Tuesday, February 07, 2006

ATTENTION ALL READERS

*n-gamers.blogspot.com will officially be closed as of this post*

I've finally decided that it is time to close this blog. After 8 months of news, reviews and sharing other info, this blog is coming to an end. I'm sure you'll all have noticed the lack of posts I've been making in the recent weeks, this was due to me being too busy for constant blog updates. The number of visitors per day has been dropping steadily down to about 65 a day, and I'd like to offer a BIG thank you to those of you who are still visiting.

N-gamers was originally created to share the latest info and rumours concerning Nintendo's outcoming console, Revolution. Sinc the controller and most details have been unveiled at last year's TGS, there really isn't much point for the blog to continue. Sure, I could post news articles and such, but there is nothing you won't be able to find at hald a dozen other gaming resources.

A special thanks to RAB, Johno, Bluelight and Froggy, these viewers have been contributing most to the blog. And a thank you to Falafelkid of the nintendo-revolution blog, for adding me to the blog list and greatly boosting the number of visitors. And lastly, a thank you to every fellow gamer who has visited n-gamers, it has been a great privilage and a great experience to be able to share my interests of gaming with you all.

Now to the more important stuff, I am now posting for another gaming resource, Nintendo Players, where I'm employed as a general writer. If you've enjoyed reading entries on this blog, please be sure to check out nintendoplayers.com. NP is the ultimate online Nintendo Resource. With constant (and numerous) updates, including articles, previews/reviews, exclusive news, we are hoping to create a community for Ninty fans of all kinds. Please also check out the forums :).

Basically, rather than retiring I am simply moving, and you can contact me at Nintendo Players in the future. My forum username is "Satoru Iwata", and NP email is jcranston@nintendoplayers.com, alternatively you can try immortaltoad@gmail.com. Also, if anyone wishes to add me to their MKDS list my friend code is 133203 986406. Be warned, I snake :P.

Well, thanks again to all who have been following this blog, it has been a pleasure. Who knows, perhaps some day I'll decide to have this place up and running again, and I'll be sure to notify anyone who's interested if I do :D.

cyaz

Edit: Wow, I found it incredibly hard to make that post, guess the 156 entries I've posted really gave me an attraction to this blog...

Friday, February 03, 2006

Nintendo World: Store Of The Year

Article courtesy of gonintendo.com, direct link at http://gonintendo.com/?p=713:

At the 35th Annual Institute of Store Planners/Visual Merchandising and Store Design (ISP/ VM + SD) International Store Design Competition Awards, the Nintendo World Store picked up the dubious honor of Store of the Year. It also picked up the First Place Store over 10,000 Square Feet award, but you know Nintendo is enjoying the first award much more!

JohntheSavage had just popped into the Nintendo World Store yesterday to bring his lady friend there, and she was very impressed with the location. I always found the store to be a very welcoming place, with a very open, comfortable atmosphere. Congratulations to Nintendo on this win, and may this award bring even MORE attention to the store!

Sunday, January 29, 2006

Video: Old School Revolution

Source and thanks to: Infendo.com

Here is a fan made video of an ironic presentation of Nintendo's situation in the console wars. It isn't very accurate with some aspects (Bill Gates = Master Chief??), though a hilarious video nevertheless. Please watch, it's a worthwhile 6 minutes.


http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2686716

Will Nintendo really be able to "blow competition out of the sky"?

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Lite - The New DS



http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n10/news/060126.html

Straight from Nintendo of Japan, a new model of the Nintendo DS has been revealed. This lighter, brighter screened, and sleeker system is due to be released in Australia on the 2nd of March, retailing for slightly higher than the average DS. Its dimensions are 133 x 74 x 22mm, and weighs 218g, 57 grams less than the original DS. The slick, Apple like design reminds one of the outcoming Revolution controller.

Obviously I would prefer this look over the current design, but as much a Nintendo fan I am, I probably won't spend another $200 on it, lol. But if there were trade in deals at EB, I'll be sure to check them out. Other than the corners being a little sharp, this remake of Nintendo's innovative game machine looks awesome.

Friday, January 20, 2006

Sunder: Land Of Divide



As much as I'd want this to be a real Revolution game in development, the anonymous email Kotaku received concerning this unannounced nextgen title seems like nothing more than a fan-made mockup. The game is called Sunder: Land Of Divide (whatever that means), and fits into the first person shooter genre. The email contained a sheet with detiled specs of weapons in the game and how they are used with the Revolution controller.

To read the full article, click the link below. Check back later as scans of the sheet will be posted:

http://kotaku.com/gaming/sunder-land-of-divide/specs-on-new-revolution-game-149876.php

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Revolution Resolutions



Q: How do you think Revolution will sell?
Reggie: We will sell more units than Xbox 360 did here in the United States in our launch window. I mean, in December, we sold more GameCubes in the United States than Microsoft sold 360s, and Revolution will do better than that.

Reggie Fils-Aime has been intereviewed by CNET's news.com on his 5 resolutions for Nintendo's Revolution console. This interesting article can be found at Gamespot, at the following link:


http://www.gamespot.com/news/6142598.html

Please take the time to check it out, as he details some interesting information about the Revolution's marketing scheme, as well as it's games and price.

Monday, January 16, 2006

Back From DS Tours

Well, last weekend I attended both Nintendo DS connection tours at Miranda and East Gardens Westfields, for the giveaways, game demos, and meeting new MKDS players. But mainly, for competing in the massive Mario Kart competition.

To be the comp champion, you would need to come first in the heat races, first or second place in the semis to make the g.final, and beat everyone else in the grand final. Quite a difficult task,
considering there were over 300 competitors at Miranda alone.


The East Gardens comp for me was a letdown, I came third in the semis thanks to two blue shells in a single race. And coming 2nd at the end, I was overtaken about a millimeter from the finish line to drop down to 3rd place (knocking me out of the comp). I had better luck at the Miranda comp though, finishing in 3rd place in the grand final. Photos for both events are up, and they can be viewed here:

http://www.nintendo.com.au/ct06/index.html

I won't tell you who I am in those photos, but if you've seen me post at certain forums on the net, you'll already know :P. Ah well, at least I earned a position in the final 8 photo, though winning the comp would have been nice :D. Final 8 players at Miranda comp (me included):

http://www.nintendo.com.au/ct06/img/m1.jpg

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Competition Facing Problems

Thanks to Falafelkid at nintendo-revolution.blogspot.com, some interesting information regarding the Xbox 360 and PS3 have been revealed. The first, states that Microsoft have officially abandoned their target sales of 2.75 - 3 million for 360 in the console's initial 90 days of sales. According to the Financial Times, MS blamed a lack of capacity and components for shortages on the 360.

Analysts estimate shipments at 1.3m worldwide by the end of 2005, with shortages predicted for January. The situation has leftgamers frustrated and meant limited sales of 360 titles for video games publishers and retailers.

The full article can be read at nintendo-revolution.blogspot.com. I guess this is good news for Nintendo, already with all their current consoles (exc old GBA) outselling the Xbox 360 each, every week, with the Nintendo DS even outselling it 120 times over just a fortnight ago.

Apparantly, Sony are also facing some troubles with PS3 development. Sony developer Josh Robinson have fired some pretty harsh comments towards Sony's next gen home console. Here are some important quotes in his remarks:

Well my immediate impression of the PS3 is... where is it? Seriously, where is it? They have a case, a controller and a dev kit. But the system still doesn’t even exist.

What most companies do is fake the entire demo. I mean they come up with some great visuals and neat tricks and scripted events. In the end however, its not a real time demo and its not running ON the actual box.

The consistent comment I am hearing from people on my end is, “The XBOX 360 is better”

The game that we are creating for a launch title is a “just get it out” title in my opinion. It doesn’t look next generation. I don’t see how anyone could debate otherwise.

I mean I was at e3 2005 and PS3 was almost no where to be seen.

Not sure how this thing is gonna make it out any time soon. It may be closer to 2007 or christmas of 06 before this thing sees the light of day. We'll see.

You can read his full remarks along with the article at nintendo-revolution. If these quotes are true, they prove that Sony are behind in console development, they are lacking third party support to produce quality titles, and are facing problems with cost. It seems Sony is in even bigger trouble than Microsoft. Now that I tihnk about it, in the last 12 months alone, Sony have had to deal with many problems, starting with the $90 million lawsuit, to the firing of employees, to the greater than ever competition they are facing in every department of the company (Nintendo, MS, Apple etc).

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Some MKDS News

DS Connection tour events have been held at Westfields in Queensland: Carindale and Garden City. They managed to attract hundreds of gamers and non gamers, and both events were a success. There were giveaways, DS demos and new games available for play, but the main attraciton of the tour has to be the Mario Kart DS tournament. I live in NSW, and am still waiting for the tour to arrive this Saturday at Miranda, but folks in Queensland have attanded the event and detailed what it was like. An admin at Aussie Nintendo has made an mp3 audio report of the tour at Garden City, listen to it here:

http://www.aussie-nintendo.com/files/mp3_nds_connection_tour_06.mp3

According to Aussie, there were over 200 people in the audience, and about 250 competing in the MKDS tournament (some people got to enter twice). Runner up entries received MKDS decals for their DS consoles, and the winner received a $2000 prize: a year's supply of Nintendo DS products. The winner happens to be a user at aussie-nintendo.com forums, so check out some of the posts made if you want.

There were 8 DS consoles hooked up to the stage, and one console conncted to a huge DS (with TVs as DS screens), to display ingame actin to the audience (must have been frightening for the driver lol). From what I have heard, it was a pretty tough contest, taking up most of the day (getting through all the heats, then championships). Overall, the day had been a great experience.



On a similar topic, I have been training hard in the time trials mode for the Miranda tournament. Posted below are my current times:

Figure8 1:22:023
Yoshi Falls 0:55:926
Cheep Cheep 1:43:073
Luigi's Mansion 1:48:306

Desert Hills 1:30:428
Delfino Square 1:48:150
Wauigi Pinball 2:13:157
Shroom Ridge 1:57:344

DK Pass 2:11:097
Tick Tock 1:48:357
Mario Circuit 1:41:949
Airship Fort 1:59:467

Wario Stadium 2:12:713
Peach Gardens 1:43:313
Bowser Castle 2:13:358
Rainbow Road 2:09:161

Mario Circ1 0:47:994
Moo Moo Farm 1:15:787
Peach Circ 1:04:176
Luigi Circuit 1:20:613

Donut Plains1 1:04:537
Frappe Snowland 2:01:566
Bowser Castle2 1:46:129
Baby Park 0:47:043

Koopa Beach2 0:49:352
Choco Mt 2:04:261
Luigi Circ 1:39:565
Mushroom Bridge 1:19:208

Choco Island2: 1:01:294
Banshee Doard 2:00:389
Sky Garden 1:29:099
Yoshi Circ 1:40:321

If you have some records which beat mine, please feel free to post them :). Btw, if anyone is up for some Wi-Fi matches, my friend code is on the top right corner of this page (post comment wit your own fc).

Thursday, January 05, 2006

Move Over 10 Million

Reports showing a total worldwide count of 10 million DS sales from Tuesday was false, the total number is actually closer to 13 million. Nintendo of Europe has revealed that 3.5 million Nintedo DS units have been sold since its release in March (Europe). Software most contributing to that number includes the Nintendogs range and Mario Kart DS. This is a major rise from the previously calculated 1 million in Europe.

Hopefully with the release of Animal Crossing: Wild World in March, European DS sales can see a further rise. This, and the anticipated Metroid Prime Hunters, along with a Pokemon sequel for DS, both releasing in the coming months, the future for Nintendo innovative handheld looks bright.