Super Smash Bros. Brawl Stage Designer!

Completely design your own Super Smash Bros. Brawl Stages. If you are any thing like me now is the time to wipe the drool off your shirt and say oooohhhhhhhhhh! Aaaaahhhhh!

Last week when they showed the Picto Chat Stage my fist thought was why not just let the player drawl there own stage. Apparently Nintendo had a similar idea but instead of just drawling on that one stage they made a full stage creation tool.

I think the official announcement at the Dojo pretty much summed up all of my thoughts with this:

"You can create your own stages this time?! No way. REALLY?! With a feature like that, won’t I be able to play this game forever?!"  (you can see the rest of the article here)

Assuming that these custom stages can be played online Brawl is going to have way more replayability than Melee did, and I haven't stopped playing Melee yet.

I am beginning to think  that the SMBB's delay is a positive thing.

Spore Confirmed for Wii

Ever since the first time I saw a glimpse of the PC version of Spore I have been hugely excited about it. I am a huge fan of games like The Sims and Black & White, I don't know if it's because those are great games or if I am just a control freak. But whatever the case Spore has the potential to be amazing and I cant wait for it.

Now the long hinted at Wii Version of Spore has been confirmed by Will Wright it's creator (announcement can be found here). 

I am actually a little reluctant to get my hopes up for Spore on Wii. On the one hand there is my love for the Wii, but on the other hand there is the massive list of crappy ports that call the Wii home.

My Sims is the type of remake I am worried Spore could become. Don't get me wrong I really liked My Sims as a stand alone title, but to me it just did not hold up the The Sims name. I will keep an open mind with Spore on Wii. But because of the Wii's hardware limitations I just don't see how it could possibly compare to the other versions without significantly changing the gameplay that I am so looking forward to.

Romulation.net is Dead!!!

Update 06/23/08: Romulation.net Cheated Death!

For years NES & SNES Emulation has been continuously growing more popular. But for those years Nintendo was not loosing any money from people Emulating there old games. But with the Wii's Virtual Console, suddenly Emulation becomes a guanine threat to there swimming pools full of money. And sadly it seems that they are cracking down and taking out that threat.

One of the biggest Nintendo ROM sites on the net Romulation.net, has officially been shut down by the ESA with a cease and desist notice. I am not sure when they officially closed shop, but it is definitely a sign that Nintendo is starting to take action against the piracy of there old games.

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) is a very ageing console and it's games have slowly but surly gotten harder to come by over the years. Which of course means that the SNES games that are out there have had steadily rising prices. The result of this is people like me who grew up on the NES & SNES are starved for there favorite classics but don't want to fork out the ridiculous asking prices on sites like e-Bay and Amazon for the original cartridges.

So what options does that leave us? I know that the virtual console has some great games on it but it is mostly only the high profile games that are being ported over to it. And even if all of the games you want are on the Virtual Console there is still something to be said for playing them with the controllers they were made for.

So that leaves only one option, PC Emulation. I in no way do I endorse piracy, but what a mighty temptation it is to just go get all of your favorite classic games for free, no mater how obscure they are. And then you can play them with enhanced graphics, Classic controllers and you can even get mod's and expansion packs for them and that is not even mentioning the ability to play them online.

With Nintendo doing what they can to put a stop to the mainstream availability of NES & SNES ROM's they are also making it very hard to acquire many of there greatest classics. So it is my hope that they already relies this and will start working on more quickly building the VC library and also start offering them at a fairer prices. Or even possibly start offering a PC equivalent of the Virtual Console and still allow all of the gaming community to continue Modding and enhancing the games like any other retail PC game.

The only thing left that needs to be said is give me back my EarthBound, Harvest Moon and Metal Warriors Nintendo!!!!

Send me stuff!

I am relatively new to the whole blogging scene. But during the past few months that I have really started to regularly keep up with most of the latest news from Nintendo, I have come to realize something. And that is that Nintendo pumps out a lot of stuff. A single person can not get every last drop of Nintendo news published without going crazy. So that is why I am reminding people that I do have an email address: Nintentoads@gmail.com.

If you have found something on the net or just have something Nintendo related that needs to be said don't hesitate to e-mail it to the address above. You can either write the article yourself or just e-mail me links and pic's (only Nintendo related stuff) of interesting things that need to be posted. Just give the name you want credit given to and as long as it is relevant to this site's content and family friendly then chances are good that it will be posted. But if for some reason what you submit is not posted please don't take it personally.

I only ask that you do not send me every new Smash Bros. Dojo update that I have not posted, for the simple reason that I do not post every Smash Bros. update because most Nintendo fans just go to the Dojo themselves. I also generally do not post about the Virtual Console updates because I live way out in the boonies and have no way to connect to Wiiconnect24.

Other than the two things mentioned above, send me any thing you find from interesting, new YouTube Videos to big Game announcements that I somehow inexplicitly overlooked (like Runaway 2 DS).

Some things in Life are Free

Due the formally mentioned technical trouble, the time that I am normally writing for the site, I have instead been playing a lot of free games. So here is some of the free ones that I have been playing. Just click the titles of each game to go to the sites were they can be found.

 

Maple Story 

This is a free 2D MMORPG. Like most MMO's the point is to hack & slash your way to the next level-up. The fact that it is a 2D sidescroller gives it a little bit of a different feel than your standard WOW clone. But what really makes it stand out above others is that it does not play like a free game it is something that you would really expect to pay for.

On the downside after a while it does get very repetitive. There is not much variety in the enemy's that you encounter. Another big draw back is that most of the landscape really starts to look the same after a while. But the biggest problem is that the quest's really seem to take a back seat to the fighting which at least to me makes leveling-up seem less useful. But despite it's issues this is still one of my favorite freebies.

 

Narbacular Drop

If you are like me then Portal looks awesome but you are having trouble justifying spending the money on a pack that you already own half of the games in. If that is the case and you need a similar game to tide you over, then you are in luck because not only does such a game exist but it is also free.

Narbacular Drop is actually the game that inspired portal. It was made by some college students who impressed Valve so much with this game that they hired them, and Portal is the result of that.

While this game may be lame when compared to portal it is still a lot of fun. It is short (like 15 min from start to finish), it is ugly and it has a few glitches, but at its core it is a fun free game with Portal style gameplay so check it out.

 

Dungeon Runners

Dungeon Runners is best described as Diablo meets World of War Craft. It is an MMORPG with a lot of hacking & slashing through dungeons for Exp. and items.

It is only partially free, several of the better items can only be used by paying members, and it is only free up to level 20. But despite this there is still much fun to be had as it does take quite awhile to reach level 20.

If you already have a WoW subscription then Dungeon runners is probably not worth your time. But for the rest of us it is a pretty good game.

 

Albatross 18

Last but most certainly not least is my favorite of the bunch Albatross 18. Golf, Anime, MMORPG, that pretty much sums up this really strange yet somehow awesome game.

Some people probably know this game better by the name  it was given on the Wii Super Swing Golf. But what many do not know is that there is a better version of Super Swing Golf and it is free.

I have been playing Albatross 18 for a few years now and while I may get tired of it from time to time I always come back for more. Do not let its strange concept of Golf MMO scare you because I do not like golf, and I'm also not a huge fan of MMO's yet I love this one.

Basically you create a character then earn money called Pang while golfing to upgrade your stats and buy new clubs and accessories. But there is much more to it than that every course has its own unique strategy with lots of crazy obstacles that seem better suited two a put put golf course like pyramids and penguins.

The only real problem I have with this game is that a lot of the premium gear cost real money. I just cant justify paying for a digital hat no matter how cool it looks!

 

Other Stuff

Those are the main games I have been playing. But some other games that I have not really spent enough time with. But still seem fun enough to warrant a mention are listed below with the sites that they can be found at.

• RF Online
• ArchLord
• Trickster
• Sword of the New World
• Portal The Flash Version

Runaway 2: The Dream of the Turtle on Nintendo DS

This is apparently old news but Runaway 2: The Dream of the Turtle is coming to the DS. How did I miss this?

I am a massive point & click adventure fan from Monkey Island to Syberia, I love this style of game. From the first moment I put my hands on the DS fat I thought were are the point & click adventure games. There have been a few good ones like Hotel Dusk and Touch Detective and they are pretty good, but there has just not been enough of them to satisfy my appetite.

Now I find out that not only are they putting a new one on the DS, but it also happens to be a port of one that I was about to buy about a week ago. I guess it is a good thing I decided to wait until I had more cash saved up for the holiday season.

I highly recommend you check out this video, the graphics on this game are almost to good to be true, there is no way this game could actually look as good as it does in the video (or could it...?).

I have high hopes for this game, but keep on mind it is a port of a game that got mediocre reviews in the first place. So we shall see and hope. Now I just need an explanation of why they are porting the second one instead of the first?

Okami on Wii (the console it was made for) Confirmed

This news is a bit old now, it is something that happened during my time of technical difficulties. Most Nintendo fans probably already know about it but it is very important so I am going to post it anyway.

At Capcom's recent event in London, Okami was announced for the Wii.  And to Capcom my responses are whoohoo! and also it's about time.

Contrary to what most people think, this is not a port of a PS2 game; No in fact the PS2 version was a port of a Wii game from the future. Okami was originally made for the Wii, but some idiot from the past stole it and took it back in time to put it on the PS2 (at least that's my theory anyway).

I never did play Okami because when it was first released I already had a stack of other games to play and I just kept putting it off. But by the time I got a chance to play it rumors starting popping up that it was going to be released for Wii as God intended, so I have patently waited for it, and finally that patience has paid off.

According to Capcom we can expect it to be released sometime in Spring 2008.

Great but Unreliable Blogging tool

For the past few weeks updates have been few a far between. The program I use to update this site is Windows Live Writer, but sadly the Blogger.com support has been unreliable at best, and I really hate the web editor. So when WLW is down so am I, and for the past few weeks whether or not it is going to work has changed daily. But despite the problems with WLW it is the best WYSIWYG editor I have ever, used and since it is still just a beta version it's lack of consistency is forgivable.

I intend to start back with daily updates, but I am at the mercy of Window Live Writer, so for now I am going under a we shall see policy on regular updates. Also I am curious if I am the only one having trouble with Windows Live Writer Blogger compatibility, so if are experiencing trouble with it let me know in the comments.

Small Nintendo News

I have not posted anything in a couple of days but I have a very good excuse, and that is that there has not really been much of interest to post about. so I am just going to sum up all of the little stuff in this one post.

1. Mario Kart on the Wii has Motorcycles in it big whoop.
2. You can take snapshots in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
3. It is pretty much confirmed that the picture below is the real box art for Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
4. And the best for last drum roll please (imagine drum roll in head now).... 12 player online in Mario Kart is confirmed! Ok that is not exactly small news just news that everyone already knows about.

Hopefully there will be more updates in the near future but so far the weekend looks to be a little slow on the Nintendo news front.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl 2008 Delay

Super Smash Bros. Brawl has been delayed until February 10, 2008(whaaaa!).

I am a huge Smash Bros. fan, me and my siblings have for hours upon hours played Super Smash Bros. Melee to death and we still go back to it occasionally.

Nintendo as far as I know has not given a reason for the delay, but it does not surprise me to much. With so many of Nintendo's big franchises coming out all around the same time I always expected for at least one of them to get delayed until 2008 I just held out hope that I was wrong.

You have to consider that Nintendo does not want there games competing with each other for sales. And all in a matter of just a few months they are releasing Metroid Prime 3, The legend of Zelda: the Phantom Hourglass, Super Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Bros. Brawl. And that's not even mentioning the new IP's like Wii Fit. So it is not really surprising that one is getting delayed it's just very disappointing. I guess one bright side is that this holiday season will at least be a little easier on gamers bank accounts.

Monster Hunter 3 Wii exclusive

Monster Hunter 3 has been confirmed as a Wii exclusive and the PS3 version has been canned. According to the Capcom managing corporate officer Katsuhiko Ichii, “Due to high development cost of titles for PS3, we have decided to switch the platform to which we release our Monster Hunter 3 title.”

I have actually never played a Monster Hunter game, so I don't really know what to expect form this game but from what little I know about I am looking forward to it. Lets just hope that it does not get the usual cheap treatment that most 3rd party games on Wii do.

3D Desktop Robot Nintendo skins

This is not exactly new, and it is not really Nintendo news either. But nevertheless it is still kind of cool, and sort of Nintendo related.

Long ago I was a regular in this site YummyWorks.com where they have these cool 3D Desktop toys. One of them is a robot named Segmento. What he does is just lifelessly flop around as you beat him & toss him into various instruments of death. It can really be a lot of fun as something to do while your waiting. The Nintendo related part is that you can create custom skins for him and a while back, under the name Ness, I made a few Nintendo skins which you can see above.

Unfortunately the formerly cool site YummyWorks.com no longer seems to be regularly updated. But Segmento can still be found here:YummyWorks - Segmento, and the Nintendo skins can be found here: YummyWorks - Nintendo Skins.

P.S. To install the skins:

1. Download and install Segmento, then download the skin you want.
2. Move all of the pictures that are in the skin you downloaded to the folder C:\Program Files\ydt\Segmento_Alpha and let them overwrite any thing it needs to.
3. Start Segmento and enjoy!

Sonic in Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Today's Smash Bros. Dojo update is a good one. Sonic will be a playable fighter in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. To me this is much more exiting than the somewhat lame looking Mario & Sonic at the Olympics.

I have been a Nintendo fan since Mario vs. Sonic was still relevant. So to finally bring this long thought dead conflict to rest I really hope Nintendo will include in the opening seen a brief clip of Mario kicking Sonic's butt to a severe degree.

You can find the official announcement here: Smash Bros. Dojo Sonic Announcement

Animation Greatness Part 2

It has been a few days since my last update for two simple reasons, Halo 3 & The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. I have been playing Halo 3 like somebody was holding a gun to my head saying beat it or die. So just to appease the imaginary gun I have now beaten it twice; Plus I have also slowed down on playing Phantom Hourglass so I finally have some free time to update the site. And for my first post two more great animations that you should watch immediately.

Robotech

Unless you were a kid in the 80's you have probably never heard of Robotech. It is one of the earliest anime's to hit the states back in the year 1985. This series while it may be old is still one of the best anime's out there; No mater your age, or even if you hate anime this is a must see. The animation, dialogue and voice acting is all very corny, but the story and complex characters will keep you wanting more.

The setting is suppose to be the future, in the year 2009 (of course 2009 was the future in 1985). There is a massive World war between all nations. But one day a giant ship crash lands on the small island of Macross. When humans realize that they are not alone in the universe, they unite in a joint effort to rebuild this giant ship. Skip forward a few years and now a city full of people have built up around the ship that is now about to go for its first test flight. But big surprise aliens attack. So they take the ship and try to run. But instead the ship and the hole island get transported to the other end of the galaxy. So now the aliens follow them and are still attacking, the ship has a hole city in it, and they have a one year journey to get back home.

I could wright another four pages about the story but instead I will just say it is very long, complex and fantastic. Robotech is made up of three main sagas, 1 movie (soon to be 2) and an OVA series which are listed below. But it is also worth mentioning that there are several books & games based on it.

1. The Macross Saga
2. The Masters Saga
3. New Generation
4. Macross Plus
5. The Shadow Chronicles
6. Shadow Rising (Expected Release in 2009)

Sadly the The Masters Saga sucks pretty badly, and the Macross Plus OVA is also not great. But both The Macross Saga and New Generation are fantastic.

The Shadow Chronicles is a new Movie that was released earlier this year. It is suppose to be very good but unfortunately I have still not had a chance to watch it. Shadow Rising is another new Robotech movie following the events of The Shadow Chronicles that is expected to be released sometime in 2009.

If you have any sense at all you will take my advice and go watch/read every thing you can find with the word Robotech on it immediately (yes I mean now)...(stop reading this and go buy The Macross saga now).

 

Avatar: The Last Airbender

I know that Avatar receives a lot of criticism, but despite all the haters out there, this show is very good. Avatar is definitely not the most original cartoon on earth but it still makes for a very entertaining watch.

Normally I would not have included such a mainstream show in this post, but a new season of Avatar just started a few weeks ago so I thought I would remind folk that this show is not nearly as sucky as people say.

Basically there are 4 nations and each nation has its own element, water, fire, air, and earth. The Fire nation decided that they are better than all of the others so they try to take over all of them. But a boy named Aang is trying to stop the Fire nation before the war gets out of hand. The reason it is his responsibility is because he is the Avatar.

The Avatar is a power that one individual from a different nation every generation is born with. The power he has is the ability to control all of the elements rather than just one. Normally the avatar would receive years of training but before he could be trained his tribe was destroyed and he went in to a trance for 100 years.

Avatar: The Last Airbender has a pretty good story, nice visuals, top notch voice actors (for the most part) and some very interesting characters. But like most things it definitely has some flaws. First of all some episodes have a tendency to feel very dumbed down for a younger audience. Also it can sometimes get very chatty, and you wonder if they are ever going to do anything other than stand around yapping. But my biggest complaint is that there is a very clear difference between the good episodes and the filler episodes and far to many of them are the latter.

But even with its problems I put it in this list for a reason and that is because it's a better cartoon than most.

If you want to see the first part of this post it can be found here: Animation Greatness Part 1

Free Phantom Hourglass Feather Stylus

Just moments after my last post about the free Wii-remote jackets At Nintendo.com, I found out that there is another free offer from Nintendo. This time it is a cool The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass feather stylus.

To get this stylus just register your copy of Phantom Hourglass at Nintendo.com then just  go here and complete a quick survey. It's as simple as that no strings attached. So kudos to Nintendo & keep the freebies coming. 

Free Wii Remote Jacket from Nintendo

Nintendo has yet another freebie for your Wii-Remotes. All you do to get this rubber jacket is go to the Nintendo free jacket request page and enter your Wii's serial code and shipping address. And they say that the Jacket will be shipped on October 15th free of charge. It will also be packaged with all new Wii-Remotes and Wii systems.

The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass First Impressions

Two days ago I got The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass and so far it is just ok. I am most definitely not one of those people who did not like The Wind Waker because of it's graphics. Actually on the contrary in my opinion The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker was one of the best looking games of the last generation.

The Wind Waker was and still is among my favorite games of all time so I was really looking forward to playing Phantom Hourglass as it's a direct sequel. Like all games that have Zelda in the title (not including the terrible CDI games) it is an excellent and very polished game. But with that said it sadly seems to be one of the lesser games in the Zelda franchise. But at the moment I am not really far enough in to the game to judge it.

But my initial complaints are first of all the controls, which are somewhat hit and miss. And at least so far the puzzles seem very dumbed down from Previous Zelda titles, even when compared to The Wind Waker's less than challenging puzzles this game has been very easy so far.

On the other hand though there is the graphics... HOLY CRAP! I new that the DS was more capable than what is usually shown on the system but I was not prepared for just how capable it really is. Phantom Hourglass is nothing less than beautiful and believe me when I say the screen shots do not do this game justice. I really hope that this will put a little pressure on developers to start pushing the DS hardware a little farther than what we usually see on the DS

Despite my complaining this is still a very good game and I highly recommend to any one with a Nintendo DS. Go buy this game!

Mother 3's Lucas in Smash Bros.

It has been a while since I last updated. It seems like every time I even think about regularly updating the site something goes terribly wrong. From a faulty Internet connection to illness, this blog is determined to kill me, but for now I am back at it.

In my recent absence from the net a most joyous announcement was made at the Smash Bros. Dojo. Lucas from Mother 3 (or EarthBound 2 as it would be known in the US) has been confirmed as a playable character in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

As I have mentioned in several previous post, I am a huge fan of EarthBound. So I really hope they make this character more than just a rip off of Ness's move set and that this character have his own unique feel. Now lets hope that Lucas's appearance in SSBB is only the start of more Mother content in the US.