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Mario Kart 8 DLC revives the plumber's trusty B Dasher kart
American gamers haven't seen the aerodynamic B Dasher kart since its debut in Mario Kart DS, but that's about to change thanks to Nintendo's burgeoning Mario Kart 8 DLC plans. "The quick B Dasher kart returns in Mario Kart 8 and will be in the 1st DLC pack," reads a tweet from Nintendo of America. Beyond that details are scant, but it appears the "1st DLC pack" the tweet is referring to is the game's upcoming Legend of Zelda-themed DLC. That pack, which is slated for launch in November, also includes three new characters (Link, Tanooki Mario and Cat Peach) alongside eight additional race tracks and four new vehicles. It's priced at $8, though fans can purchase the DLC as well as a second, similarly immense DLC pack scheduled for release in May 2015 for $12. Though the B Dasher has most frequently been seen alongside Mario - the duo even grace the cover of Mario Kart DS - as you can see in the above screenshot, Mario Kart 8 will allow any character to take the B Dasher for a spin. Just keep an eye out for low-flying blue shells. [Image: Nintendo]
Nintendo Wii and DS internet multiplayer services will shut down worldwide May 20th
Nintendo Japan is putting internet-connected services for some of its older consoles out to pasture, although it's unknown if these plans could impact the US (Update: They will).The Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection that served original Wii and DS units is scheduled to turn off internet multiplayer gaming and many other (but not all) services May 20th, while the free Video app that launched for the 3DS in 2011 will be unplugged at the end of March. Services that will keep working on the DS after May include the DSi Shop, DS Browser, and DSi Browser, while the Wii keeps Netflix, Hulu, Wii Shop Channel, Internet Channel, Pay & Play and YouTube. Newer Nintendo Network games that arrived around the 3DS and local multiplayer will also keep on chugging. If you have a long-distance score to settle in Mario Kart DS or Wii Speak conversation pending, we'd suggest trading friend codes (remember those?) now, while you still can. Update: Nintendo America has confirmed, the Wi-Fi Connection service shutdown May 20th is worldwide.
Mario Kart 3DS preview: By land, by sea, by air
The highlight moment of my time with Mario Kart 3DS didn't involve blue sparks, bananas or any sort of weaponized carapace; though, naturally, all of those elements make a reappearance in the colorful racer. The key moment was the first time I hit a rather innocuous-looking ramp and, once airborne, produced a hang glider from my vehicle's undercarriage. It wasn't a particularly surprising moment -- your car's new utilities were revealed in the trailer showed during Nintendo's E3 press conference -- but it was certainly an interesting one. The new aerial and underwater portions of each track aren't just fresh new obstacles for you to dodge using the series' tried-and-true system of drifting, boosting and item-firing. They represent challenges for you to navigate using entirely new methods of control. %Gallery-125669%
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.
Nintendo DSi XL review
Since Nintendo first asserted sole domination over the handheld gaming market with the release of the paperback-sized Game Boy in 1989, the company has striven time and again to make its pocket systems smaller, meeting fantastic financial success along the way. Nintendo did it with the Game Boy Pocket, the Advance SP, the Micro, the DS Lite and again ever so slightly with the DSi -- the last even at the expense of backwards compatibility and battery life. Now, for the first time in the company's history, it's made an existing platform bigger, with questionable reasons as to why. Does the Nintendo DSi XL squash its predecessors flat? Or is Nintendo compensating for something? Find out inside. %Gallery-89058%
Bury The Shovelware: Pokemon Dash
Nintendo's big E3 press conference has come and gone. While the mainstream media outlets will praise titles such as Wii Music and Wii Sports Resort, the hardcore gamer has reason to feel underwhelmed. Whenever the Big N fails to please its base, one might wonder how the seemingly impervious Nintendo could fail to deliver on expectations. However, like all that is human, the house Miyamoto built is not without its blemishes. When "mistake" and "Nintendo" are mentioned in the same sentence, those who aren't hurling bricks at the heretic are known to immediately think of the Virtual Boy. Nonetheless, Nintendo has had its fair share of publishing misfires involving some of its biggest licenses. Often, the company will allow its intellectual properties to be used in games developed by second or even third parties. Mario, Donkey Kong, Zelda, and Metroid have all had titles outsourced. Like a mother bear protecting her cubs, Nintendo tends to insist on quality development. They will publish these games themselves in part to assure the consumer that the title is worthy of its featured IP (otherwise, things can get ugly). Nintendo is a business, however, and businesses need to make money. And what's one of the quickest ways to turn a profit? That's right: slap a well-known franchise onto a subpar piece of shovelware. The exemplar piece can be found in Pokémon Dash, a disastrous "scratch-your-DS-into-submission" racer.
Another Week in Japan: Hardware and software numbers 6/30-7/6
The most recent Japanese charts showed us that musical instruments have more legs than horses, as Band Brothers DX jumped up into the first place spot. Meanwhie, Nanashi no Game made its debut in the top ten, but only sold a total of 30,000 copies. Hardware sales were also interesting, as the DS stubbornly held onto the second spot: PSP: 56,439 (2,442) Nintendo DS: 47,455 (1,429) Wii: 44,525 (3,955) PlayStation 3: 14,359 (3,614) PlayStation 2: 11,768 ( 4,095) Xbox 360: 4,776 (328) With the Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G craze finally starting to quiet a bit, we don't think it will be too long before the PSP dips closer to DS sales (as long as Nintendo's handheld can maintain its own momentum). Enough about the future, though -- it's all about the now. So, go on and see how software fared last week in Japan by clicking past the break.
Another Week in Japan: Hardware and software numbers 6/16-6/22
The DS found itself back in cozy old third place in this week's chart, as the hype from Metal Gear Solid 4 died down a bit in Japan: PSP: 59,531 (5,325) Wii: 41,037 (4,527) NDS: 36,599 (2,602) PS3: 20,336 (54,975) PS2: 6,346 (951) Xbox 360: 2,555 (392) Meanwhile, Let's Make a Pro Baseball Team's steady climb back into the top ten makes us wonder if supply just wasn't meeting demand a few weeks earlier, when the game fell out of the top thirty. Yet overall, the DS had a relatively boring week in terms of software, with no exciting new releases to congratulate or poke fun at (unless you consider the budget-priced re-release of Puyo Puyo 15th Anniversary "exciting" and "new").If you want to see what Japanese gamers were buying last week, though, just click on past the break.
Amazon's Gold Box is full of DS treasures [update 5]
Hey, guess what? You can buy Super Smash Bros. Brawl on Amazon today (and today only) for $25.99! What a minute -- why are we posting about a Brawl deal on DS Fanboy, of all places? Because, friends, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Amazon is offering up nine Nintendo deals today, which (if our guesses are correct) includes five DS games. Since all of the said games are published by Nintendo you might own most of them already, but if not, they're games that are definitely worth getting for cheap. So, all you stingy folks that are able to order from Amazon.com should check past the break to see what Gold Box sales are in store for you today.
DS Fanboy poll: Demos: do you dabble?
The Wii's Nintendo Channel, then. It's enjoyed a somewhat shaky start if you ask us, particularly where DS demos are concerned. Although we love occasionally receiving bite-size portions of games such as Arkanoid, most demos are ... well, to be frank, they're old. Not just regular old, either, but Jesus and his pet triceratops trekking across the ravaged plains of Pangaea old.The situation is especially grim in Europe, where Tetris DS (original release date: April 2006) has just joined a list that includes (amongst others) the ancient likes of Big Brain Academy, Brain Training, Mario Kart DS, 42 All-Time Classics, and Sight Training. Needless to say, we've only downloaded a small handful of games since the service debuted. To us, a demo of Brain Training is about as useful as a plasticine climbing frame.Then again, maybe we're being overly critical, grumbly bastards. Maybe some of you good people actually get quite a lot of use out of the service. So we thought we'd throw this issue open to you, our beloved readers, and ask: how often do you use the Nintendo Channel demos? %Poll-15495%
Another Week in Japan: Hardware and software numbers 5/26-6/1
Two DS games debuted in the top ten this week (Endless Frontier: Super Robot Wars OG Saga and the cutesy spatial puzzler Empty Space Training), but otherwise, DS software had a relatively lackluster performance. Only twelve titles ended up in the top thirty, which is low for Nintendo's handheld. As for hardware, the DS is getting comfortable in third place behind the PSP and Wii: PSP: 71,986 (7,537) Wii: 50,851 (1,804) Nintendo DS: 38,355 (951) PlayStation 3: 9,169 (98) PlayStation 2: 7,203 (14) Xbox 360: 1,959 (12) Front Mission 2089: Border of Madness is another game that premiered last week, taking twelfth in the charts. If it follows the path of games like Let's Make a Pro Baseball Team! and Glory of Herakles, though, it's likely to drop soon. As for English of the Dead, the game didn't debut in the top fifty, and according to Famitsu it only sold 1,500 copies in its first week. Click on past the break to see the other software numbers and rankings from 5/29 to 6/1.
PAL Nintendo Channel DS demos are training-tastic
Training, training, training. That's all us Europeans and Aussies want, right? Day in, day out, there we are, blurting "blue" into our handhelds like obedient farmyard animals, and being told that we're doing it wrong and that we're thuddingly simple. We know this happens, because the sales charts tell us so, and now the first DS demos on the local Nintendo Channel (released on all PAL consoles today) reflect the self-improvement obsession that has swept many PAL countries.So, instead of getting demos of totally rad, new games such as Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword (which is what the U.S. got), we get four training games (only one of which came out this year) from the seven titles available, and adverts for Nintendogs and The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. The only bright spot? A couple of tracks from Mario Kart DS, and a Picross demo, but those are hardly fresh titles.We're not usually the types to look a gift horse in the mouth, but there's a stunning lack of variety on display here, Nintendo. Hit the break for the infuriatingly vanilla list.
Another Week in Japan: Hardware and software numbers 5/19-5/25
After a somewhat stalwart week, DS software recovered nicely and once again dominated the charts. Even though the same amount of games appeared in the top thirty (fifteen in total), they ranked higher on average than they did in the previous week. Good software sales also gave DS hardware a little boost: PSP: 64,449 (6,087) Wii: 49,047 (7,475) Nintendo DS: 37,404 (2,499) PlayStation 3: 9.071 (1,370) PlayStation 2: 7,189 (167) Xbox 360: 1,947 (473) Four new games debuted in the top thirty, including Sega's Let's Make a Pro Baseball Team!, which nabbed the first place spot from Monster Hunter. The other three games were Glory of Herakles, Scarlet Fragment, and Tea Dogs Room 3. Herakles (or Hercules, if you prefer) is the title that sparks our interest the most, as it's an interesting RPG published by Nintendo. Even so, it's first week sales were (unfortunately) subpar, yet good enough to land it in the top ten.Check out the sales numbers and rankings for yourself after the break.
DS Fanboy presents: Game Night [update 2]
Update: The staff have left the Game Night chat. There were a lot of folks still in there, getting their game on. Hit up the chat if you want to see who's around. Otherwise, we hope to see you next week!Hi, how're you? Good? Wonderful, good to hear. Say, what are you up to this evening? Well, you see, around 7pm Eastern, the staff here at DS Fanboy, as well as a bunch of readers, get together to enjoy the best Wi-Fi title available. Tetris, Mario Kart DS and Advance Wars: Days of Ruin are just a few of the titles we like to rock. Won't you join us? You should! It's surprisingly simple to get involved, actually. All you have to do is come back to the site at 7:01pm tonight, where you'll find this very post at the top of the page. It'll contain a link into our chat room, which you click and that's it. We told you it was simple!So, we'll see you tonight, them?
Another Week in Europe
Hey, you! No, not the guy on the next screen along with the muffin -- you. That's right. You a European? You are? Great! So let's hear it: why have we just checked the latest European charts and found that Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney charted absolutely nowhere? If yours truly can summon up the the effort to scour the high street give his credit card details to an online retailer, you can do the same! No wonder Capcom seems to be thinking twice about releasing Trials and Tribulations here.And now look what you've done! There are bits of Brain Training and Mario and Sonic everywhere! Eww.
Another Week in Japan: Hardware and software numbers 4/28-5/4
We realized today that we don't know Japan as well as we thought we did. With our reasoning, a new Gundam game + the popularity of the DS = cha-ching. While the debuting Emblem of Gundam had decent sales for its first week, though, taking the twelfth spot isn't all that impressive -- especially since there was only one new release cluttering up the top ten. On the other hand, We're Fossil Diggers, Pokemon Ranger, and the Taiko Drum Master DS sequel continued to shine, giving the DS a nice piece of top ten representation. Batonnage managed to reach the half-million mark, while the other two games neared 100,000 copies sold.For hardware, DS numbers went up since last week, but the handheld is still convincingly behind the PSP and Wii in recent sales. If you want to see the numbers, though, just click past the break. You can check out the software listings there, too.
DS Daily: A longtime companion calls it quits
This weekend, we had to do something that made us feel horrible, but in the end, was for the best. Like that scene in Old Yeller, we had to put down one of our DS carts (Mario Kart DS, oddly enough). You see, all of the inserting and ejecting of the cartridge with our DS caused something to get loose in there and now the cart cannot be read by the system.It got us to wondering about this happening to others, namely you all, who probably play their DS a lot more than we're able to. So have you played a game so much this has happened? Have you never heard of this happening? What's your oldest DS game?
Sixteen years of Mario Kart
It's been nearly two decades since Super Mario Kart, and in that time, the five console releases have turned Mario's hobby into a powerhouse franchise in its own right. And no matter where you started in the series, be it with Super Mario Kart or Mario Kart: Double Dash, you've probably already noticed that the old adage applies here: the more things change, the more they stay the same. We're kicking off a week of everything Mario Kart with an overall look at the franchise, with an emphasis on old familiar faces and places. Reappearing characters, recurring tracks, and our oldest memories with the series: you'll find it all right here. Looking to stay spoiler-free? Only very basic information is revealed about Mario Kart Wii, near the end of the gallery. Follow Yoshi! >
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]
DS Daily: Cheating
It's a depressing fact that cheating will always be a part of online gaming, regardless of your platform of choice. For some time, those of weak moral fiber have been able to grant themselves infinite energy, infinite ammo, and the ability to levitate in Metroid Prime: Hunters (encouragingly, Nintendo claims it is now taking measures to prevent this), while the whole Mario Kart DS/snaking debate has rumbled on for some time (though we know of at least one Nintendo representative who would argue that the method isn't actually cheating, and we're sure many of you would concur).Today, we'd like to hear about some of your own experiences of cheating opponents. Which games do you find attract the most online cheats, and have any of you indulged in this dark art yourselves?
