Want to play online with staffers and readers?

Mario Kart 7 has a new community feature where you can (hopefully) always find someone from your different communities to play online with. We've got a freshly minted community called "NWR Anonymous" for staffers and readers to join so we can all play together.

To join, all you have to do is take the game online and "Search by Code" under the Communities sub-menu. The code is: 52-8882-2728-4207

If it fills up, then we'll just have to make more!

Nintendo opens a window to the land of Link in Redwood City.

Last year, Nintendo had i-am-8-bit come to their Redwood City offices to decorate their game demo room with a Kirby's Epic Yarn motif. A year later, the felt was feeling the force of gravity and the room was beginning to droop.

With the launch of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and the series' 25th anniversary, Nintendo had i-am-8-bit return to redecorate. The result is a mix of spectacular whole-wall paintings depicting day and night scenes and three dimensional crafts, such as potions, fairies in bottles, and a mask-filled chest. How would you like some stuffed rupees to accessorize your couch? They even covered the floor with artificial turf! Check out their handiwork in the gallery below.

A double dose of fan-made music.

The only thing better than the original music of the Legend of Zelda series is the multitude of ways each and every beloved track has been reinterpreted, remixed, or broken down into something completely new. Dedicated fans have gone about this practice for years, churning out dozens of genre-spanning versions of classics, and now, in the lauded twenty-fifth year of one of Nintendo's flagship series, two more noteworthy albums look to capture the familiar spirit of the adventures of a boy named Link.

Nintendo throws another gaming bash, mass crowding ensues.

I just got home from another one of Nintendo Australia's increasingly popular launch parties at The Nintendo Experience, situated in the lofty levels of an inner-city EB Games store here in Melbourne.

I am exhausted.

From 10 p.m. until 1 a.m., the store was converted into a Nintendo-themed club to celebrate the simultaneous launch of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Super Mario 3D Land. Cosplayers flocked in droves to the store, as well as fans eager to purchase the highly anticipated games.The turnout was incredible, and the upstairs section of the stores was so heavily crowded that movement was often extremely difficult.

Here's a pro-tip for those picking up Zelda this weekend.

Caution, very minor gameplay spoilers below:

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword implements one of the most impressive control schemes I’ve ever seen in a video game. I know this, because for the past seven days I’ve immersed myself in the NWR review copy, putting close to forty hours in. Almost everything the game does, it does flawlessly. Swordplay is fantastic, and using the Nunchuck as your shield is rewarding. Unfortunately, not everything is problem free.

One of the first things I noticed in Skyward Sword was that the on-screen pointer didn’t seem to be controlled by the infrared sensor bar like most Wii games; rather the Wii MotionPlus attachment seemed to take over for the IR. I tested this by pointing my remote in the opposite direction of my TV and experienced no interruption in pointing by doing so. This is why you can, at any time when you are pointing the remote at the screen, press down on the D-Pad to re-center your pointer: it’s all relative to where you start. If you start pointing while your hand is raised upward, then that becomes the center point on the pointing mechanic. It works just fine, but for long-time Wii owners, it could be a bit jarring.

On November 18, 2001, the GameCube launched into our stores and our hearts.

Today, we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the GameCube, Nintendo's fourth home console. So, go grab your systems by their handles, play your proprietary mini-discs, and hook up to the Warp Pipe with your broadband adapter.

This also kicks off a hell of a weekend here at Nintendo World Report, which is fitting considering the GameCube was integral to this site's early days (that happens when you're called Planet GameCube).

You can go read all of our GameCube coverage here, and we've still got more on the way. We'll be concluding our trip through our staff's 10 favorite GameCube games later today.

This independent remake of Metroid 2 is looking pretty fine.

While 3DS owners wait for the Metroid II: Return of Samus to hit the system’s Virtual Console marketplace, they (and everyone else) can and should play the recently released demo for Project AM2R (Another Metroid II Remake), the extremely promising fan update of the oft-overlooked 1991 Game Boy game

The project, which has been in independent development for nearly four years, uses the GameMaker programming platform and takes graphical and gameplay cues from more recent Metroid titles like Zero Mission and Fusion. The large sprites and cramped view of the original are eschewed for a significantly pulled out view. This, along with the new active and pause screen maps, facilitates exploration, something of an unruly task in the original and a necessity for any Metroid game.

The podcast marathon returns to raise money for Child's Play.

It's all over! The telethon was a huge success, and we sincerely thank all the donors, special guests, audience callers, and fantastic NWR staff members who made all this work so well. We did get a recording of the show, warts and all, and we'll be releasing it in parts this week.

Telethon Recording, Part One (3:07:29) - MP3 or AACTelethon Recording, Part Two (3:05:43) - MP3 or AACTelethon Recording, Part Three (3:09:10) - MP3 or AAC

After updating his 3DS, James C. hits the streets of Tokyo in search of Mystery Boxes.

I had a one day delay in getting Super Mario 3D Land (which I'd had on preorder for a while now) thanks to a screw up at Amazon Japan, I ended up getting it on the 4th.

The first thing you'll notice (apart from the very light manual-free box) is that there is a mandatory update to your 3DS before you can even play Super Mario 3D Land. The update, not to be confused with the major update coming later this month, blocks flash carts, but more importantly than that, gives the friend list a much needed update. My friends were sorted by online players first, followed by offline players in alphabetical order after that - nice touch. However the most important change was the ability to jump into an online game with players from the friend list screen. I'm not sure what the official English text will be, but the button in Japanese roughly translates to "play game currently in progress" and is situated at the top of the touch screen.