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DS Lite drops to $99 on June 5
The 3DS just got more competition. Not from Sony or another competitor, but from another, now impulse-buy-priced, DS. Nintendo just announced that the DS Lite has been officially dropped in price from $129.99 to $99.99, effective June 5. Perhaps the old SKU at the old price was what GameStop was clearing out? The same month, six Mario games (New Super Mario Bros., Mario Kart DS, Super Mario 64 DS, Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem!, and Mario Party DS) will be re-released in red boxes, to " make it easy for [consumers] to find their favorite Mario titles." Not that anyone ever had trouble finding any of these -- Nintendo announced that more than 9.25 million copies of New Super Mario Bros. have been sold in the US. No price drop was announced for the games. Just fancy new boxes.
Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem! review: Good things, small packages
By now, you'd think Super Mario would know better. Like Captain Kirk and Mitch Buchanan before him, any woman he romances is destined for danger. A kinder man would quit the dating scene altogether, maybe take up a hobby, and take comfort in knowing that he has spared some beautiful stranger the peril of knowing him. Not this guy. It's like he's got a hero complex or something. And so, in Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem!, there's Mario taking Pauline out of hiding for a romantic day at the Mini-Land amusement park, and there's Donkey Kong, right on schedule, snatching her away. Even though "mayhem" is not exactly the right word for the low-key puzzle game that ensues (and the exclamation point is just gratuitous), Mario's latest handheld adventure is nevertheless an appealing, though minor, entry in his canon. %Gallery-95771%
Nintendo dates Q4 lineup, announces Bit.Trip Fate
Nintendo sent out one of its seasonal mega-press releases, announcing pretty much everything at once. Its whole fall Wii lineup now has solid release dates, with newly dated games including: Kirby's Epic Yarn: October 17 Wii Party: October 3 PokePark Wii: November 1 FlingSmash: November 7 Donkey Kong Country Returns: November 21 On DS, Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem has been given a November 14 date. But Nintendo didn't stop there with the announcements: we now know we can expect Super Meat Boy for WiiWare and Shantae: Risky's Revenge for DSiWare this holiday season (which was previously announced, but it's good to know that game is still on track). Also ... Bit. Trip Fate this fall! That's right, not content with merely giving release dates to games we knew about, Nintendo went ahead and announced someone else's unannounced game. And that's why we love these press releases.
Visual overload: Nintendo's E3 DS lineup
If, at any point in the last week, you forgot about the existing DS platform due to all the news about the 3DS, you've made a serious error, and you owe the Nintendo DS an apology. Nintendo brought a diverse selection of first-party (and sorta-first-party, in the case of Dragon Quest IX) DS games to E3, and we've collected trailers and artwork for the whole set. Included after the break is Professor Layton and the Unwound Future. It might be a little ... puzzling, but Nintendo brought two Professor Layton games to E3 (which means, by the way, that this was the best E3 of all time) -- this one, number 3 in the series, for the original DS, and Professor Layton and the Mask of Miracle, which is number 5, for 3DS.
