Super Smash Bros 3DS/Wii U Final Video Thoughts

Cloud from Final Fantasy 7 is in a Nintendo game. Just let this sink in for a moment.

I remember back when Final Fantasy 7 came out. I was a big Nintendo fan who had decided to buy a Playstation 1 instead of a Nintendo 64. The Playstation just looked cooler to me. And I loved (and still love) Final Fantasy 7.

Now Cloud is in a Super Smash Bros and two worlds that I love: Nintendo and Final Fantasy, are back together again. Thats really awesome.

But you know, we already knew about Cloud in Super Smash Bros 3DS and Wii U before this week's final video about Smash.

So what did I think of the new reveals?

I can't say I was impressed by yet another Fire Emblem character being added to Smash. There's already so many. I did like the look all of the new costumes for Smash, especially the Chocobo costume and the Geno costume (that was a shock!).

And that final reveal shocked me a lot.



Bayonetta in Smash Bros! WOW.

I can't say I'm a huge fan of the character. I mean, I tried the demo and thought it was ok, but she wouldn't have been high on the list of characters I wanted for Smash.

Even so, WOW. She looks incredible in Smash Bros. She absolutely looks like she'd be a fun character to play as. I'm sure people are going to love playing as that character when she comes to Smash Bros next year.

I'd say, overall, it was a good final video for Smash. It wasn't a great one though. I still think that Shovel Knight or Rusty or some Indie character should have gotten into Smash Bros instead of that new Fire Emblem character. Also at least one more big surprise would have been amazing.

Still, the Smash Bros final video was very welcome in an otherwise slow Nintendo news week.

What did you think of the final video? What characters do you wish had been added to Smash Bros?

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The Cloud picture was taken from here and the Bayonetta picture from here.

I'll be taking next week off from this blog. I'm just way too busy. This blog will return the week after Christmas!

Goodbye Shigeru Reviews, Hello Real Otaku Gamer!

As some of you may have heard, I've left Shigeru Reviews and moved over to Real Otaku Gamer. Here's my goodbye to Shigeru that I posted over the weekend at that site:

" Dear Readers,

Just like Jon and Harold, I’ll be leaving Shigeru Reviews and heading over to Real Otaku Gamer too. I’ll miss Shigeru a lot.

When Matt asked me to write my first review for this site (Stick It to The Man), I had no idea that it’d turn into a full time writing position. I was delighted when I started receiving review codes from Matt and that feeling of excitement/worry about “what will this game be?” has never worn off (and I doubt it ever will). Writing for Shigeru has been a blast!

I have enjoyed writing the reviews the most, but writing the news has been an excellent learning experience. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my reviews and news posts here.

There are some people I want to thank:

Matt and Jon for giving me games to play and things to write. What a fantastic experience!

The rest of the Shigeru crew! Especially Harold, Fletcher, Jolt, and Chris.

I also want to thank Adam Roffel, Shaun Edwards, and Trevor Gould for their support of my writing. The feedback you guys provide is really helpful and I hope we’ll continue to talk a lot.

Some people that inspire me and make me strive to be a better writer: my mom & dad, Daan Koopman, Shawn Long, Roger DiLuigi III, mattmagician, Tony Brasel, Jess Carder, Carl Smith, and many more.

Thanks to Nintendo Everything, Go Nintendo, and Nintendo Enthusiast. Three of the best Nintendo related sites and our main sources for gaming news.

And thank you to the fantastic Indie developers who gave us review codes, interviews, and plenty of news to report. There are way too many of you wonderful people to list. You all know who you are. I hope we’ll work with you again very soon.

Most of all: YOU guys. The readers. Thank you for reading.

Sincerely,

Daniel Fugate

@df2506 on twitter "

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And thats it! How will this change effect this blog? 

Not at all. I still plan to write previews, reviews, and other stuff for this site. 

With Real Otaku Gamer, Jon, Harold, and I saw an interesting opportunity to join another site and took it! We just started working for the site this week, so its too early to tell you what we have planned for the site (other than we will still be talking about Nintendo & Indies) or how its going. Wish us luck! 

You can check the site out here if you want to.

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I'll be back on Friday. Let me know in the comments if there's anything Nintendo or Indie related you want me to talk about.

Congratulations to Image & Form

Today I thought I'd write a blog entry about Image & Form, developers of Steamworld Dig and now Steamworld Heist.

As many of you know from my blog entries here, I was really excited for Steamworld Heist. The game came out yesterday. I got to review it over at Shigeru Reviews and I loved it.

Image & Form created an excellent game. It was everything I had hoped for and a bit more! Please check out my review at Shigeru Reviews here to find my full thoughts.

Image & Form has always been a really friendly developer. I've talked to them a lot on twitter and yes, I'm a huge fan. That did not stop me from being critical of Steamworld Heist. I did have some nitpicky things to say (not many). I know that I failed in my Steamworld Dig review here on this site because I just loved that title too much and couldn't be unbiased about it. I tried to be as unbiased as possible in my Steamworld Heist review. It wasn't easy.

There was a lot of hype for Steamworld Heist. I felt that hype and I even wrote poems based on what I'd seen and heard of the game. I was constantly bugging Image & Form and tweeting my excitement for the game.

I thought one of the coolest things that Image & Form did was the Steamworld Heist Ambassador contests. It was amazing that fans could win early copies of Steamworld Heist! I didn't enter those contests because I hoped that I'd be reviewing the game (I did enter their contest for the soundtrack though). I feel really lucky to have gotten a review copy and to get to play the game early!

I've only played two of Image & Form's games so far. I feel like they make really amazing games and their games are only going to get better and better! I can't wait to see what they do next! If you haven't bought Dig and/or Heist, what are you waiting for?! GO GET THEM!

Congratulations Image & Form on the release of Steamworld Heist for the 3DS. All the best to you! Hope Steamworld Heist sells a ton of copies.

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The Image & Form logo is from Image & Form's blog here. The Steamworld Heist picture is from Image & Form's press kit for the game.

I'll be back on Monday to talk about the FUTURE of something. Not this blog. Something else.

Get Your (eshop) Wallets Ready!

Get your eshop wallets ready folks!

This week Steamworld Heist and Terraria come to the 3DS. Also FAST Racing Neo and Devil's Third come to the Wii U! And those are just the titles we know about! There could be more.

Then next week Minecraft and Temple of Yog are coming to the Wii U and The Delusions of Von Sottendorff and his Square Mind is coming out for the 3DS too! And those are also just the games we know about.

It looks like we are about to have two really great weeks for the 3DS eshop. You should stay tuned for reviews of a few of these games at Shigeru News. Oh and hey, don't forget that Xenoblade Chronicles X came out last week at retail and on the Wii U eshop. It looks like an incredible game.

Doesn't look like I'll be getting it anytime soon though. I fell behind on my retail Wii U games. I have to get Super Mario Maker for Christmas. I will probably write up some first impressions after Christmas for it and maybe share the levels I create here too!

What eshop games are you looking forward to in the coming weeks? What retail Wii U games are you playing?

Oh and before I leave you, please check out my thoughts over at Shigeru News about Minecraft Wii U edition here.

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I'll be back on Friday! Please let me know if there's any Wii U or 3DS games you'd like me to talk about.

The Game Awards: Two and a Half Hours I'll Never Get Back

I was originally planning to write about the great reveals that Nintendo gave us in The Game Awards last night. Nintendo didn't reveal anything though. They did have a moving tribute to Iwata, which was nice, and they won two awards, which was great, but no big reveals like last year's Zelda Wii U footage. That was pretty disappointing.

Actually, I should note that Nintendo won THREE awards really, but the third one wasn't mentioned during the broadcast. Splatoon won Best Shooter. I think they didn't mention that because they figured they'd have a riot.

But I'm not here today to write about how disappointed I was in the no Nintendo reveals last night. I don't feel like being the typical Nintendo fan and bad mouthing Nintendo today.

Instead, I want to talk about what a waste of time The Game Awards was.

First of all, Nintendo was an after thought for The Game Awards. During the broadcast's pre-show, people were asked what games they liked this year, what big gaming news there was, and Indie game of the year and Game of the year was discussed. Barely anybody talked about Nintendo. None of them were Nintendo fans clearly. Not a single Nintendo bit of news was brought up, none of the Nintendo Indies were nominated for an award, etc. Super Mario Maker was only talked about because it was nominated for Game of the Year. And the sequence had a guy saying he hoped it DIDN'T win because HE wasn't creative. sigh.

Then there was the opening segment: How do you play? With Splatoon getting a cameo and the rest being Sony and Microsoft related games!!! Seriously. What a bad sign.

Also the awards ceremony took place in the MICROSOFT THEATER. How biased can you get! An awards ceremony like this should be on NEUTRAL GROUND. No one company should have a clear bias in this program.

And most of the broadcast focused on Sony and Microsoft, with Nintendo only getting a few moments to shine; the Iwata tribute being the biggest moment...

But the Anti-Nintendo bias isn't the only thing that bugged me about the Game Awards.

The program also had useless categories like Trending Gamer and esports team. Who the heck cares about that stuff?!

I also didn't care for most of the music that was brought out and think that it should have been more related to VIDEO GAME MUSIC. There were a couple of things like that, but it should have ALL been game music.

Overall, The Game Awards was just BORING. If you don't care about Sony or Microsoft games, you should have avoided this program last night. Yes, there was a moving tribute to Iwata, but you can catch that online today. If you're a Nintendo fan, you didn't miss anything. Heck, I'd go as far to say, if you're a gamer, you didn't miss anything. The reveals this year weren't as mind-blowing as last years The Game Awards. In fact, the only two really surprising reveals were Psychonauts 2 and the Batman Telltale game.

(as aside: neither of which will be coming to the Wii U I'm sure. sigh).

I'll never get those two and a half hours back.

I guess I'll know better for next year though.

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I'll be back on Monday!

YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG Soundtrack Impressions

WARNING: The following its a preview of a soundtrack for YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG and contains titles for music from the game. These titles may or may not spoil or hint at elements of the game. If you don't want to know anything, not even a song title, don't read this preview
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The developer of the upcoming Wii U rpg YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG recently let me listen to a preview of the soundtrack for the game. Note: this was only a portion of the game's soundtrack. And there was one song on the soundtrack, Break Away: Michael's Theme, that did not work for me. I'm not sure if it was my computer or what. I did listen to the recent of the soundtrack, though, and here are my impressions of it.

The YIIK soundtrack, so far, is a mix of electronic, vocal, and orchestrated sounding material. There is one tune that came back into the other songs a lot, but otherwise, the music varied quite a bit. Personally, I prefered the slower songs in the soundtrack. I wasn't a big fan of the stranger music nor the vocal soundtracks. The slow songs were extremely well done though.

Here are my impressions of a few of the songs I liked:

The Overworld theme is definitely one of my favorites. It reminded me a bit of a Final Fantasy overworld theme, while also keeping its own unique identity. I think its going to be a lot of fun to listen to while traveling across the overworld.

Cat Chase is a really good lighthearted song that I'm very interested in seeing where its placed in the game.

The Theme of Sammy Pak is a very slow song that reminds me of something out of Earthbound. It also seems to have a sort of romantic vibe to it. Perhaps there's a bit of a Disney music quality to it too.

 Thinking of You Whenever You Are is just a nice guitar riff of a song. There isn't much to it, but there doesn't need to be. Its an excellent example of the wonderful slow music in this game so far.

Those are the highlights of the soundtrack for me, but none of the music in YIIK is terrible. I wasn't fond of the vocals in Puzzle Pieces, but otherwise, I have no major complaints with this soundtrack so far. You can tell that a lot of time and effort is being put into the soundtrack. If as much time and effort is being put into the actual game (and it appears that a lot of both is), then we should be in for a treat whenever YIIK comes to the Wii U.

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Thank you to the developer, Ackk Studios, for letting me check out the soundtrack. I can't wait to play the game!

The YIIK logo was taken from here on google.

I'll be back on Friday!

I'm Not Thankful For Animal Crossing New Leaf's Harvest Festival

Not all change is for the better. Animal Crossing: New Leaf is, in my opinion, the best Animal Crossing game in the series. That said, there is one holiday in the game that I absolutely do not like at all.

I don't like the Harvest Festival.

I use to love the Harvest Festival in previous Animal Crossing games. It was so much fun.





Basically, in previous Animal Crossing games, you had to hunt down a Turkey named Franklin. Franklin hid all over your town. It was like an advanced version of hide and seek. That turkey could really hide! Once you found him, you had to keep taking him knives and forks in order to get him to give you the entire Harvest set. Doesn't necessarily sound fun right? Well it was a ton of fun. One of the big things that made it fun was all of Franklin's funny dialogue. He was really nervous turkey!

I always looked forward to playing the Harvest Festival on Thanksgiving. It was just one more great thing about the holiday.

And then...



Nintendo changed it for New Leaf. And they ruined it.

Now, I don't usually like to talk bad about Nintendo. I love Nintendo. I love Animal Crossing. But...this was a huge mistake!

The Harvest Festival in New Leaf has Franklin as a cook now. He's trying to get you to make an alternative meal for Thanksgiving. But you have to collect a bunch of stuff before the day: fruit, mushrooms, fish, and give it to him. So the Harvest Festival has been turned into a collect-a-thon now and the reward for doing all this work is nowhere as good as the reward you use to get. You can buy all of the Harvest stuff at the Nooklings store now. Thank goodness I suppose.

This new version of the Harvest Festival is just awful. Its not fun at all.

I really miss how the holiday use to be.

I hope Nintendo brings back that old version of the holiday in the next game. I know they didn't have it in this one because you're the mayor and you wouldn't invite the turkey to town to be eaten and neither would Isabelle. The solution in my opinion? They could have had someone anonymously invite him to town! It could have been left a mystery.

Anyway, I never play this new Harvest Festival. I always just turn City Folk for the Wii on and play the old hide and search version. Thank goodness the Wii U plays Wii games!

Have you played the new Harvest Festival on New Leaf? What do you think of it? Please let me know in the comments!

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All of the above pictures are from google here!

Its Time to Go to the (Nintendo Badge) Arcade

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For about a week or so now, I've been addicted to Nintendo's latest 3DS app, Nintendo Badge Arcade. The app, basically, lets you get badges from a crane game and then place the badges of your 3DS bottom screen menu. Most of the badges do nothing. They are basically for decoration. There are some badges that'll take you to the eshop or things like that, but even those are just something to make your 3DS look cool. The crane game isn't always free though. You can win free turns via a practice crane game or the bunny in charge will give you free turns occasionally, but if you want to play the crane game a lot...you have to use real money.



I haven't used real money yet though. I say yet because the temptation is always there to use real money. There are a lot of really cool badges and you can't always get as many of them as you want.

In fact, the crane game can be a little frustrating sometimes. It'll pick up something and then drop it. Kind of like a real crane game, you can have a hard time getting exactly what you want or anything at all. Sometimes, you do get really lucky though and accidently push some badges down into the hole to get them.



But Nintendo Badge Arcade can feel like a ripoff sometimes. There have been days when I'll use my free turn and get nothing. Thats another reason I hesitate using money on this app. I worry that I'll use money to get some badges, won't get any at all, and there goes my money. Sure, five turns only costs $1 but still, a dollar is a dollar.

Nintendo Badge Arcade isn't for everybody. Not everyone will like putting the badges on their menu or like the crane game and how it feels like it cheats you sometimes. And certainly there will be people who NEVER use money on the app. I'm not sure if I'll be one of those or if I'll eventually give in and pay for some badges.




Yes, Nintendo Badge Arcade is a gimmick. Yes it can be a ripoff. But its also a very addictive app and I play it every day. Oh and I have gotten some cool badges, such as a Triforce badge, some Animal Crossing badges, and some good Mario badges. I also like how you can put the badges directly on folders if you want or design them like you see above.

Nintendo Badge Arcade is free to download right now on the 3DS eshop. Be warned though, you may get addicted to it!

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All of the above pictures were taken from google here.

I'll be back on Monday! There will be no blog entry on Friday next week