Dr. Luigi trailer; Year of Luigi will continue!

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

Nice trailer for Dr. Luigi there explaining the various gameplay modes. I wonder what makes it distinctly Luigi though? I mean, Ms. Pac-Man is very distinct from Pac-Man so... ?

eShop back up!

Nintendo Tweeted the following:

"We do not anticipate any further outages of the Nintendo eShop, but will continue to closely monitor the situation."

There we go. Hopefully now everyone can enjoy the discounts.

Christmas sales 2013

Quite a lot of games on sale where you can find them. One of them is Rayman Legends which can be found for under 20 Euro.

eShop scheduled maintence over the 2013 holidays

When you try to connect to the eShop you get an error message containing all the details of the scheduled maintenance. Today for instance,  eShop was online between 9am and 9pm and will now be offline between 9pm and 9am Irish time.

You can also check Nintendo's local Twitter at:

http://www.twitter.com/nintendouk

Get back online eShop! I wanna buy Mario 3!

Seriously! I haven't been able to get on the eShop for a few days now and they just released Mario 3 on it. urgh!

IT Crowd Christmas Special

This was on Christmas Eve and I was lucky enough to catch it. It was lovely! A very nice reunion and it followed with a little documentary about it and the whole series.

Worth it alone for hearing Roy say "I laughed my hole off".

GoNintendo's Week of Nintendo Love feature

Happy Christmas everyone! GoNintendo's been running this feature where they asked various video game culture personalities about their love of Nintendo.

It's a nice thing, yet it's also a sad thing that something like this was actually deemed necessary. We usually don't take any notice of the nauseating marketing from other companies and I usually just blog away here like nothing else in the gaming world matters.

Among the personalities include Jonathan Holmes, Reggie-Fils Aime, Andrew Eisen, Michael Pachter, Smooth McGroove and others.

I think the other gaming platforms are boring and worthless! These guys aren't here to say that though, it's just about love and appreciation of the Nintendo stuff. Might as well enjoy it.

NSMBU & NSLU Christmasy levels

After the desert world head to the mountains! Very snowy up there and it has a lovely atmosphere. You see snowmen and cloudless starry skies everywhere.

Mario 3 in 60 Hz for Wii U and 3DS. Horray!

Just saw the listings for this week's eShop release list. One of the best games ever will be in glorious full speed for us to enjoy!

I gotta keep an eye on Nintendo because recently they released Link to the Past in 50 Hz on Wii U VC. Ouch :(

3DS Miiverse will help sell SEGA 3D Classics thanks to fall-in 3D screenshot sharing

Just noticed that 3DS Miiverse communities popped up for Shinobi III and Streets Of Rage and I've been spending some time browsing through the 3D screenshots that players have been uploading. They look really good! As long as they're the "Fall-in" 3D ones of course. If you're asking yourself why you should pay for these games, looking at these screenshots will help with your decision!

Also, screenshot takers? Please take as many of the "Fall-in" 3D screenshots as possible. I want to look at more lovely SEGA stuff with that effect!

NES Remix looks fab

I've been watching several videos of this celebratory remix of NES game challenges and it looks as fun as Wario Ware and it features a similar notion to the Namco Museum arrangements. I wanna play it!

Here's a great video of Arino playing the game on a Game Centre CX special, along with some young contenders. Lots of shrieking, lots of high-fiving, lots of fun! It's also fansubbed in English. Go watch it!

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x18o26n_game-center-cx-nc21-nes-remix_videogames

Hyrule Warriors

Wow, that announcement was a mindblow wasn't it? I haven't played any Dynasty Warriors games before but I bet loads of copies will be sold somewhere. The game itself is looking very nice.

Angry Video Game Nerd Episode 117: Wish List Part 2

http://cinemassacre.com/2013/12/19/avgn-wish-list-part-2/

Ahahaha! And here we have the second part of the Wish List. The Nerd goes into a number of games and there are some good laughs to be had.

I bet the comments section is going to be full of people repeating "IT'S NOOOOT SHIIIIIIIT!".

By the way, another game by that company that's nooot shiiiiit is Bill & Ted's Excellent Game Boy Adventure — its title is an accurate description of the game itself!

Angry Video Game Nerd Episode 116: Wish List Part 1

http://cinemassacre.com/2013/12/17/avgn-wish-list-part-1/

Unusual episode but that's good because it's like the Nintendo Power memories episode!

I remember all those catalogues growing up too and the wonderful games and toys in them. The games cost so much back then too. He also did some Sonic games to fulfill some fan requests.

Nintendo Direct 18 Dec 2013 is on at 2pm Irish time!

Just learned about this new Nintendo Direct! They might talk about Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze and maybe Iwata will hold fruit again. They're probably gonna talk about the new Wii Sports and Wii Fit stuff too.

Wii U eShop now competes with 3DS eShop

We've had this recent update with the eShop. Now the software on these formats directly compete with each other! This might be to the Wii U's disadvantage because the 3DS has had a lot more digital releases due to being out longer. Might be a tiny bit rough for a short while!

AVGN top 10s

Recently there've been postings of top ten Nerd moments of a specified theme being posted on Cinemassacre. I enjoy them quite a lot and I still get to see new new stuff with the fun "James and Mike" play series. I wonder what the next Nerd episode will be?

Regular Show 3DS game OST on SoundCloud

https://soundcloud.com/d3publisher/sets/regular-show-mordecai-and

Still haven't played this game but the music inspires pangs of comparative nostalgia and keeps me coming back to listen to it. I think it'll eventually lead to me buying the game...

Kirby Triple Deluxe for 3DS is coming along very nicely! New gameplay clip!

http://www.gonintendo.com/?mode=viewstory&id=218743

Oh wow, just have a look! Interesting powerup that enables Kirby to gobble up a Wispy Woods sized tree and what appears to be a sub-game where you're tapping in rhythm to Kirby jingles like Green Greens and Gourmet Race with a King Dedede shaped cursor. It's time to get a little bit more excited about the game!

Miiverse on 3DS is pretty good!

Miiverse is on 3DS now and it even has an offline mode where you can write a post before coming back to an area where you can connect to the Internet. Nice touch!

Just learned about the existence of Murphy's Micro Quiz-M

RTÉ had this quiz show in the '80s that featured all these microcomputers and graphics presented by Mike Murphy. I'm kind of gobsmacked. I saw a clip where one of the prizes was the excellent ZX Spectrum.

Super Dolphin Mode actually makes me want to play 3D Ecco The Dolphin

http://www.siliconera.com/2013/12/10/3d-ecco-dolphin-rebalanced-difficulty-two-versions-one/

Really fascinating interview with the staff here about times before e-mail where they had to fax each other.

Now, I grew up playing Nintendo quality games, so when I got to try Ecco I couldn't stand it. This interview is making me want to try the new version out. It might actually be playable this time. I don't think the awkward bottle-nosing is going to go away but the new mode should help some bit.

Link to the Past 50 Hz on Wii U again :(

Corrected aspect ratio so no borders and there was optimisation in the original release but still. Fuck sake.

I have no time for DKC dissers

Quite a few morons giving out about the Cranky Kong announcement. Even people who don't care either way are joining in just to be part of the herd. Ugh...

Cranky Kong in Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze!

We've seen boxart already but he was just now featured in a gameplay demonstration at the um... event... that uh... I forget but it's not important.

But we get to play as Cranky Kong! He has a pogo stick jump move too like Scrooge McDuck.

He was always known for talking in the games so I have no idea what his personality is going to be like this time round. I do know that he's less cranky in Jungle Climber and DKC Returns so we'll just wait and see if it follows that pattern or not.

21st of February for North America release, now to listen for the Irish release!

Bravely Default is out in Ireland today

I still have to play more of the demo but I did watch a 2 hour footage video from "nintendomination".

I felt discouraged at the start of the video because I felt like it was trying to make me feel feelings that I didn't feel like feeling and that led to me feeling like it was made for angsty teenagers. There was a stage where tears welled up in my eyes when I came across a man who was grieving for a family member he lost, so it worked on me eventually.

Then they obsess a lot about crystals so hey it's one of those games by Square-Enix that survives the original legacy of Final Fantasy.

I got more appreciative of the music when they went into one of the dungeons. It could be a nice enough game to get into.

So I'll try to play the demo myself again to see if I'd like to buy it.

Captain Toad levels are great

These levels in Mario...uh...3D...uh....World(titles are getting confusing) remind me of those old Tomy ball bearing labyrinth games and they're just lovely. I see plenty of comments on Miiverse asking for a standalone game with these.

Reggie Fils-Aime is having a live Q&A Twitter session but you VOTE for questions

I thought for a moment it was about answering everyone's individual questions and I was even thinking up some of my own, but then I noticed every question is previously prepared with its own hashtag identifier and they're coupled into different categories where Tweeters do not ask their own questions but they have to vote by noisily responding with their preferred hashtags.

Why not just answer all the questions then?!

Urgh... of course... it's because it's a social media event.

Instead of a Q&A session, it's a democratic vote...

More like DUMBocratic. lol

ANYWAY... maybe something nice will come out of this noisy bit of noise.

USK rating strikes again, Bravely Default Collector's Edition is latest victim

Have you seen the collector's edition of Bravely Default? The boxart has the HIDEOUS German USK rating on it. Why does it have to be so big and ugly? The PEGI rating is nice and tidy, so what the hell?

Luckily the normal retail version of the game doesn't have that big disgusting snot green USK monstrosity.

Link Between Worlds doesn't force you to re-read what a gathered ingredient is when you restore from a save!

You just collect it like it's an ordinary item! This was another major thing that was wrong with Skyward Sword and it also affected Twilight Princess. They repeated the same message at you when you switched the game back on after a save.

In fact, the text in Link Between Worlds really doesn't interrupt the flow of the game and that's a really nice thing.

Miiverse loves the stamps from Super Mario 3D Land

Most of the posts on this game are either just a mess of stamps in the shape of Mario characters or saying how great the game is.

That's ok of course, because the game is quite lovely! It even has the option to reverse camera controls which means a lot to me, but then, the viewpoint is usually fixed so it's no biggie in this case.