A big part of Nintendo (and gaming) fandom seems to be linked to the appreciation -- nay, love -- of certain characters, and that's what we're exploring in this week's edition of Show and Tell. It's all about characters and the things we do in honor of them. Take the guided tour, or jump all willy-nilly into the gallery below.
Gallery: Show and Tell: For the love of a character
Show and Tell is all about fan stuff, so long as it's Nintendo-related. We love to see your collections, your crafts, your frosted creations, your t-shirts and swag of all sorts.Just snap a few pictures, tell us what's up, and send it all to showmeit [at] dsfanboy [dot] com. We'll take care of the rest.Not a handy type, but found something neat? Send us a link instead.
Maybe sometimes, you don't really want to flaunt your status as a gamer. Maybe you like to do so sometimes, or with certain groups of friends, or maybe you just like being mysterious. No matter your reasons, if you have any interest in keeping your true love at least a little hidden, then this week's Show and Tell should provide you with lots of ideas for keeping your hobbies close to your chest. Take the guided tour, or, if you're feeling reckless, jump directly into the gallery below.
Gallery: Show and Tell: Subtlety
Show and Tell is all about fan stuff, so long as it's Nintendo-related. We love to see your collections, your crafts, your frosted creations, your t-shirts and swag of all sorts.Just snap a few pictures, tell us what's up, and send it all to showmeit [at] dsfanboy [dot] com. We'll take care of the rest.Not a handy type, but found something neat? Send us a link instead.
You would think DS, no? That's exactly what we thought, as the handheld is home to more amazing third-party games than any other console in recent memory, but that is not the case. It turns out, the SNES was the best Nintendo console for third-party publishers. Who would've known?
Keep in mind, though, that this is merely based on Aeropause's own evaluation and may not be representative of how much money publishers made on each system, or the quality of the titles they released on said platform. It's more or less based on an article in the latest Nintendo Power where the staff ranked their top 20 games for each Nintendo system.
What do you all think? Which Nintendo system had the greatest batch of stellar third-party titles in your eyes? We're going to stick with DS. It seems like a no-brainer to us.
I recently attended Wizard World Philadelphia, not because I'm a huge comic nerd or anything, but because my friends are. So, with a couple of buddies, I headed on down to the Philly Convention Center and prepared myself to be underwhelmed by the gaming action on tap and overwhelmed by the sheer amount of cosplayers there.
Imagine my surprise when I actually stumbled on something I could write about. Well, it's not something I'm actually happy to be writing about. You see, for some odd reason, a vendor was allowed to be set up on the show floor, selling CDs chock full of illegal ROMs.
With the Dragon Quest IV DS remake announced for the US and Europe this week, we thought it'd be good a time to dig up Enix's commercials for the original Famicom game's release in Japan. They're completely different from the retro ads used last November when the DS remake shipped.
As with Squaresoft's chocobo commercials for Final Fantasy IV on the Super Famicom (launching a little over a year after Dragon Quest IV), these ads were just plain odd! They show hardly any in-game video, relying on logos and recognizable theme music instead. Gather your party and meet us in the fifth chapter, past the post break, for the commercials.
One of the first things homebrewers do when they gain the ability to run unsigned code on a game console is to see what other console's games they can get running. Although the use of commercial ROMs varies from legally ambiguous (in the case of backup copies of your own software) to unambiguously illegal (in the case of just downloading stuff), emulator programs are perfectly legal -- and capable of running legal homebrew software designed for the consoles. We don't really want to get into the legal and ethical issues. We think that programs designed to run like old hardware are just cool.
Just like every other console, the advent of DS flash cards has brought with it a booming emulation scene. And since homebrew is so easy to run on the DS, and MicroSD cards so copious, it's easy to turn the humble DS into a classic gaming Swiss Army System.
We've outlined some of the most important DS-based console emulators below, along with a ton of lower-profile emulators.
Did you know that the first issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly (and the preview issue before that) was branded as U.S. National Video Game Team's Electronic Gaming Monthly? It's been a long time since we thought about that group, although one of them has come to notoriety recently. Team member Steve Harris is EGM's founder, and many of the guys worked as reviewers and "strategy consultants."
The world of 1989 EGM is a different one than we know now. Companies like Taxan and Beeshu could afford many consecutive ad pages. FCI had its own strategy hotline. It was possible to write neutral-to-good preview text about the execrable Hydlide. And handheld gaming was just about to be elevated to the status of real gaming. Steve Harris's opening "Insert Coin" column refers to the rumor that "Nintendo may be leading the way with a mid-range cartridge system that will play a variety of games on a specially developed 2" LCD screen." Although the magic of that statement is diminished somewhat when a full writeup of the Game Boy, including a picture, appears toward the end of the magazine. Maybe he wrote that before that information came in.
If there is one thing we can appreciate, it's talent. And these folk have it, as the students from Hermann Wesselink College manage to bust out into a pair of great Nintendo themes a capella style. They handle a choice selection from The Legend of Zelda, as well as Super Mario Bros. in the video above.
If our school had stuff like this back when we were in our developing stages, maybe we would've paid attention and not grown up to become blogging scum.
Update: Some readers point out that this isn't a capella. Sorry folks, we're not a music blog!
As Nintendo fans, we're pretty much required to at least attempt to pass on that love to our spawnlings, and if you're going to do it, you might as well get started early. Y'know, before they can crawl away from you and protest over your choice of clothing. Thanks to Etsy marketeer kaytea, you can start dressing your children in geeky style before they can wriggle out of your insistent hands. The above NES-decorated onesies are available in both yellow and green for $20 -- a bargain for any fanboy parent.
Unimportant side note: You'd better believe one of these is going on the boychild. He's already alarmed.
Since we're unabashed game enthusiasts, we appreciate any opportunity to combine our love for modern day gaming with our nostalgia for gaming of the past. That's why we find these DS covers to be absolutely darling. The Game Boy cover makes more sense to have, since the system belongs in the same family tree as Nintendo's dual-screened handheld. Yet, the NES controller is a perfect shape for a DS pouch -- and who doesn't love a NES controller? -- so that works, too.
Should you like these as much as we do, you can check them out at Janis13's Etsy store, along with some other DS cases.
This isn't the first time we've featured a wooden gaming system. Instead of a SNES, this time modders have turned a NES into a portable system, encasing the screen and hardware in a nice wooden frame. And to prove this modder means business, the portable NES is shown playing none other than badass title Contra.
What we would like to know is if you tried anything like this before and was it successful? Did you turn your NES into something much better? Share your experience(s) with us!
Likely taking inspiration from Koji Igarashi's formula of remaking Symphony of the Night ad nauseam (har har har), homebrew coder Frosty Chaotix is working on his own vampire-slaying update for the first Castlevania NES game. He released a demo for Castlevania: Devilish Resemblance yesterday to show off his progress on the project's engine, and it looks fantastic! Of course, most of that can be attributed to the ripped 2D assets from previous titles in the series, but it's still an impressive project.
So far, this proof-of-concept build has Simon Belmont walking, jumping, and whipping to his heart's content, all within the confines of a single test room. While there's still a lot left to be implemented -- e.g. enemies, interactive objects, touchscreen controls, etc. -- the soundtrack, grabbed from OCRemix, is the cat's galoshes. We totally wouldn't mind vanquishing the Prince of Darkness to this music!
Lwelyk, the Lego mosaicist (mosaician?) behind some truly excellent Nintendo block art, has posted his latest masterpiece, a large-scale model of Metroid's final-boss-in-a-jar. This Mother Brain is "about the size of (Lwelyk's) torso" and took "four or five hours." We can only imagine that part of that time was spent shooting little flying rings so he could get back up on the tiny platform on which he was building the sculpture.
Can you imagine how upsetting it would be to walk in and see something like this, especially if you weren't familiar with Metroid? Or, even worse, to wake up in the middle of the night and see this ... mass ... in your house?
We are still fascinated by this gigantic, impractical Famicom cartridge adapter. That's why we were delighted when GAME Watch picked up one of CYBER Gadget's CYBER Familator Lite adapters and tested it out, taking plenty of pictures during the process. Unsurprisingly, but still sadly, the various issues with the device make it a suboptimal method of playing Famicom games.
Most notably, you can't plug a second controller in, meaning also that the Famicom microphone (which is embeded in the player 2 controller) cannot be used. Also, the system can't hook up to the Famicom Disk System. The Familator also suffers compatibility issues with a few games, including Bases Loaded.
GAME Watch did a side-by-side comparison of the Familator's TV output of Xevious to the Wii's Virtual Console version of the same game, and found that the colors and the sound were inferior, even without taking into account the Wii's ability to use component and D-terminal connections. Battery life was, of course, also an issue.
None of these concerns are exactly dealbreakers, but even as a novelty it would be hard to justify the expense of such an item without excellent performance.
In some deeply weird alternative universe, perhaps one in which Japanese people actually bought Microsoft consoles and England's footballers weren't quite so irredeemably rubbish, we might never have experienced Super Mario Bros. as we know it. Instead, we could have been playing Super MarioSisters.
Alas, Nintendo of America never did follow through on a trademark application it filed in February, 1990 for a game called "SUPER MARIO SISTERS." The application was abandoned almost two years later, depriving us all of an estrogen-fuelled version of the world's favorite platformer.
A big part of Nintendo (and gaming) fandom seems to be linked to the appreciation -- nay, love -- of certain characters, and that's what we're exploring in this week's edition of Show and Tell. It's all about characters and the things we do in honor of them. Take the guided tour, or jump all willy-nilly into the gallery below.
Show and Tell is all about fan stuff, so long as it's Nintendo-related. We love to see your collections, your crafts, your frosted creations, your t-shirts and swag of all sorts.Just snap a few pictures, tell us what's up, and send it all to showmeit [at] dsfanboy [dot] com. We'll take care of the rest. Not a handy type, but found something neat? Send us a link instead.
Did you know that the first issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly (and the preview issue before that) was branded as U.S. National Video Game Team's Electronic Gaming Monthly? It's been a long time since we thought about that group, although one of them has come to notoriety recently. Team member Steve Harris is EGM's founder, and many of the guys worked as reviewers and "strategy consultants."
In some deeply weird alternative universe, perhaps one in which Japanese people actually bought Microsoft consoles and England's footballers weren't quite so irredeemably rubbish, we might never have experienced Super Mario Bros. as we know it. Instead, we could have been playing Super Mario Sisters.
