Nintendo broke away from competition with Sony and, new arrival, Microsoft with what some call the “Blue Ocean” business strategy. The Blue Ocean strategy is the metaphor of leaving a “red ocean” (one dyed by the blood of competition) for unclaimed waters filled with the potential for creating new demand. From a business stand point this brave (or stupid) move has paid off and now Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 are competing for second place.

Nintendo managed to succeed because they did something more than incrementally improve and repurpose old features. Yes, Gentle Reader, I’m talking about the “I” word, innovation. It’s debatable if the Wii controller is a true innovation as some gamers will still belittle it and mock it, but from a business standpoint it’s a successful change that’s brought in tremendous profit. Nintendo is as guilty as everyone else of giving us sequels by the truck load, most games in each series offer something new every one or two games. In truth, sequels are not really a bad thing as long as they are different enough that it stands on its own or adds to the previous experience. (continue reading…)

Let me begin this article with an introduction not to the game, but to myself. I’ve never played a FE game before. Ever. I’ve played SRPG’s before such as Disgaea, FFTA (and the even more awesome FFTA2) and so on, but I’ve never actually played a Fire Emblem game. This is mainly because I jumped out of the Ninty camp after my Wii collected dust. I have also only completed one mission in this entire game so far, and I have been playing it for 24 hours hit the jump to find out why.

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To all the Pokémon fans out there, Toys R Us will be giving out a level 100 Regigigas via wifi. This will last from March 8th to March 21st so you folks out there got two weeks to go out and get it. This is to go along with the Pokémon Platinum release that is coming out on March 22nd. As with Pokémon Pearl and Diamond, there is a chance to get Regigigas if you have obtain Regice, Regirock, and Registeel but with Platinum coming out, if you trade Regigigas into Platinum, apparently it reverses and you are able to catch the three Regi-Pokémon and get the platinum version of Regigigas as well.

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I really don’t know how to put this. I’m sorry if I led you on, that wasn’t my intent. I-I just… I just don’t think we’re right for each other anymore. We had some good times I know but- hey don’t do that, it’s not your fault. Don’t cry Nintendo. I mean, we still have the memories right? There were some fantastic things we did together, do you remember that night back in 1990? It was pure magic.

Things started out great. Do you remember how we met? My mom brought you home from the store that day in 1986. I couldn’t have been happier. I know, I know. I was young and naïve. You were new and exciting, a whole new world of possibilities right in front of me. I didn’t know this, but you were already strangling the life out of the people that wanted to make games for you. You just squeezed and squeezed. Your sweetly cruel grip locked down third party developers. They were powerless to make games for other systems. You even made poor Konami open Ultra Games, just so they could deliver you Ninja Turtles and Metal Gear. It was wrong of them to trick you like that, but when you don’t allow game makers but 5 games a year, sometimes drastic steps have to be taken. Even with your veritable monopoly on my gaming experience, my love for you only grew. Late nights sharing you with friends, blowing into your spacious cavities, even your portable model I could take where I pleased only made my fervor for you stronger. I bought you accessories, despite your lack of software support for them. I loved every minute on my Power Pad, though I only had one of your five games for it. Asshole Dog didn’t giggle half as much as I did when shooting cans in Hogan’s Alley. Then, that raven shelled hussy called Genesis threatened to take me away forever.
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Deciding that I want eye cancer and to become obese at the same time, I played Jack Bros. by Atlus for the Virtual Boy. Jack Bros. is a very simple dungeon crawler for the Virtual Boy using original icons from Atlus, such as Jack Frost and Pyro Jack.

The story is very simplistic but it gets the job done. On Halloween all the faeries come out play with the small children to have fun and cause mischief. You play as a one of the Jack brothers, either Jack Frost, Pyro Jack (Jack Lantern in this game) or Jack Skelton (aka Jack the Ripper). Having so much fun playing with the children, you forgot you’re suppose to go home by the end of the day or else you will die because faeries don’t belong in the realm of humans. So off you go on your adventure to get back home with the aid of a small pixie that nags you at every single floor giving you the most obvious hints.

The game play itself is just as simple as the story. You go through many floors of a dungeon collecting keys and eventually get back to the faerie world. Each character plays pretty much same, the only difference is the sprites. So I decide to play through the game as Jack Frost, who in my opinion is the most lovable one of the three. The gameplay consists of running around collecting keys and shooting ice/fire/knives at enemies, and if you’re feeling feisty you can use a bomb too, which kills everything on the screen. The dungeons are small and narrow, so there’s not much room for you or the enemies. The floors are designed to be maze-like but can easily be solved by any grade school child; so it becomes hard to lose yourself on the map. There is also a radar that tells you where the keys are and where the exit is. There is no life bar, but rather a timer. The timer goes down every time you are damaged and once the time runs out its game over.

Overall the game play is just basic and repetitive. There’s nothing really much else to it besides the dungeon crawling aspect of the game. The monotony does break up when you reach the end of a dungeon to fight a boss, which changes things around as you now have an arena to fight in and it suddenly feels like I’m playing Smash TV. Each boss is unique in their own way and all of them are very fun fights. Even though the boss fights can be very exhilarating, everything in between gets a bit boring after mere minutes of playtime.

Nothing really much to say about the graphics in the game, besides staring at them for too long can cause eye problems. Shades of red aren’t really a beautiful sight to see, but it gets the job done, sort of. I would say besides the eyestrain, everything else about the graphics is just fine; everything is identifiable and you really can’t get confused between one sprite or the next. The music seems to remind me of every DOS game there is, even the NES and Gameboy had some catchy bits in their music library but the music in this really reminds me of the days of DOS music which can be either good or bad depending how you like it. Even though the music was a step backward in synthesis, it was for the most part adequate, I’ll say just above mediocre but that’s it.

The game is simple and fun for those who enjoy the dungeon crawling. If you like to kill thirty minutes, give the game a try; if you want to kill over thirty minutes, give the game a try – just go see optometrist afterwards.

Since I was lucky enough to register 400 dollars worth of Nintendo games, I’ve decided to review this Club Nintendo reward because most of you probably do not have it. Let me tell you, it was worth it. Previously only available in Japan as part of their Club Nintendo, this game was hard to come by. However, with Nintendo debuting Club Nintendo here in the “Americas”, we now have a chance to play it. Ordering the game requires 800 points on the CN (as I will refer to it from now on) website. This turns out to be roughly 400 dollars, if you registered only Wii games.

The Game and Watch Collection contains three G&W games:

• Oil Panic
• Donkey Kong
• Green House

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There were so many ways that the DS could have evolved. Nintendo could’ve made the top screen touch-sensitive. The whole thing could have been compacted to fold up into a convenient Gameboy SP-sized package, like one of those shoop’ed ads circulating the interwebs from long, long ago. But no, they had to come up with the Nintendo DSi, which is basically a re-designed DS without the GBA port and dual 0.3 megapixel cameras. Well at least the screens themselves are bigger, and there’s some potential with homebrew ( the DSi also offers SD card support and internal storage as new features ). We’ll take what we can get.

Anyway, IGN seems to be on the vine with the latest regarding the latest model of the Nintendo DS, citing numerous but unnamed sources in their report that the redesign would cost around US$ 179.99, and will be launching in the Americas on April 4. That’s a bit of a hefty price, but it’s a good thing, considering that the Nintendo DS lite is still selling like hotcakes (selling 1.5 million units in November), making the DSi more of an optional upgrade than anything else. I’m sure I won’t be plunking money down on it.

It’s no surprise that Nintendo has won this gaming generation in terms of sales. Yes, we know about the shovelware and yes, we know that the Wii and the DS do have gimmicks, but even the most hardcore fanboy can’t deny the fact that Nintendo is literally making a killing, even with the recent economic crunch. Sony’s laying off people, Microsoft is planning to lay off people, Nintendo is in fact hiring more people to cart the ridiculous scads of money they’ve been making from the bank to their secret underground vaults, where they also store the world’s only supply of Nintendium. They’ve dominated each and every NPD chart since the history of forever, and it looks like they’re not stopping.

Take this latest NPD Group update, which tackles the sales of all videogame consoles last December (i.e. December of 2008). Here’s the actual list, first:

* Nintendo DS – 3,040,000
* Wii – 2,150,000
* Xbox 360 – 1,440,000
* PSP – 1,020,000
* PlayStation 3 – 726,000
* PlayStation 2 – 410,000

Oh, look, Nintendo’s at the top. No surprise there. What’s surprising is that for the entire month of December, Nintendo has sold over 5 million consoles. That’s both the Wii and the DS hardware sales combined. According to NPD, that makes a new record high – breaking the PlayStation 2’s record of 2.7 million sales for a month alone. And that’s just for the US. Nintendo is making so much money, it should be a crime.

Of course, now with all your money, Nintendo, isn’t it time to do something about your software? Come on. We’re literally eating right out of your hand. Take some risks! Be creative with your IPs! Super Mario Galaxy was great, Twilight Princess was pretty cool, but it’s always been more or the same. Ask Rockstar to help direct the next Zelda. Have Suda 51 develop the next Mario game, anything. Break the mold. PLEASE.

Balloon Fight for the NES is an instant classic. You are a Balloon Fighter who must survive in a sky of bird-masked kids who want to kill you. It’s just you, and perhaps a buddy. Also you must dodge man-eating fish and electric stars of doom in an infinite maze. Great fun, great co-op, and great music. But, is this game still worthy of a buy/download? Read on to find out!
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Remember Bob’s Game? That DS RPG that the creator, someone supposedly named ‘Bob’ himself put in a staggering 15,000 hours of hard work on? That indie game that Nintendo apparently doesn’t want to be completed, blocking it by way of denying its creator an SDK purchase? If so, then you might remember that ‘Bob’ himself bit the bullet by staging a 100-day protest inside a room, barricaded from the outside world, only to come out when Nintendo finally relents and gives him the SDK he sorely needs to make Bob’s Game ready for retail. Well, it seems that it will be a while before Bob’s Game actually makes it to the store shelves, as it seems that Bob himself has given up the good fight, letting himself out after only 30 days of being cooped up in his own room. Bear in mind that it’s quite the furnished room, and has all the amenities and luxuries of any room, and he even has a way to communicate with the outside (as well as a shower and food) – which is why him giving up even before the halfway mark a bit puzzling, and a bit sad.
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