484 posts tagged with nintendo.
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"This is invisible walls explained, once and for all."
PannenKoek2012: "If you’ve wondered where I’ve been for the past 10 months, it was working day and night on this one video." (YouTube, 3hours, 45 minutes) [more inside]
SpotPass Archival Project for 3DS and Wii U
Help preserve SpotPass content by uploading your database dump of your 2DS, 3DS and Wii U! All online communication services for the Nintendo 3DS, 2DS and Wii U, including the distribution of SpotPass data will be discontinued on April 8th, 2024, at 4pm PDT. After this date, features using SpotPass in games will stop working once this change has taken effect. [more inside]
Recreating a game using a VHS recording of it
The exclusive Satellaview-only broadcast tracks of Nintendo's classic SNES/Super Famicom racing game F-Zero have been recovered by fans, and are available in a romhack on the original F-Zero. The story of their recovery, and in some cases recreation, is told in an interview with the hack's main programmer on classic gaming blog Press The Buttons, which reveals that special tools were used to recreate some of the tracks from out of a VHS recording of the tracks being played when they were originally broadcast. DidYouKnowGaming (12 minutes) also has a video about the process of the tracks' recreation. [more inside]
"This is one of the best endings to a video game I've ever played!"
YouTube video game music analyst, 8-Bit Music Theory (Previously: 1, 2, 3, 4), returns to Hyrule to discuss The Music of Zelda's Best Ending. (Contains major spoilers for the ending of Tears of the Kingdom.)
Micro Mages: How we fit an NES game into 40 Kilobytes
In 2018, retro indie studio Morphcat Games create Micro Mages for the 8-bit Nintendo. Playable as a Windows PC game or on an NES emulator, they discuss how they fit an entire game into 40 kilobytes. [SLYT] [more inside]
Mamma Mia!
Let’s Get Really Nostalgic About The Early Days Of PlayStation
At a GameStop store on Launch Day of PS2 in 2000 [YouTube] ““There was a sense that video games were toys. And Sony is not a toy company.” That’s how a new mini-oral history about PlayStation revolutionizing console gaming begins over at IGN. The words belong to former head of Sony Worldwide Studios, Shawn Layden, and they ring true for anyone who grew up with an NES or SNES. The Nintendo consoles built for angular cartridges could take a beating like children’s building blocks, and the games often revolved around colorful worlds full of knights, dragons, and magic mushrooms. In the ‘90s, PlayStation felt like something entirely different. [...] In addition to the pitch of bringing arcade-level graphics into the home, there was the idea of a video game console that could channel the same feeling of cool imbued in the Sony Walkman and your older sibling’s collection of grunge and hip-hop CDs.” [via: Kotaku]
toxicity persists and worsens in highly competitive games
Despite Advancements, Games Still Aren't Doing Enough To Stop Toxic Voice Chat by Alyssa Mercante [Kotaku] “I started regularly playing competitive online games in 2007, with the launch of Halo 3. Back then, participating in in-game voice chat was harrowing for a 17-year-old girl whose voice betrayed her gender and her youth. I was subjected to such frequent and horrific hostility (rape threats, misogynist remarks, sexually inappropriate comments, you name it) that I eventually started screaming back, a behavior my parents still bring up today. And yet, voice chat is essential in competitive online games, especially modern ones like Call of Duty: Warzone, Apex Legends, Fortnite, Valorant, and Overwatch. All of these popular games require extensive amounts of teamwork to succeed, which is bolstered by being able to chat with your teammates. But in-game voice chat remains a scary, toxic place—especially for women. [...] I spoke to several women about their voice chat experiences, as well as reps from some of today’s biggest online games, to get a better understanding of the current landscape.”
Imagine if the only way to watch Titanic was to find a used VHS tape
An Alarming 87 Percent Of Retro Games Are Being Lost To Time [Kotaku] “The Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) partnered with the Software Preservation Network, an organization intent on advancing software preservation through collective action, to release a report on the disappearance of classic video games. “Classic” in this case has been defined as all games released before 2010, which the VGHF noted is the “year when digital game distribution started to take off.” In the study, the two groups found that 87 percent of these classic games are not in release and considered critically endangered due to their widespread unavailability.” You can read the full 50-page study on the open repository Zenodo. [more inside]
what's old is new again
The Best Reviewed Games of 2023 (So Far) [IGN] The snowball of games delayed out of 2021 and 2022 has settled in 2023, coalescing into the most exciting games lineup of the decade so far. 2023, arguably, marks the proper start of the PS5 and Xbox Series X generation with Unreal Engine 5 support building and an increasing number of developers dropping support for last-gen hardware. Each of the three console manufacturers has at least one blockbuster release scheduled this year — Starfield for Xbox, Spider-Man 2 for PlayStation, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for Nintendo — complemented by a generation-best third-party lineup that includes Hogwarts Legacy, Resident Evil 4, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Street Fighter 6, Diablo 4, Final Fantasy 16, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Hades 2, and Mortal Kombat 1. Five Six months through 2023 and already the year has lived up to its lofty expectations.
Everyone loves Elephant Mario and it’s (mostly) wholesome
Wednesday’s Nintendo Direct was jam-packed with pleasant surprises, from a Super Mario RPG remake to the return of Detective Pikachu. Another standout announcement was a new Mario game, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, which looks like a fun and trippy take on the usual 2D platformer formula. The trailer showed Mario and the gang going on adventures, and at the end of the trailer, Nintendo gave us a sneak peek at a new, goofy-looking fruit that turns Mario into an elephant. Elephant Mario is still recognizably Mario. He’s bipedal, bright-eyed, and keeps his usual mustache, cap, and overalls. (His shoes, however, are gone; presumably, they don’t fit his new elephant feet.) [...] Nintendo didn’t reveal any details about Hollow Knight: Silksong, Metroid Prime 4, or post-release content for Tears of the Kingdom. [via: Polygon]
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The 'Real' Mario Movie
Who needs Illumination? Let a completely different Mario movie play out in your brain as you listen to the completely improvised audioplay The Real Mario Movie (starring, among others, Ellie Spectacular, the woman behind, among other things, the uncommonly clean Youtube Poop account DaThings). By its creators' own admission: 'no script, no reheaseals and zero brain cells'.
just revel in the absurdity and exhilaration of it all
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom changes the conversation By Mike Mahardy [Polygon] “If, as with music, movies, TV, or books, we can look at Tears of the Kingdom as a dialogue between creator and audience, then Nintendo has effectively changed the conversation. Historically, when Zelda players asked Nintendo, “Can I do this?” the answer was usually “no” or “not yet.” Breath of the Wild often answered in the affirmative, but Tears of the Kingdom takes that response one step further: When pressed as to whether something is possible in this enormous, absurd, mysterious world, Nintendo doesn’t just try to say “yes.” It strains to say “yes, but also...””
Nothing Xbox does matters if the games aren't good.
Xbox Is Running Out Of Time To Get It Right by Ethan Gach [Kotaku] “But if Hi-Fi Rush showed the promise of Game Pass, where more focused and stylized games can find an audience without sanding themselves down into dust to appeal to a mass market, Redfall has done just the opposite. Arkane’s vampire shooter feels incomplete and plays like mush, a far cry from the striking, precisely drawn contours of immersive sims like Prey and Dishonored: Death of the Outsider. [...] For years now, Xbox fans and players have been waiting for Microsoft to begin delivering a steady stream of hit exclusives that can rise to the level of those found on PlayStation and Switch, and it simply hasn’t. The results of an acquisition spree of new studios that began in 2018 are mixed at best, with each bright spot—Psychonauts 2, Pentiment—overshadowed by delays, missteps, and radio silence around major projects teased years ago in a premature effort to drum up hype for the Xbox Series X/S.” [more inside]
Nintendo can take 25-30% of his monthly income
Nintendo 'Hacker' Will Be Punished For The Rest Of His Life [Polygon] “A man sentenced to three years in prison for his role in a Nintendo Switch hack-selling scheme has been released early. But he says he will have to pay Nintendo a portion of whatever income he makes every month, for a very long time, as part of a $10 million settlement with company. In a podcast interview (first reported by TorrentFreak), Gary Bowser, 53, said he was let out of federal prison in Seattle early because of his age, medical condition, and nationality (he is Canadian). He will soon return to the Toronto area. But Bowser noted that his plea agreement calls for him to pay Nintendo $10 million in restitution. [...] In December 2021, he agreed to pay Nintendo $10 million to settle a civil lawsuit Nintendo had brought against him. Bowser’s criminal sentence also called for a $4.5 million fine, but since he is returning to Canada, Bowser said he is unlikely to have to pay that.” [Podcast interview with Gary Bowser about release.]
Rehydrated Ganondorf can’t quench your thirst
“The third and final trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is stuffed with new details about Link’s next adventure, including a very good look at the newly reborn Ganondorf. And, as suspected, the rehydrated Ganondorf, seen in Gerudo-jerky form in previous trailers, is moisturized, thriving, and decidedly hot in the sequel to Breath of the Wild. His evil hotness is confirmed in brand-new artwork for Ganondorf released by Nintendo on Thursday, in which his increasingly Akuma-lookin’ ass is shown in great detail. Great man bun, cool pose, and perfectly accessorized, Ganondorf is going to challenge Link for handsomest man in Hyrule (and probably the Triforce, or something).” [via: Polygon] [more inside]
PU (Pendulum Undoing)
Pannenkoek is the person who's been doing the A-button Challenge in Super Mario 64, and along the way has made a number of extremely geeky, but also informative, videos on Mario 64's internals, that explain a number of computer science principles along the way. You know, the person who brought M64's Parallel Universes (PUs) to our knowledge. He has a new video, on crashing the game in Tick Tock Clock by walking into a corner at the right moments (1 hour 12 minutes), and in this one they speak! [more inside]
866 Wii U and 1547 3DS games were purchased with 464 eShop cards.
YouTuber bought EVERY Nintendo Wii U & 3DS game before the Nintendo eShop closes [YouTube] “Nintendo’s decision to close both the Wii U and 3DS eShops might make commercial sense for the company, but for fans and lovers of video game history it’s a disaster, as it’s feared many of the games being removed will disappear and never be seen or made available ever again. Loads of these games are tiny little indie things that probably haven’t been purchased or heard from for years, but that doesn’t mean they’re not worth preserving! [...] In an effort to address this—or at least address it in a single place on as few consoles as possible—YouTuber The Completionist decided to sit down and spend almost a year of his life (328 days in total) buying his way through both libraries.” [via: Kotaku] [more inside]
The gaming industry has changed, and it doesn’t need E3 anymore.
E3 isn’t coming back. [The Verge] “The pandemic proved that gaming could survive without E3. The last year E3 took place in person was in 2019; the event was cancelled in 2020, held as a digital show in 2021, and bounced from in person to online-only and finally to fully cancelled last year in 2022. Yet even without E3 as an anchor, developers and publishers have found ways to make a splash that don’t include the investment required for a big booth on the expo show floor. And when the pandemic arrived, the industry already had a playbook to follow — a playbook written by Nintendo. Since 2011, the company has seen enormous success with its Nintendo Direct video presentations, letting anyone in the world watch big game reveals without attending a physical show. Since then, nearly every major gaming company has adopted the format to create newsworthy moments of their own, and they’re pre-recorded ones that can’t break down on stage or might embarrass in front of a live audience. ” [more inside]
i'm in a pipe / i cannot gripe
Nirvana's Nevermind but with the Super Mario 64 soundfont
Link will be taking to the skies on May 12, 2023!
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom [Official Trailer #2] [Official Trailer #1] [First Look/Teaser] “After years of waiting, Nintendo finally pulled back the curtain a little more on what fans can expect from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. A snazzy new gameplay trailer revealed a ton, including a world that’s more than just a reskin of the one from Breath of the Wild. It starts with an unknown voice calling on its minions to destroy the world, followed later on by Zelda warning Link that he might not be table to take on the new threat poised by the strange zombified demon who sure bears a resemblance to Ganondorf from earlier Zelda games. Plus there’s Link riding a hot air balloon, tractor, and more. Previous trailers made it clear that Link will be taking to the skies in much of Tears of the Kingdom, both in terms of teleporting up to floating islands and making use of a new glider to cover long distances. The hero of time also sports a new magic glove this time around which augments some of the physics-based abilities from the first game and even includes a flamethrower mode.” [via: Kotaku]
Tactics > Social
Fire Emblem Engage May Be The Meaty Tactical RPG Fans Are Hungry For [Kotaku] [Review Roundup] “Fire Emblem Three Houses was adored by many for its detailed characters, intricate relationship building, and consequential story choices. The series’ strategy combat was still there, but hardly the main attraction. Based on early reviews, it sounds like Fire Emblem Engage flips the tables, rewarding fans of the strategy series’ roots while at the same time curtailing the ambitious social elements introduced by its predecessor. Fire Emblem Engage sports VTuber-looking protagonists and a gameplay gimmick that lets players summon heroes from the series’ past to help them in battle. What it doesn’t necessarily have is a cast of fascinating warriors to befriend or a compelling conflict. There are a host of visual and quality-of-life improvements, but the game appears to be more of an homage to the series’ past than its next step forward.” [Overview Trailer] [more inside]
RIYL Radiohead, big chunky cartridges
To celebrate the pioneering electronic music experimentation of Radiohead
and the roughly 15-and-a-half birthday of their pioneering pay-what-you want release of their album In Rainbows
please enjoy this pioneering (and surprisingly upbeat) pay-what-you-want release of In Rainbows covered using samples from N64 games (mostly Mario 64)
and the roughly 15-and-a-half birthday of their pioneering pay-what-you want release of their album In Rainbows
please enjoy this pioneering (and surprisingly upbeat) pay-what-you-want release of In Rainbows covered using samples from N64 games (mostly Mario 64)
Mario Carey
All I Want For Christmas Is You except it's the Wii Shop channel music, or vice versa maybe
People want features that make things easier to use, or more pleasant
A Timeline Of Adaptive Technology In Digital Experiences [Able Gamers]
“Despite its stunning popularity today, video games weren’t always so mainstream. In fact, at its outset in the 70s, the video gaming industry was a small niche market trying to grow its customer base and introduce the world to its technology and stories. As a result, a small-yet-devoted community began to emerge, and people with disabilities saw the immediate value of what the video gaming community could offer them. As such, video game developers and companies began to focus on accessibility in their software and cultivating adaptive technology solutions to promote their companies and games in the press. AbleGamers has spent the last sixteen years creating change via direct advocacy and action in the industry, fighting to remove the barriers to gaming that people with disabilities experience. Today, the major wins for accessibility that we’ve witnessed over the past decade prove that the industry is undergoing a transformation that welcomes people with disabilities to the community.”[more inside]
“Now you're playing with power!”
Someone Named Gumball Uploaded All 285 Issues Of Nintendo Power To Archive.org “All 285 issues of Nintendo Power are now unofficially available in .cbr format. At just over 40 gigabytes for the whole shebang, the vast majority of the collection comes courtesy of Retromags, a community-run project dedicated to archiving classic video game magazines. A couple of remaining issues were sourced via Reddit by Gumball. Scanned in full color, the collection is a wonderful way to browse through gaming and media history.” [via: Kotaku]
When your Pokemon Crystal deserves the best.
Poet, programmer and professor Allison Parrish writes: "Over the summer I dug in deep with Game Boy modding and made this: the Game Boy Pocket SP. [...] In this post, I’m going to talk about why and how I made the Pocket SP, and how you can make your own."
"The main change, obviously, is all the drum bull****."
Last month, YouTuber Ben Kidd—aka: 8-bit Music Theory (previously 1 2)—released his first album, Let's Play, a jazz fusion reimagining of classic Nintendo GameCube era music.
In a recent video on his YouTube channel, 8-bit breaks down how he created his arrangement of the Rainbow Road theme from Mario Kart: Double Dash!! [more inside]
“Mamma mia, I’m-a going to be middle-aged.”
Simon Rich (Previously, Previously, Previously) writes yet again in the New Yorker, this time about the tribulations of Mario as he deals with aging: “Mario”
[N]ow that I’m-a in my forties I don’t really think about my body anymore, and when I do it’s-a to focus on the parts that I’m-a proud of, like my thick mustache and my big strong ass. And, honestly, I can’t tell you how liberating it is just to allow myself to feel-a sexy. Like, why can’t a short fat guy be sexy? I feel-a sexy, and I’m not afraid to say I feel-a sexy.[more inside]
Museum rigs up multi-screen N64 GoldenEye to prevent "screencheating"
Mission In Snowdriftland
Nintendo once had a flash game designed as a sort of advent calendar, each day advertising a new game in a very strong winter line-up. It had an expiration date and disappeared, but one YouTuber had fallen in love with it. Mission In Snowdriftland: Nintendo's Forgotten Flash Game [38m] outlines a 14 year passion quest full of twists and turns and a fortunate ending, from late 2020, right before Flash's demise. [more inside]
Theft vs. Sampling vs. Re-arranging without credit
As lightly reported by Glenn Bunn at ScreenRant, a delightful-and-educational subset of TikToker @thejahni’s videos are devoted to identifying and juxtaposing moments when video games -possibly- swiped from pop songs and moments when pop songs -possibly- swiped from video games: 1, 2, 3, 4 (Sonic only), 5 (Ed: Mamma Mia!), 6.
スーパーマリオブラザーズ
Zelda code dives and Breath of the Wild shenanigans
For Zelda Day 2021:
- Behind the Code looks into disassemblies of the code of NES Zelda games to explain weird behavior: Item Drop Manipulation in Legend of Zelda - Hit Detection in Zelda - Bugs in Zelda II.
- Here's some chests in BotW that are very hard to open,
- and Youtuber/Breath of the Wild expert Kleric shows us (with a great deal of effort) how to open an "impossible" one, as well as how to do a 'flurry rush' wherever you want, how to get the Master Sword whenever, finishes a Divine Beast (a dungeon) with only a pot lid, and presents a short and entertaining collection of moments from his other videos.
flyheccing with the cheez grip
Camera manipulation is ironically still important
Is it possible to complete Super Mario 64 blindfolded? Not only is it possible, it's a speedrun category, as recently demonstrated by Bubzia at SGDQ 2021.
The production quality on this was actually insanely good
Ever wondered what it's like to live as a Bokoblin? Using the latest in stealth technology, Life as a Bokoblin - A Zelda Nature Documentary presents the high risk journey of trained professional integrating and blending into a Great Plateau mid-sized Bokoblin community.
Super Mario World remastered
Owing to last year's Nintendo Gigaleak, an intrepid researcher tracked down the uncompressed PCM samples used in Super Mario World, and others have used them to play tracks from the soundtrack in their "original" fidelity for the first time.
What'd I miss?
Since last summer, Cesar (also known as Guitar_Knight14) has been painstakingly recreating the musical Hamilton inside of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. After six months of work, he completed all of Act 1, which you can view as a YouTube playlist or a single hour-long video. [more inside]
Demystifying Game Development
Bijan Stephen interviews Frank Cifaldi and Kelsey Lewin (The Verge) of the Video Game History Foundation on their efforts to preserve videogame history by studying original source code, art, sketchbooks, documentation, and correspondence. They’ve already deconstructed Aladdin, reconstructed Days of Thunder, and recovered the NES version of SimCity. On October 30, they’ll be celebrating the 30th anniversary of the The Secret of Monkey Island by looking through its source material with creator Ron Gilbert. [more inside]
Identifying Luck in Mario Party
For two decades and across seven systems, the Mario Party games have been a beloved but frustrating experience. You might try with all your might to be the damnable Super Star, but a plethora of factors, some luck-related but some not, conspire to throw the match to your eight-year-old cousin who always plays Yoshi. YouTuber ZoomZike has compiled amazing and exhaustive videos going through every element of four games in the series, and showing what can be manipulated and what can't. It's IDENTIFYING LUCK IN MARIO PARTY: One - Two - Three - Four [more inside]
It’s a three-five, Mario!
This week, Nintendo celebrated Mario’s 35th anniversary with the announcement of a 35-player Super Mario Bros. Battle Royale game, a brand new Game & Watch handheld system, and Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, a combination remote control car and multiplayer augmented reality game.
A Cozy Management Game About Dying
Natalie Flores on Spiritfarer, a heartbreaking and heartwarming meditation on life where the player becomes “a ferry master to the deceased whose job is to help them pass on to the afterlife. By caring for them and helping them fulfill their wishes, you allow the spirits to wrap up the loose ends in their lives that otherwise keep them from achieving peace.” [more inside]
Every Pokemon is interesting and worth talking about
Here's Another Pokemon is a weekend column on Kotaku by Zack Zwiezen which explores interesting, unusual, and startling Pokedex entries (with a fair amount of assistance from Bulbapedia). Each entry discusses a different Pokemon at length, with random facts, personal observations, and highlighted fan art and comments. [more inside]
“You were close. I expect a better shot next time.”
During a special YouTube presentation this morning, The Pokémon Company announced a new version of classic Nintendo 64 game Pokémon Snap in development for Nintendo Switch, aptly named New Pokémon Snap. They also revealed free-to-start puzzle game Pokémon Café Mix and Pokémon Smile, a mobile app meant to help children brush their teeth. This is in a similar vein to their previously released, Pokémon Sleep.
V
PS5: The Future of Gaming Show [YouTube] [Twitch.tv] The PS5 reveal event starts today, June 11th, at 1 PM PDT / 9 PM BST / 10 PM CEST. The digital games showcase itself will run "for a bit more than an hour" and give viewers a "first look" at some PS5 games that will be playable when the console releases this holiday season, according to the official PlayStation blog. The event will be "best" streamed with headphones due to some "cool audio work in the show," but Sony did not specify further. [via: Gamespot]
Paper models of older computers
"Construct the computer from your childhood or build an entire computer museum at home with these paper models, free to download and share." via Ian Visits.
a single disk labeled "NINTENDO: HOT ROD TAXI, FINAL."
30 years later, a lost Days of Thunder NES game has been recovered from 21 floppy disks [Ars Technica] “In one of the most unreal data-recovery projects we've ever heard of, a seemingly lost NES game has been unearthed—as archived on a single hard drive backup, spread across 21 5.25-inch floppy disks. A joint effort led in part by the Video Game History Foundation began earlier this year with a pile of leftover CD-Rs, floppies, computers, and other errata donated by the family of late programmer/designer Chris Oberth. The results, thus far, are one fully functioning game whose code had to be recovered, then compiled, to run on original NES hardware.” [Days of Thunder NES Gameplay]
Truly definitive.
Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition [Game Trailer] “First released in 2010 for the Nintendo Wii, Xenoblade Chronicles was a smash hit in Japan that was heralded as a breakthrough innovation for the JRPG genre - and then took a year to release in PAL format and another year after that to arrive in North America. [...] Ten years after its initial release, Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition comes to Nintendo Switch and brings with it an overhaul of the original's now-dated graphics. The title goes well beyond that description though, providing fans with new content, additional features, and a preservation of the series' appealing storytelling.” [via: ScreenRant] [more inside]
Remember The Legend of Zelda? He's back! In Sudoku form.
A sudoku based tribute to the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time