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Japanese Nintendo downloads: Magical Drop 2
WiiWare is on a break this week in Japan, leaving only DSiWare and Virtual Console with new releases. Magical Drop 2 on Neo Geo picks up some of the slack -- Data East's color-matching puzzle game is easily the best thing available this week. On DSiWare, there's a Gameloft soccer game, Othello and hanafuda games, and a diary app meant to help people practice their English. Don't expect to see that one in North America, on account of, you know, the pervasiveness of native-level English competency. The full list of this week's releases includes: Heisei Shin Onigashima Zenpen (Super Famicom, 1 player, 800 Wii Points) Magical Drop 2 (Neo Geo, 1-2 players, 900 Wii Points) at-Enter: Taisen Hanafuda Koi Koi Kassen (DSiWare, 1-2 players, 200 DSi Points) at-Enter: Taisen Reversi (DSiWare, 1-2 players, 200DSi Points) Suku Suku Native English Journal Calendar (DSiWare, 1 player, 500 DSi Points) Real Soccer 2010 (DSiWare, players, DSi Points)
Club Nintendo returns (for now)
Club Nintendo, the long-awaited rewards site, opened to North American gamers on December 15, and has been in a perpetual state of kinda working since then -- some people couldn't log in, some couldn't access surveys, and the site has oscillated between being on- and offline. That is, until Christmas, when ... the site went down for maintenance.Good news for those of you anxious to register codes from all the games you got over the holidays: the site is back. Not better, but back to its unreliable pre-Christmas state, which means that you can enter codes and earn Coins, but you may have to hit F5 a few times to wake the site back up. Alas, we didn't all get bonus Coins for the inconvenience, thus dashing our hopes of earning the hanafuda cards. Want to see Club Nintendo's greatest gifts to Japan and Europe? OF COURSE YOU DO. So go here.
Nintendo toys from the '70s collected
A lot of casual students of video game history probably know that Nintendo manufactured traditional Hanafuda playing cards for nearly 100 years before diving into the video game business in the '80s. But not all Nintendo fans know that the company transitioned into the game space with a line of traditional toys and games in the '60s and '70s.A collector going by the handle dogbowl has a posted a small picture gallery containing some of the more interesting products Nintendo produced during this period. Some, like the Ultra Hand and remote control vacuum cleaner will be familiar to anyone who has played WarioWare Inc.: Mega MicroGame$. Others, like the marble race game and the spooky-looking board game pictured above will probably only be familiar to truly obsessed Nintendophiles. You can even see the inspiration for some classic NES and arcade games in toys like Wild Gunman and Mach Rider in their toy analogues. We can only hope that one day we'll get to see a Wii game based on these delightful flash cards.(Thanks ilostmyunicorn)
