Nintendo

Um, This Sure Is A Lot Of Ass Cheek For A Nintendo-Licensed Product

Nintendo is about as family-friendly as video game companies can get. This goes double for the company’s merchandise, which normally begins at t-shirts and ends with plush representations of cute little Mushroom Kingdom characters. So it’s strange to see this figure of Tharja from Fire Emblem Awakening on the 3DS turn up, not only because…

Two New 3DS Colors for Japan

On March 20, Japan is getting two new 3DS colors: Light Blue and Gloss Pink. They are priced at ¥15,000 (US$163) and come with 4GB SDHC memory cards, instead of the standard 2GB ones. Note that the new memory cards don’t make these handhelds cost more. ニンテンドー3DSに新色2色を追加 [Nintendo] Kotaku East is your slice of Asian…

An Admirable Attempt To Explain Why Gamers “Love” Company Executives

It’s one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen in this job, especially when you consider so many gamers spend so much of their time loathing the companies they represent. But when it comes to the actual men and women running giant video game publishers, there’s a lot of love in the house. We saw…

Super Smash Bros. Is Amazing, Even If It Doesn’t Make All Fighting Game Fans Happy

Here’s ReallyFreakinClever with an earnest video about the merits of Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. You may not agree with all of it; I didn’t. But I think he’s on-point when he lauds the accessibility of the franchise, particularly when compared to the fighting game genre as a whole (though that’s improving nowadays). Then again, I…

‘Nintendo’s Doomed, They Should Go Third-Party!’—Said Everyone, Ever.

Yesterday, former Epic Games designer and Dead Space aficionado Cliff Bleszinski was quoted by GamesIndustry International about what he perceived as the worst turmoil the industry’s experienced since the eighties. The situation was so bad, he suggested, that even Nintendo might throw in the towel and go software-only, like Sega did after the Dreamcast’s meager…

The Wii Mini—aka the “most pointless console upgrade of all time“—goes on sale in Europe next month.

Fire Emblem: Awakening Has One Hell Of A Grand Finale

The grand finale of Fire Emblem: Awakening made me feel things. Emotional things. In fact, it made me feel so many things it kinda knocked me out. This was unexpected. It took me about 27 hours to complete the game. If, about halfway through, you had told me that the ending was going to make…

Bond Takes All Comers In A Real-Life Reenactment Of The N64 GoldenEye

I always figured I’d be pretty crap if I had to survive in a real-life version of GoldenEye. I was pretty solid at the N64 game back in the day (or at least, I think I was), but give me an actual Klobb and set me loose, and I’d be done for. In honor of…

Shigeru Miyamoto Link Cosplay Portraits Are A Wii U Exclusive

I thought giant Majora’s Mask illustrations were good. And, hey, they are. But enormous portraits of Shigeru Miyamoto in Link cosplay are even better. [via AndrewNK]

Pikachu Used To Be Way Cuter (and Fatter)

Pikachu, the iconic Pokémon from Pocket Monsters, looks slightly different these days. Adorable, sure, but not nearly as adorable as in 1997, back when the Pokémon anime first debuted. Not nearly as fat, either. Over the weekend, a thread called “Pikachu in the early days was way too cute” (初期のピカチュウかわいすぎ) appeared on 2ch, Japan’s largest…

There’s A Sly Inside Joke On The Cover Of Fire Emblem: Awakening

I’m not sure how many times I’ve seen the cover of the recent 3DS strategy game Fire Emblem: Awakening. Dozens, at least. And yet I never noticed that there’s a great little inside-joke hidden in plain sight. Fortunately, Bill Mudron caught it. If you look at the cover, you’ll notice that only one character’s face…

Nintendo’s Commercial For Luigi’s Mansion 2 Is Straight-Up 90s

Grab your Gushers, kids. This new commercial for the second Luigi’s Mansion—out March 24 for 3DS—feels straight out of 1995. That’s not a bad thing, of course. Nothing like some good old 90s nostalgia to brighten up your Friday afternoon.

Deciphering Pokémon‘s Mysterious Language

The Pocket Monsters anime originally used Japanese writing for on-screen text and signs. A pain in the ass if you need to localize the cartoon into other languages. So the Pokémon folks came up with a solution: a made-up language. A Pokélingo, if you will. Starting with anime series Pocket Monster Best Wishes!, the anime…

Sony And Nintendo, Best Friends Forever

Two decades ago, Sony and Nintendo were prepared to partner on a CD-ROM drive for the SNES. Things went sour. The deal fell apart. And Sony went their own way, eventually launching the PlayStation and paving their own path to success. Today, the two companies almost seem like best friends. BFFs! And as a dedicated…

PS4? What PS4? It’s the Nintendo Download.

Hey, did something happen in video games last night? You couldn’t tell from looking at Nintendo’s corner of the world. It’s business as usual over there, with wacky Nintendo Direct hi-jinks and a new crop of downloadable goodies for consoles and portables. Worth noting is the debut of Wii U and 3DS demo versions of…

This New App Turns Your Wii U Into A Network Router For Your 3DS (For Monster Hunter 3G)

A new Wii U downloadable app now allows 3DS Monster Hunter 3G players to enjoy co-op play over the internet. The Nintendo 3DS Monster Hunter 3G Packet Relay Tool is a free application available on the Japanese Nintendo eShop that basically turns a Wii U into a network router. By pairing a 3DS with the…

For 3DS title Super Robot Taisen UX, Nintendo is releasing a special Super Robot Taisen 3DS XL.

Gameboy Advance Color Zelda games (Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons) are virtual console bound in Japan on Feb 27th.

Europe Grateful for Faster, Less Authentic Version of F-Zero

So, remember that at the end of last month, European (and Australian) Wii U gamers were hopping mad because their Virtual Console re-release of Balloon Fight ran slower—at 50 frames per second—and smaller, reflecting the lower refresh rate of PAL tubes from the 1980s. NTSC TVs had faster refreshes, meaning gamers in the States and…

Nintendo’s Top Brass Blend Cosplay With Product Announcement

Just in case you didn’t stay up and watch the last Japanese edition of a Nintendo Direct presser, Nintendo of America has translated and re-uploaded this opening segment from it. Why? Because at the start it’s got Nintendo’s two biggest names—president Satoru Iwata and legendary designer Shigeru Miyamoto—messing around in Luigi cosplasy in just about…