Dcubed

The marketing budget was much bigger for DS2 than for the first DS game though... So I wouldn't imagine that Namco would be happy with a "mere" 20% improvement in this case...

96% increase WoW doesn't seem all that much when you consider that its release was also coupled with the console pricedrop (which also came with Titanfall bundled in as well)... That comment made a couple of days ago about there being "hundreds of thousands of players" playing the game ever since its US release also seems to indicate that it's between 200k-350k worldwide currently (any higher and they would've been shouting over the rooftops about selling "almost half a million since launch") I wonder if that's good enough considering how much MS have riding off of this game...

Nice! CV1 was long overdue!

Edit: Forgot that he doesn't post on weekends and we're already past 22 characters revealed so far...

Very impressive. Looks like he's done a good job of replicating the original version's physics and animations

Yeah it's great. The sig got a chuckle out of me too. Very clever

Yeah it would really improve the experience. A big part of what puts me off the Demon's/Dark Souls games is how clunky they are, with its bazillion different menus and stat porn. Streamlining that with the Gamepad would do wonders for making it more accessible (note to the developers: Making a game more accessible doesn't mean that the game is made easier. It's ok to make the game more accessible to people who aren't turned on by masses of menus and numbers )

Nice! Here's hoping it also paves the way for more WSR content!

A Tomodachi stage? Nice!

HA HA HA! Bravely Default (160k retail, 40k+ digital) outsold Lightning Returns! Finally some fucking divine justice! Fantastic result for Bravely Default (and to think that Nintendo had to step in and do S-E's job for them... Bet they feel real good about themselves now!) Fuck you Square Enix! Otherwise, Xbone really surpassed my expectations. Guess all those bundles and gift card deals did the trick, for now at least... Wii U getting a boost was a nice surprise. Still terrible in the grand scheme of things, but that goes without saying. DKCTF is a bit lower than I had expected, but it is only 8 days and its legs will no doubt be legendary...

We know that Tomodachi Collection is coming, so that's one... Fantasy Life, Theatrhythm Curtain Call, Inazuma Eleven Go, Harvest Moon CTANL, SMT4 and Yo-Kai Watch will probably hit this year as well... (Maybe Persona Q in Europe as well if we're lucky)

I get the feeling that it's not a bad game per say (not like Yoshi's Island DS or Yoshi's Topsy Turvy or most of Artoon's own games outside of Flingsmash), but rather that it's just not a great one. It looks like a competent platformer but nothing more. The criminal part of it is that it just fails to live up to the legacy of the original SNES game and it's just getting crushed under the expectations that are placed on it as a result. I feel a bit sorry for the guys at Arzest in this case. They're clearly much better at making games than the team at Artoon were (nor are they the same developer or share all of the same staff as some people seem to believe...) and they don't deserve to get crushed like this. They did a great job with Streetpass Quest 1 & 2 and Flingsmash was a good game (a fitting end for Artoon I guess as they finally managed to put out a legitimately solid game, right before were shuttered). It no doubt isn't up to the same standard as the original SNES game, but I'm sure that if you compare it to YIDS, you'll see that it's leaps and bounds ahead.

Woah! That came out of left field! An actual 3rd party Wii U (and even Vita) game!? Wowza! Wonder if the console versions will support local multi with the respective handhelds (like MH3U did)?

TBH there's plenty of other games that they could release right now that don't use special chips but seemingly don't want to... (cough: Pilotwings 64, Mother 1, Tetris & Dr Mario, Mario Paint, Pokemon Stadium 1 & 2 etc) People all thought that Nintendo weren't able to re-release Earthbound due to copyright issues and yet, there it was... They're just weird and don't subscribe to any sort of sensible logic

I've heard people spouting this all of a sudden on GAF and I don't see how it could be the case. If there were any licensing issues (and I don't see why there would be, considering that Nintendo co-developed the chip from scratch alongside Argonaut - it's not like it's technology that has been licensed from somebody else), who would they even pay license fees to? Argonaut don't exist anymore!

Same thing happens every generation. Granted, it's worse than ever before now, but it's still not like we haven't gone through this song and dance before... Of course it's upsetting, of course it sucks and of course it's unacceptable; but it's also not exactly unprecedented. But time and time again we come for the exclusive games that we love so much and they always make the whole thing worthwhile You know full well that despite the horrible release schedule and the near enough non-existent 3rd party support that the console still has the games that you want and more than enough of them to justify that pricetag. It's just that you'll have to look elsewhere for all of the big AAA mainstream titles in addition to what Nintendo offer... It sucks, but nothing is ever going to change this because the major publishers don't want to support Nintendo... There just isn't much that interests me on those consoles... I'm not interested in most AAA budget western made productions, annual sports games or the typical dudebro rubbish that dominates today's market It's not like there aren't games that interest me on those machines (the likes of Valkyria Chronicles, God of War 1-3, Bioshock 1, Bayonetta, Heavy Rain, Devil May Cry 4 etc have been brilliant over the last generation), it's just that the ones I like are far and few inbetween and are largely dying out

No idea. Suppose we find out when we find out... I bet we'll see SOR 2 eventually though. If not as a part of this series, then as part of the probable series 3 I have my doubts about it being as part of this series because I think they want to focus on delivering 3D experiences that haven't really been seen yet. SOR2 woudn't really look surprising in any respect since it would basically look just like SOR1 3D. Something like Ristar, Gunstar Heroes or Sonic 2 or 3&K would look very different though, due to the crazy parallax and 3D effects used in their respective bonus stages; so I would imagine that we're more likely to see those games than SOR2 in the short term.

A good choice! Should look really cool in 3D and it's a very different kind of game to be included in this series (the last was a tad heavy on the side scrolling platformers and Super Scalar games. A bit more variety is much appreciated )

There's plenty of great games available (I'm up to 16 retail titles and 13 downloaded ones, not including VC games) and most of the good ones are actually exclusive to Wii U too! Hell I already have more retail games for the Wii U than I have for either the PS3 or the 360! (not combined though. We're not quite there yet...) If you're not interested in Nintendo's own titles or the variety of titles that sit outside of the typical mainstream (COD, Fifa, AC etc) then I have to question why you'd buy the console in the first place though... ...Even though that's where all of the really good games actually reside... New generation, same old story (in all respects)... Eitherway, this game (Watchdogs) is looking to be a stinker anyway, so I wouldn't consider it to be much of a loss personally if it doesn't actually get a Wii U release in the end... So much lost potential...

If it doesn't, you could always set up a new account that has an NNID based in Australia and use that to download something from the AU eShop (the AU game would still be playable on every account on the console, even the UK ones).

This one is a real odd ball. It isn't really a mainline Mario game and that's not a bad thing at all. It was made by a completely different team within Nintendo (R&D1 AKA SPD1 - the Kid Icarus/Metroid/Wario Land/Wario Ware/Rhythm Heaven etc team) as opposed to EAD and it really shows. With SML1, you get the feeling that the developers weren't really happy about being asked to make a "companion" game of sorts to the original SMB on NES. It follows a very similar gameplay structure and tries to emulate the original gameplay while adding in as many different surface elements (that stray as far away from the NES game as possible) as they could; almost a reluctant existence. With SML2 though, R&D1 take an entirely different approach and were clearly let off the leash to make the game they wanted to make. It's slower, more methodological and much more exploration focused than the mainline Mario series; not unlike R&D1's other games, (like Kid Icarus, Metroid and Wario Land) actually! Thematically, it's also really... strange... Again, it strays as far away from the "safe" themes of the mainline series and is best compared to the Wario Land series. I really like the interconnected feel of all of the different levels and the way they all seem to fit together to make up each world - the secret exits were also really well designed, with some utterly genius ways they were hidden - never forget the Hippo Zone and the secret exit in the Mario Toy world! It's not really an acrobatic and athletic platformer like the mainline Mario games, but rather the platforming is slow and functional. Unlike its predecessor (which was built to try and squash down the NES SMB experience onto a device that wasn't really well equipped to handle that fast paced platforming), SML2 is a game that was clearly built from the ground up for the Gameboy alone. Large sprites, slow movement and level design that is designed around the small field of view; it's a game that takes advantage of all of these limitations and focuses on exploration and milder platforming to deliver a very different kind of platformer. This is a game that clearly had a lot more love and care put into it than SML. It's a game that wasn't made out of frustration and reluctance, but of a desire to go in a completely different direction; even when using existing characters and IP. It's basically Wario Land 0 in all but name (In that respect, the name "Super Mario Land 3" was actually a very fitting subtitle for the original Wario Land; much moreso than "Super Mario World 2" was for Yoshi's Island) and is a much better game than its predecessor for it!

HOLY TECHNOS! 2 VC games this week for Wii U!? And they're even games that I actually want and don't already own in some other form What parallel dimension did I fall into this morning!? Not bad! Can we have more weeks like this NOE? Pretty please!

Dare I hope for N's Castle in the Wii U game? Nah of course not. Gen 5 is gonna get screwed over and we all know it

The Wii U trophy screen looks nice. Very different style than previous games (including KIU)

Free running was introduced in Tales of the Abyss; you're probably thinking of the Manual control option in TOS (which lets you jump whenever you want by pressing up on the control stick). Anyway, I should mention that the port is in a better state now than when I first played that demo. It's on par with the PS2 version performance wise (solid 30FPS at all times), just with the loading times improved to the same standards as the GCN version. I still wouldn't say it's a great port, even compared to the PS2 version (the new outlines look crap and the celshading looks a bit weird at times - sometimes it looks like it's not even there at all), but it's a chance to play the PS2 version in English so it gets the job done