Posts with tag Nintendo Wi-Fi
Posted Apr 11th 2006 3:04PM by Ludwig Kietzmann
Filed under: Reviews, Nintendo Wi-Fi
Gamebrink has posted a review of
Contact, currently the most anticipated DS title that doesn't involve a duo of energetic plumbers. Instead, you get an eccentric professor looking for the parts of his downed spaceship in an original RPG that supports Wi-Fi play. The article praises the game for its unique story, excellent presentation and varied locations.
I especially like how the game breaks the fourth wall right off the bat, having the professor communicate to you as the player on the other side of a mysterious portable device. The professor will quiz you about some of your favorite things at the start of the game, often sharing his own opinion regarding your answers. It's a cute little gameplay device that, according to the review, really boosts the immersion factor (often quite tricky for a portable game to get right).
The only qualm brought to light was the fact that the game's combat system comes across as a bit shallow. Still, if an RPG has enough personality and a great story to tell, it can often get away with such issues. It's when things are the other way around that you start having problems.
The English version of Contact should be out later this year, courtesy of Atlus.
[Thanks Sense!]
Posted Mar 29th 2006 3:13PM by Ludwig Kietzmann
Filed under: Fan stuff, Nintendo Wi-Fi
One of our UK-based readers sent us one of the first bits of information to help in
our ceaseless quest to locate all the DS download kiosks in the world ever.
"
I found a DS demo kiosk in HMV on Oxford Street in London. It was demoing Mario Kart DS and had a crappy times new roman a4 print-out that gave instructions on how to download demos from the kiosk. I followed em and sod all happened.
I went back 2 days later, and they changed the kiosk to an Animal Crossing demo with a new shiny sign that said you can download demos. I tried again and it worked. All they had was Polarium, so I grabbed that and finished the demo on the train ride home..."
And our progress on the American front? Not so good. Nintendo seems to have hit a delay in rolling out their kiosks, with the Nintendo Store in New York being the only US location thus far to be bathed in Wi-Fi goodness. Nintendo's own Download Station page promises that the units will start showing up in early April, however, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled and your DS powered on.
If you spot one,
let us know what your experience with it was like! Tell us what games you tried! Send us a picture! Or update this Frappr map that one of our swell readers created! And make obnoxious use of exclamation marks!
[Thanks Butch, Sean and D. Short!]
[
Update: Thanks for the submissions so far! Just make sure you give us enough details on the location--states are rather large, after all.]
Posted Mar 28th 2006 3:38PM by Ludwig Kietzmann
Filed under: News, Nintendo Wi-Fi
Our friends at
Famitsu managed to attend a GDC seminar entitled "The Zen of Wi-Fi: A Postmortem of the Wireless Features of Nintendo DS" and, as most journalists are prone to do, quickly converted their experience into an informative article. Unfortunately, being of Japanese origin, said wonderful article had to be put through an internet translation service before we could make any sense of it. Curse our bizarre Western tongues!
Regardless, the most interesting bit of news to emerge from the conference is one directly involving the universal language of numbers. According to Takao Ohara, amusingly dubbed as the "Ohara your husband person" of Nintendo by Google's linguistic trolls, there are currently 40 Wi-Fi DS games en route for release. He also made an effort to point out that the forthcoming
Winning Eleven (Pro Evolution Soccer for the Europeans and soccer hooligans among us) was one of them, shortly before pulling his shirt over his head and doing an energetic backflip.
The Nintendo Wi-Fi service is certainly taking off with gusto--and this from a company that once claimed gamers weren't interested in all those online shenanigans. We all make
misteaks mistakes, right?
[Thanks Terrell!]
[
Update: Here's a link to the Famitsu article - now translated by actual humans! Thanks CTU Kyoto!]
Posted Mar 7th 2006 4:10PM by Ludwig Kietzmann
Filed under: News, Mario Kart DS, Nintendo Wi-Fi, Metroid Prime Hunters
And they're all playing
Mario Kart DS. Shortly after a dramatic website countdown hit six digits, Nintendo has officially announced that their Wi-Fi service has managed to ensnare over 1 million hapless users. According to Reggie Fils-Aime, all those users represent more than 27 million game sessions. That's certainly an impressive number, but we expect it to grow even further once
Metroid Prime: Hunters finds its way into the hands of eager online gamers. The total number of hours that will be lost to Nintendo's Wi-Fi nexus in the next few months is nigh incalculable.
Are you one of those 1,000,000 online players?
[Via British Gaming Blog. Thanks JonathanEx!]
Posted Mar 6th 2006 3:02PM by Ludwig Kietzmann
Filed under: News, Nintendo Wi-Fi
This Earthbound-ish game has
been in the news before, mostly due to it being one of the first online-ready RPGs to emerge from the colorful recesses of Japan.
Contact, which centers around the adventures of a young man trying to reassemble a wacky professor's spaceship, has now been picked up for localization by Atlus. Given that some of the prominent team members who worked on
Trauma Center: Under the Knife will be helming this title, we expect it to be a fine localization indeed.
We'll be posting more information on the title and its exact online capabilities as soon as we get it. Needless to say, we've already been won over by the promise of animal-training mini-games. We love those.
[Thanks Lazy American!]
Posted Feb 13th 2006 11:36AM by Ludwig Kietzmann
Filed under: Mario Kart DS, Fan stuff, Animal Crossing, Nintendo Wi-Fi, Metroid Prime Hunters
A while back we asked you to tell us
how good you really were at
Mario Kart DS. Now we might ask you to prove it. You see, the guys over at
DS Meet, one of a few sites that allows users to share their friend codes and meet new players online, have implemented a cool new online tournament system. It allows you to join up with existing tournaments or create your own, all via a reasonably easy to use interface.
Once you've created a tournament, the site will automatically take care of rostering (though you can manually alter this as well) and keeping track of the friend codes of those competing. You also have the option of having a forum to discuss and coordinate matches with your fellow DS players. The onus is on the tournament operator to keep track of everybody's scores though, so a level of honesty may be required if you're going to take charge of a tournament. Being
the best Mario Kart DS players in the known universe, we're all about the honesty.
Mind you, it's not all about the snaking. With support for
Animal Crossing's various competitive activities and the upcoming
Metroid Prime: Hunters, it's about fishing and shooting too. It's also about competing with people from all over the world. How about a DS Fanboy reader Mario Kart tournament? Can we have a show of hands from those who would be interested?
[Thanks echelon! Keep up the good work.]
Posted Feb 10th 2006 8:01PM by Ludwig Kietzmann
Filed under: News, Nintendo Wi-Fi
According to the guys over at
Cubed3, Reggie Fils-Aime recently dropped some hints in an
EGM interview regarding potential web browsing functionality for the DS. With so many online pieces already in place, it's quite surprising that Nintendo hasn't put more effort into getting the necessary software out. Supposedly, a third-party initially expressed interest in providing a browser and Nintendo thought it best to step back and give them free reign. However, with no real results yet, Reggie suggests that Nintendo is likely step up soon and get the job done.
That is, if
someone else entirely doesn't get there first.
[Thanks jah75157, who we stupidly forgot to thank at first.]
Posted Dec 31st 2005 7:03PM by Ludwig Kietzmann
Filed under: News, Nintendo Wi-Fi
While many see it as an enjoyable RPG romp with endless variety,
Pokémon is in truth built upon far darker principles. The game is obviously representative of the greed in our hearts, our unending desire to garner vast material wealth and yes, our very need to
catch...them...ALL. Well, I guess the games are pretty fun too.
Those eagerly anticipating the
forthcoming DS iterations will be pleased to learn that director Junichi Mysada has let slip some info about
Pokémon Diamond & Pearl (the original
Ham & Dilithium titles having been rejected earlier). He claims that his main goal is to make full use of the capabilities of the DS, including the microphone and online Wi-Fi connectivity. Shouting "I choose you, Pikachu!" into the mic whilst battling your friends online and robbing them of their precious pocket monsters? Sounds good to us.
[via DS-x2]
Posted Dec 20th 2005 7:00PM by Ludwig Kietzmann
Filed under: News, Fan stuff, Nintendo Wi-Fi
More fallout from the
Reggie Event hits us now, with a surprise guest appearing at the
Mario Kart DS gathering. Why, it's none other than Major Nelson, whom you may have seen in such popular productions as the Xbox and the Xbox 360. Was he spying on Nintendo's marketing mastermind? Planning a daring assassination? Or...maybe he just wanted to play some
Mario Kart.
"I wanted to see how they did it…and it was a pretty underwhelming event. It was not able to connect via the wireless connection, or play as my nickname ‘Xbox Live.’ On the upside I was able to get my DS signed by Reggie (to “Major” none the less.)"
Perhaps the reason he couldn't connect was
because his nickname was Xbox Live, thus breaking an invisible rule set by Nintendo to prevent you from advertising naughty things. Or not. The DS and the Xbox 360 may not be competing directly, but the online service models they implement certainly are (especially since the Revolution is likely to have a similar one). That only adds to the amusement of Reggie signing the Major's DS, possibly completely unaware of who it really belonged to. This is most likely due to the Major's inability to connect via Wi-Fi, have his ass kicked and his name taken.
[Via Joystiq]
Posted Dec 20th 2005 5:44PM by Ludwig Kietzmann
Filed under: Mario Kart DS, Fan stuff, Animal Crossing, Nintendo Wi-Fi, Tony Hawk's American Sk8land
How long before the act of exchanging friend codes becomes geeky sexual innuendo? Probably not long at all, now that the full power of the internet can be used to spread your unique set of DS numbers to the world. We now know of two websites that can ease the pain of reciting a bunch of numbers into your friend's ear, a process which has to be repeated for each different game you play. Oh, if only someone could have thought up a centralized network populated with universal "Gamertags"...oh well, maybe someday.
First up, we have a site called
DS-Play. They allow you to sign on and create a little virtual business card for yourself, proudly displaying your screen identity and your frighteningly complex friend code. It's a place where you can log on "any time of day or night and always find REAL people to play against or trade items and facts with." Good, because I just
hate losing to those damn synthetic humans all the time. Them and their mad nanoskillz.
Another site that does more or less the same thing but promises to keep account info more private (though this protects the identities of filthy synthetic humans), is
DSconnect. It'll send you an e-mail whenever your friends are going online with a specific game and the site's creator was even nice enough to add a team page for Joystiq readers, accessible after you sign in.
So, which site should you use? We'd tell you, but our feelings towards synthetic humans would cloud our judgment and so we'll just wait for you guys to try both out and deliver a shocking verdict.
[Via Joystiq. Thanks Kyle!]
Posted Dec 20th 2005 5:11PM by Ludwig Kietzmann
Filed under: News, Mario Kart DS, Fan stuff, Nintendo Wi-Fi
In case you didn't make it all the way to Bellevue, Washington for the legendary Reggie
Mario Kart DS meeting, you might be interested in checking out coverage of the event over at the Nintendo forums. Though most of the forum posters seemed to have gotten a kick out of openly worshipping their ass-kicking, name-taking god and running into each other in "real life", not many have given feedback regarding the one question that truly deserves asking.
Just how good is Reggie at Mario Kart? If you were there, let us know what you thought of the event and whether or not it altered your outlook on life in any way. Use the tips form to speak to us (about this or any of our other posts), since our comments system is still wallowing in self-despair in her room and says she hates us.
[Via Joystiq]
