Miitomo, Nintendo’s first mobile game, will launch on March 17 in Japan, according to a tweet from Nintendo.
Preregistion is still open at the Miitomo website and will earn My Nintendo Platinum Points for anyone with a Nintendo Account. Miitomo’s English website still lists a March release.
Miitomo is a free-to-play mobile game and is the first of five games announced by Nintendo and mobile partner DeNA. The game heavily features Mii characters and social interaction with other users. The other four games have no details other than a 2016 release date.
The Nintendo Direct featured an extended look at the upcoming Metroid Prime: Federation Force, including strong words from the producer of the Metroid Prime series.
Tanabe has wanted to tell this story for a decade, even going back to the DSi. "Metroid Prime: Federation Force is a game that absolutely belongs in the Metroid Universe," Tanabe said during today's Direct. "That I promise."
The multiplayer focus left Samus out as a playable character, but introduced traditional party roles like healer, warrior, and mage. The team needs to work together to balance the weight of equipment and spoils between the party. The players wear suits from "Project Golem," a program aiming to mimic Samus' Power Suit.This group, the "Federation Force," is ambushed by Space Pirates on their first mission and must work together to survive. Samus will appear as a non-playable character.
Metroid Prime: Federation Force will release late this spring, and several live demos have been announced starting with WonderCon later this month.
Edit: The balance update will release on March 8 with the two weapon combination updates starting in April.
Splatoon is getting a two-part update offering new weapon combinations and balances to gameplay and matchmaking starting in April, today's Direct revealed.
Weapons, sub-weapons, and abilities that are underused by the community are being strengthened, then offered in new combinations to encourage more variety.
Volume 1 should release in April, with Volume 2 release sometime in the future. The combinations are "hand-picked" by Sheldon, the in-game weapons seller.
Keys with locked doors, skewers from Super Mario World, and Super Expert difficulty will release on March 9 in Super Mario Maker, shown off during today's Direct.
Keys can be hidden in the stage or in an enemy, creating mandatory boss battles, or be locked behind a handful of pink "key coins."
Super Hard difficulty will unlock new costumes. Tetra from Windwaker was shown.
Super Mario Maker's Bookmark site will also add new rankings and features.
In Big John Games’ post-apocalyptic train simulator, Lionel City Builder 3D: Rise of the Rails, the world is in ruin. The only things left intact are the world’s train tracks and your collection of old trains. The story ends there. There are 16 short missions covering basic train tasks like moving passengers and delivering cargo, but the world never feels very destroyed. The last two missions are the only ones that are difficult at all. The rest all feel like tutorials for harder levels that never come.
The meat of the game is supposed to be Creative Mode. In Creative Mode, you build a city and track for their trains to drive on. You cannot apply objectives or even pick up passengers. Tracks can be shared through QR cards, but I had trouble getting the 3DS camera to read them.
Placing the tracks is quite a pain. Each of the seven environments loads with a preset layout of tracks. You can then grab a piece of track and wiggle it, moving the entire track with it. I spent almost twenty minutes trying to undo a loop I accidentally created in my first town. Tracks can go anywhere without any complications, so you can drive a train through the side of a mountain or through a building.
A decent number of objects can be scattered throughout the map, like buildings and shops, but a lot of them look super similar. Each house comes in a few color variations and it’s hard to even tell the skyscrapers apart. Most objects have values attached to them. The goal is to balance objects so that everyone has a job, food, and is happy, but objects need to be placed close to each other to count. After hours of careful balancing failed, I ended up placing every object in the exact same spot to please everyone.
Driving the train is pretty boring, no matter how nice your town is. You can speed up, slow down, stop, and reverse your train, and each engine has a different top speed. You can choose from a handful of different engine and a dozen or so train cars. The camera stays focused on the train in seven of the eight camera modes, making it difficult to even appreciate your world. The graphics are awful, even by handheld standards, and there’s only one song.
There are achievements to unlock, such as building in a new environment or driving a train at a certain speed, but they certainly are not satisfying. The final achievement I got was for driving on 1,000 miles of track. The fastest train tops out at 130 MPH, so that’s almost ten hours of train driving. Getting achievements doesn’t actually unlock anything, though. There isn’t a secret second story mode hidden behind those ten hours of train driving. I tried.
This game might not be a ton of fun, but I fell in love with it once or twice. It’s a train set, even if it is pretty limited, and that’s okay. I do wish there had been more to the story mode or an unlock system of sorts for more objects.
The Pokémon Company has released 24 animated stickers on the popular LINE platform.
The set includes Pikachu and other starters from multiple generations. Nintendo released a set of Animal Crossing stickers last September. The set goes for $1.99 in the US, €1.99 in Europe, and ￥240 in Japan.
LINE lets users communicate around the world by sending text and picture messages and placing phone calls over the Internet. The app has previously released sticker sets for Star Wars, Yo-kai Watch, Sanrio, and more.
2015 was a special year for me. I started writing for Nintendo World Report and went back to school after a decade of working out the finances. I found a huge local Nintendo group. I got to know 2015’s Nintendo Retail Rep of the Year winner. (Congrats Pepper!) Even though I was super busy, I found the time to play some amazing games in 2015 that will help define this year in my life. Instead of focusing on why these games are well-made, I’m looking at what makes these games so special to me.
?. Xenoblade Chronicles X
I preordered the original Xenoblade Chronicles when it was still called Monado. I spent years telling friends and family that I couldn’t spent time with them because I needed to go home and “unlock the secrets of the Monado.” Xenoblade Chronicles X even coming out in North America without a fight makes me damn happy. I preordered the special edition as soon as possible, but it came out so close to Christmas.
I told anyone that would listen that the only thing I wanted for Christmas was for someone to go to the mall by my house on December 4th and pick it up for me. I had the money. I could’ve picked it up, but I waited. Weeks later, I even ran into another special edition in the wild, but I left it alone. On Christmas, I ended up getting my copy of the game, meaning that someone loves me enough to follow a bizarre and specific series of instructions in order to get me a Christmas gift. I don’t know what to do with this power, but I must try to use it for good.
I’m only fifteen hours into the game, and I have no idea what’s going on. I do know Xenoblade Chronicles X belongs somewhere on this list, though, so I gave it a question mark.
9. Pokémon Rumble World
I’m not exactly thrilled that Pokémon is coming out with so many free-to-play games, but I am thrilled that the Pokémon Rumble mechanics are still being revisited. The 3DS’s Rumble Blast is my favorite, but Rumble World got everyone to try one of my favorite game series. I’ve spent a good chunk of my life in the world of toy Pokémon collecting and battling the cute little things, so I’m glad that a free-to-play entry was able to throw the series into the public discussion for a while.
8. Affordable Space Adventures
I played Affordable Space Adventures with my younger sister, a filthy casual, and we had a blast. She was in charge of steering, and I was in charge of all the knobs. I also broke the game out at a birthday party for a filthy hardcore gamer. Even though the game maxes out at three controllers, it’s all about communication, so I was able to play as a fourth player just by yelling at my friends. Some of the later puzzles got too hard and time consuming as we got tired, but this game gave me memories that I will forever cherish.
7. Yoshi’s Woolly World
Yoshi has a similar story to ASA above. I was able to play and replay these levels with a huge range of players. Instead of immediately replaying each level to look for collectibles, I’d wait until a different friend came over and make them search with fresh eyes. The game is fun, even if it isn’t amazing, but I’ll remember all the time I spent with it. It also sold me on three expensive “cat toy amiibo.”
6. LBX: Little Battlers eXperience
The Mega Man Battle Network games were about friendship, computers, and netbattling! I absolutely ate those games up as a kid. While the DS successors captured some of that feeling, the new premise was boring and the story was too predictable. Now, LBX has come to bring me back to my childhood. LBX nails the story of a kid and his toy saving the world, knowing when to be campy and when to be serious. The actual combat mechanics are deep enough to satisfy me, especially after I convinced a buddy of mine to pick up the game. I haven’t been this excited for an inevitable sequel since playing Mega Man Battle Network 3.
5. Splatoon
I was not excited for Splatoon when it was announced. I thought it looked like something designed by a Japanese focus group for American teens. Its focus on online and competitive spirit were not my style. Still, like a good Nintendo fan, I picked it up at launch anyway. I don’t know how I got so addicted. Before long, I was splatting fools left and right, covering the world in my colored ink. I ended up buying three copies of the game for my bros. A fourth joined us shortly afterward. The online scene got a lot better a lot faster than us, and my squad kind of fell apart. Still, I’ll always remember the late nights we had together.
4. Super Mario Maker
How did this get on this list? This game taught me that YOU’RE ALL MONSTERS and I hate you. How could you make such a difficult Mario level? Did I do something wrong? I thought my levels were fun and innocent, and you respond with this Mario-themed death trap? I spent TWO HOURS trying to beat your damn maze of Hammer Bros. There wasn’t even a mushroom in the level. At least I had a reason to use my amiibo.
3. Octodad
Octodad taught me a ton about my own dad. I realized that we all just sort of fake adulthood for a while until it seems normal. I don’t know why anyone lets me write for them or be on their podcast or drive a car or own pets, but I pretend that these are things that I should totally be allowed to do. Octodad taught me that we all do that. Octodad doesn’t know how to be a person or a dad, but it’s okay because he’s doing a great job anyway. Nobody suspects a thing.
2. Majora’s Mask 3D
In November of 2000, I got the Majora’s Mask strategy guide. I didn’t end up getting the game itself until Christmas. Still, I read the entire guide cover to cover more than once. When I finally got the game, I lived in that world. The Clock Town theme is stuck forever in my head. I know the game’s residents better than I know myself. I remind myself that it always rains on the second day whenever I plan three days of anything. However, I was young, and I never beat the Stone Temple. With this remake, I was able to power through it. The portable version was my constant companion through my first semester as a returning college student. I got every mask and heart piece and was even able to beat my childhood enemy, the Stone Temple. I decided to face Majora for my first time with just my regular transformation masks, leaving the Fierce Deity mask I had worked so hard to obtain unequipped. I cried. Finally watching that end cutscene after more than a decade of growing up broke something inside of me. I faced my childhood and defeated it. Maybe I really am an adult now.
1. Amiibo Hunting
I’m kidding, I’m totally not an adult! I spent a lot of this year writing, working, making videos, and doing homework, but I would drop anything if I heard rumors about an Amiibo. I had decided against buying Amiibo, telling myself that if I left my good job that I hated to go back to school, I wasn’t allowed to buy any. Then, my beautiful family somehow tracked down ten of the rarest Amiibo for Christmas. It. Was. On.
I spent nights outside of Toys ‘R’ Us based on rumored restocks. I called far away GameStops and pretended to work at other locations to have rare Amiibo shipped in. I wrote my first college paper about Amiibo scalpers and got an A. I was on Amazon when Esteban told me to be, skipping class to follow the word of r/amiibo’s false prophet. It all came crumbling down when Greninja went up on Toys ‘R’ Us’s website.
The toy was rumored to go up at 7 AM Eastern. Not wanting to miss it, I decided to stay up all night. I passed the time by making an awful music video to a song off the Pokemon 2BA Master album. A friend texted me.
“Dude, Greninja’s up.”
Greninja went up at 12 AM Pacific instead. I rushed to the site, but I had missed it. He was gone. The second half of the music video is just me crying in front of my computer in the middle of the night. I cursed Nintendo, and was ready to throw everything I had away. It wasn’t fun anymore. I looked at all my games and crap I’d bought over the years and realized that I hated it all. Nintendo botched the Amiibo supply, and I took it personally. There was still hope, though.
A rumor surfaced that on April 27th, Toys ‘R’ Us would have a limited number of preorders available. I showed up before close on April 26th. I talked my best friend into joining me a few hours later, and we waited. My much smarter friend only has three Amiibo, so I’m not sure how I got him to come, but I’m glad he did. Almost seven hours after I arrived, a little red car pulled up. He asked if we were waiting for Amiibo. This guy’s name is Cale, and he’s one of my best friends now. I made two more friends, Matt and Kelsey, about a month later outside of Target. These aren’t just Facebook or Twitter friends, these are people I spend holidays with. I wore a shirt with Cale’s face on it to Cale’s ugly sweater party. Kelsey and Matt had me over for a mini-Christmas where she let me ride her Mega Yarn Yoshi Amiibo.
Even though Amiibo Hunting isn’t a video game, the thrill and excitement of camping out, making new friends, and feeling like you’re part of a community will stay with me forever. I have new people in my life that I never would have met otherwise, and I have like sixty little figures!
Pokkén Tournament’s Japanese website has been updated to include a Japan exclusive Wii U bundle. The bundle comes with a black 32 GB Wii U system, a copy of Pokkén Tournament, a special booklet, and a Dark Mewtwo amiibo card. The game and the bundle release on March 18th, 2016, with the bundle going for 36,000 yen.
Alongside the bundle, a special controller will also be available. The simplified controller features the same layout as the arcade version of the game with a few extra buttons in the middle. The controller is listed at 3,480 yen.
The website also features a new trailer with release dates and a glimpse of Dark Mewtwo.
The North American website still lists the game for spring 2016, and the amiibo card is included with all first run copies of the game including the system bundle.
Yoshi was so crappy in this game. He was like a delicate flower that handled poorly. I really hated that the camera would reset behind you whenever you hovered, sometimes clipping through walls and stuff. That made some levels way too difficult
Final Fantasy Explorers, Square-Enix's multiplayer monster-hunting game, will be launching in North America on January 26th and in Europe on January 29th. The Western releases will include all the DLC currently available to Japanese players.
A Collector's Edition is set to include an artbook, a soundtrack, a Nintendo 3DS case, and exclusive quests for unlocking classic Final Fantasy weapons. Every edition of the game lets players switch between popular Final Fantasy costumes and characters and the original player character.
Mario and Luigi: Paper Jam, a crossover between the Mario and Luigi and Paper Mario series, had a new trailer and details shown off during the November Nintendo Direct. A new card mechanic was shown off, giving the Bros. powerful new attacks. These cards can be unlocked with amiibo from the Super Mario series and feature art from Mario's long history.
Nintendo also showed off giant Papercraft battles where Paper Mario transforms into massive figures for special battles. Paper Mario can use his signature moves outside of battle, such as turning into a paper airplane or slipping sideways through small cracks. Attacks using all three brothers were also shown off.
Nintendo gave the game a release date of January 22, 2016 in North America and December 4, 2015 in Europe.
I've waited a really long time to play Octodad. Young Horses’ indie adventure was released over a year ago on other platforms and has finally made its way to the Wii U. Octodad tells the story of a father that loves his family and is secretly an octopus. Three of his tentacles are controlled by the player and act as legs and an arm. Octodad has to spend a normal day with his family without letting anyone figure out that he's an octopus.
Octodad controls pretty terribly at first. Lifting and moving each leg individually is confusing and difficult, and using both analog sticks to reach around and pick up items is frustrating. It's also hilarious. Fighting the controls really made me feel like an octopus trying to move on land. Watching Octodad accidentally destroy a grocery store or tear apart his house kept me giggling through most of the levels. By the end of the game, I had pretty good control over Octodad and could get myself to alternate paths and hard to reach places pretty easily.
Octodad’s story is super short, but the three secret neckties in each level brought me back to explore. Almost all of the ties are extremely well-hidden and require a bit of digging to find. The developers also included their fastest times for each level. I was surprised to find two meaty bonus levels after beating the game, both including ties and times. The game is a spectacle, though, and I played through most of the game a few different times to show friends.
Where Octodad really shines is the writing. The story is cute, if predictable, but the dialogue is some of the wittiest stuff I've ever heard in a game. The children’s personalities are well-defined, and the wife’s obliviousness is adorable. Throwaway lines from background characters made me laugh so hard I needed to pause more than once. Octodad’s theme song is stuck in my head, and I can't stop smiling.
Most of Octodad takes place during a family trip to the aquarium, and it gets pretty tiring. The bonus levels add some variety with brand-new environments, but I still want to see Octodad at the office or at the kids’ school. The game chronicles a very busy day for Octodad, but I want to see more of his life.
The Wii U version does suffer from slowdown at the beginning of every new objective, and I did run into a terrifying audio glitch with a ton of stuttering that required a reload. Otherwise the game is perfectly enjoyable on Wii U. There's also a co-op mode that has players controlling different tentacles. It's good for a laugh, but it spikes the difficulty up considerably.
I loved Octodad’s premise right when I heard about it, and I’m glad to finally have the chance to play it. The Wii U version doesn’t run at 100%, but It’s already sold me on any projects Young Horses works on in the future. I just hope it comes to a Nintendo platform sooner.
The Rivers of Alice is a weird game. Alice goes to sleep at night and dreams of crazy point-and-click adventure puzzles based on her deepest fears. The game was put together by Delirium Studios, Spanish band Vetusta Morla, and artist Ane Pikaza. This artistic focus is front and center for the entire game. Some of the deeper themes were lost on me, but I got enough out of The Rivers of Alice for it to make an impact on me.
Each screen of the game has a unique feel to it. The hand-drawn backgrounds, simple puzzles, and varied soundtrack make this world feel alive. The music is almost hauntingly wistful. Every song made me want to cry and laugh at the same time. The loading screens suggest playing with headphones, and I’d have to second that.
The loading screens also suggest taking a break if you get stuck. I only got stuck on a few puzzles, but coming back with fresh eyes sure did help. Most of the puzzles are pretty easy to figure out, but an NPC on the first screen is loaded with tips to get through almost every puzzle. Alice’s walk can be pretty slow, so the long trek back to the beginning is plenty of punishment for anyone wanting a hint. Alice’s slow pace and emotional music did have me wandering around pretty dream-like when I did get stuck.
All interactions between Alice and other characters are completely image based. Alice keeps track of a lot of stuff in her notebook, and there’s also room for you to make your own notes. I ended up using my cell phone for most of my notes, but it’s still nice that the game has something built in.
I only found one puzzle really difficult, a music puzzle about halfway through the game, but that may have had something to do with a decent amount of background noise. I never figured out the final puzzle, either. I mindlessly tapped the GamePad screen until the puzzle magically solved itself. I thought I was unlocking the final areas of the game, but then the game just ended. There isn’t a linear story or anything, so it was hard to gauge how far into the game I was at any given moment. I just didn’t think that it would end after the only bad puzzle in the game. I was only upset long enough for the credits to load. The ending song totally made me cry. It’s like every song being played at once, capstoning the game perfectly.
I only spent a few hours with the game, and a second playthrough would probably take less than an hour to complete. The game is subtitled, “Extended Version,” but I’d sure appreciate an Even More Extended Version. Nothing feels tacked on, though, so anything that was added during its port from iOS still feels like part of the original game.The game did soft-lock on me almost immediately after starting the game, but I didn’t encounter any other technical problems during my playthrough.
The Rivers of Alice has some deep themes that I didn’t really get, but I definitely felt the emotions associated with them. The beautiful graphics and unforgettable soundtrack make me want to stay longer in this world, but the short run time and lack of replayability make that difficult. Maybe I’ll dream of my own point-and-click adventures tonight.
The words hit me like a ton of bricks. Ingress’ soothing in-game rhythms flowed over me like a massive wave of baby blankets.
“Scanner disabled; location inaccurate” is displayed on my screen. The beautiful, all-metal design of my now two-year-old phone blocks the GPS signal. I haven’t launched this game since figuring that out. Pokémon Go, the upcoming project from The Pokémon Company and Ingress-maker Niantic, brought up a lot of memories for me. Ingress is vicious and life-consuming, while Pokémon is friendly and accessible. I don’t know how the two will work together. I do know Ingress, though, and I’m excited to see what Pokémon can bring to the formula. But what exactly is Ingress? Let me explain it for you.
In Ingress, the world is divided into two teams: The Enlightened and The Resistance. The teams fight for control of real-world landmarks, or “portals,” using Android and iOS devices with a data connection and strong location signal. Controlling and leveling up two portals allows them to be “linked” and eventually turned into a “field.” There’s a level up system, item farming, and local chat.
I was working at a mall RadioShack when the Ingress beta launched. A group of Shackers and I recreated the Ingress logo out of Android phones. Niantic was pleased and gave us early access. We recruited a local StreetPass enthusiast and a mall security guard and then, our crew was formed. We owned the mall within days. Our nights were spent walking around downtown Omaha in the dead cold of winter. We participated in a few local meet-ups through a Google+ group and turned the town green, only to find it blue again hours later. Something powerful was out there, and we were determined to find out what.
One night, while rolling through Omaha’s historic Boys Town charity campus, I ran into a powerful, Level 8 portal. Level 8 was the original level cap. I snooped around and realized it was fresh. Very fresh. The portal was being recharged almost immediately after I attacked it! I looked around, scared. I saw the blue glow of a phone screen lighting up the interior of a beautiful silver car. I turned my volume up and stood right next to the car.
He rolled down his window and introduced himself. He was an early beta tester that worked at the Google Data Center in Council Bluffs on the other side of the downtown river. He and the other Iowan Googlers had been playing for months. In Omaha. Nebraska. Not Iowa. I thanked him for the introduction and left, determined to take back my hometown from those dirty, no-good Resistance players.
Months passed. Western Nebraska turned green, and Eastern Iowa turned blue. Omaha was constantly changing hands. I was level 7, the highest-levelled player of the original Shackers. People left, and people joined. My StreetPass recruit had become a leader in our Google+ group, organizing parties and strategizing attacks. The two of us set out to turn the city green. We each brought extra batteries and I had a massive battery pack. The Resistance was about to go down.
We started after dark, just outside of town at the westernmost blue portal, taking down a massive field cutting through Omaha. We weaved our way through the suburbs. Teammates started to notice us in the chat, offering to set up links and defend portals. The University was green before midnight. The two of us held our phones out the window to keep them from overheating. The app was heavy and still in beta, after all.
By the time we got downtown, our portals out west were under attack. We did our best to defend them from across town. Luckily, other Enlightened members had reinforced our portals and were still on site. We decided to focus on the massive blue fortress in front of us, so we parked at the courthouse and started our attack.
Ingress took you to places you knew you shouldn’t be: the employee courtyard of the courthouse, the rooftop garden of the huge banking building, the yard of the tired old train station. That was half the fun. Even though we weren’t doing anything wrong, straining to get as close to the Public Library as possible at 2 a.m. sure looked suspicious. We got the fringes of downtown without being arrested or attacked, though. Then it was time for the Old Market.
The Old Market is old. Almost everything on the block is historic, so almost everything on the block is a portal. They were all blue. We worked our way slowly down the street, leaving every 20 minutes to recharge our in-game energy. We had almost done it! Omaha was almost green! Then we started to get the notifications. A Resistance member had made their way downtown. We watched our beautiful work turn blue on the map before our very eyes. We were both low on items, so we had to retreat.
We walked over a few streets to grab more items. I was pretty well stocked on weak weapons, but they wouldn’t do much against strong portals. The intruders must’ve ran out of items or energy or time because they left things a mess. Many of our downtown portals were damaged, but still up. They left portals unclaimed. We could still do it. The Old Market’s main street took us over an hour to turn green, but, boy, did it feel good. Almost every portal in the city was green, but there was one big one left.
The pedestrian bridge over the river.
The bridge was built as a symbol of friendship between our two cities and our two states, and I planned on taking control of it. It was obvious that many powerful Resistance members had a hand in creating this monster of a portal. It was linked all across Council Bluffs and even linked to the Google Data Center.
It was an epic battle. We attacked the portal, and it attacked back. We had to retreat a handful of times. But then, as the sun began to rise, we claimed that portal as our own. Players from around the city started to link portals to the bridge. Within minutes, Omaha, no, Nebraska was covered in a massive green field. I looked at my experience and noticed I’d hit Level 8. I had hit the level cap. I had beat the game.
I never played Ingress again.
I still get notifications from forgotten Google+ chats once in a while. The game has been out of beta for a long time now, and I still follow Ingress on Facebook. I’m due for a new phone this fall, and I’ll be sure to check reviews on GPS signal strength, but I don’t know if I’ll go back to Ingress. It was such a huge part of my life, but, since I left, I’ve filled that part of my life with other things. Still, I will be playing Pokémon Go at launch. I just hope it can give me even one memory as good as any I have from Ingress.
I want every Pokémon fan from every generation to download Pokémon Go and come outside. Let’s meet up. Let’s capture rare and powerful Pokémon when we go visit grandparents. Let’s ruin road trips with frequent stops. Let’s battle under the University clock tower. Let’s run our cars into the ground, get out, and walk. If you see me wandering around outside, glued to my phone, know that I’m not turned off to the world. I’m tuned in to a new world: The World of Pokémon Go. And I want you to join me.
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