Dcubed

Calciobit is getting localised!? OH MY GOD! Wow! No way did I think that would ever have a chance at a western release (EU only and eShop only, but still!) Nice to see that they're bringing over The Ogre as well; thought that they'd just skip it and go straight to IE Go. Currently frantically refreshing the eShop for Jett Rocket 2! GIMME GIMME GIMME!!!

It's like surgically attached to my sensor bar! I couldn't remove it even if I wanted to :p (Don't even remember how it happened!) I suppose there's a chance that it might come in handy one day... I guess (I could always swap it for another one, I somehow now have 3 Wiimote sensor bars, but eh? It would just feel weird not having it there now - and buggered if I'm gonna bother re-sticking a different sensor bar to my TV again )

Guys! I've got this current weekly goal in the bag! Nah, I'm not changing my goal

Yeah, it's very nice Weird that I just happen to make a post asking why nobody had copied them just a few days ago and suddenly... VOILA! Pretty hilarious to see people signing praises about Sony doing this, saying that they're leading the way for consumer rights, when Nintendo already did this many months ago in Europe (and over a year ago in Japan :p ).

NOA have said this about previous Nintendo Directs and they've gone on to make new Wii U announcements in them anyway, so I wouldn't get too hung up about that little tidbit... Yeah, they've been hinting at it for a good while now (they were originally hinting at it happening in the last week of October/first week of November, with them originally planning to have the game announced during the video - which would explain why the announcement they ended up making had nothing to show of the game other than a logo and a single picture; since they didn't expect the video to get delayed an extra week and a half or so). Any word on a Japanese ND happening at the same time BTW? You have my axe

The 2DS hasn't even been announced for a Japanese release yet, so it's obviously a performance issue. They obviously just wanted the extra GPU power for graphics (which would explain why it's graphics look so surprisingly good). It's not the first 3DS game to not support 3D at all (some other examples outside of this and Pokemon X&Y include Nightsky, Hydroventure Spin Cycle, Cubic and Senran Kagura)

We've never had a US only Nintendo Direct before and I doubt that they'll start now (NOE are unusally late to announce their one though...) As for the content itself... Surely it's time for details on the N64/GBA (and future to-be-supported consoles) VC!? Also I'm really itching for a Bayonetta 1 port to Wii U! A surprise announcement in time for Xmas would be much appreciated Otherwise, I expect solid release dates for the Q4 3DS and Wii U games (since absolutely nothing that is bound for 2014 has a release date at all!) and some details on the upcoming Wii Sports Club sports and Steel Diver 2.

Wow! Capcom's making up for lost time here! That means that they have only 1 NES/SNES game left to re-re-release from the Wii VC before they start digging into their un-re-released catalogue! (Street Fighter Alpha 2 SNES). I'll take Demon's Crest please, thank you very much!

From playing the PS4 lineup at Eurogamer, this is BY FAR the best launch title. By a mile!

I absolutely agree. It's ridiculous that there's no OS level voice chat function! Developers shouldn't have to code their own voice chat solution (while I'm at it, the Xbone is gonna suffer from the same problem too; totally ridiculous when the 360 already had a fantastic party chat system!)

In Mario though, lag like that is a total game breaker though due to the precise nature of the game (likewise, nobody complained when Rayman Origins and Legends lacked online play, because lag + twitchy platformer with frame reliant timing = A bad time) But yeah, the lack of a global voice chat solution is total BS. They should've made it an OS feature from the get go (hell it's not even like their own games haven't implemented voice chat either, so they clearly see the value of it!). Mind you though, considering that the system has (or at least had at launch) 1GB of RAM set aside for OS functions, they could easily add cross game voice chat in if they wanted to... But yeah, for Wii Sports Club in particular, I reckon that they were originally designing it with some future upcoming Miiverse features (in particular: the boot-to-game-from-post feature that is due in an future Miiverse/system update), but it wasn't ready in time for launch. But either way, the point is that Namco designed the game's online system, not Nintendo; so that game's particular online setup shouldn't really reflect the entire system's online experience (which in other games is absolutely fine - 3rd party games perform just like they do on other consoles), or Nintendo's own stance on online play in their own games.

Shouldn't we be complaining at Namco for Wii Sports Club's friends matchmaking? They did make the game after all... (And it's not like their other online games are lacking in features...) In fact, almost all of Nintendo's own internally developed games with online multiplayer (Mario Kart DS/Wii/7, Animal Crossing Wild World/Let's go to the City/New Leaf, Metroid Prime Hunters, Planet Puzzle League, Advance Wars Days of Ruin, Dragon Quest Wars) have had fairly robust online features; relative to what the system could offer at the time. Nintendo just don't make a lot of online games themselves, for various reasons (be it issues of game-breaking lag in stuff like Mario, or it's a single player only game, or the multiplayer game they're making just isn't well suited for online play - like Mario Party).

Yeah I agree; the friends matchmaking system is pure crap. Both Nintendo AND Namco have had much better systems in their past games, going back to Mario Kart DS style matchmaking is just absurd! I suppose it's possible that it might've originally been designed to allow players to jump in directly from Miiverse (since joining players games from Miiverse posts is a feature that is due in an upcoming update), but with Wii Sports Club being pushed out the door before that update is ready; that feature is currently unavailable, making friends matchmaking much more barebones than planned... I suppose we'll see soon enough though...

Controls work perfectly for me. No calibration problems at all (well, except for that time I left the curtain open - DAMN YOU SUN AND YOUR IR LIGHT POLLUTION!) Still haven't quite gotten the hang of slice and top-spin shots though...

They haven't reduced the quality of any of their assets with any of their already released games and neither has any 3rd party developer. Of course they wont. BTW, all audio on Wii U is uncompressed LPCM anyway (in fact, it's the only format the hardware supports!), so there's no need to worry about developers compromising the audio quality.

Not surprising really. No FMV + minimal voice acting = small file size. Super Mario Galaxy 2 is roughly half the size of the first game (despite featuring more content) because it features no FMV, unlike its predecessor.

Not really a question, it'll be Chrom for sure. They always have Marth and the protagonist from the latest FE game.

Not with Wii U and 3DS download codes at GAME! (at least at launch anyway). Why on earth Nintendo continue to keep the codes exclusive to them in the UK (in Japan, they're available at every retailer), I have no sodding idea, but they're still great! Making the download codes sellable at whatever the retailer deems fit is a genius move that I'm surprised that Sony and MS haven't copied yet (it's just a shame that GAME have a practical monopoly on them right now )

Oh nice! It's the little things that really make Nintendo games what they are BTW, I love how they make all these little idle movements and such visible, even when playing online (that must've been really tough from a netcode perspective!). Really goes a long way towards making online feel that much more personal It's just a shame that the friends match setup is such utter balls Hopefully this'll be one of those things that they change and update over time (along with Wii Fit U style custom communities), what with this being touted as an ongoing service and all...

Another video from Eurogamer, this time going over some of the uses for the Gamepad throughout one of the game's levels... Glad to see them making some creative uses of the Gamepad. I was worried that they would be making very little use of it, seeing as how they've shown off very little Gamepad usage so far. Nice to see that's not the case (and it's also nice to see some more asymmetric gameplay on offer here). Hope they went all out with more crazy concepts like this!

Yup. All 5 sports will require Motionplus.

Yes, you can still throw the bowling ball like in the original Wii Sports/Resort BTW, I'm not the only one who thinks that the game feels weird am I? Stylistically, it feels off - doesn't feel like Wii Sports at all (more like Namco's Go Vacation & We Ski series - which I suppose makes sense considering the team that made WSC...) It does play well though, which I suppose is what matters most; still, it does bug me...

Well it was released less than 20 mins ago, so I doubt it has downloaded automatically already! Give it a few hours and it'll probably have started/finished on its own.

IT'S OUT! GO GO GO! Who wants to get smacked at Tennis right now? I'm waiting

I'm surprised that they're basing his SSB4 design on New Mystery of the Emblem rather than Fire Emblem Awakening. Guess they still consider his identity to be a spoiler, no matter how painfully obvious it is... (either that or they just want to carry on the tradition of teasing us with references to games that never got a western release )