Some people who tried to download the Mario Vs. Donkey Kong game Nintendo recently placed on its DSiWare store might have been scared off by a pre-purchase warning about recycled content.
Nintendo's told us how much wasn't original.
In my review for Mario Vs. Donkey Kong: March of the Minis I made the educated guess that Nintendo had recycled the boss battles from its earlier Mario Vs. Donkey Kong 2 DS game. But there had to be more, or else Nintendo wouldn't have included the warning in its shop, right?
A couple of weeks since we made the request, Nintendo's vice president of marketing, Denise Kaigler, has provided Kotaku an answer, via electronic message:
"In the main Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again! game, pretty much everything is new. The game contains new game rules, mechanics and AI, and all 100 game levels are new. As you have pointed out, boss levels especially might look similar to the previous game because we tried to follow the same style. But we actually updated all the assets in the levels.
"But the bulk of the levels and game play for Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again! is only now being created by users themselves. So while players might see some familiar-looking areas, they also will have access to a potentially endless supply of new levels never seen before not even by the game designers."
Not bad, huh? Interesting that Nintendo included the potentially consumer-scaring warning — which was the responsible thing to do — but didn't bother to be more clear to those consumers at the point of purchase.