Burny

Not having to pay for the electronic parts + plastic required for four Gamecube controller ports and two Gamecube Memory card ports? Being able to use a possibly cheaper drive that doesn't read Gamecube stuff and maybe only works horizontally? Maybe even more modifications to save money? Is "saving money" as reason that hard to see? Why do you people think the PS3 alone has had half a dozen revisions, although the uninformed consumer might only be able to distinguish between the fat and the slim at best? What Nintendo announces on their site is this: They explain "newly configured" later as meaning it has to be placed horizontally. For all intends and purposes, to the uninformed parent hunting for Christmas presents, this is just another bundle and won't confuse any more than the slew of bundles we've had in the past two years or so. They should try to squeeze the price though. A 100€ Wii would be a good impulse-buyer's Christmas present. I'm just hoping that the golden Wiimote+ won't be only exclusively available in such a bundle with Zelda. >.< Oh, and am I the only person here, who doesn't see a marketing problem between the Wii and the WiiU? At least no more than there was between the PSX and the PS2? Do you people really want to tell me, that those two are easily mistaken?

Actually, skimming through a neogaf thread about the management at Team Bondi, I got the impression that's not necessarily just Rockstar's fault, but can also be blamed on their own management.

Perfect. ^^ So, about 6 days to play through it and write the review? Did you actually take breaks for "bio"? Or did you stimulate yourself to be quicker with matching soundtrack? Speaking of which: In the UK's Club Nintendo makes the soundtrack available for download for people who register the game before September 30th. I'm very much hoping Club Nintendo over here does the same. And that we're talking well tagged, high quality mp3s here, not stuff that's been compressed to hell and back and has such meaningful titles as "track01".

What made you put a heavily story driven singleplayer open world RPG into the same box as a cooperative multiplayer score grind-fest in the first place? Lack of reading available information? :p

Eurogamer UK Review sounds euphoric, too.

They're getting there, eventually: Behold the Massive M...err...Singleplayer Online Game? Actually the idea might be great in some games. Never played it, but I think Demon Souls had something similar (scribbling warnings onto walls was it?). That idea could be extended in more ways. Seeing where other players built things, beat enemies etc. might make single player games more lively without the need to turn them into MMOs. For things like Mario Kart I'd just like to have no "Nintendo-esque" experiments, but well implemented communication features and convenient ways to play with friends. And if Nintendo is going to release another New Super Mario Brothers-game with multiplayer, making it online would actually be great.

Yes - to both. From what I've read, both games lie at opposite ends of RPG world designs. I'm too lazy to search for all the neogaf threads I skimmed through and got the information, but the difference is essentially this: Xenoblade is a gigantic and pretty non-linear open world RPG with a combat system reminiscent of MMORPGs. It's supposed to take 50+ hours for the main quest alone - closer to 100, if you bother with all the side quests. There are multiple towns and a large part of the game should be exploration. The Last Story on the other hand has only one large "hub-town" and there is no world to explore - you travel straight to a dungeon in order to do quests. The main quest is supposed have duration around the 20-hour mark. I've also read impressions stating that The Last Story has a far more chliche "standard" JRPG story and doesn't quiet hold up to Xenoblade. Without having played any of the games though, it's hard to say which one I would prefer personally. However, the main difference is this: Xenoblade is out this Friday and you should buy it. Another Edit: This is actually the page of the Neogaf thread with a fair amount of impressions on The Last Story.

You were never a PC gamer, were you? With MS' and Sony's (successful) attempt at turning consoles into the poor man's gaming PCs, they also suffer from what has been common in PC-land.

Just found this via gonintendo: Colors! is coming to the 3DS' eShop. New features they're promising so far: fully integrated gallery 4-player collaborative painting painting in 3D On facebook they say this: Even a downright port of Colors! would have been good news in my books.

Well, my two cents: The width for the content seems to large imo. A fixed 1180px for the main wrapper just seems very wide. iPad users would already have to scroll and even on a Laptop screen (e.g. 1280x800), a bit more free space to either side might look better. The left column with the navigation menu also looks odd imo, because it only fills the top of the column and leaves a lot of space below. You end up with three columns, each with a different height. It's also mostly redundant as the vertical menu on top has the same links. The last thing would be the overly large header (?) image. Due to it's position below the vertical navigation menu and its enormous size, it's not a header anymore. Instead it takes the whole focus away from the first post's preview, as it pretty much fills the center of the page (Laptop) and even on my 1920x1200 screen, it appears to be the center of the page. If this is indeed intended to be a header, I'd try to make it so that it fills the space between the top of the page and the upper edge of the vertical navigation menu. This way, people opening the site on a Laptop will actually see the first post. Otherwise, nice site so far!

They probably won't bother for the reasons Aimless mentions. As this is Sony, they're still eager to let everyone know that they could replicate the WiiU's main novelty though. Although it's probably possible from a technical perspective, I'm not taking this serious until they start packing in a Vita with every PS3 sold.

Wouldn't Adobe's own "Getting started" section be the first place to look, if you want to learn ActionScript? At least in combination with the AS3 API one should be able to learn all the basic things from there. Had to learn a bit of ActionScript for a project around spring last year. Provided, I've never touched it since (never had to, only ever worked with a 30 day trial of Flash Professional), but by now I've forgotten most things it seems. Overall though, if you know a bit about object oriented programming, it it was easy to get into.

That should probably read: "contains the best single player FPS campaign on a Nintendo system since the original." As much as I like the new Goldeneye, I can't pretend Half Life & Co. don't exist. :p Actually, I'd say even the original Goldeneye's campaign wasn't all that impressive, if you take Half Life into account. The remake's campaign might have some of the nicest stealth elements for a shooter though.

It appears that the first 1000 French Limited Edition owners to register their game at Nintendo will get a 200 page art-book. Snotfair! Oh well, the game will do.

Heh, fun fact: I've got hundrets of Euros worth of figurines around, and I've actually spent and enjoyed more time converting and painting them than actually playing with them. It's like... a hobby. :p Although I'm still out of it for the foreseeable future. Some day though... @Dazz: You might want to have a look at this thread.

That's because they gave them similarly responsive controls as karts had in previous Mario Karts (+wheelie boost) and made the Karts handle like bricks. I'm glad bikes are gone, not because they were bad in itself, but rather because they destroyed the balance. Glider and underwater sections however sound like great additions to the game that don't break the balance between vehicles. I'm eager to see what kind of tracks they build around this.

Fun fact: The iPhone (4) (and consequently the iPod touch) have 3,5'' screens, so the diagonal is the same as the 3DS' top screen. I previously thought they had bigger screens, too - until I checked Apples product page. Only the resolution is massively higher of course, but you'll also obscure parts of the screens with your fingers while playing stuff on it. I agree with the 2D-games sentiment and fully expect to see games that don't support 3D in the future. Although the latest UK 3DS ad I've seen seems to be targeted at male teens in puberty (and cheaply produced), the striking thing is how they never even once mention "3D without glasses". That ad also made me smile for the wrong reasons. "Monumental titles" => Ridge Racer is shown. "state of the art online functionality" => what's that friendlist good for again? Still, it's only four months into the 3DS lifetime, Nintendo has already realized that 3D without glasses is not a feature they can successfully build on and going by the size of the price cut, they're at least willing to invest in the system to make it a success.

It's not going to improve much. They've got lots of games in development, but they've only got so much teams to develop games and they all take their time. They can technically reduce the price on a whim, but they can't declare development of an unfinished game "finished", because they need it right now. And they've got another platform to supply with games. Without third party support, the 3DS isn't going to have a more continuous stream of games than the Wii had. In fact, there were also large spans of time, where the DS did not have much quality software. What might help, is a stronger digital distribution service where smaller devs can florish. The big ones don't care for the 3DS no more than they did for the DS.

@Ellmeister:

Yes, the DSI's charger works with the 3DS.

IIRC, you have to send them to school if you want them to grow up. They don't on their own. As children they can climb up trees, so you need them for some treasures!

Sounded better than "Mario Sub-Glider-Kart 3D". As the name seems officially confirmed, I'm surprised they're going to a simple numeral. Mario Kart 3D sounded like the obvious choice. Maybe it's part of their effort to start marketing the 3DS and it's games as a new console instead of giving the impression it's a 3D-DS.

And here I was, thinking Nintendo should try to push that far too high price through holiday sales with Mario Kart and Super Mario. That definitely reeks of desperation. Although - by all rights - it puts the 3DS' price in a region where it belonged in the first place. The appearance of GBA games on the VC was merely a question of time imo. It's not like Nintendo to let money lie on the street... But apparently, these ten games early adopters will get, are exclusive to them. I wouldn't mind, if they didn't include Metroid Fusion. That alone makes this a real dick move, although it might pacify early adopters somewhat.

They absolutely, under all circumstances and without any exception, wanted to make sure that you're never disturbed by pesky game invites and chat messages while enjoying this all-time-classic. Wait a second...

@Rummy: If you've had to start two times over already... Shishkebaboo is the gluttonous king. There are a couple of other wacky boss fights to come.