Dcubed

There's a good point to be made for there not being an option though... Should someone decide to give it a try, they might find the experience so off putting that they may decide to never play online ever again... This is particularly likely if the player is female (and that makes up a substantial part of Nintendo's audience, much moreso than Sony and MS' one). With player safety and hospitality being such a key focus of Nintendo's, I can understand there being no option for chatting with strangers in most of their games... (Chatting with people on your friends list however is a different matter).

In regards to Nintendo's approach to online, I actually do think they have the right idea when it comes to a curated approach. Online voice chat amongst strangers is typically a complete cesspool, filled with offensive language and slurs (especially if the recipient is female sadly) and I love Miiverse as a whole (well, aside from the morons who don't understand sarcasm of course ) With the NX, personally I'm just hoping for party chat at the OS level and nothing else. I don't want to voice chat with strangers and I don't think it's a good fit for the friendly atmos that Nintendo is looking to carve with their systems. Private party voice chat amongst friends is a must though and it's criminal that we still don't have it!

It's not one, but THREE new Pokemon that were announced (and amazingly enough, none of them were Pikachu!) It's Garchomp, Mewtwo (not the weird Shadow one, but the normal one) and Braixen (Really? Braixen? Really?, filling in that Ivysaur slot I see :p) So Braixen gets into Pokken, Greninja gets into Smash, while Chesnaught gets...

And NST continue to work on commercial experiments :p Crazy to think that there are now 7 Mario VS DK games! (6 if we don't count Mario & DK) Still, can't really argue with free when it's not riddled with microtransactions

It has indeed been confirmed to be coming to Europe now. No word on how it's going to be distributed yet though... I'd be shocked if GAME weren't involved though... I suspect that it'll look mostly similar to the US one (just replace Gamestop with GAME)

Kinda related... http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1169733 The first 3 Pokemon movies are finally getting released on Bluray!

The only one left other than the ones you mentioned is Kirby Super Star Ultra (and Kirby's Super Star Stacker; kinda... It's the one and only JPN only Kirby game and it's actually available on the Wii and Wii U VC in Japan right now... Don't know why, it's a bloody puzzle game with hardly any text in it! If they can release Mario's Super Picross over here, I don't see why not KSSS as well ) BTW, pointless fun fact. Masked Dedede's theme actually first appeared in Kirby's Super Star Stacker

IS THE RED NENDOROID GETTING RELEASED OUTSIDE OF THE POKEMON CENTER SITE!? I NEED to know this!! @Serebii! Please tell me that I'll actually be able to import it this time! (and no! I refuse to play the insane eBay prices for it!!) Why the hell cant they just sell them on the UK Nintendo Store!? Why do the Red Nendoroids have to be so bloody hard to get!?

Best bit is that I didn't even suggest the idea at all! It came as a surprise even to me! Awesome stuff S.C.G! : peace:

We do already have a Design the NX Controller thread running (with a unique tag up for grabs BTW... That means you @Glen\-i ) so controller guesses aren't really necessary. Otherwise, sounds like a plan to me! Personally I would run it a little closer to E3 though; to get the hype going. It's still a bit early in the year and we still have little to work with in terms of guessing...

IN! Good idea to consolidate the GPs onto one image. Makes it much easier to keep track of what to choose when using my phone

They're complaining about something they don't really understand. They're looking at PC emulator shots and the N64 Wii U VC and wondering why the PC one looks so much more saturated and bright when they don't seem to realize that that's not how they're supposed to look. N64 games are supposed to have a dulled image, that's how the console would output the signal to begin with. The games were designed around having a dim level of brightness, so it's more accurate to dull the image like they have done on Wii U.

Only 18!? Feels older to me than that What can I say? This site means a lot to me. Been posting here since I was a wee lad and I don't intend on stopping any time soon (though I'm one of the big boys now : peace: ) From the many hilarious nights shared with people on here playing online games (WIFI KARTS!!!), to the many hours of discussion shared about all matters Nintendo and the opinions of mine that you people have had to endure (@Sheikah in particular has borne the brunt of much of that; thanks for putting up with me!), to the meetups and events that we have run on the site. I salute you all! Hopefully I give back to the community as much as it has given me! Here's to many more birthdays still to come! : peace:

Do note that unlike HDDs, flash storage prices drop steadily over time. That's part of why Nintendo always choose to use flash storage in their consoles (the other is durability - HDDs tend to be fragile, while flash storage devices are far more durable; and you know how much Nintendo focus on making their hardware rugged and durable)

True, it does raise the manufacturing costs a fair bit (nowhere near as high as the NES/SNES/N64 carts though - as 3DS games use the same kind of flash storage as SD cards) but the costs will go down significantly for those games that don't use the higher capacity cards. It also cuts the price and the size of the console down significantly (especially if they eschew a built-in HDD again in favour of Flash storage - something that last patent also hinted at), so there's significant savings to be made there... Speaking of savings, it also cuts the costs down for games that get released on both consoles since the publisher only needs to print the one Game Card that works on both handheld and console (instead of two different copies on two different formats); so it may well balance out

Nah, it'll be Rai... Pikachu! Now with lightning tattoos all over his body

Including two different controllers in the box? Now that's an interesting idea... Never thought of that one! Pro Controllers are probably cheap as dirt to produce, so it wouldn't really up the BOM much...

Agreed wholeheartedly @Emasher. Great explanation of the how BC works as well! : peace: That being said, I wonder if they might actually be planning on moving away from discs and instead plan on using an enhanced version of the 3DS Game Card as the method of storage for retail games... That patent from a while's back did sort of hint at it... and no doubt that many of the games released for the NX console and handheld will be cross compatible (like Monster Hunter 5 or Smash Bros for NX and likely Mario Kart 9 as well), so that's a dead easy way of making retail games crossbuy; you just release the one game card with both sets of assets on it (the game just scales up on the console with higher res assets). Both consoles accept the same cards for cross compatible games and games that are exclusive to either machine use different shaped/coloured carts that don't fit in the wrong device. Cuts down significantly on loading times as well, which is always a particular bug bear that Nintendo always steadfastly focus on tackling with their consoles. 3DS Game Cards can go up to 8GB, so it's not hard to believe that a potential NX Game Card could go up to 32GB or 64GB (that's about the same jump that Nintendo handheld carts/cards usually go up by during each generational leap) and even then, most Nintendo console games are tiny as they are (1st party games typically average at around 4-6GB on Wii U; and even huge exceptions like Smash Bros Wii U and Xenoblade X are still well below 25GB), so most probably won't need to use the higher capacity cards. Otherwise they'll have to require people to install their games if they want to cut down loading and that's something that Nintendo will likely deem unacceptable for their audience; something that's too much of a hassle. Wii U and Wii backwards compatibility will of course be digital only if they go down this route though...

I'm thinking a refined Gamepad as well. Really needs analog ZL/Zr triggers though (with that digital click!) But of course that's not to say that we can't have a refined Pro Controller either... (I miss Octagonal Gates!) I'll have a crack at doing my own one later

Looking forward to this year's NWCs. They were a fun watch last year! Let's just hope that they remember to map the button that activates the Virtual Console menu to nothing this time. Was embarrassing watching everyone continuously opening it up during the last one I bet that Mario Maker will be a staple of future AGDQs after its reception here. Blind runs of it are just so perfect for tournaments and events like this

The Super Mario Maker blind race section of AGDQ was amazing!! Great levels too, very well designed (note the little hints given, like the screen and sound effects for when the shells come back. Also note how you can always see the oncoming obstacles from far away? You're given ample time to react ) Some great ideas that I'm jotting down for myself

As before, I will probably be IN every odd week because I work every odd Thursday : peace:

True... But I reckon that they'll go ahead and push it anyway; what with the anime running and all. Level 5 tend to keep localising a series once they start, Inazuma Eleven isn't a huge seller in the west, but they carried on bringing them out westward regardless.

Hey, @Hero\-of\-Time, the 3DS sequels have online multiplayer... I'm kinda interested in getting this at some point (I did enjoy Medabots AX, as you'd know if you read my VCW review and I'm kinda itching for something similar), but I think I might just wait for the next game to come out in English...

Yeah, Wave Race is not an easy game! The CPU players are plain BS (and in the highest difficulty, they don't actually earn enough points to qualify themselves! - but they still get to carry on playing anyway :p )