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JXE Streams: Join us for some 'Affordable Space Adventures'
KnapNok Games gets what Richard Branson doesn't. Of course people want to hang out in space, but they definitely don't want to pay top dollar to do it! So rather than drop $200,000 on a Virgin Galactic reservation, why not fire up your Wii U for some Affordable Space Adventures? The game simulates the existential nightmare of getting trapped on a foreign planet as well as makes novel use of the console's unique tablet controller. It's win-win! Join us at 3:30PM ET today for a live tour of the game on JXE Streams.
BBC iPlayer comes to the Wii U with GamePad viewing
These days, it's pretty hard to find anything electronic that doesn't have access to BBC iPlayer already. Nintendo's Wii U is one of the most notable exceptions, but if you've been quietly jonesing for an iPlayer client to hit the quirky console, then jones no more. With zero fanfare marking its launch, BBC iPlayer is now available to download in the Nintendo eShop. The Wii U's GamePad is fully supported, too, so you're not tied to the TV screen if, you know, your tablet's run out of battery.
Nintendo asks you to pay what you want for indie games
Nintendo's been going through some serious growing pains on its path to the modern era of console gaming but with this latest step it's actually beating Microsoft and Sony to the punch for once. The Japanese gaming company is running a Humble Bundle. Not a Nintendo homegrown version of a Humble Bundle, but a real McCoy on Humble's website. Pretty crazy right? Especially considering these are all indies. Up for grabs are digital codes for games on the 3DS handheld and Wii U alike, including Guacamelee: Super Turbo Championship Edition for the latter and Whoah Dave! for the former.
Nintendo kills off the basic Wii U in Japan
Nintendo is about to halt production of its 8GB Wii U Basic in Japan, according to a notice on its product site. The white-clad product has been around since 2012, but was never super popular since the 32GB version is typically only $50 more. In fact, the rumor mill had it being killed off two years ago after it went out of stock at GameStop and Best Buy, though Nintendo later called that a "misperception." Somehow the model has hung on until now, but has gradually become harder to find.
JXE Streams: Engadget vs. Upright Citizens Brigade in 'Mario Kart 8'
Mario Kart 8's brand new 200cc races are fast. Very fast. Indeed, they are so damned speedy that they almost made our own Joseph Volpe throw up while he was having an insanely good time playing. Since we're always up for a bout of stomach churning fun, the JXE Streams posse is diving back into Mario Kart 8 to check out the new 200cc races as well as the new downloadable characters. We're also going to share the love with Mike Still, our very special guest from Upright Citizens Brigade.
Nintendo backs off of bringing Super Nintendo games to Wii U
Bad news for Super Nintendo fans: your Wii U fix is about to dry up. Nintendo's Virtual Console, the download service offering older games on its consoles and handhelds, has never had the most robust selection. With Nintendo turning its eye towards N64 games, though, SNES releases are being left behind. According to Natsume, a publisher with a plethora of SNES games primed for re-release, Nintendo is done with 16-bit for now.
Wii U 'Splatoon' bundle lands at Best Buy on May 29th
Nintendo must be really, really confident that you'll want Splatoon. It's launching a Best Buy-exclusive Wii U bundle that includes the ink-drenched, kid-friendly shooter, Nintendoland and a 32GB Deluxe console for $300. That's a good deal, but a bit of a gamble for a brand new game series -- normally, Nintendo thrives on bundling familiar titles that lure you in based on the name alone. If you're new to the Wii U and don't mind trying something genuinely new, though, you can snag this bundle on May 29th.
'Guitar Hero' gets born again with a new look and a new controller
Guitar Hero has no business being relevant in 2015. Ten years is an eternity for video games, especially so for games tied so closely to specific technology like Harmonix's revolutionary PlayStation 2 game was to its inner-rock-star-summoning controller when it came out. A decade on from that original, and five years on from the last release in the series, Guitar Hero is an icon, but it also feels like a relic, a work hopelessly locked in its era. A 10-year anniversary reissue, maybe with some bonus tracks thrown in, seems like the best-case scenario for Guitar Hero coming back to life in 2015, a dignified archive for the nostalgic. FreeStyleGames has done so much more with its new game Guitar Hero Live. The studio has made a game that feels deeply modern, relevant, wholly distinct from Rock Band and somehow still rooted in tradition. It's all thanks to a new controller and a wildly different look for the series' debut on PS4, Xbox One and Wii U.
Resurrecting 'Guitar Hero' through live rock and robots
Guitar Hero Live is trying to pull off one of the most difficult acts in rock and roll: the return to relevance. Not just a reunion tour feeding off nostalgic fans looking to recapture the good, old days of 2005, but a bona fide resurrection. After a five-year hiatus for the series, FreeStyleGames has taken over. It hopes to bring the rock star simulator back to the prominence that made Guitar Hero 3 the first game to break $1 billion in sales. Its first step: redesigning the iconic guitar, trading its five primary-colored buttons for six black and white keys that mimic actual chord fingerings, but that's not its primary gambit. Chasing the rock star fantasy that the old games sold even further, this fall's Guitar Hero Live places you on a real stage with a real band and audience, all filmed from a first-person perspective.
'Mario Kart 8' is about to get absurdly fast
How big of a difference do those extra 50 cubic centimeters in Mario Kart 8 make? Well, Iwata and Co. have a video showing the current fastest/most difficult setting (150cc) side by side with the 200cc level the outfit announced last week. The trip around Piranha Plant Slide starts out slowly enough, but it isn't long before the differences start to show. There's roughly a five second gap between when Mario passes the first eponymous flora on the 200cc speed and 150cc, for instance, and the lead only grows from there. By the end of the lap, the lead is almost 15 seconds. That's quite a bit! Anywho, the video, along with a few others, is just below and the free update hits April 23rd -- see you on Rainbow Road.
'Binding of Isaac: Rebirth' reborn on 3DS, Wii U and Xbox One (updated)
Prepare your consoles for ritual sacrifice. An edited version of The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, the adorably disturbing roguelike from Super Meat Boy co-creator Edmund McMillen, is on its way to 3DS, Wii U and Xbox One. This is really happening, despite a few years of uncertainty about the game's fate on Nintendo consoles. Back in 2012, McMillen said that Nintendo had nixed The Binding of Isaac (the version before the Rebirth expansion) on 3DS because of the game's "questionable religious content." It is a game about God compelling a mother to murder her own child, after all. However, Rebirth has since launched on PlayStation 4, Vita and Steam, and McMillen has remained optimistic about working with Nintendo. In July 2014, he noted that a 3DS version was still on the table.
Watch the peppy, neon 'Shin Megami Tensei x Fire Emblem' for Wii U trailer
"Thank you for waiting, everyone." That's how Nintendo capped the new trailer today for Shin Megami Tensei x Fire Emblem, a Wii U game it's developing with Japanese publisher Atlus, announced back in January 2013. While the video is fairly gorgeous and shows off some gameplay, it doesn't offer a release date. We did, however, get the following description: "The role-playing masters at Atlus are developing a truly modern RPG where everyday life exists alongside a secret world of fantasy." Watch the trailer below.
'Mario Kart 8' adds 'Animal Crossing' DLC earlier than expected
The next round of downloadable content for Mario Kart 8, a pack featuring tracks and items from the Animal Crossing series, will hit the Wii U on April 23rd, Nintendo announced today. The DLC pack was originally scheduled to launch in May. Hooray! Also heading to Mario Kart 8 on April 23rd is a free update that adds a 200cc speed class, meaning players who have mastered the existing races get a brand new challenge. That's bananas! The update also adds support for more amiibo, Nintendo's Skylanders-style action figures.
'Fatal Frame' and its photo-based horror hits Wii U this year
It isn't a Pokemon Snap sequel, but Nintendo just announced a new Fatal Frame for the Wii U. The camera-based survival horror title hits sometime this year, and, well, that's about all we know for now. Is it a port of the game that was slated for last year in Japan? We aren't sure just yet. But, that'll almost positively change come E3 in June.
'Amiibo Greatest Bits' offers the best of Nintendo's past
You know that Amiibo collection of yours? It's about to get a bit more useful. Nintendo's just announced Amiibo Greatest Bits, a series of bite-sized chunks from the company's gaming history that're unlocked via tapping your collectible figures to the Wii U gamepad. As for a release date, Nintendo's Satoru Iwata says it'll be a free download this spring. Each toy contains a random level (basically a demo) and, like Forrest Gump's mom said they're like a box of chocolates and you'll never know what you're going to get.
'The Legend of Zelda' Wii U version pushed out of 2015
Nintendo's Legend of Zelda game in development for Wii U is no longer due out in 2015, producer Eiji Aonuma announced in a video (embedded after the break) today. "I must apologize to you all that were expecting the game by year's end, but we are no longer making a 2015 release our number one priority," Aonuma says. "Instead, our priority is to make it the most complete and ultimate Zelda game. I hope to use the added time to make The Legend of Zelda for Wii U into a game that will reward you for your patience, so thank you for your continued support."
This is why 'Mario' levels are brilliant
For the past 30 years, if you wanted a masterclass in video-game level-and-objective design you needn't look any further than a Mario title from Nintendo. That didn't change any with 2013's stellar Super Mario 3D World or last year's spin-off Captain Toad Treasure Tracker, either. As Pocket Gamer's Mark Brown dissects in the video below, the ingenuity lies in how the former communicates wrinkles and tasks to the player -- not with a series of terrible tutorials, but gameplay. This is something the game's director Koichi Hayashida draws from four-panel Japanese manga. The structure's called kishoutenketsu, and it comes directly from Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto's time spent drawing comics; it's always been influential in how the company has approached game design.
Nintendo Wii U lineup stars fan favorites from PS4, Xbox One, PC
Nintendo's digital store is beefing up with some top-notch independent titles in the coming months, and the company showed off a few familiar games during a presentation at GDC 2015. We're talking games headed to the Wii U eShop that have already launched on other platforms, including Klei Entertainment's Tim Burton-esque survival game, Don't Starve: Reign of Giants, Young Horses' PS4 launch title Octodad: Dadliest Catch and the beautiful, educational platformer Never Alone from Upper One Games. Our list below includes the freshly announced Wii U games and a bit of information about each one, so you can make platform decisions in peace.
It's complicated: Nintendo's relationship with indie gaming
Independent games are a cornerstone of Sony's PlayStation 4 messaging, and a contributing factor to the system's blockbuster success. They are not for Nintendo -- neither for the Wii U, nor the 3DS. An unsurprising strategy given the Japanese company's reliance on Mario and Zelda, its familiar, first-party franchises. And yet, independent games have had a presence on the company's digital software channel, the eShop, for almost a decade. Only now, they're more noticeable. "We've been supporting Indie content and self-publishing for a really long time," says Damon Baker, senior manager of licensing at Nintendo. "I mean, [going] back to the WiiWare, DSiWare days. But I think that it's just a more visible community because there's so much talent that's coming out of it; there's so much coverage for it that it just makes it naturally higher profile."
Deconstructing the method to Nintendo's madness
It's easy to hate on Nintendo. With the Wii U, the company played right into negative consumer expectations by releasing a product derided for its kid-friendly appeal, Fisher-Price toy-like looks, less-than-bleeding-edge silicon, confusing branding and (initially) clunky operating system. The message to the market at the system's launch seemed clear: The gaming giant had fallen behind the times. But that's not quite the truth. There's a well-reasoned and deeply entrenched philosophy behind the often baffling, public-facing decisions Nintendo makes and that's to deliver high-quality and accessible entertainment experiences on cheap-to-produce (often older), innovative hardware. It's the Nintendo recipe for success as concocted by the domineering former president Hiroshi Yamauchi. It's the reason why Nintendo sits on billions of dollars of cash; why its famed first-party studio -- the home of Mario and Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto -- is called Entertainment Analysis and Development, or EAD. The company quite literally agonizes over ways to innovate the concept of "fun."
