Nintendo Picks old NES games as ‘Best of 3DS’

So I got some 3DS cash for Christmas and I’m pokin’ around the featured categories on the eShop yesterday and I see “The Best of 2012” and figure I’ll take a look. ‘Oh wow, Dillon’s Rolling Western was a 2012 release?’, I think. ‘Oh right, Sakura Samurai, that looked pretty cool and maybe — wait, what!?’, I’m interrupted mid-thought as I’m suddenly seeing Super Mario Bros., a Sonic the Hedgehog game for Game Gear, a handful of Game Boy games and even Metroid! Yes, the red hot new release from 1986 which did come out on the 3DS eShop in 2012 but completely does not count for a “best of the year” list. I also take odds with Colors 3D and Petit Computer which are more productivity apps than games.

Oh Nintendo. On one hand they’re pioneering Day One digital releases for retail games and on the other they’re saying a ROM dump of Super Mario Bros. is one of the best 3DS games of 2012. Is this list based on sales? User ratings? Who knows, but if Bird Mania 3D makes the cut then surely there were enough ports of hidden object and iOS games to fill out this list without dipping into Virtual Console releases. Anyways, there is some good stuff worth looking into on this list so check out all 25 entries below.

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Re-Review: Art Style PiCTOBiTS (DSiWare)

Back in the days when I was writing for that other site I would post snippets of reviews here and link to them. As they’ve disavowed any knowledge of me I figured it’s fair game and since I just transferred PiCTOBiTS to the 3DS and reminded myself of this review, here ya go:

For a simple downloadable title there’s a lot of history behind Art Style: PiCTOBiTS. Developer skip started things on the Game Boy Advance with the ‘bit Generations’ series and have evolved the hallmark of simple gameplay coupled with arresting visuals into the Art Style series for the WiiWare and DSiWare stores. To date PiCTOBiTS is the most original and worthwhile investment on the fledgling DSi downloadable service, but it’s not quite enough to warrant upgrading from a DS Lite on its own.

That’s not to say it isn’t mind bending, puzzle game fun because this is some of the most frantic, perplexing and rewarding action I’ve yet encountered at the end of a stylus. In traditional fashion big colorful pieces come marching down the screen and it’s your job to turn their pokey angles into squares, rectangles and lines to clear them before they reach the bottom. You do this by touching a colored block at the bottom of the screen and then placing it along the downward path of the larger megabit pieces. Each stage starts you out with a few rows of blocks to work with but once they’re gone you’ll have to decide which megabits you clear and which ones you let fall down the screen to provide more color coded ammunition.

Clearing the megabits as fast as possible is challenging enough but to play the game well takes incredibly quick hands, and an even quicker intuition. Once you take out part of a megabit the game freezes while the pieces fly up to the top screen, giving you only seconds to line up more blocks underneath before the remainder of the megabit plummets to the ground. The quicker you clear megabits the higher your multiplier climbs, doling out more golden Super Mario coins in the process. Using the megabits strategically combined with the ability to place blocks anywhere on the screen (instead of simply stacking them up as in most other puzzle games) is half of what makesPiCTOBiTS so unique.

Holding true to the Art Style formula, the retro presentation is the other half of the package. With a cartoon cast or uninspired visuals the game would be little more than a forgettable knock off of 1989′s Quarth, but PiCTOBiTS packs as much Nintendo fan service as Super Smash Bros., both in its visuals and soundtrack. Each of the fifteen stages is based on an NES game, ranging from the ubiquitous Super Mario Bros. and Zelda to the more obscure Devil World, Baseball, and Wrecking Crew. The colored blocks that fill the screen represent little chunks of a pixel image from the game and also serve as your goal. Unlike the never ending flow of Tetris, once you’ve cleared enough megabits to fill in the image on the top screen you’re done. Colored blocks and a gray backdrop are all the graphics you get but combined with the music each stage inexplicably becomes the game it represents.

Remixing a song is a delicate balancing act; maintaining the sound that made the tune memorable in the first place while adding elements to make it a standalone piece. Japan’s chiptune group, YMCK, has done it perfectly here inPiCTOBiTS, adding nothing but equal parts 8-bit “blips” that fall right in line with the source material. It’s also interactive and as you progress through each stage new layers of melody build over the basic beat until the tune is in full swing, ratcheting up the excitement and drawing you beyond the puzzle game. On one of the final stages I found myself thinking of the massive green, white, and yellow megabits as Koopa himself, not just parts of the image I was creating. I was right there with Mario, jumping over fireballs and hammers even as my hand was moving colored blocks around the touch screen. It’s a sense of immersion that you very rarely ever get from a puzzle game and totally justified the $5 price tag for me, even if it’s not the most content-rich experience on the DS.

As good as it is, Art Style: PiCTOBiTS isn’t going to drive anyone to spend $170 on another Nintendo DS system. Playing straight through the fifteen stages is only going to take a few days of bite-sized play sessions and though there’s a lot of unlockable stuff, it’s not going to appeal to everyone. The music player, with seventeen tracks to unlock (each with alternate renditions) is only for the truly geeky and the Dark versions of each stage are so frantic and challenging that most players are unlikely to struggle through more than one or two. However, it’s pretty much inevitable that we’re all going to upgrade to a DSi at some point and no matter what has hit the service in the meantime, Art Style: PiCTOBiTS will always be one of my top recommendations on the DSiWare store.

Another DSi-to-3DS transfer video

We got 3DS XL’s a few weeks ago and I finally got around to transferring PictoBits and Aquia from Katy’s DSi to my 3DS. It went well once I figured out I needed to download a transfer app on the DSi as well. Then the Pikmin were all heave-ho about moving the games over and then it was done. The only thing that didn’t make it were the game saves but — oh well — now I get to play through PictoBits again!

Hey Nintendo, you’re welcome

For maximum effect you should view this post at GameLuv.com directly where this image is couched between almost the exact same blue and pink that we’ve been using since 2006.  If they weren’t currently reserved for the Chinese market (and if they came in XL format) I’d say these would be perfect for Katy and I. Maybe I’ll be sure to stick any 3DS screenshots I post within one of these frames… but I probably won’t.

You’ve sold me on New Super Mario Bros. 2

Coin lust and Koopa Kids. If there’s a cameo by Wario I’ll pretty much have to buy it as soon as it’s out.

E3’11: Thoughts on Wii U

I think it looks like a handbag :/

Let’s cut right to it since I’m so many days late in getting this posted anyways: nothing outside of Wii U from Nintendo’s press conference was of any interest to me. Ok, ok, a couple 3DS games looked neat but it was Wii U — which was revealed to me by way of twitter as I was sending Katy off to Europe — that was obviously the big news.

Living up to many of the rumors, the controller wasn’t a huge surprise but the silence over the console itself was. Is this just a Wii? Is it a slightly enhanced Wii? Is there another new, non-WiiPad controller coming? Nintendo has since admitted that the whole showing was confusing and didn’t get across everything they were going for. It’s almost MORE interesting than what they did show; that being a bunch of glorified tech demos.

Still, the potential was easy to see. Once again Nintendo has made what will probably be the most unique party game experience with one player on the WiiPad and others (up to 4) using Wii Remotes. The virtual spaces that the gyroscope-enabled WiiPad lets you interact with was also a mindblowing display. While the TV displays the “straight ahead” view, the Shield Pose demo let you look 360-degrees around you with the WiiPad held up in front of you. The hardware itself has some surprises of its own, able to stream the game directly to the WiiPad to play in bed, on the toilet, or when someone else wants to use the TV. In a great throwback to the 3DO it even has its own volume slider and headphone port along with a touch screen stylus, dual analog sticks, and ergonomic grip on the back that conveniently acts as a stand.

it ALSO only does damn near everything!

The problem? Price. That’s a Sony caliber product right there with tons of tech inside that can’t come cheap. And that’s just the controller. I personally think the console itself is going to be a minimally enhanced Wii with little more than some HD outputs, basic wifi and a little flash memory. They’re finally falling in step with HD but the big draw is clearly in what the new controller can do, not how astounding the games look.

They also promised loads of third-party support and showed a couple demos but the WiiPad’s features could just as easily dissuade developers from the investment it takes to bring their PS3 and 360 games to Wii U. Where the Wii brought us a bunch of shallow minigame collections we may wind up with PS3 and 360 ports that limply slap on map/inventory support for the touch screen and ship it out the door.

Like most, I wasn’t sure what to make of this thing at first but in the days since E3 opened I’ve come around on Wii U. I like touch screens and analog sticks way better than Wii Remotes and motion controls like PS Move and Kinect so they’ve got me on the physical interface. I’m not the biggest fan of Nintendo’s IPs anymore so they still need to find some games I care about but I don’t outright hate this thing! And after the last few years of being bummed out over the Wii that may be the biggest surprise of E3.

Sega has a CRUSH on 3DS

Original PSP trailer, in case you forgot

Amidst the hidden-object games for PC and the expletive-laden console shooters in this week’s ‘You, Me and the ESRB‘ show I found confirmation of CRUSH 3D. You may remember it as simply CRUSH when it was released in 2007 on PSP. Sega and Zoe Mode are dusting off the source code and slapping it on the 3DS for an expected release in 2011 depending on just how dirty that code is. The ESRB rating summary confirms the return of the 2D/3D puzzle platforming gameplay of the original with “cartoony” characters, giant cockroaches, and, uhh, Mild Cartoon Violence. Elsewhere, the BBC’s Barney Harwood of Blue Peter fame (I have no idea who that is or what that is) recently made a trip to Sega to see the game and was reportedly super impressed.

“It was a fun day” said Marc Tourle, game designer at Zoe Mode. “We created an avatar just for Barney, so he could see himself running around a Crush 3D level. And we all got Blue Peter badges to boot!”

What on Earth are these people talking about? Anyways, Crush 3D is yet another old game that’s getting an exploitative update for the 3D handheld but in this case it might not be such a bad thing. I think a lot of people missed out on what looked like a unique, brain-tweaking puzzle game in 2007… myself included.

Mahjong gets the 3DS treatment this Summer

BONUS POST! Not only is this Atlus’ first game for the 3DS and not only is this tile-matching mahjong in three dimensions, it’s also a heads-up from Sunsoft. Yeah, the Sunsoft of old is still at it… umm, making 3D Mahjong. Mahjong CUB3D is coming this Summer from Atlus and along with classic tabletop style layouts the game will offer Cube Mode which is exactly what it looks like above: tile-matching mahjong but all up and down and over and around. It’s not exactly the ‘Picross 3D 3D’ that it immediately makes me think of but it’s close. Someone get on that ASAP!

U.S. 3DS software lineup confirms my dismay

Well it’s official. There’s nothing outside of the 3DS’ built-in games and utilities that I’m excited about. Steel Diver and PilotWings will make for great bargain bin buys when I pick up a 3DSi in another year. I just hope there’s still a few people around me using StreetPass because those recently revealed Puzzle and Quest games (also built into the handheld) sound really cool.

Here’s the official U.S. launch lineup for the big day on March 27th, most of which are reportedly priced around $40. Anybody getting a 3DS on Zero Day? Anybody buying any of these games?

• Asphalt 3D
• Bust-A-Move Universe
• Combat of Giants: Dinosaurs 3D
• Lego Star Wars® III: The Clone Wars
• PilotWings Resort
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 3D
• Madden NFL Football
• Nintendogs + Cats
• Rayman 3D
• Ridge Racer 3D
• Samurai Warriors: Chronicles
• The Sims 3
• Steel Diver
• Super Monkey Ball
• Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition
• Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Shadow Wars

Another bloom off the 3DS rose

So the public demos didn’t go so well and it barely seemed like it was a game and it was to feature a butterfly-winged tanuki… Well okay, when you put it that way I guess I can see why EA would spread the weed killer over My Garden and prune the plot into a FIFA pitch.

One of their few — and most original — Nintendo 3DS titles was just canned and along with it one of  my few reasons for getting a 3DS. A gardening sim sounds a lot more interesting to me than yet another iteration of Ocarina of Time or another crummy handheld version of The Sims. Ah well, I can always hold out for bohm.