Mii Mario Party. Er, Wii Party U Announced. Mii-Fused Minigame Focused Boardgame ala Mario Party. Play Classic Boardgames With 2-Players On One GamePad. Trailer Video, Screenshots (E3 2013 Nintendo Direct)

Intense animal racing action right here!

Wii U Party for WiiU has been announced by Nintendo & developer NDCube as the next major Nintendo game to focus on controlling Mii’s in a casual party game environments. This time it is basically “Mii Mario Party”, as the game delivers a virtual boardgame that you can play with up to four friends, all of whom play as their Mii characters.

As they make their way around the game board, you will compete in a variety of Mario Party-style mini-games. It is the sequel to the Wii game “Wii Party”, and will feature a number of those same minigames in upgraded fashion.

However this game’s major hook is the ability to play classic tabletop family boardgames with two players using one WiiU GamePad. You put the GamePad on the table like a game board, and two players, one sitting on each end of the GamePad, can play as it if was a boardgame.

Awesome and innovative.

This is a new concept and one that Nintendo prototyped and demo’d as a possible use for the WiiU Tablet Controller when the system was first unveiled. It’s nice to finally see it being implemented in a real videogame. This is another “quickie” by Nintendo, but the kind of game that appeals to everyone and will surely be a high system seller.

Official Synopsis

It’s Time to Party with WiiU
Enjoy board games and mini-games on the TV, play familiar tabletop games using the Wii U GamePad controller or transform your living room into a game show floor. No matter what kind of party you’re throwing, Wii Party U offers something for everyone.

Key Wii Party U Features:
* Everyone at the party competes with his or her own Mii characters in a medley of party games.
* Experience new ways to play with others using the WiiU GamePad. For example, in “Lost-and-Found Square,” imagine you are the person holding the GamePad and you are lost in a playground. Your goal is to describe your surroundings based on what you see on the GamePad in order to help the other players find your location.
* Post your impressions of game sessions to Miiverse. You can rate your performance by adding a one-to five-star ranking after the match is over.
* When you want to leave the TV behind, you can choose to play exclusively on the WiiU GamePad with an array of 15 tabletop games, ranging from foosball to baseball, for two-player competitive and cooperative play.
* In addition to the main games that everyone can play together, there are 80 minigames that can be played on your own. These include the Tabletop Minigame that can be played with the Wii U GamePad only.

 

X WiiU E3 2013 Trailer. Nintendo Direct Video Reveals Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Gameplay Footage. Titled Simply X. Badass Mechs Galore

Awesome.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 or “X” for WiiU was Nintendo’s E3 2013 Nintendo Direct bone to hardcore RPG players, offering an amazing looking title in development by Monolith Soft, the developers behind Xenosaga and Xenoblade Chronicles for Wii.

This sequel looks like it will be more of the awesome Action RPG gameplay that hardcore gamers loved with the original Wii game, and will feature massive worlds for players to explore, vast vistas and beautiful graphics. Only now, badass looking pilotable mechs are part of the action!

Xenosaga’s character designer Kunihiko Tanaka is working on this game. It also features Hiroyuki Sawano doing the X’s score, who’s composed many popular Japanese music for TV shows and anime.

This is definitely one to keep an eye on. No solid details yet, or even an official title. Although I’m kinda hoping they keep the game name as simply “X”!

Epic boss battles in this JRPG.

 

E3 2013 Schedule of Shows

E3 2013 starts today with all of the major publisher Pre-E3 2013 shows! Today is the entire Press Conference focus where all of the companies will announce and show their major AAA titles. Every company except Nintendo. Tomorrow E3 2013 kicks off officially as the show floor is open and we’ll get all the smaller announcements and gameplay video streams from tons of games from the show floor.

Today however are all the major announcements from Microsoft first, then Electronic Arts, then Ubisoft, then Sony. Tomorrow we’ll see Nintendo who won’t be having a Press Conference Show, but will be doing a Nintendo Direct where they will show all their big new games (Including a new Mario, first footage of Super Smash Bros. 4, a new Zelda and much more!)

Here is how the Schedule Breaks down! Take this schedule and try to apply it to your time zone to figure out when the show will actually start.

E3 2013 Press Conference Shows Time Schedule:

Microsoft E3 2013 Show:
Starts First @ 9:30AM

EA E3 2013 Show:
1PM

Ubisoft E3 2013 Show:
3PM

Sony E3 2013 Show:
6PM

Nintendo Direct Show:
Tuesday, June 11th @ 7AM

Pokemon X/Y Panel:
June 11th @ 6PM

 

Animal Crossing: New Leaf Is First AAA 3DS Nintendo Game of the Summer

Time to re-enter the always-on digital world of Animal Crossing!

Animal Crossing: New Leaf releases on June 9th in America, June 14th in Europe and June 15th in Australia.

The game is another huge bomb-dropper for the Nintendo 3DS from Nintendo, a game that is sure to sell lots of Nintendo systems, especially given the fact that the game supports Online Play, allowing you to visit the town of any friends in your online friends list. Additionally, you can visit a special location (Tortimer Island) with up to four players online to play mini-games.

Even better, Animal Crossing: New Leaf allows you to visit the house of anyone you’ve come into contact with while walking around your real-world city via the StreetPass feature which is awesome! You can also send letters to people via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection and can download new home layouts and other goodies via SpotPass whenever you connect online at certain locations with a free wi-fi connection.

Cool stuff.

I never played any of the Animal Crossing games outside of the GameCube original. A game I loved. Read my Animal Crossing GameCube Review to see my opinion on that masterpiece. It’s a game I still pop in from time to time, 11 years later! Of course, the main reason I loved it, or one of the main reasons, was due to the ability to be rewarded with playable NES games!

This feature was taken out of the DS entry in the series, Animal Crossing: Wild World, as well as the third game in the series, Animal Crossing: City Folk for the Wii. This made me sad, and made me less likely to play those titles. Even though I really did want to get the Wii game, but never got around to it.

However Animal Crossing: New Leaf has a lot of new features. Not only do you get to play as the Mayor for example, but you get to customize your character way beyond past games. You can even customize individual parts of furniture, essentially creating all-new furniture! And as the mayor, for the first time, you can actually customize your actual town as well. Very cool stuff.

Nintendo sent me a review copy of Animal Crossing: New Leaf, so expect a review on the site with my thoughts on the game soon!

 

Pikmin 3 Release Dates Announced (WiiU). August 4 2013 (USA), July 26 2013 (Europe). Official Box Art

Pretty!

Pikmin 3 release dates have been announced. This major AAA Nintendo-developed, Shigeru Miyamoto-produced system seller will be released in Europe first on July 26 2013. Americans will have to wait a week, but they’ll get it soon enough on August 4 2013! No Australian date yet…

I never did get around to playing Pikmin 2… FOR SHAME! But I’ve been itching to replay the original Pikmin 1 and Pikmin 2 in the run-up to Pikmin 3!

Sadly though, I don’t have a WiiU, so I gotta solve that problem first….

 

Zelda Link to the Past 3DS Screenshots (Official Gameplay)

The token sword spin is back!

Screenshots of Zelda: Link to the Past 3DS! This is The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past like you’ve never seen it before! All of these are official screens straight from Nintendo, enjoy!

More soon.

 

Retro Review: Final Fantasy I (Dawn of Souls Version) For Game Boy Advance

You can read the entire review here.

 

Videogame Photo of the Day – Real Life Excitebike Wallpaper NES Polygonal 3D Artwork

Soooo coool!

Real life Excitebike wallpaper NES Polygonal 3D artwork!

I absolutely LOVE this piece. So freakin’ awesome. As already mentioned with the other excitebike artwork, I love this kind of thing where videogame elements are put into real-life backgrounds, and this one is about as good as you can get!

 

WiiU Focused Nintendo Direct Video – Watch Now Live

Satoru Iwata talking about MiiVerse on WiiU Nintendo Direct.

Nintendo is doing a WiiU focused Nintendo Direct conference video that’s expected to bring some news for Nintendo’s next-generation console.

Watch WiiU Nintendo Direct live right now!

 

WiiU GamePad Virtual Console Play Coming Soon

Super Metroid on the GamePad. Yes please.

Can I play WiiU Virtual Console games on the GamePad? The answer right now is NO. You cannot.

Why the heck can you not? Who knows. Thankfully, Nintendo knows about this issue and that people desire it, and is working on an update that will allow Wii U owners to play downloadable titles, including Virtual Console games (once the Virtual Console debuts on the WiiU, that is).

To quote, Nintendo told Kotaku:

“Nintendo is moving ahead with development of Virtual Console for Wii U. We plan to make it so you can play Virtual Console games on the Wii U GamePad alone”.

Reggie, Nintendo of America’s Vice President, has also publicly stated that he would “Love for that to happen” regarding the ability to play Virtual Console games on the WiiU GamePad.

These are definitely positive developments, but I wish Nintendo would get their act together and have stuff like this figured out beforehand. Not later on. Nintendo fans who love the Virtual Console and have downloaded tons of games for it on Wii, DSi and 3DS, should be rewarded for their diligence and fan-service, not “punished”. But oh well, as long as they fix these problems, then all is well. But they need to continue to learn from their mistakes.