Posts Tagged ‘Kid Icarus Uprising’

Interesting Stuff for The Week of June 27

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

I thought I’d try something different and compile a post of news and interesting stuff I come across every week. I’ve never tried to post about news here unless it was something worth commenting on because there’s no way I’d be able to keep up with the many gaming sites out there and I wanted each post I wrote to have a worthwhile amount of content worth reading. Since I’m always reading about news and finding other interesting things whether its videos, interviews, or news, I thought I’d try and compile a single post with interesting stuff I’ve come across to get some practice combing for news.

Here’s interesting stuff for this week:

I always knew about using holy water against Dracula’s final form in Castlevania, but didn’t know how useful the holy water was in the rest of the game until I saw this video. Next someone will come up with a use for the throwing knives. Castlevania holy water video (via Otaku USA)

A Halo fan goes all out with this Realistic Halo Elite Costume. (via neoGAF)

Smash Bros. and Kirby creator Masahiro Sakurai is interviewed about Kid Icarus and talks about how he considered Star Fox for the game he was designing, bringing Kid Icarus back with Smash Bros., and how Japanese game development isn’t suited toward the Western style of big hollywood budgets. (via 1up.com)

Siliconera’s interview with NIS America’s president reveals that Sakura Wars V didn’t do so well and Sony blocked the Sakura Wars 1+2 collection on PSP because they viewed it as a graphic novel and not a game. (via neoGAF)

IGN interview Shigeru Miyamoto with reader questions where he explains how they try to develop games by designing gameplay that brings to the players closer to the developers, and that any ideas that didn’t make it into Super Mario World have found their way into later games in the series and hints at a Mario game for 3DS. (via Ripten, via GoNintendo)

Final Fantasy 14 Online is coming out Sept 30th for PC and delayed until March 2011 for PS3. A limited version for $25 more has a nice cover by Yoshitaka Amano, an art book, a making of DVD and a few other things.

Mega 64 TruthPhones: E3 video. What the presenters on stage were really thinking during the E3 conferences.

Gundam in Shizuokua – It’s a Gundam! The size of the Gundam to the people moving around it shows just how enormous it is. It reminds me of the episode when the White Base crew had to remove explosives that were planted on the mobile suit.

PAX 2010 music acts announced.

Master Hand is playable in Super Smash Bros. Melee by tricking the game into letting you bypass the character select screen without choosing a character. Gotta try this later myself. (via neoGAF)

Rogert Ebert concedes games can be art, admitting that he hasn’t played any video games and would not give an opinion on a movie he hasn’t seen. He goes on to supply his definition of art and how it should be something that allows him to learn about other people’s experiences and move him. Similar to how Miyamoto mentions connecting with players through gameplay, that’s kinda why I like video games in the first place.

At a recent stockholders meeting at Nintendo, Shigeru Miyamoto mentioned “We need new game characters”. Someone suggested that Nintendo could develop for other platforms like iPad to which Iwata said no, that their games and systems are the same thing.

Mega Man 10 concept art was posted on The Mega Man Network from the Japanese magazine Gameside. Even though the game is 2D, the concept artwork shows a real world to inspire the level design, and there was similar artwork for the older games in the Mega Man Complete Works book. (via Tiny Cartridge)

Fan’s View: Inside the World of Fanart at 1up.com covers several aspects of fanart for games such as legality and why people make it.

One of the weirdest and funniest things I’ve seen lately is Starfox the animated series, with a completed animated clip with Star Wolf singing to Star Fox “can’t let you do that!”. (via GoNintendo)

E3 2010: Nintendo Conference Impressions

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

After watching Microsoft’s, Ubisoft’s, (and now) Sony’s conferences, Nintendo had the best and the most enjoyable to sit through and watch over a live stream (it doesn’t hurt that I’m a huge fan of their games either). Nintendo kept up a great pace throughout the conference, without getting bogged down with talking about what they’re going to do or spending too much time on just casual games. Nintendo did what they did best, and talked about new games and showed off interesting gameplay, while also talking about new technology to bring about new forms of gameplay. I also feel like they’ve made up for previous E3s and addressed what was wrong about previous presentations.

Starting with a countdown timer the Nintendo conference began with Reggie Fils-Aime taking the stage and talking about how technology is a tool. Getting right down to business, he introduced a game he said everyone was waiting to see, the new Legend of Zelda.

The trailer started with Princess Zelda’s theme playing with iterations of previous Links and references to the previous 3D Zeldas appeared, with OoT Link riding Epona, Majora’s Mask appearing with a giggle, TWW Link riding on the boat, and wolf Link from Twilight Princess as the camera turned to clouds parting ways to unveil Link’s new incarnation. Looking like an older cross between Twilight Princess Link and a touch of The Wind Waker’s style, this Link appeared poised and ready with the Master Sword and Hylian Shield. The art style ditched the dark graphics of Twilight Princess for a more colorful look that looks like a compromise between the realistic and cel-shaded Zeldas, and reminds me of the art from Link’s Awakening with its warm colorful look. The game is subtitled “Skyward Sword” with the Hyrule bird emblem and Triforce behind the Zelda logo hinting at a strong story toward the Triforce and Hyrule.

A video of Shigeru Miyamoto appeared where he once again wielded the Master Sword and Shield replicas from a few years ago and explained how it’d be great to play Zelda like this as special effects transitioned the replicas in his hands for the a Motion Plus equipped Wii Remote and Nunchuk. Calling on translator Bill Trinen on stage he saw he was having trouble defeating a plant monster. Just a magical teleport special effect happens and Miyamoto disappears from the video and comes from behind the curtain on the stage for a live demonstration. He showed how the Wii Remote had to be swung in the direction of the deku baba’s mouth in order to slice it.



Octoroks (back on land!) can have their rocks reflected back at them with a thrust of the nunchuk to do a shield bash attack. Coming across a sealed door with a eyeball tracking the sword movement, Miyamoto made it dizzy by moving the sword around. Rolling is now performed by shaking the nunchuk with the A button set to using items. Holding the B button brings up your inventory that you just choose by picking from the circle. Bombs set on the ground or rolled like a bowling ball. Flying beetles can be controlled to pick up items. With a flick of the wrist, the new whip works like you’d expect (how about that Castlevania?). In a few fights with bokoblins they moved their swords to block Link’s sword attack (not unlike Iron Knuckles moving their shields in Zelda 2) requiring the sword to be swung in open spots like in Wii Sports Resort. In fact several of the abilities including the bow and arrow seem based on Wii Sports Resort.

During the presentation Miyamoto was having technical difficulties with aiming and slashing at the right time, (likely due to the lighting in the room messing up with the remote or lag on the monitors), and assured the audience that they could see for themselves that it plays fine (and reports from people who have played Zelda confirm there were technical difficulties on stage). Zelda is due out next year.



(more…)