Homebrew solution for Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection? Bring it on!

As we know, this service will be halting soon. Someone is working on a homebrew solution though so that the games may continue online!

We've been hoping for this kind of thing for a while now! Hopefully it will catch on.

Official Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection for Wii and DS is ending soon

Well there we go. Haven't played many games from these systems online but we should take note of stuff like this in the future with our increasing reliance on Internet services.

YouTube, the web browser and the Shop Channel will still be available so that's a good thing. Home brew stuff as well.

DS games coming to Wii U VC!

This is good news! Maybe this is the chance for games like the two Zeldas for the DS to get proper analogue stick controls!

Jools Watsham celebrates Moon anniversary; I think about my experience with First Person Shooters on handhelds

Jools Watsham has been Tweeting stuff about Moon for the DS recently. I haven't played the game myself but I've heard a lot about it. It's a favourite of many. He's also got a new FPS going on in his top secret lab.

I shied away from the likes of Metroid Prime Hunters on the DS because it seemed like it would hurt your hands after playing for a while. With 3DS we have the solutions of gyroscopic aiming and the Circle Pad Pro(which I like very much), but I don't really know if we have an FPS culture on the 3DS like the one we had on the DS(there was also a number of FPS games on J2ME phones when you think about handhelds in general).

MY experiences with handheld FPS games were on the Game Boy Advance! The GBA had the likes of Doom 1 and 2 but I wanted to play original games so I went for the Ecks vs. Sever series mainly. I liked them a lot! The stages had mission checklists, which was one of my favourite things about Perfect Dark on the N64 and they had controls similar to Doom (could only aim left and right). You could also explore ventilation shafts and use zoom-in aiming weapons. My absolute favourite thing to do in these games was to press the delicious L and R buttons on the original model GBA for doing various things like strafing and crouching and crouch-strafing! Playing FPS games this way was novel certainly, but it felt good too.

How should an FPS on a handheld control? I think about this the odd time and I always find myself thinking that simplicity is the key to the best FPS games, just like it is for the best sandwiches.

Every DS game should have a sound test with the L and R buttons acting as "Prev" and "Next" in sleep mode

The title says it all really :)

Konami Acrade Classics had this and it was brilliant. Made me unplug from the iPod and into the DS on many commutes!

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.

What is the best alternative Christmas game?

http://cinemassacre.com/2012/12/22/whats-the-best-christmas-movie/

He's interesting as always, especially about Die Hard as an alternative Christmas movie, which is always an interesting conversation piece.

It's making me think about what the best alternative Christmas video game is. Going through my memories of games I've played over the years it actually didn't take me long until I came up with both Hotel Dusk and Last Window, neither of which are particularly heavy with the Christmas theme but both of them take place around Christmas and even have their moments.

The one moment that jumps out at me right now is from Hotel Dusk, where Kyle Hyde and the little girl are decorating a Christmas tree in the hotel storage room, surrounded by an unlikely yet likeable group of people who come together to have their own little party and appreciate what they have. It's a nice cosy moment in this detective story and you even get to place the decorations on the tree yourself.

Is the Adventure Time game coming out in Europe?

I'd love to know. I see some Americans getting excited about the Zelda 2 style gameplay and we all love the fact that WayForward developed the game.

I haven't watched much of the cartoon but it seems to be popular with video game fans. It's broadcasted over here too so it'd be nice if we got this game available to buy.

No shops in Cork seem to sell Pokémon Typing...

It's a good thing I ordered it online!

Before the game came out I asked a couple of shops if I could preorder the game and they looked at me funny, thinking it was for the PC. Natural mistake I suppose, considering it's about typing. Anyway alarm bells went off in my head and I ordered it online instead.

I looked up a thread on boards.ie and it seems that other Irish Nintendo Fans are having no luck finding it in Dublin even. Yikes. Another thing, if you're ordering it online make sure to order the English version. Different countries have different versions of the keyboard and also have their own names for many of the Pokémon. This would affect the pacing and difficulty of many of the levels I'd imagine so localisation must've been a very big project for this game.

Pokémon Typing: All silver medals achieved!

It took ages but I finally got all the silver medals! The game gets unbelievably hard in some stages. Just remember when you're trying this out for yourself that accuracy begets speed!

One method I have though is to look at the following Pokémon while I'm typing the present one. That's what finally got me a silver medal in the Tab stage.

Pokémon Typing is getting really difficult

I've gotten all the bronze medals in the game and now I'm after the silver ones... Some are ok to get but some are really tough, especially the Tab endurance stage. I'm struggling so badly to get 50 Pokémon. The score table is all in the high 40s but I just can't push past the last couple!

The game has to be a git then and throw FARFETCH'D in my path near that milestone, apostrophe and all.

You know something else? It's getting much colder these days so my hands just turn numb with the cold during a session and it's annoying when I can barely move my fingers then.

Completed Pokémon Typing's story

The story is a small but nice part of the package and it's all presented in talking head dialogue between Paige Down and Professor Quentin Werty. Since it's small it doesn't feel intrusive but it adds something to the world and the levels you go through to the end. It's nice. It can be completed in 2 hours if you're good at typing.

Also when you've completed the final story level you get the credits where you can type the names of all the people that appear! Hurry before they scroll off the screen! Quite tough to do as well as there are a lot of Japanese names there.

Pokémon Typing is too good to be called edutainment

Because edutainment typically sucks. There are some notable exceptions but normally they just have bad cg, are just plain unimaginative and not fun at all. When they're good though they're Pokémon Typing.

Pokémon Typing works well as an arcade game. It's like a rail shooter, only with typing and it's got high scores and combos and boss battles. Typing of the Dead by SEGA had a release in Japanese arcades and the cabinet had two keyboards. Nintendo could very well do the same.

Pokémon Typing also works very well as a Pokémon game. Now, there's none of that turn based battling and levelling up, you're just simply there to catch them by typing their names, which is probably one of the purest instances of the tagline "Gotta Catch 'em All!". Also if you're a Pokémon fan you have an advantage because the Pokémon appear before their names do, giving you a chance to type their names in faster and achieve higher scores.

Another reason why this is one of the best typing games out there is because of the world it takes place in and they way you explore it. You see, the world map is shaped exactly like a keyboard and the places are named after the keys on which they're located like "Semi-colon Cavern" for example. On the map screen you type the key of the area you want to enter for the character to immediately go there. Very clever and imaginative.

Of course if you like the benefits of edutainment then this will not only help sharpen your skills, but it'll also make the practice really fun too.

Pokémon Typing is awesome!

I got this game today! I'm very fond of how that little keyboard looks and that stand for the DS is invaluable. Typing to the 3DS XL's huge screens doesn't feel weird at all. The little keyboard itself takes a little getting used to but the keys are well defined, even though my fingers just fit them. I would rank the keyboard as not being quite as comfortable as your normal keyboard but much better than a laptop's keyboard. You also have the option of using the touch screen.

To me typing is generally a fun thing to do. I enjoy typing games a lot and the world of Pokémon is well suited for this activity. In fact the game rewards you with having Pokémon knowledge because it shows you the creature before its name and typing it accurately straight away gives you more points. Typing a succession of prompted Pokémon correctly gives you combos. There are also some boss battles and rare Pokémon you have to quickly type because the chance to catch them is quite brief. Ho-Oh for example took me a few tries because you have to type the hyphen as well and quickly.

I say "catch" but you're really "studying" them, catching a record of them with a special study ball really. The world map is literally a keyboard with placenames like "Semi-colon Cavern" and the characters are puns on keys as well such as Paige Down and Quentin Werty. That is a very nice touch!

I'm really enjoying this! Maybe something like it should come to the Wii U as well. I'd like it.

Nintendo Gamer demonstrates Pokémon Typing and the keyboard!

Nintendo Gamer lives in video form! I should visit the website regularly as they have a good online presence. Anyway they have a good demonstration here in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kbT2Vr8AzQ

Chris Scullion is one of the newcomers. I never knew he was Scottish. Anyway he does a good job of showing Pokémon Typing here for anyone curious about the game or the keyboard. He also connects it to an iPad which is a good demonstration of its versatility. It's everything you wanted to know and more.

Pokemon Typing gets review scores in the 80s

The first couple of reviews for this game are out. Official Nintendo Magazine and Nintendo Gamer gave it scores in the 80s.

All part of the hype! We may not see many reviews for this game. We will definitely however see this game in future top 10 lists of games that are unusual in some way and blog commenters will go "whoa".

I'm really looking forward to this game and I hope I'll be able to get it if everything goes according to plan :)

Even Capcom gets confused over the Ace Attorney series

Recently someone spotted a piece of fanart on Capcom's site. It was supposed to be for Ace Attorney 3 but instead it was apparently a fanmade cover of a non-existent installment. This kind of mix up is a serious problem with the Ace Attorney series - I speak from personal experience over the years when shops kept selling me the wrong installments and now Capcom is all mixed up.

The problem is that the cover artwork for these games are all very similar and in our localisations, the titles aren't numbered; instead they have a subtitle and a sub-subtitle. This muddles shops up even more because it makes the sub-subtitle text microscopic on the game cart's label and shops often seperate the box and the game itself.

There are other factors that exacerbate the situation, such as a spinoff, its unlocalised sequel and a later installment coming out before an earlier one in Europe. It's worthy of an AVGN style "Chronologically Confused" video!

Pokémon Typing Japanese unboxing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Osxm86eDCw
On the run up to this game's Irish release in September I've been looking at some videos since I'm really interested in this game and here we have a great one with an unboxing of the Japanese version. I'm pleased to see that it comes with a stand and I'm curious about that key that shows a the house symbol. It's kind of like the one on Wii controllers so that's got me all interested.

I'm glad we're going to get an English keyboard and I wonder if it'll be bigger?

Dragon Quest VI was the best RPG of 2011

What an awesome game this was. It made you try and figure out things for yourself and the job/class changing system was a pleasure to use. The version of Alltrades Abbey that appeared in this game is the one I visited the most out of all the Dragon Quest games I've played so far.

It also had some wonderful characters, my favourite being the mermaids. They like to rhyme so it's always such nice fun having a chat with them.

On a side note the game also released on the same day the Queen visited Cork which makes it the most stressful video game launch day I've ever had.

Xenoblade was ok and got people more hyped up(especially Americans) but it's just not as interesting to me.

In 2012 I'll probably like Dragon Quest X more than Last Story, depending of course on how the online stuff will affect DQX.

What I really want though is a European localisation for the Rocket Slime sequel for 3DS!