HCBailly will do Zelda 2 as well :O

Wow he's gonna do this really hard game after he does both quests in Zelda 1.

I just watched the first episode of the Zelda 1 LP and the memories and HCBailly-isms I had forgotten came back :)

He's a master of RPG gems and blockbusters but it's nice that he does the classics too.

HCBailly begins his Let's Play of The Legend of Zelda! :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPH4Jh0_5rQ

Ahhhhhh it's been just too long since I've watched HCBailly! He's one of my all time favourite LPers. His LP of Final Fantasy Adventure/Mystic Quest for the Game Boy is my favourite of his and is what got me into watching LPs in the first place. I actually watched that whole playthrough twice and I almost never do that with any LP.

Anyway here he is doing the first Legend of Zelda :) and I've been looking forward to this. I currently have it buffering so I'll be able to watch it in a few moments but I just know it'll be great.

Time to kick back and enjoy the show! See you there viewers! :)

Wii U VC and games that were originally optimised for PAL

This is a big topic and it's kind of started with the release of the PAL version of Kirby's Adventure on the Wii U VC. The feedback I'm seeing from this is kind of mixed. Some bits like the brief cinematics are slower but the game controls and plays just fine. So it's a mixed bag. I didn't mind it the other day when I tried my original NES cart of the game. I think in these cases it's a matter of taste and what kind of mood you're in when you want to play.

This is why I want an option to choose between 50 Hz and 60 Hz, not at the download stage, but at the VC application's options menu. The download itself should ideally contain all regional versions of the game.

Wii U's Virtual Console launches! Opening line-up in 60 Hz!

This is besides the Famicom 30th anniversary titles of course.

The fact that they're all in 60 Hz is glorious. The SNES games still cost 8 Euro and the NES games 5 Euro but hey, back in the old days of the Wii VC you were lucky to get a 60 Hz game at all. When you did it was called a "festival" and they cost an extra 1 Euro.

I don't know the exact list but Super Mario World is one of them. :)

Watching the Pokémon MD Gates to Infinity cartoon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ8h7nSNY1c

It must be nice for a franchise to be so popular! Here we have a nicely produced promotional short portraying the introduction to the game. I can hear some familiar voice actors like Lisa Ortiz in there.

It doesn't have any moments that take place in the dungeons, which is kind of a strange thing to do. Then again, I guess they can sell the game based on the characters themselves and the fact that they're speaking like normal people. (It's all text dialogue boxes in the game obviously)

Demo for Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity out today

I gave this a go and it's alright, about as good as you'd expect a Rogue-like game to be. It has a nice plot about your buddy wanting to build a Pokémon paradise, though you can't skip any of the text or make it fill the box with a press of a button like you can in most games.

It's my first time trying a Pokémon themed Rogue-like. It seems like a nice sub-series and I wonder if it's easier to get into than other games of this kind? I have a feeling that it's much fairer on the player than some of the ones I've played.

Shantae GBC coming to 3DS VC this Summer

This'll be nice. The DSi sequel is great but the original is even better.

Matt Bozon tweeted: "Shantae Virtual Console update: looks like mid June-early July. Will keep you posted!"

Of course this is probably the American VC. I'm sure a European release will follow shortly though and it'll be extra nice for us because the original never came out over here.

I'm getting another free 3DS game with the "So Many Games!" promotion

So Nintendo of Europe has this new promo thing you can see here:

http://www.nintendo.co.uk/Misc-/Nintendo-3DS-So-Many-Games-Promotion/Overview/Overview-750393.html

I already got games free in previous promotions and now here's another one!

It looks like I'm applicable for this one too. I just need to think about which one of these games I'll choose to download for free.

Michael Pachter has to be useful to us for something

So we know he studied law, he works long hours, he answers all these game industry questions people tweet at him, he has a lot of observations about how the game industry is doing by studying sales data and other statistical stuff. We also know that he admits he doesn't get Japanese companies like Nintendo and why they do what they do.

Considering the above, he could be really useful to us for something. He loves answering questions related to things in which he specialises and often praises questions that allow him to explain the things that typically go on (such as what contributes to the retail price of a new game).

I mean really think about it. Just as an example, look at all the stuff in his office. There's that Gizmondo he showed off in a recent episode. He knows the story behind that thing so he could be a contributor to a video game themed museum.

Think up some good hard fast fact-finding questions that he would be able to answer better than anyone else!

Fire Emblem Awakening is out

This'll probably be the most successful Fire Emblem game judging by some reports I've been coming across. Of course it won't be because of DLC, it'll be because it's filling an appetite that hasn't been sated in a long time.

Just listened to "the blender who would recite shakespeare" by Tim Rogers

You know those videos that feature reactions of glamorous looking Japanese women playing horror themed games? I want to watch a video of a woman listening to this essay while she's wearing big noise cancelling headphones. I would look deeply into her eyes with genuine interest.

99.3 million Wiis and counting!

After nearly 3 weeks here's the third milestone of Wiis sold as we try to reach our goal of 100 million! The other day I saw the Wii Mini feature prominently on some store shelves with a 99 Euro price tag. The box itself carries the appropriate notices about the absence of older features such as GameCube compatibility and Internet connectivity. I wonder if it'll get released in the U.S. or Japan?

Link to the Past sequel! More Yoshi!

Still reeling after yesterday's Nintendo Direct. Seriously, go watch it if you haven't already.

I'm thrilled to see a brand new Zelda game! It's a sequel to Link to the Past and takes place in its world. Interesting thing about it is the fact that it's directly top down, meaning you can't see Link's face when he's turning left, right or down. This has to do with the depth perception and the layers he'll ascend or descend during the game. Even Sean Malstrom seems to like it, and he doesn't like anything.

Yoshi's getting a 3DS game sequel as well, so this is another game in addition to the yarn Yoshi that was announced months ago.

But holy shit, EarthBound! Earth! Bound!

EarthBound is coming to the Wii U Virtual Console in Ireland!

This made my day. Standing at a bus stop in the crappy weather, refreshing NintendoUK's Twitter feed from today's Nintendo Direct and this bit of news shows up. WOW!

At long last they're doing something with this! I'm fed up with having to play the game on a shitty stuttery emulator.

Nintendo 3DS Direct tomorrow at 3pm Irish time, Isabelle's Twitter account opens

I'm expecting Animal Crossing New Leaf to take centre stage for this one. Isabelle, the assistant in the game has an official Twitter account that just opened here:

 https://twitter.com/AC_Isabelle

I heard that her official Japanese Twitter was very popular so I guess they're trying out the same thing here. I'll check up on it now and again.

I'd also love to hear about the new Mario and Luigi game that's coming out in a few months!

Kirby's Adventure was always optimised at the correct speed in Europe, so Wii U VC release will be the PAL version

So says this snippet from the press release on this week's Nintendo downloads:

"This is the European version of the game, which was optimised originally by the developer to offer gameplay and music speed similar to the US version. Demos and animations may run at PAL speed. The aspect ratio has been corrected for this release."

That's an interesting development in the world of VC news. Needless to say though I will be scrutinising this release when it comes out on Thursday. Watch this space...

What the hell is Nintendoji?!

I've been watching this clip and I'm utterly confused.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riVLQBRS_q8

It seems to be some dungeon crawling puzzle thing? No fighting or anything, just collecting orbs and..... whatever else? What is it you do? Why's it called "Nintendoji"?

?

It's nicely illustrated with the ancient Japanese things but still...

?

Watching Dillon's Rolling Western sequel videos

Some of these have come out and I've looked at a few. Unfortunately none of them talked about the controls. From the looks of things though it seems that it'll have the same morbidly unattractive control scheme that made me shy well away from the first one.

Fire Emblem Awakening's demo is pretty good

I had a good bit of fun with it. My favourite parts were when I could get assistance from someone on my team in a battle if they were standing next to me and the fact that I could select the attack range from more than one unit at once. Very nice couple of features.

Anything bad? Can't think of much except for the word "defence" being spelled with an 'S' on the character creation screen.

First, Smurfs 2 for Wii and DS, now Turbo Super Stunt Squad!

The revival continues with another upcoming movie licence tie-in, Turbo from Dreamworks.

This is something that'll easily be mistaken as a reference to Wreck-It Ralph but it's about a snail that cam move at top speed. The game itself looks like those Tony Hawk and Matt Hoffman stunt games that used to completely flood the game store shelves (I don't miss that at all).

We're gonna be seeing a lot of teaser stuff now that Summer and E3 are approaching.

The Wii and DS still live! Smurfs 2 by WayForward and Ubisoft coming out for both

This is a nice surprise! Well, no not really. The only new Wii games that come out these days are movie licence tie-ins like Wreck-It Ralph and The Croods, which are both pretty good movies, but probably not so hot games(The Wreck-It Ralph game was only kind of ok). The nice surprise really is that there's going to be a Smurfs 2 movie. The first movie was good. Smurfs themselves looked ugly as hell but the movie was good. Hank Azaria was great as Gargamel and I hope he'll be just as good in the sequel.

WayForward are doing a sidescroller game based off the movie. They did the Hotel Transylvania one as well which I haven't tried. We'll see if either the game or the movie will be good.

Holy shovel Game Grumps!

No this isn't GoNintendo.com's swear word filter, it's the latest episode of Game Grumps and they're playing Shovel Knight!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcP3yp6w7Pw

I wanna play it early too :/

Speaking of GoNintendo, I wonder if anyone there said "shit knight" just to have the filter catch it.

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate in stock in Irish shops at last

Could not find a single shop that had it in stock when it was released(other than a bundle deal) but now I see display boxes on shelves. Now's your chance if you want to buy a hard copy.

I'd like Tails Adventure on the 3DS VC

This game came out on the Japanese 3DS VC recently and I'd like it to be made available for us soon. There aren't that many SEGA Game Gear titles on it at the moment so it'll be nice to look forward to this one.

Whoever came up with the idea of the Eerie Staircase in Luigi's Mansion 2 deserves a punch in the jaw

It helps to look at the staircases that aren't lit up before you go venturing up in this long long room. You only have a short amount of time to memorise them before they light up and time and time again you WILL get a ghost appearing all of a sudden to laugh at you and turn the stairs into a slide, making you slide all the way back to the bottom, forcing you to climb the rows of stairs you've already conquered again and again.

It's funny when it happens at first and it's funny now when I think of it in hindsight, but while I was doing it I was just thinking how MEAN it was for the level designer to do something like this!

Don't worry, I'm not going to punch anyone in the jaw for this but I will say that I felt like my time was being wasted.

60 Hz Mega Man 3 is out on the 3DS VC

The 60 Hz loveliness continues. (By the way, I forgot to trumpet 60 Hz Punch-Out!! on the Wii U VC).

For some reason the Americans got this before we did, whereas with the first two Mega Man games we got them first. But there we go. It's available.

Luigi's Mansion 2 is a lovely cosy adventure game

I've been playing this since I bought it earlier in the week :)

I like it a lot. The box itself glows in the dark and has the PEGI spider symbol for fear.

It's fun to go around and try out everything and experience everything.

The most amazing thing about the game is the sound. The sound effects are really satisfying and realistic and hearing Luigi hum the level tune just makes you grin from ear to ear. The noises the ghosts make when they speak sound just awesome.

This is a stark contrast to another recent 3DS release, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate, which has very low quality tinny sound. It doesn't even have the PEGI spider symbol! That's right, Luigi's Mansion 2 is considered scarier than a Castlevania game!

Grant Kirkhope releases Banjo-Kazooie OST for free, my fond memories

Grant Kirkhope has been spending the past two days on Twitter telling people "It's free" over and over. I guess people are finding it hard to believe that such quality music is being distributed like this!

http://grantkirkhope.bandcamp.com/album/banjo-kazooie

Actually, I remember I used to read Rare's Scribes page and they used to give away downloads of their game music whenever fans asked for a particular track. I don't know if they still do that but it was a pretty cool thing to do.

I don't mean to sound coarse or anything but...  I used to masturbate to the theme of Gobi's Valley.

Yup. I was 15 years old when the game came out in Summer 1998 and of course that's one thing a normal healthy boy of that age does constantly.

The music itself didn't make me randy but it was just a very pleasant background rhythm to have while doing it and thinking of the big jiggly bosoms of my female classmates and teachers.

The part in the pyramid where you have to rush through the maze and the music gets faster and faster was particularly effective.

Looking back on that now I just smile fondly :) This is just one memory and I still enjoy the music a lot. I can even tap into the rhythm that I found so pleasant but my hormones aren't that turbulent now! Besides, teenagers usually listen to absolutely miserable music to get them through their tough times and I'm actually quite proud of the fact that I listened to stuff that was so upbeat and actually of very high quality.

Like I said, this is just one track and one memory. I have many others, mostly involving scratching my head looking for music notes, jiggies and jinjos. Thank you Grant Kirkhope!

Just thought of a dumb April Fool's Joke re: Fire Emblem Awakening

The blog entry would be titled:

"Nintendo to offer characters feet as paid DLC in Fire Emblem Awakening"

Fav April Fool's Day joke of 2013

I haven't found an awful lot this year... Maddox is dependable as always but my favourite is this Brawl in the Family comic:

http://brawlinthefamily.keenspot.com/2013/04/01/477-b-royale-in-the-family-2/

Nice work Matthew :)