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Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS 'several years' away, Sakurai says
When Nintendo announced that Smash Bros. was en route to its Wii U and 3DS systems, longtime fans of the fighting series may have, in elation, momentarily forgotten how much time elapses during the announcement and launch. As creative lead Masahiro Sakurai explains in his weekly Famitsu column (translated by 1UP), the next game is "several years" away from completion. "It makes me cringe," he laments, referring to the two game projects being added to his plate. "And I'm not sure it's the smartest thing to make gamers wait for several years, but the early announcement was made chiefly in order to attract new team members." Apparently all of his studio's resources are currently being poured into Kid Icarus: Uprising for the 3DS. "We've got no plans whatsoever -- we've got two new games out there in the open when there's no extra time to work with them at all." At least with these games, Sakurai knew ahead of time. With the Wii's Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Nintendo head Satoru Iwata announced the game before Sakurai even knew it was a project he would be working on. "With previous projects I had a game design document in place before forming a team, but with this I don't have the time for that. I won't be able to look at every aspect of the game and balance out all the characters by myself this time," he writes. Before the Wii U announcement Sakurai's studio, Project Sora, "had intended to make a 3DS Smash Bros.," but doubled up after seeing the Wii U. "If we went solely for the Wii U, the HD graphics would really bump up the visual effects, but then we'd be stuck in another arms race. If we made this game another extension over the previous one, we'd have to cut out the new things we could possibly do on the 3DS hardware and compete with ourselves again over the size of the character roster and the amount of gameplay we can put in it." If your heart stops every time Iwata takes the stage at a press conference, just imagine how Mr. Sakurai reacts.
Super Smash Bros. Brawl surpasses 100 million hours played
Wow, guys, you really like your Super Smash Bros. Brawl, eh? Nintendo Channel data reveals the fighter has spun around in Wii disc drives for a collective 100 million hours and then some. On average, each gamer has put just over 73 total hours in. To put some perspective on the figure, some of Nintendo's most notable titles haven't even come close to approaching 100 million hours played. Mario Kart Wii has only been played for 46 million hours, while Super Mario Galaxy has managed a mere 34 million hours in total. Wii Sports, however, remains the obvious top game played, netting a total play time of 105 million hours. [Via Coffee with Games & Go Nintendo]
Project Sora shows off its smashing new office
What has Masahiro Sakurai's Project Sora studio been up to since opening in February? According to its website, the company is in the final stages of its hiring initiative, but it's also been moving. The new developer posted a photo tour of its new offices in Iidabashi, Tokyo, complete with a sound booth and a teleconference room for meetings with Nintendo of America.The room with the most furnishing is the office game room, seen above, which features an impressive array of consoles (including the dreamy Twin Famicom on the floor) and plants. "The cactus was a gift," Sakurai boasted. As for what Sora is working on in this new space: "Our project is a secret!"[Via Siliconera]
Hackers add Roy to Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Smashboards forum user goodoldganon wasn't satisfied with all of the characters in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. His main contention with the game was that it lacked several key Melee characters. So, he did what any sensible member of society would do: He wrote a letter to Nintendo He hacked the crap out of the game.As evidenced in the videos past the break, this isn't merely a texture swap, as goodoldganon also incorporated Roy's moves into the game. By delegating the hack to a certain color set of Marth's (here it's the red suit), he can pick Roy at will and seamlessly integrate him into the game. Sure, the bottom of the screen still says Marth, but, for all intents and purposes, this is the Roy you remember.It's impressive stuff, to say the least, so head past the break and check out the footage of a fighter's return to the arena.%Gallery-26316%[Thanks, Slashy!]
Fans rewrite Brawl to balance characters
Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a pretty fun fighting game to play with friends, right?WRONG. It's actually an unbalanced mess. At least, that's what a group of Smash Boards members seems to believe, seemingly with more conviction than we've ever had for pretty much anything. It's important enough that they decided to patch the game's code to change specific gameplay elements. "Balanced Brawl" has three goals, as stated by the coders: first, to remove "infinites" and "inescapable lockdowns" (simple, unblockable combos that add more than 50% damage), increase overall character balance, and increase stage viability.You can see examples of the kind of minute tweaking done to the characters in the chart above, and you can read way, way more about each change in the Smash Boards thread. It's a pretty impressive testament to just how much time has been spent thinking about Brawl.
Project Sora hiring for non-Smash Bros. game
Last month, Nintendo announced the formation of Project Sora, a new studio created from the combination of Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai's Sora Ltd. and a pile of Nintendo's money. This week, the new company took out a full-page ad in Famitsu seeking new employees.The ad reiterates that Sora is working on "something that Nintendo can't create by themselves." Nintendo president Satoru Iwata also has quotes in the ad, which provide one small detail: "I am asking for something special here, something that isn't Smash Bros.," Iwata says. While it's entirely possible Sora or another studio is also working on another Smash Bros. title, the mysterious game that the developer is focusing on right now is something else. We don't even know which system it will involve!
Wii Warm Up: Smashed Gameplay
As reported yesterday, the new TMNT: Smash Up for the Wii seems to borrow liberally from Super Smash Bros. We're not going to argue about the "fairness" of lifting from other games to make your design, because appropriating other people's ideas and resynthesizing them is basically the essence of art. And every fighting game since Street Fighter II has cribbed from Capcom's masterpiece anyway. Basically, we wouldn't have a fighting genre if not for copying.But on to Smash Bros. and the Turtles. Do you think the Smash Bros. gameplay is strong enough to work without Nintendo characters? Are there any particular ideas involved in the bizarre fighting series that more fighting games could stand to inherit? And is it going to become its own branch of the fighting game genre?
Wii's winners and losers in Japan
We can't exactly trust the validity of the numbers used to create this list of best-selling games across the three home platforms, since it's just some guy on Geocities doing it (and he claims that he might alter numbers to deter copying) but they're close enough to our expectations for most games. These numbers are purportedly derived from Enterbrain and Famitsu sales data. Kotaku reproduced the top and bottom-selling games on each platform, and we think that's a nice way to organize it.The top ten Wii games are not too surprising, including stuff like Wii Sports, Wii Play, Wii Fit, Brawl, and other big Nintendo franchises. The only third-party game on the list is Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, which, of course, is a Mario game!But the bottom ten is a lot more entertaining, revealing, for example, that poor Opoona sold only 5,000 copies, as did Dewy's Adventure. D3's motivation for putting their Simple games on WiiWare is made clear by the fact that their disc-based releases totally bombed. Though not as badly as Hudson's Puzzle Series Vol. 1 Sudoku, which apparently sold 482 copies total.It's hard to pick interesting tidbits out of the middle of the list (which we won't reproduce after the break in the interest of brevity) but apparently No More Heroes sold just 27,873 copies -- much less than the 84,224 copies of Mysterious Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer 3 that went out!
Nintendo makes Brawl world less colorful
Remember the awesome Super Smash Bros. Brawl hacking project through which some guys were making alternate color schemes for all the character models? Well, the group responsible started calling themselves ]EE[ Syntax-Error, and they were planning to distribute a patch for Brawl that would allow any homebrew-capable Wii owner to play with all kinds of recolored characters. Soon before this patch was to be released, their site went down.We don't know exactly what happened, but according to a post at Stack Smash, a related Smash Bros. character model hacking site, Nintendo threatened Syntax-Error with lawsuits. As a result, the site is down and the patch is shelved. The image above, found in another Stack Smash post, features almost every texture alteration that was to be released with the software. Check out Pac-Kirby! Oh, we've just made ourselves sad.%Gallery-26316%[Thanks, Ants!]
2008's best-sellers revealed, familiar outcome ensues
Gamasutra has compiled a bunch of charts showing the best-selling games of 2008 (so far) across all formats. At first glance, the results are thoroughly predictable -- it's yet more Wii dominance in the U.S. -- but there are interesting factoids to be drawn from this.Wii Play, for example, looks like finishing in the top five games of the year for the second year running. Even more impressively, Gamasutra thinks it could sell more copies in 2008 than in 2007, which is all kinds of crazy. Surely that would be some kind of first?The top two spots are held by Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Mario Kart Wii, a pair of titles that we always expected to sell well, but to beat the likes of Wii Fit or other games aimed at Nintendo's broadened audience? Speaking of Wii Fit, it tops the chart for estimated revenue so far this year, thanks to its higher retail price. We'll reproduce the 2008 YTD sales table below, but Gamasutra has other data worth looking at here.1. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii) -- 3.5 million2. Mario Kart Wii (Wii) -- 3.4 million3. Grand Theft Auto IV (360) -- 3.2 million4. Wii Play (Wii) -- 3.0 million5. Wii Fit (Wii) -- 2.8 million%Gallery-3347%
Top 5: Multiplayer Experiences
As someone who writes on the Internets, I do a lot of reading as well. As just about any successful author will advise, if I want to be a better writer then I should be reading as much as possible. Thus, I tend to spend a good amount of time scouring the gaming websites and reading commentary from just about anyone. I wouldn't insult anyone by pointing out flaws in their work (as I'm host to many of my own), but it is sufficient to say that there is great diversity in the quality and other general attributes of gaming commentary. One source that I do consistently enjoy comes from GoNintendo's head honcho, known as RawmeatCowboy. Equal parts Nintendo fan and beard enthusiast, RMC has a passion for gaming unmatched by nearly anyone else in the entire industry. Whereas some journalists and commentators may give off an impression of jaded cynicism, this particular blogger is a bundle of video game-loving joy. Though he's not quite the wordsmith of a Jerry Holkins, his joy and optimism transcend any potential criticism. And after all, that should be the reason we play video games: for happiness. Stepping away from worshipping his shrine, I'll get back on target. In a recent post, RMC discusses offline multiplayer via a get-together involving several friends of his trying out Guitar Hero: World Tour. He states that multiplayer is more enjoyable in person than online, and I find it difficult to disagree. That is not to say that online multiplayer is garbage; quite the opposite is true. Aside from the obvious pragmatics of not always being able to round up a few friends to play a game you enjoy, there's the global aspect behind online gaming. Though I've been battling people online via chess years before any major console had such capabilities, the enormous power of the technology didn't register with me until very recently. As I was connecting to an online race in Mario Kart Wii, the identification of racers on the globe really hit home. Realizing that I was simultaneously connecting with individuals from Japan, China, Germany, and England was strangely beautiful. Despite the fascinating global implications of such connections, I remain a bit of a luddite in that I don't think there's anything better than having your friends in the same room with you while fighting with or against each other. Here's the Top 5 ways we recommend that you enjoy such opportunities. NEXT >> #ninbutton { border-style: solid; border-color: #000; border-width: 2px; background-color: #BBB; color: #000; text-decoration: none; width: 100px; text-align: center; padding: 2px 2px 2px 2px; margin: 2px 2px 2px 2px; } .buttontext { color: #000; text-decoration: none; font: bold 14pt Helvetica; } #ninbutton:hover { text-decoration: none; color: #BBB; background-color: #000; } The Top 5 is a weekly feature that provides us with a forum to share our opinions on various aspects of the video game culture, and provides you with a forum to tell us how wrong we are. To further voice your opinions, submit a vote in the Wii Fanboy Poll, and take part in the daily discussions of Wii Warm Up.
Ten for under twenty at Gamefly's sale
In these belt-tightening, penny-pinching times, it literally pays to have a nose for the bargains. That's where we, or rather Gamefly, comes in. The game rental outfit has a broad selection of used Wii software for low, world banking crisis-friendly prices, and we chose ten of the best sub-$20 games to tempt you. Thar be bargains ahead! Baroque for $12.99 Battalion Wars 2 for $17.99 Blast Works: Build, Trade, Destroy for $9.99 Dewy's Adventure for $13.99 Geometry Wars: Galaxies for $16.99 Mercury: Meltdown Revolution for $15.99 NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams for $12.99 No More Heroes for $17.99 Sega Superstars Tennis for $9.99 Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure for $17.99 There's actually a ton more we could have mentioned, including Super Mario Galaxy for $32.99, Super Smash Bros. Brawl for $30.99, and Metroid Prime 3 for $26.99. Sadly, "One hundred and fifty-eight for under forty-two" just doesn't work as a headline. Hit up the "Source" link for the full set. %Gallery-3283% [Thanks, William!]
Nintendo UK wheels out the celebs ...
... with mixed results. But let's start with the good ones: Patrick Stewart will be back this Christmas to sell the DS and Brain Training to Brits (as he was last year), and he'll be doing it alongside Julie Walters. Hurray! The rest of Nintendo's celebrity line-up will be quite obscure to Americans, but when they produce lifestyle photography as brilliant as this, who the hell cares? They include: Girls Aloud. British girl pop group, and actually a pretty big name in Blighty. Most famous member is one Cheryl Cole, who seems lovely and sincere on X Factor, though isn't quite as pleasant if you meet her in a nightclub toilet. Fern Britton, once-cuddly, now gastric-band-wearing TV presenter, will be advertising Cooking Guide. Ronan Keating, one-fifth of Irish boyband Boyzone. Incidentally, in the process of writing this post, we discovered Boyzone were reforming. Ugh. Anyway, Ronan will be promoting Big Brain Academy. Jamie and Louise Redknapp, slightly thick but good-looking soccer pundit and his former pop star wife. Will join forces with their extended family to push Mario Kart Wii, Wii Sports, and Super Smash Bros.: Brawl. That's a lot of responsibility on the Redknapps' shoulders! We hope they're up to it. And going by Nintendo's current record in the UK, they'll probably do really well. Best of luck to all of them.
Dirty disc drive lens? Nintendo has your back
Reasons not to smoke: Increased risk of lung cancer, high blood pressure, bronchitis, emphysema. It smells. Wii lens damage!!1! Rather than lecture you on the first two (because hey, they're your lungs, bucko), we want to concentrate on the latter. Back in February, Japanese gamers reported that Wiis were having trouble reading newly purchased copies of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Nintendo's intervention was swift, with the company blaming dirty console lenses -- Brawl was the first Wii game to release on a dual-layered DVD, and therefore especially sensitive to this issue.Nintendo's first practical solution was ... not so swift. As in, it just came out now. The Wii Lens Cleaner Set is available to order on Nintendo's Japanese site for ¥800 (around $8) or Play-Asia for a tenner. It should leave your console lens sparkling and your Brawl career resurgent. Whadd'ya mean everyone plays Mario Kart now? Hush!%Gallery-26316%[Via Kotaku]
NPD dishes out the 5 top-selling Wii games of this year
When we think of what games could possibly be the top 5 for the Wii, it doesn't seem like there's much room for mystery. Those that follow the monthly NPD numbers will likely be able to recite the top 5, in order, off the top of their heads. So, let's get to it!The top 5 games of 2008 so far according to the NPD are: Super Smash Bros. Brawl Mario Kart Wii (with wheel) Wii Play Wii Fit (with Balance Board) Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (with guitar) We're amazed at how well GH3 still continues to do on the Wii. Obviously, Wii Play is no surprise, as it's a constant fixture in the top software titles month after month. And we have a feeling that Wii Fit would be higher on the list if only more people could actually find it.
Get Equipped with Mega Man answers from Inafune
As the daddy of the Blue Bomber, you'd expect Keiji Inafune to know a thing or two about the Mega Man canon, and readers of the Capcom blog got the chance to test his knowledge in a interview, in which Inafune quickly set about clarifying series minutiae.Other subjects broached include the prospect of Mega Man appearing in not-Mega Man genres (in short, don't be expecting Mega Man Kart in the near future, and let's all be thankful for that), Inafune's fondness for photography (which influenced Dead Rising), and co-op Mega Man (which, argues Inafune, would be "close to impossible" with the current style of the series). He also mentions that he'd be happy to see Mega Man in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and that's not the first time Inafune has dropped that particular hint. Surely the robo-boy is a shoo-in for the next game?%Gallery-30253%[Via Joystiq]
Hackers give Brawl cast a change of clothes
Some dudes at Ghosteo have breathed new life into the already-quite-vital Super Smash Bros. Brawl by ripping the game code and editing the textures to look like other well-known Nintendo costumes -- like Fierce Deity Link as he appeared in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Pikachu becomes Plusle and Minun, Lucas becomes a juvenile Phoenix Wright, Ness becomes Zim, and R.O.B. becomes ... R.O.B. covered in blood. It looks like it came out of a Funcoland in Silent Hill.The Ghosteo posters aren't releasing the textures to the public until they've completed two per character, if at all. So for now all we can do is imagine what it must be like to play Brawl as Sonic, but ... looking like Metal Sonic.%Gallery-26316%[Via NeoGAF]
Smash Bros. champion cracks the world of reality TV
Fans of reality TV show Survivor who also read Nintendo blogs will be pleased to hear that gamers are getting some representation for the show's seventeenth season, Survivor: Gabon - Earth's Last Eden.22-year-old Ken Hoang will be one of the eighteen contestants when the series begins on September 25th, and he's there for one very good reason: he can totally kick the world's ass at Super Smash Bros. Melee. Yeah, even yours. A professional gamer by trade, Ken has earned over $50,000 from playing Melee, which (according to his Survivor profile at CBS) he's used to help pay his family's mortgage. Whaddaguy!The message to take from this: don't let anybody tell you gaming can't take you anywhere in life. Unless you play, say, Mario Kart Wii as well as we do. Then, seriously, it's time to look for a real job.%Gallery-20414%[Via Joystiq]
Dojo update: Celebrating obsessive Brawlers
For the second time after the Smash Bros. Dojo announced that there would be no more site updates, the Smash Bros. Dojo has updated. Rather than revealing something new about Super Smash Bros. Brawl, however, the latest update reveals something about you: that you're all crazy and willing to replay Target Smash and Home-Run Contest over and over again. The Dojo now features a list of records for the two contests, organized by level and by character. The fastest Target Smash overall? As of the end of last month, it's 3.98 seconds in Level 1 by Olimar. The longest home run? Ganondorf's 7,435.9 feet. And those are just individual records -- it gets crazier in co-op.If you're good at these challenges, but you've stopped playing Brawl, it may be time for you to hop back in. You might just get on the Dojo! Of course, only you will know, since there aren't any names attached to these records.%Gallery-16727%
So apparently this Wii thing is popular?
Pow! Blam! Thwack! That's the sound of the Wii's biggest software performers in 2008 so far. The likes of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Wii Fit, and Mario Kart Wii have taken some of the the top places in a new Top Global Markets Report, as calculated by chart specialists Enterbrain (Japan), NPD (the U.S.) and Gfk Chart-Track (the UK).Although top spot goes to Grand Theft Auto IV (6.29 million copies sold in 2008 so far), the next four places feature Wii games, three of which are exclusives. Brawl (5.4 million) was runner-up, while Mario Kart Wii (4.6 million) and Wii Fit (3.6 million) reached third and fourth respectively. Guitar Hero III (just under 3.4 million) was fifth; obviously, the Wii also had a hand in that.What does this prove? Well, little that we didn't already know: that Nintendo's console and games are obscenely popular -- even when said games cost way more than regular titles. With four months of the year still to go, we wouldn't rule out one or more of those Nintendo exclusives overhauling that insolent Russian Niko. Commence yaaaaying.
