got my first "DSi-enhanced" (aka 'region-locked') game for Christmas one year and it wouldn't work, which was a little bit disappointing for the gift-giver.

@redsoul91 right now, yes you can. But it's not known whether you will still be able to when they release the 3DS system update that forces you to link a NNID.
I asked Nintendo about it and was told:
"We cannot confirm if you will be required to change your ID to the correct country upon linking it to your 3DS as there have been no announcements with regards to this."

So I can only recommend that you buy any eShop games that you want to play before they release this update, and that you don't update your 3DS until you know what the update will do to it regarding moving between regions.

If it's anything like the Wii U, then it won't let you use any online features if you're not physically located in your console's region.

A couple of weeks ago I got this reply from Nintendo UK when asking them if changing the country on my Nintendo Network ID was possible:

"In regards to your query, I can confirm you will be able to change the country for you NNID by contacting customer support team. Please bare in mind by changing the country setting this will wipe your eShop purchases that you may have on the console"

But with the Louvre guide being region-free, would it survive any change in country?

@Alshain01 good point! RCT3 bored me very quickly for some reason, can't remember why now, but I hardly played it compared to the previous two..

Shame. I don't know if anyone actually wanted Coaster Crazy, but I know several people who want another Rollercoaster Tycoon game.
I'd love to see RCT4 on Wii U...

It also makes me a little bit worried about Elite 4. I just hope that this port was left to the work experience placements, and everyone at Frontier is hard at work on Elite...

From the trailer it looks like you swap between Tetris and Puyo Puyo, rather than it being a "mash-up" of the two.

The problem with Puyo Puyo is that it take no skill to beat your opponent:
You just have to fill up your side of the screen as quickly as possible.
Fill up the left and right sides first.
Don't bother trying to match anything.
Before long, you'll get a crazy long chain combo that will destroy the other player.
Repeat until you beat every level and never want to play it again.

Super Puzzle Fighter was exactly the same.

What I would like to see a 3DS version of is Meteos. Played that to death on the DS. In fact I played it so much that the cartridge isn't recognised any more

I forgot about this until now, but Notch who made Minecraft also made an open-source Mario clone in Java called 'Infinite Mario Bros': http://www.mojang.com/notch/mario/ (He even says on the page "Please don't sue me, Nintendo!")
And someone else ported it to HTML5: http://rawrbitrary.com/arcade/infinite-mario-bros-in-html5/ (which has been online a lot longer than fullscreenmario).