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Wii Upscaler Review: Can The Wii Really Do High Definition?

When we first heard about VDIGI’s new VD-W3 Wii upscaler, a product that promised it could bring high definition graphics to the Wii, it sounded too good to be true. “Better review it, then” we thought. Just to be sure. The VD-W3 is hardly a new idea – standalone “upscalers” have been around for years,…

By Luke Plunkett Published March 30, 2010

The Greatest School Bus In Japan

Kindergarten is a tough time for some kids. It’s the first time that they are away from their mother or father for an extended period of time. To help ease the experience, Japanese kindergartens and pre-schools have cute, colorful buses. The buses are supposed to hopefully make children want to ride them — and thus,…

By Brian Ashcraft Published March 30, 2010

Advance Wars: The Board Game!

Nintendo’s turn-based wargame Advance Wars works well as a video game. But as a board game? Yeah, looks like it works pretty well as a board game, too. First designed last year, “Skirmish Wars” is the creation of Andrew Tullsen, Matthew Kloth and Brandon Pennington. It’s not trying anything fancy, which is a good thing:…

By Luke Plunkett Published March 30, 2010

How Nintendo Can Help You Cook

Nintendo’s new super-sized DSi XL portable gaming system hit stores this weekend. One of the device’s key “games” also went on sale: An interactive cook book. We took both for a spin to see how they did. America’s Test Kitchen: Let’s Get Cooking looks and feels an awful lot like a re-imagining of 2008’s Personal…

By Brian Crecente Published March 29, 2010

Cutesy Korean Girl Group Shilling Nintendo DSi

One of the country’s biggest pop outfits, Girls’ Generation, will be hocking the Nintendo DSi in South Korea. Imagine that! The group and its members appear in a myriad of commercials (like this Bubble Bobble noodle ad) as well as variety programs and dramas, so this is yet another endorsement for the group. The girls…

By Brian Ashcraft Published March 29, 2010

Mario Creator Was Influenced By Easy Rider

Ah, Easy Rider. The film that depicted the rambling adventures of motorbike drug dealers through the American South, Southwest and West. The film’s production and film itself were heavily laced with marijuana and LSD. Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto says the movie had a “great influence” on him. Easy Rider helped turn co-star Jack Nicholson, who…

By Brian Ashcraft Published March 29, 2010

DSi XL Torn Apart, Just So You Can See What Its Insides Look Like

That DSi XL thinks it’s so smug, with its big screens and its enormous stylus. What it needs is to be taken down a peg or two. Have its guts ripped out, let the internet feast on its insides. Tear-down specialists iFixit have got hold of Nintendo’s latest handheld, and in typical fashion, have completely…

By Luke Plunkett Published March 29, 2010

The Argument For (And Against) Buying a DSi XL

It’s easy to misjudge Nintendo’s often fanciful video game system redesigns. When the Japanese game maker first unveiled the Game Boy Advance SP, a fancy iteration of the Game Boy Advance that folded in half, people loved the concept. And their initial impressions proved dead on, with the SP selling nearly 44 million units in…

By Brian Crecente Published March 27, 2010

Nintendo’s New DS Will Still Force You To Re-Buy Your Digital Games

Lagging behind standards maintained by competitors Sony, Microsoft and Apple, Nintendo is launching its second portable gaming system capable of downloading video games, without letting those who downloaded games on their first DS to transfer them to the new one. Nintendo is currently operating a pay-for-it-twice system for its DSiWare line-up, something that will be…

By Stephen Totilo Published March 27, 2010

Netflix on the Wii Features Some Nice Long Load Times

The Netflix discs enabling streaming video over the Wii are already in the mail and one reader’s uploaded this video, showing us what we can expect – in this case, 30 second loading times to browse the catalog. By this video, booting up the service takes 33 seconds. After registering the device, it’s another 33…

By Owen Good Published March 26, 2010

Nintendo President Explains Why You Need a DSi XL

With the DSi XL hitting this weekend, smack dab between last year’s DSi and next year’s 3DS, is there a reason you should bother picking up this over-sized portable? Plenty of them, the head of Nintendo of America tells Kotaku. While Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime is an obvious supporter of his company’s products,…

By Brian Crecente Published March 26, 2010

The Making Of A Video Game Fanboy

It’s nearly 2 p.m. Eighteen year-old Richard Stephen rolls out of bed in his Florida home and fires up his PlayStation 3 to play a round of PS3 exclusive God of War III. He spent the night before, flipping on his computer, wishing that Sony made an operating system so he didn’t have to use…

By Brian Ashcraft Published March 26, 2010

Reviews

Cave Story Micro-Review: So This Is What The Excitement Was About

So how does the WiiWare version of Cave Story stand up to the original? I couldn’t tell you, as I’ve never played the PC version. For those of you who, like me, have been in the dark, Cave Story is a shooting platformer along the same lines as Nintendo’s Metroid. The player awakens in a…

By Mike Fahey Published March 26, 2010

Concepts: Could The 3DS Look Like Any Of These?

Since we don’t know what the new Nintendo 3DS looks like, people are having to guess what it looks like. Some guesses are crimes against nature, but others, like these, look pretty good! Most of these are mock-ups from users over on gaming messageboard NeoGAF, and unlike the flights of fancy that plagued the internet…

By Luke Plunkett Published March 26, 2010

DSi XL Passes The Pants Test

The DSi XL is a large portable gaming device, with a bigger screen and graphics, but is the design too large? My dad has a theory, and it’s a pretty good theory too. When I told him about the iPad he said that anything too big to fit in a pocket might as well be…

By Brian Crecente Published March 26, 2010

Mario Creator’s Priority Is Entertainment, Not Online

To say Nintendo lags behind Microsoft and Sony when it comes to online gaming is an understatement. Want to know why? It’s because the Japanese company’s priorities lie with entertaining everyone “It is often said that Nintendo was rather late in advancing into the network world”, Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto told The Economist. “Actually we…

By Luke Plunkett Published March 26, 2010

Who Remembers Their First Gaming Experience?

This Tuesday was a very important day. It was the first day my 1 and a-half-year-old son played his first video game. The game? Wii Sports baseball. And by playing he held the Wii Remote and kinda swung his arm. My older son doesn’t really play that many video games — instead, he likes to…

By Brian Ashcraft Published March 26, 2010

The Next Club Nintendo Exclusive Is Ultra Handy

North American Club Nintendo members are in for a treat, as long as they have the 80 coins needed to purchase themselves a copy of Grill-Off with Ultra Hand!—emphasis Nintendo’s—the latest Nintendo fan reward for WiiWare. The game, released via Japan’s version of Club Nintendo as Wii de Ultrahand at the end of 2009, is…

By Michael McWhertor Published March 25, 2010

The Old, New, Finally Official Super Mario Galaxy 2 Cover

We’ve seen all of the elements of the upcoming Wii blockbuster before, but never combined and with the official “this is the box art” seal from Nintendo. Note the extra little stars. The lack of secret homo-erotic star writing, the glee with which Yoshi is carrying Mario through the sky.

By Brian Crecente Published March 25, 2010

Wii Netflix Streaming Discs Are In The Mail

Netflix completes its console triple play, as discs begin to ship for the Wii version of the streaming video service. Several Kotaku readers have forwarded emails like the one seen here, alerting them to the impending arrival of the discs necessary to enable Netflix streaming on the Nintendo Wii. By Friday, Wii owners all over…

By Mike Fahey Published March 25, 2010