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Nintendo teams up with distributor to bring DS to Taiwan
For all of you in Taiwan who have relied on non-official distribution to satisfy your need for Nintendo, know that a new third-party distributor has made a deal with Nintendo to supply the region with video games from the Kyoto-based company. FarEasTone (FET) will be teaming up with Nintendo to provide the region with DS units and hopefully find as receptive a market as the handheld has in all other regions of the world it's available for sale. Two specific models of DS Lite were mentioned, in the crimson black (or "senior") unit and a "New Super Mario DS Lite console." The handheld will be available from July 3rd on.
Japan snaps up 100,000,000 DS games
In what is yet another statistical landmark for the DS in its homeland, the data gatherers at Media Create have revealed that Japanese consumers have purchased their 100,000,000th Nintendo DS game.* Considering the handheld itself hit the twenty million mark only last November, we calculate that to be ... a pretty good attachment rate! In total, 922 titles have appeared in the region, 21 of which have been million-sellers. Hit the break for the top ten best-selling games to date. * Rumors that the 100,000,000th game sold was Bangai-O Spirits are yet to be verified, and are suspected to have originated at popular Nintendo DS blog "DS Fanboy."
The best deal on a sack of styli you'll see today
We don't know why you would need 50 New Super Mario Bros. styli. Maybe you want to give them out as party favors. Maybe you live in an octopus family. Or it could be that your habit of chewing on your touch pens ruins them within minutes. Whatever the reason, this is totally your chance to buy 50 New Super Mario Bros. styli in plastic eggs. NCSX, in an effort to clear out their warehouse, has marked the package down from $130 to $95. We suppose you could buy them individually for $3.95, but what are you going to do with just one stylus? Ridiculous.
New Super Mario Bros. hack transports us back to 1985
Yes, yes, New Super Mario Bros. is pretty and enormously fun. We get it. But while playing through that otherwise delightful slice of 2D platforming, we often found ourselves missing the challenge of an old-school Mario game. That's why we're excited when we see stuff like New Retro Mario Bros., one of the downright sweetest Mario hacks we've encountered in a while. Combine the luscious, 3D-on-2D visuals of the mentally popular DS game with the level design and increased difficulty of the peerless Super Mario Bros., and you're talking about our kind of game. That's essentially what New Retro Mario Bros. is: a landmark NES game wearing fancy new DS pants; everything that appeared in Super Mario Bros. is here, right down to the last item box and Goomba. To see just how accurate it is, hit the break for videos of the original game, as well as the updated version of World 1-1. Oh, and bear in mind that the Machinae Supremacy soundtrack is for placeholder purposes only. %Gallery-19138%
DS sells twenty million in Europe
One of the biggest challenges of being a Nintendo blogger is finding new ways of telling your readers that the DS is popular in various regions of the world. We could take the easy route here and resort to writing about hot cakes and/or printing money, but no, we're just going to give it to you straight: in Europe, the DS is really, really popular. We're not quite talking Japan levels of popularity here -- that would be insane. But it's doing jolly well, regardless. According to a swaggering Nintendo of Europe, the little handheld that could has sold through more than 20 million units in the region, as of the beginning of January. And that's not all, folks: the games are also shifting in healthy numbers. Throughout the continent, Nintendogs is at the front, pulling furiously on its leash with 8 million sales. Everybody's favorite polygonal professor takes second, having sold 5 million copies of the bonce-honing Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain?, while New Super Mario Bros. grabs bronze with 3 million sales. Get that conga line formed, people. You know the drill by now. [Via press release]
Promotional Consideration: Dual screen theatre
Promotional Consideration is a weekly feature about the Nintendo DS advertisements you usually flip past, change the channel on, or just tune out. The following DS Lite ads were taken from a series of Nintendo-sponsored station identification pieces (idents) aired over a year ago on Channel 4. For those of you unfamiliar with idents, they're short spots, often themed, stuck in between television shows to help "brand" the channel. In the case of this set, the UK public-service TV station bookended its comedy programs with Japanese theatre-styled advertisements for the DS's features and games. They're some of the most creative commercials we've seen for the handheld, so don't skip this post!
Super Mario Chart
NeoGAFfer Stumpokapow compiled this chart of Japanese Mario sales throughout the series, and two things are immediately obvious from looking at it: Mario sprites still look great! Seriously, yay Mario. New Super Mario Bros. is huge. We knew that NSMB was riding the combined influence of Nintendo nostalgia and Being On The Nintendo DS into sales Valhalla, but we didn't realize just how successful it was. If Nintendo ever gets enough DS Lites into Japanese stores, we can almost guarantee that two-million copy gap between it and the original Super Mario Bros. will disappear. In other good news (in one blogger's opinion and pretty much no one else's), Super Mario 64 is near the bottom of the list, providing evidence that 3D Mario was a failed experiment. This in no way means that Super Mario RPG's position on the list is indicative of the quality of that game. That's, uh, completely different. Check after the break to see the full chart and to register your disgust about our treatment of Mario 64.
Critic's choice: The top five DS games
All week, we've been sharing our favorite games with you, as well as snippets of our personalities outside the fanboy sphere. Now you know that some of us weren't really huge handheld fans before the DS, that at least one of us is terribly silly, and most of us seem to dig cats, in some way or another. But forget the trivial details -- how do our favorite games stack up against the critical darlings? We offer this side-by-side comparison to wrap up Fanboy Favorites week, and we hope you've enjoyed this closer look at not only the DS Fanboy staff, but some of the best that the DS has to offer.
DS Fanboy Favorites: Eric's top five
All this week, the DS Fanboy staff is letting you in on a few of their favorite titles. Each day, a different member of the staff will present their personal top five DS games along with a snapshot of their gaming paraphernalia and habits, in an effort to provide our readers with a little more information on the tastes and personalities of our writers. When my afternoons aren't busied by hours of photoshopping cat heads onto pictures of my friends, I pass the time with puzzlers and plumbers on my DS Lite. But those kitten-free days are few and far between, so I end up being able to only fit either the most polished or the most eccentric games into my packed schedule. Wario: Master of Disguise? Sorry, I've got things to do and feline faces to retouch. Lost in Blue 2? I'll have to pass -- I'm already lost in trying to get these whiskers to look perfect. My collection is a mishmash of AAA titles and niche releases, their cases piled atop one another like a Jenga stack of mismatched blocks, threatening to topple over at any moment. Just pulling a game from the middle of the shaky structure is an act preceded by hours of anxiety and self-doubt. Having my wife provide commentary during the ordeal, remarking "Oh god, it's going to crash this time for sure, I just know it. Why'd you even try, Eric?! Game over, man! Game over!" as I tug out my copy of Advance Wars DS doesn't make the challenge any easier. So when I do manage to put aside the pussycat photos and secure a game to play, it better damn well be worth it. Journey forth and read which of those titles have captured a place not only on my top five list, but in my heart.
Someone buy us one of these gigantic Marios
Nobody's going to believe we're a real Nintendo gaming site unless we have our own obscenely enormous Mario statue, right? This is our credibility we're talking about. This is important. We want people to walk into our office complex and see that we mean serious business. Would you deal with DS no-Mario-statues Fanboy? Importers extraordinaire NCSX are offering this five-foot tall Mario statue, usually available only to stores, to normal people like us for the low, low price of $3000 plus shipping. Five feet tall may not be big for a person, but for a video game character statue? Man, look at that Mario. It's huuuge.
The top five "traditional" DS games
var digg_url = 'http://www.digg.com/gaming_news/The_Top_Five_Traditional_DS_Games'; The DS is well-known for its unusual design features, the two-screen format and the touch screen. Many of the DS's most popular games make good use of these features, and there are many outstanding games, like Meteos, that make strong enough use of them that they could fairly be said to depend on these features. There wouldn't be too much to Brain Age without the handwriting input, and it is hard to imagine Elite Beat Agents existing at all without either the unique interface or the simultaneous cutscene/gameplay presentation. But for as much attention as the DS gets for its unique features, many of its best games use them in only the most cursory of ways. Some of the best-reviewed, most popular DS games have only optional touch-screen use, or some function that is nonessential to gameplay. Some games squander their second screen on inventories and maps. Many such games not only could have worked just as well on other systems, they are from long-standing series that worked just fine back in the dark ages when game systems only had a single screen and controls were mapped only to buttons. The games on this list are the highest-ranked games according to Metacritic that fall under the category of "traditional" games. In fact, the top four DS games according to Metacritic are all traditional. Each game on this list is an excellent DS game that is excellent independent of the DS' inherent advantages.
New Super Mario Brothers plush toys are new, super, and plush
We really weren't fans of Mario's blue shell ability in New Super Mario Bros., because it tended to steer us inexorably into a lava-filled grave. But we want to hug this plush Blue Shell Mario. And then maybe toss him into lava. Play-Asia is selling these adorable NSMB toys, produced by Banpresto, for about $11 each. You have your choice of the aforementioned Mario, a Mega Mushroom, Boo, Luigi (in casino minigame regalia) and Toad. Does anyone else find it odd that Luigi still wears his green hat, even when he's in formal attire? [Via Siliconera]
Nintendo making strides in Korea
Over at 4 Color Rebellion, writer (and Seoul resident) N Rumas tells us of a nation's ability to love Nintendo again. In riding the train, he reports of daily sightings where people are enjoying the DS and Brain Age, as well as seeing the handheld plentifully stocked at local retail outlets. He even reports of a friend, who owns a shop, enjoying a boost in business. Now, with the release of New Super Mario Bros. this week, sales in the region for Nintendo should skyrocket that much further. With the universal appeal and popularity of Nintendo's plumber mascot, the game should sell very strongly upon release. [via 4cr]
The New Super Mario Bros. Rubix Cube
As gamers, we are members of a very unique culture that permeates every fiber of our being. Odd gaming quotes and an insatiable desire to explode all barrels in sight are just a few of the things that come to mind when we think of gamers (the rest are just as nice, we assure you), and upon seeing this Rubix Cube, which is affixed with various pictures of Mario and Luigi from the game New Super Mario Bros., we knew that we had to have it. Do you share our desire? [Via Tokyo Mango]
Cute game cases for the Mario and Pokemon fan
Siliconera has documented the above game cases, which are distributed in Japan by company Takara Tomy, available for the small price of 200 yen (about $1.61 USD) each. The only snag is that you do not get to pick which one you get, instead offering your money int he hopes that you'll randomly get any case other than the bricks. We've included the Pokemon cases after the post break, which will become available next month.
New Super Mario: Big in Japan
It's easy when you're big in Japan. Nintendo recently announced at a Japanese retailer meeting that New Super Mario Bros. sold through over 900,000 copies in its first 4 days of availability. Not a huge surprise, but another indicator that even Nintendo benefits from everything old being new again. Other successes in Japan, where the Eastern seas so blue, were Tetris DS which sold 800,000 in 4 weeks and of course, the DS Lite itself. In the month of April alone, Nintendo shifted 950,000 Lites. It looks like this whole "double screen" thing is going to work out for them after all. [Apologies for the Alphaville lyrics used throughout this post. Thanks Feek!]
New video up at Super Mario Bros. site
Watch the acrobatically inclined Italian plumber perform amazing leaps and powerful butt-stomps in this video that, if anything, reminds us that this game simply can't come out soon enough. Sure, the game shamelessly profits from nostalgia and fails to provide much in the way of innovation, but it seems to radiate pure, unbridled fun from every shell-kicking, block-busting orifice. New Super Mario Bros. releases 15 May.
Update to Mario site [Update 1]
Some of you might have had your pointers poised atop your designated browser's refresh button while staring at the official New Super Mario Bros. minisite, waiting with fevered anticipation for something to change. It was these fine readers that sent us the news of a small overhaul to the site, which received an upgrade in the form of a new video and placeholders for what we assume are future videos to arrive in the weekly intervals of 5/01, 5/08, and the final release date of 5/15. The video shows Mario ingesting a concentrated dose of mushroom and becoming larger than life, destroying everything in a way that only a mutated lizard haunting the country of Japan would. We also see Mario eagerly lap up a smaller, blue mushroom that manages to shrink the plumber down to an almost weightless, water-walking size that increases his jumping ability. The requisite fire flower is present as well, so all you pyromaniacs will take pleasure in watching Mario lay waste with it. Finally, a smaller segment shows a water level in which Mario is wearing a large shell and collecting red coins whilst dodging sharks. [Thanks to everyone that sent this in!] [Update: Fixed the release date, which I accidentally typed as 5/12.]
More New Super Mario Bros. screens
Here we have some more screens for you all to drool over on the long overdue New Super Mario Bros. Of the new screens, the inclusion of a snapshot of one of Super Mario 64 DS' more fun minigames brings joy, but the included snapshot on the right has to be the most interesting. Taking heavy inspiration from one of the most popular time-wasters Snowcraft, this minigame looks like it should fit in fine and be one fun time. Other screenshots show one of Bowser's dispic children and what appears to be the world map, a map which features 8 game worlds on a route that leads you to the "Big B's" castle. [Via Joystiq]
New Super Mario Bros redelayed?
Reader zverg writes us saying that the buy-it-all site Amazon.com recently sent him an email notification as to when he could expect his preordered New Super Mario Bros. game to arrive. This date was a disasterous June 12th to ship and June 14th to arrive. The game's official site still shows a release of May 15th. So given the rollercoaster release scheduling this title has gone through, can we expect it to be pushed back again? We sure hope not.
