Retro Gaming Australia

Gen 2 is the best.

Pokemon Gold & Silver was the heavily anticipated second game in the Pokemon series. It’s difficult to sum up in this short paragraph the wealth of content that the second game brought to the series – 100 new mons, a huge main quest, new attributes, a day night cycle, Pokemon gender – the list goes on.

Still have a soft spot for the void levels.

Super Mario Sunshine is perhaps Mario’s most divisive adventure to date. Some will argue that it wasn’t enough of a step up from Super Mario 64, others will claim that it was too radical a departure mechanically. There are a scant few of us who enjoyed it for what it is.

Clear the way!

Blast Corps is an oft-overlooked gem from Rare’s peak era. Players control various demolition equipment and must clear the way for a truck which is carrying enough nuclear armament to destroy the world. It’s one of those games that’s relatively easy at the basic level, but has some downright dastardly challenges if you’re going for full completion. This ad is from the UK release of the game.

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The latest entry in the Iwata Asks series is available. This one discusses the origins of Star Fox and the making of the upcoming 3D remake of Star Fox 64.

The interview gives a lot of insight into the conditions in which Star Fox was developed and the relationship between Dylan Cuthbert and Nintendo. Cuthbert and fellow Brit Giles Goddard were the first non-Japanese people to work at Nintendo’s Entertaintment Analysis Division, if I recall correctly. There’s also a lot of stuff in there about the cancelled Star Fox 2.

In its financial briefing last Thursday, Nintendo announced that its recently released 3D upgrade of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has shipped in excess of 1 million units across the world.

The game sold 810,000 copies in the West and 270,000 copies in Japan in just two weeks of reporting. It is the second Nintendo-published game to hit the platinum mark on the 3DS – Nintendogs + cats was the first.

The news really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, since Ocarina of Time 3D is arguably the best thing on the 3DS, not to mention a fantastic update of one of the best video games ever made.

Still should have been a launch title, though.

It seems that there are a few caveats to go with the recently announced NES and GBA Virtual Console news.

Nintendo Australia has announced that the 3DS system will drop from $AU349 to $AU249 on August 12, with similar price drops occuring across the world. As a bonus for early adopters (anybody who buys a 3DS before September 1), Nintendo will be giving you 10 free NES and 10 free GBA games, some of which we elaborated on in our earlier story.

It’s not as cut and dry as these games simply appearing on the Virtual Console store and you downloading them. On September 1, Nintendo will be pushing out “early bird” versions of the 10 NES games. They won’t have any of the usual VC trimmings, and it is understood that the NES emulation is at a beta stage. These titles will be added to the Virtual Console store at a later date, and joined by other classic NES games.

It gets weirder with the GBA situation though. No date has been announced for when these will be available to download, and it is understood that Nintendo is not planning on adding the GBA to the Virtual Console – instead, these 10 GBA games will remain exclusive to the 3DS early adopters and will not be for sale later down the track.

There’s something I don’t like about Nintendo of America’s mid 90s advertising, but I can’t pinpoint it.

Killer Instinct was a fighting game developed by Rare for the arcade and Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The arcade cabinet famously claimed that it was running the same hardware as the upcoming Ultra 64 console, which was proved to be false. The SNES version of the game is a pretty huge technical achievement, but in reality, the underlying game is not particularly memorable when the graphics are stripped away. This ad is for the SNES release.

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Kyoto-based t-shirt shop The King of Games has launched an international online shopfront. The store has gained a reputation among travellers to Japan for its high quality, officially licensed Nintendo themed retro gaming t-shirts.

They’re not exactly cheap, though.

Via GameSetWatch

Ever heard of a game called Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru? Perhaps under its translated name For Frog the Bell Tolls? No? Well there’s a reason for that. Before Nintendo were being jerks and not bringing over games you wanted to play on the Wii, they were busy developing Game Boy games they had no intention of releasing outside of Japan.

For Frog the Bell Tolls is an action-adventure game based on the same tech as The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. Unfortunately, the game was never released outside of Japan, but that’s no longer a concern as ryanbgstl has completed his translation patch for the game, making it fully playable in English. (continue reading…)