Full 3DS Ambassador NES list for Ireland & Europe

These aren't out yet but they will be very soon. Here's a list of all 10 of them, sorted alphabetically and with their complete titles:

Balloon Fight
Donkey Kong Jr.
Ice Climber
Mario & Yoshi
Metroid
NES Open Tournament Golf
Super Mario Bros.
The Legend of Zelda
Wrecking Crew
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

In the U.S. they have them already today and I keep checking the eShop to see if they'll be there but they aren't yet. Grrr come on Nintendo! Your so called "most important customers" are waiting!

I beat Kirby 64!

Man that last boss was excruciating. Like most of the game it was a slow painful process to whittle it down into submission. I did it though and got the ending and everything. Thing is, there was a bit in the ending that seemed like there was a loose end somewhere which makes sense since I didn't find all the shards. So now I've a choice of looking it up on YouTube or go through all the levels to find them all.

I decided to go with the least sensible option.

I've over half of the crystals found now so it's just going through the harder stages to find the rest. I figured out that the barriers that block some crystals are coloured with the ability you need to use its attack on. A very annoying puzzle was trying to make a bunch of blocks look like a hat or an umbrella or a pizza. Some challenges were fun though like discovering combinations I hadn't found before like the spark+stone combo. That one's brill!

Gonna play it for a bit more and I'll try to 100% it. If it stays true to the series there might be another final battle.

Kirby Right Back At Ya! — Episode 23

The bad CGI Dynablade is back!(actually it doesn't look that bad this time) Escargoon has come up with a formula that turns li'l creatures into monsters so King Dedede decides to kidnap Dynablade's baby chick so he can try it on. It goes badly and now the chick is running all over the place with everyone chasing it since Dynablade's frantic scaring everyone, including the farmer's sheep.

Honestly those poor sheep get an awful doing. In the first episode we saw them getting eaten and their bones spat out.

No NME monsters this time as King Dedede was all excited with the prospect of creating his own instead of buying expensive ones. There's no Kirby ability either but we do see him fly around a lot on his warpstar.

Xenoblade is apparently a rare game now, one week after its release

Today I went to the shops for the first time since I got Xenoblade last week and I could not see hide nor hair of it in any of the game shops I usually frequent. I guess I'm glad I have my copy but it really shouldn't be the kind of game that's hard to find.

There aren't even any instore ads about it. It's like they refuse to acknowledge its existence. Actually I've seen this kind of thing plenty of times before but it ought to be abundantly available.

So yeah, if you've been wanting to get Xenoblade but are holding out on it... well I don't know if that's the best idea.

Angry Video Game Nerd Episode 104 - Nintendo World Championships

http://cinemassacre.com/2011/08/26/avgn-nintendo-world-championships/
This episode was awesome! It's all about video game collecting and he meets with another collector. There's lots of suspense and tension as they engage in a battle of wits over an incredibly rare game!

Xenoblade's gameplay, battle system and considerateness to the player.

You can run across the vast landscapes of Xenoblade without ever having to fight an enemy you see unless it's to move the story forward, then you have to fight it eventually. When you want to fight an enemy you have to target it first.

When it comes to attacking, everyone will attack by themselves. They'll attack, wait a moment, then attack again, all by themselves.

The input you have with regards to attacking is to select special attacks on the real-time menu that'll deal extra damage or cause status effects.

You can also interact with your team mates by chaining attacks, picking them up if they get knocked down and by warning them about a bad vision you had during battle, giving you a chance to select an action from their menu that'll hopefully prevent it from happening.

Now the ways this game is considerate to the player!
- You can skip and pause cutscenes.
- You can skip to any previous landmark you've been to by selecting it in the map, which is a menu option that's available from the start.
- When your party gets wiped out you respawn close by.
- When your party gets wiped out you don't lose anything at all since your last save, not even money.
- You can save everywhere.
- After a battle, everyone in the party automatically gets restored to full health.
-(I'm sure there's others I can't think of right now)

Kirby Right Back At Ya! — Episode 22

Kirby and co. enjoy a relaxing day at the beach in a little inflatable dinghy when a tornado comes along and shipwrecks them all to a deserted island. They then meet a veteran star warrior who still believes the big battle from long ago is still going on.

This is probably inspired by all those stories about Japanese soldiers from World War II ending up getting stuck on Pacific islands and not hearing about the war being over for years due to being away from everything. I love those stories.

The NME monster this time is a genuinely ridiculous looking monster with propellors on its arms. Kirby gets the Tornado ability from it.

Xenoblade First Impressions Part 2: I'm finally enjoying the game

When the game came out on Friday I took at home and played it for a while, being utterly confused and frightened. Now after playing it for several more hours I'm somewhat less confused. I got my ass kicked several times but learned something new each time about battling.

I won't go into the battle system too much but one really cool feature are these visions you get during battle of the immediate future where someone gets gravely injured and you get a chance to prevent it from happening all the while a special timer counts down. It feels really good to do this.

I love the way the characters talk during battle. The voice acting functions quite well and you get used to it. I think it's funny to imagine them all say things in cockney rhyming slang (they don't for the record!) and the monster or boss would be thinking to itself "wh-what the hell are these guys saying...".

Speaking of bosses I just beat a mechanical one with big tentacles. It took me a looot of trial and error...

The big red sword Monado is featured in a big way in the story and the characters talk about it a lot. Now I know why the classic controller pro released with it was red! Xenoblade is still a better sounding title though.

The game more than delivers on the promise the trailers showed. It really is "Super Landscape Running Adventure" with its vast landscapes and high cliffs into big lakes of water. Gaur Plains is a particular standout moment so far!

There are a lot of other deep stat affecting system thingies that I've yet to learn more about. I've a big need for those tutorials. They're not intrusive in a bad way though which is cool.

Xenoblade is pretty good

Sorry I haven't much to say about it now but I'm enjoying it a lot more!

The problem I had with the small text, remedied by changing it to widescreen. I can see it a little better now:)

More soon!

Kirby Right Back At Ya! — Episode 21

Cappy Town is all abuzz with the news of a Princess from another planet coming to visit. King Dedede is all excited too and spends the entire episode trying to woo her in his own larger than life way. It's more like blurting obnoxiously but it's actually really interesting seeing him like this!

We also meet the princess' bodyguard, who befriends Kirby and his buddies and goes off into town having fun with them. That must sound strange eh? ;)

The NME monster this time is a big fat fishy/eely like creature. Kirby with his sword ability and his new buddy literally make sushi out of it! It's quite a sight!

Made it to the last boss in Kirby 64 (I think)

Kirby 64 is a challenging Kirby game but that's because it's so sluggish. I've made it all the way to what I think is the last boss but it's pretty tough. Hopefully I'll get through it and see the ending.

Retro Gamer Issue 92

Bit late with this one as there's a new one out since. The big feature in this issue is as advertised on the cover, about how the 8-bit computers of the '80s I've only heard about in stories met their end which will be a very interesting read for a lot of people.

The best part of the issue is the merciless pisstaking Columns gets on the letters page. Made me smile!

The worst part of the issue is the review of Super Mario Land for Virtual Console. It's a really really horrible piece of writing.

Xenoblade unboxing and first impressions

Today I got Xenoblade with the red Classic Controller Pro. A couple of things worthy of note:

- The instruction manual has a message of thanks for buying the game :)
- There are two instruction manuals: One in English and a massive thick one for every other European language. I liked the fact I got an English one on its own.
- The Classic Controller Pro is red with a red lead.
- The boxart on the game case is reversible like Sin & Punishment 2's was and the other side shows the most popular voted alternate artwork of the main character looking over the vast plain.
- The default X-axis camera is fucking backwards :( but there is the option to put it back to normal, even if that option says "reverse".
- The text is far too small to read, which is a big problem I had with Monster Hunter Tri. I don't care if it's to do with the tv, mine's a 24" standard def which is a decent size. The game should be made with that in mind.

So far, in terms of your average modern day RPG with its typical themes, setting, presentation, characters and gameplay conventions and mechanics I would say it's crafted as well as it can be. It has the same kind of things you'd see in say, a PS2 Final Fantasy game like XII. The thing is though you have to actually be interested in this kind of thing and so far I don't think I am. I would say it's strictly for fans of that genre. They should buy this. It's got the "cool n' stylish JRPG factor".

Kirby Right Back At Ya! — Episode 20 plus a special gift I got from the Kirby Channel

After watching this episode I got the familiar screen where you win a key to unlock a past episode but instead of a key it was a gift box. On opening it I got a crystal ball, which allows me to unlock a future episode. It's controlled fun at its most enjoyable!

So anyway in this episode King Dedede is suffering from the intense heatwave so he decides to order a monster that makes it snow in Dream Land. After this everyone goes off and has fun in it. We then meet a Chilly, the snowman from the Kirby games. He and Kirby become bosom buddies until we see that Chilly is showing some suspicious behaviour.

In the end we see Kirby wave goodbye to another new buddy that he made. Aw!

The NME monsters we see are Chilly, first seen in Kirby's Adventure but looking more like his sprite in Kirby's Fun Pak and can only say his name like a Pokémon as well as the Ice Dragon, who first appears in Kirby's Dream Land 2. Kirby also gets his Ice ability.

Shopping for a Xenoblade preorder

Today I went looking around for preordering Xenoblade. I want to get the red Classic Controller Pro bundle so I went shopping around.

First I went online. GAME's site has the bundle alright but Gamestop's site doesn't even acknowledge the game's existence. I didn't look at any other site.

On going into the actual shops I saw an ad saying that the bundle is exclusive to GAME. So I preordered it there. All's left now is to wait for Friday!

If you're ever looking for Nintendo advertising in GAME, don't bother even glancing at the front windows of the shop; they almost never have ads for Nintendo stuff there. Instead, look on the aisle pillars. That's where it's usually found. It's usually the case that the ads or displays are facing towards the rear of the shop, so you could go into the store without noticing them. It's crazy to think but you often have to search for ads featuring Nintendo goods rather than the ads catching you, which I'm used to by now but it is a crazy crazy thing. Every single video game store I know is like this.

I completed Hamtaro Ham-Ham Heartbreak!

I'm a fan of the Hamtaro games. More specifically I like the adventure game type that were developed by Nintendo and Alphadream such as Ham-Hams Unite, Rainbow Rescue and this, Ham-Ham Heartbreak.

This one's lovely. I would recommend these games to anyone who liked Link's Awakening for being able to walk around, explore and talk to people, which is initially why I liked Link's Awakening when I first played it. Imagine say a point and click adventure game where you go up to someone and press A instead of clicking on them. That's what these games are like and for adventure games they're extremely competent.

I would rate this one above par with its predecessor, Ham-Hams Unite, but neither of them are as good as Rainbow Rescue. One of the major reasons is that in Rainbow Rescue you don't have to select greetings from a menu before you interact with anything. Rainbow Rescue is the latest of the three so it's no surprise that it's improved all round.

Kirby Right Back At Ya! — Episode 19

Here we meet Knuckle Joe from Kirby's Fun Pak, except he has muddy purple skin for some reason. He invades NME's servers on the way to Dream Land but they let him through since he tells them he's out to get Kirby. On Knuckle Joe's arrival one thing leads to another until he eventually has a stand off with Kirby. Then Meta Knight intervenes to tell Knuckle Joe the truth...

It's cool seeing Knuckle Joe and he even has the abilities he had in the SNES game, like the vulcan jab. Kirby gets the Fighter ability from his jabs. At one stage he also gets the Needle ability.

We get some more backstory which is interesting for a serial cartoon. I'm really thankful though that the backstory isn't forced into the games in the form of dialogue heavy cutscenes because that would make them less interesting as games.

Playing Zelda Outlands (Part 3)

I beat the first quest! There were loads of walls to walk through and often times an enemy would get stuck in the wall so I couldn't proceed which was highly annoying. It was also weird and kind of scary seeing those old blue guys with fire swirling around them. I also came across these things that looked like bags or something and picked them up but I have absolutely no idea what they do.

The showdown with the Thunderbird was thrilling and scary. Well, it is but it's there instead of Ganon so it's certainly not as terrifying and hard as it was in Zelda 2.

So now I've completed the first quest! I immediately tried out the new one and saw tiny bits of several dungeons so far but no sign of me getting the sword! I wouldn't dream that I'd have the meat and the boomerang beforehand. That's all I've played for now. I'll just have to see what happens next!

Strategies you may develop if you play Kokopolo

After playing Kokopolo for a while you may feel the need to know what the levels are like before you go chasing around. You want to be somewhat ready to jump over spikes for example so it's good to take a little wander around to see what it's all like. The enemies usually stick to their own little patterns in their own little corners so feel free to do a little reconnaissance.

Let's say then that you get involved in a chase. You may not be fully aware of where you're going which can be dangerous so take advantage of the way the paths in the levels form roundabouts. The enemies that chase you form a sort of conga line so it's a good way of keeping the chase going while you glance at the map on the bottom screen for a way out or to get ready to deal with an obstacle. The 3DS' slide pad feels great doing this actually.

Hmmm... this is all making me think of Pac-Mania, which is one of my favourite Pac-Man games. Imagine an isometric Kokopolo? A Kokopolo-Mania as it were!

NGamer Issue 65

Remember that voting thing a few months ago where everyone was to vote on an alternative cover for Xenoblade? Well this image was the ugliest option and for some reason it's the cover of this month's issue. There were three free gifts including Xenoblade decals for the Wii and two Wiimotes (one of which also has the ugly artwork), Xenoblade posters (again one of them is the ugly artwork but the other one's nice) and a 3DS tips book.

This issue has the now slightly infamous article about the Project Rainfall people who got a little bit too excited. At this stage, anyone who would boycott Skyward Sword out of support for Pandora's Tower doesn't just need to get over themself — they need a smack.

There's a feature about Xenoblade where I learn about the game's sensible save system, a Skyward Sword preview that is very very detailed and a Fortune Street one in the form of a highly amusing exchange between one of the magazine staff and the E3 booth attendant(well worth reading). The Kirby ones were most interesting to me (it's quite funny the way they awarded the DS and Wii ones best and worst Kirby games at E3 respectively). Their glowing preview on "Go Vacation" has made me very curious about the game. I'll have to look it up.

Other interesting features were in the retro section: one about Nintendo coin-ops and a nice big one about Terranigma. That's another game I'd say a lot of fans want released in the U.S.

Kirby Right Back At Ya! — Episode 18

While Kirby and his buddies are shopping for a picnic King Dedede abruptly shows up outside the supermarket and throws out a Noddy. When Kirby eats it he goes into a deep sleep that could last decades.

Tuff and his pride are featured in a big way in this episode as he feels responsible so he leads an expedition to an exotic plant that is said to be able to wake Kirby up. Tiff and Meta Knight follow at a distance to make sure he's safe.

With the NME monsters we see the return of Noddy but we don't see Kirby transform and get a cap when he eats him — I think it would've been funny to have that dramatic transformation sequence only for Kirby to fall asleep! I'm pretty sure the plant is from NME as well; Kirby gets the cool Needle ability from it and changes yellow, making him look like one of Lakitu's Spinies from the Mario games. I like the way he's able to control the direction of the needles he shoots. He couldn't do that in Kirby's Adventure!

I completed Shantae Risky's Revenge!

Great game this! I played the first Shantae recently too so I can compare them.

Generally the sequel has a lot of technical improvements over the GBC version in almost every way except for the save system. In the GBC game you could continue with your status when you got a game over where as with this one you have to restart back at the last save point with all progress lost since you last saved. This forces you to save more often.

The music is amazing. Most are remixed tracks from the GBC game but there's a few outstanding ones like the Scuttle Town music. It's very impressive and you really feel like you're in a busy Arabian Nights themed town.

I don't care much for the dialogue or about the fact that Shantae is a half genie. Wonder Boy never spoke — I see Shantae as being like Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap — but at least you can skip the dialogue.

This sequel isn't as long or as difficult as the first game but it still achieves the high fun factor, which is the most important thing.

One nitpicky thing but it's something that really irks me and that is one of her expressions during the cutscenes, namely the sarky 'tudey raised eyebrow one. It's yucky and it's nothing like her other cute vivacious expressions. It's like some bored Garfield expression. She has an expression like this in the last game but she wears it with a bit of sass and banter and... well it's like I was saying, more vivacious!

Xenoblade gets an official "Let's Play" on its official YouTube channel.

http://www.youtube.com/user/XenobladeWii
Have a look at this site. This should get a nice bit of hyping up going. It'll certainly get me hyped up for it since I haven't been thinking about the game itself much; I'm just thinking about its release date because I am planning on buying it.

I don't know if the stuff here is spoiler free since I haven't watched any of it yet but I like to think there's plenty of landscape running!

Kirby Right Back At Ya! - Episode 17

Sir Ebrum loses the ring he was going to give Lady Like on their wedding anniversary. King Dedede, always the nosy busybody, overhears Tiff talking about a special day and is determined to find out everything that's going on. When he learns that the ring is missing and that it's some kind of ancient Cappy treasure he sets out to gather every bit of such treasure in the kingdom.

The NME monster this time is a creature with a gigantic nose that can find and suck up treasure. No Kirby ability this time. No key earned this time either. Lady Like gets some screen time which is always nice! She even says "cuckoo" in a funny way.

This episode has one of those chase sequences where the good guys and the bad guys are chasing a precious gem that gets kicked around by the crowd just before one of them grabs it. My favourite of this kind appears in "Flintstones: On the Rocks" (brilliant movie).

Playing Zelda Outlands (Part 2)

I've played quite a bit and now I'm at level 9! I don't remember every single bit of my journey since my last post but I have to say Level 6 was hellish with the wizrobes and like likes. Level 7 was awesome for a couple of reasons. Lots of bombs had to be used as I was trying to find my way, the screen goes slo-mo in an cool way in a certain room filled with more Dodongos than I've ever seen and of course that room where Zelda appears where you have a choice between two things. I won't say what it is but it's a nice variation. Level 8 was tricky in that there's a line of rooms where you know you shouldn't go north. There was also room after room of those red jinxing enemies that were such a pain in the arse I eventually resorted to save states.

Now I have the final dungeon ahead of me. Let's see if I can beat it!

Sam and Max Season 2 for Wii turned out to be broken in the end

I just completed all the episodes from Sam & Max Season 2 for the Wii. It's a very entertaining adventure game with its top notch humourous content. I just have to say that from the get go. The big problem was what they did for the Wii version.

Now we all know the two seasons released on the Wii stutter quite unsmoothly but we can put up with that for a good adventure game. The very most of it is very playable except for this moment at the end of episode 5: "What's New, Beelzebub?" where the stuttering problem just renders the game completely unplayable. It's like I was trying to play the game while it was streaming off the Internet on the worst dial-up connection ever. The graphics freeze entirely and the music loops the first few seconds over and over again. You know it does its level best to move along but it goes so slowly that the Wii remote will turn itself off if you don't keep pressing buttons. I'm not happy at all with how bad it became.

I wonder if this is why I had such a hard time finding the game, let alone any information about it at all including the release date.

The other complaint I have is this blatant lie on the cover that says "Extra bonus episode". This turns out to be the exact same tutorial we saw in the first season's release on Wii.

The game's still worth it for the other four episodes but don't bother even touching the fifth.

I think it's safe to say we won't see a release of the third season on the Wii. That's too bad because it's my format of choice to play these kinds of games.

Kokopolo is pretty good

I played a good bit of this DSiWare game on my 3DS yesterday when it came out. It's exciting when you get the enemies to chase after you and even more exciting when you get heaps of them in a row chasing you! There's a lot more points at stake you see and you have to navigate a maze without getting hurt or delayed on the way to the Snap Snap plant trap. This game's got some fantastic arcade values.

There's also this one funny part where if you jump on top of the Snap Snap plant it eats you!

The A button is for attack and the B button is for jump. I really hate when developers reverse the buttons like this but for some reason it hasn't affected my playing of the game so far. It would really annoy me though if it was a 2d platformer.

Kirby Right Back At Ya! - Episode 16

An unrequited love story! Tiff gets a love letter from Kine the fish helper from Kirby's Dream Land 2. He desperately wants to be boyfriend and girlfriend with her but she's not interested. Meanwhile King Dedede is looking for the rainbow coral reef and overhears all the exchange between Kine and Tiff so he offers Kine a way to spend some time with Tiff on land(a water tank on wheels) in exchange for directions to the reef. The king of course has his own plans...

So Kine is established as a lovesick fish(the love remains unrequited). I wonder if he's like this in future episodes? I did enjoy his cameo in an earlier episode where he said "Run Kirby! Run!" like as if it was a Forrest Gump reference.

No NME monster this time and Kirby gets the tornado ability. (That ability rocks in Kirby's Adventure!)

Go! Go! Kokopolo! is coming out in Ireland and the rest of Europe tomorrow!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_t0MHeJZ10

Check out this trailer!

I first read all about this game in NGamer magazine several years ago before the DSiWare service was even heard of (I think. I don't remember what issue it was.) There was this big feature full of lovely game artwork and screenshots for this game and it was all about the creator who researched Hudson Soft-esque games like Bomberman talking about this game and the game's development. He talked about stuff like how he discovered the hard way that in games like Bomberman where he will walk the way he's facing before turning around a corner in the desired direction so that you don't get stuck in your tracks on a tiny edge of the wall. (This was actually a big problem in the Goemon Game Boy game where Yae gets kidnapped)

Anyway, reading the feature and about the gameplay mechanics — which you'll be able to see in the trailer — made me so fascinated with the game I really wanted to play it. The author of the game was Keith Webb and I think he was looking for a publisher back then.

The game costs 800 points which is the exact amount I have left on my 3DS after downloading Shantae: Risky's Revenge. Handy!

Kirby Right Back At Ya! - Episode 15

This episode was released yesterday but I'm a bit late watching it since I was away. There's no key earned with this one.

Tiff's family get Kirby a robot dog when she notices that he's too little to play with the other Cappy kids. King Dedede notices Kirby's new toy and immediately wants it for himself so he gets his whole army after Kirby to get it.

It's a standard family friendly doggie style story where it shows how Kirby bonds with it and of course — like all these kinds of stories — the dog dies in the end. It's cliché certainly but it's worked well into the show's standard formula.

The NME monster this time is actually the robot dog! Its behaviour isn't evil but it was programmed to blow up in the end.

I beat Dragon Quest VI !

I finally beat this massive game! It's a loooong game and there's some things I don't remember about the whole thing but there's a few things that are worthy of note.

Firstly, there's no hand holding at all. You figure out what to do and where to go and that encourages adventuring where there's real joy to be had.

Secondly there's the job changing system, which I was initially worried about but it's actually the best, most fun and least finicky system of that kind I've ever used in an RPG. It's better than DQ III's system because it doesn't punish you for changing jobs and it's better than DQ IX's system because there's only 8 levels in a job rather than 99. Oh and choosing what stats to level up really really sucks in comparison. It's a video game RPG so it should all be automated (or at least have that as an option).

Thirdly, if you grind or try to get as many jobs as possible, you're doing it wrong if you want to just enjoy a basic path.

There's probably more I can say about this. I might talk about it again sometime. But for now I gotta say this game rocks!