News - Nintendo Nerds - Home

A Black And White Sequel Coming Soon?

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 22:45:50 +0000

About seven hours ago, my iPhone started getting bombarded with emails. The email alerts were news notifications about Pokémon Grey Version. Basically, I set up a notification via Google News, to be alerted when new news about "Pokémon Grey" hits the Internet. These alerts stemmed from a recent question and answer period between GAMEFREAK's Director of Pokémon, Junichi Masuda and a crowd of Pokémon fans.

Below is a video of the entire Q & A period. Although most of us here do not know Japanese, I've managed to track down an English translation for a portion of the video. At approximately 4:30 into the video, someone in the crowd asks if there's going to be a sequel to the Pokémon Black Version and Pokémon White Version. You can hear the reaction of the crowd at 5:00 as Junichi-san answers the question. His response, while loosely translated, is this:

"Well, there's no reason to expect me to know that about a third version (laughter in the crowd) but I can't answer. But...I wonder if it's alright to say this...watch Pokémon Smash...if you want to know more about details."

Although rumors and speculation about a sequel to the Pokémon Black Version and Pokémon White Version continue to keep the suspense elevated, there's still no official details. If the rumor proves to be true (and we'll find out very soon), the sequel will most likely be for the Nintendo DS system, as an enhanced version of the Pokémon Black Version and Pokémon White Version games.

New Club Nintendo (NA) Item - 3DS Game Card Case

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 01:35:26 +0000

Today, Nintendo of America introduced new items in the Club Nintendo catalog, including this item: a 3DS Game Card Case.

Click HERE to go to the Rewards page and check it out. Get it while you can, because, I am sure of two things: (1) this will sell out fast; and (2) they will surely raise the coins on this one later.

Here's a description of the item as well:
Carry your Nintendo DS™ and Nintendo 3DS™ games in style with this sleek card case, shaped like a game box. Four double-sided covers are included, showing off eight Nintendo scenes featuring the likes of Mario™, Link™, and more. Up to 18 Game Cards can be stored inside.

The other items: two notebooks and two downloads for February (Art Academy for the 3DS and Mario Party 2 for the Wii).

Why are you still here? Go spend your coins!

Ace Attorney 5 Announced

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 19:44:26 +0000

By "announced", I mean they flashed a logo at the end of Ace Attorney's 10th anniversary event. No information was given about the game, unfortunately, but it's a pretty safe bet it will head to the 3DS. I wonder if the protagonist will be Phoenix Wright, Apollo Justice, or someone else entirely.

Thanks to:
http://www.cubed3.com/news/16452

More Info On The Nintendo Network

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 01:27:37 +0000

We already know that the Nintendo Network(the replacement for Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection) is an attempt to modernize Nintendo's online presence. It will debut on 3DS, and make its way to Wii U when it is released. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata had this to say about the changeover: "Unlike Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, which has been focused upon specific functionalities and concepts, we are aiming to establish a platform where various services available through the network for our consumers shall be connected via Nintendo Network service so that the company can make comprehensive proposals to consumers."

Nintendo also discussed a couple of other tidbits:

Wii U will use personal accounts in a similar fashion as Xbox Live and PSN. Friend codes are going away.
They are considering selling full retail games digitally. This may work for Wii U, but the 3DS has limited storage space. The Resident Evil: Revelations demo took up a good chunk of space.

Thanks to:
http://uk.wii.ign.co.../1217360p1.html

New 2012 Pokémon Titles Are Coming

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 11:07:03 +0000

Famitsu, Japan's most notorious gaming publication has just received a greeting card from none other than The Pokémon Company. Apparently, within the card, is a message stating that "more amazing Pokémon games" will be released in 2012 than in 2011. With 2011 releases such as Pokémon Black Version and Pokémon White Version, Pokémon Rumble Blast, and the 3DS application Pokédex 3D, there's bound to be some more great ones coming very, very soon. We already know about the two confirmed 2012 titles; Pokémon + Nobunaga's Ambition and PokéPark 2: Wonders Beyond.

With these two known 2012 Pokémon titles already in the works, what would you guys expect to see next?

Nintendo Drops Support For SOPA

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:26:26 +0000

Nintendo, along with other major gaming companies, officially ceased support of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act(SOPA). The internet community is quite correctly infuriated by SOPA, which would shut down a good part of the internet, including any site that hosts copyright-infringing material, such as YouTube. The masses made their voices heard with a boycott of GoDaddy.com, who had previously supported the bill. The mass exodus of people moving their domains away from GoDaddy forced the company to do a complete 180 from their previous stance. Nintendo is attempting to avoid that backlash by no longer publicly supporting the bill.

Thanks to:
http://articles.busi...opa-online-bill

Fils-Aime: Consumers Want "Complete Experie...

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 19:23:45 +0000

As many of you heard, with the next 3DS system update, the 3DS eShop will have the capability to offer add-on content. Third party developers seem primed to take advantage of this, but what is Nintendo's take? According to AOL Games(Yes, AOL still exists. I was surprised too.), Nintendo isn't going to start pumping out DLC for its core franchises.

NOA President Reggie Fils-Aime's take:
"We're interested in it to the extent that it makes sense to the consumer. And it's interesting: I've had this conversation with a number of our key developers, and their mentality is, 'Reggie, when we sell a game, we want the consumer to feel that they've had a complete experience.' Now, in addition, if we want to make other things available, great, and we'll look at that. But what we're unwilling to sell a piece of a game upfront and, if you will, force a consumer to buy more later. That's what they don't want to do, and I completely agree. I think the consumer wants to get, for their money, a complete experience, and then we have opportunities to provide more on top of that."

Nintendo has always been different. Having said that, I wonder if this is just some sort of spin to mask their failure to embrace the online facet of gaming. DLC is a great thing if it isn't abused on silly stuff, or things that were intentionally held back at launch to make more money. I'm not saying that Nintendo needs to start charging 500 Nintendo Points to unlock Jigglypuff in Super Smash Bros. However, if, say, a new Zelda game had a Master Quest DLC available, Nintendo would make more money and still retain their fans' goodwill. Maybe that's what he had in mind.

Little Monsters, Big Bucks: How Pokémon Keeps O...

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 22:39:50 +0000

Pokémon? Isn’t that so 10 years ago?

Not hardly. One would have been forgiven, back at the turn of the century when All Nippon Airways was painting its fleet of 747-600s with giant images of Pikachu, for thinking that the bestiary of battling critters was just the faddish flavor of the month. Certainly it was destined to go the way of Pet Rocks, Beanie Babies or that other flash-in-the-pan unpronounceable Japanese export, the Tamagotchi.

“Entertainment is fickle — it’s not something that can be more easily forecast like potato chips or beer sales,” said Anita Frazier, research analyst with the NPD Group, in an e-mail to Wired.com. “There are properties that can have everything going for them on paper, and sometimes it never resonates at all with the audience or it’s gone in a flash.”

But not Pokémon. In its various incarnations as a cartoon, Nintendo game and trading cards, the franchise has maintained its popularity. By some measures, it’s bigger than ever: The latest games, Pokémon Black and White, were the first to sell more than 1 million units in their first day of availability in the United States when Nintendo launched them this March. In Japan, the games sold 2.6 million copies in the first two days.
On Monday, Oct. 24, Nintendo will release the first game in the series for Nintendo 3DS, an action game called Pokémon Rumble Blast.

Games are just one slice of the pie. Soon after Nintendo launched the game and its attendant tie-in products in 1996, the tail began to wag the dog. The trading card game, a kid-friendly version of Magic: The Gathering, became popular in its own right. Originally published by Magic maker Wizards of the Coast, the trading card game is now produced by The Pokémon Company, an independent Nintendo affiliate that was spun off in 1998 to handle the whole shebang: games, TV, toys and airplanes.

In other words, Pokémon did what Super Mario attempted, but ultimately couldn’t — broke out of the world of videogames and became a true multimedia sensation.

How did it do it? That’s the thing: Nobody really knows. It’s a mystery. Frazier calls it the literal “billion-dollar question.” If there’s a secret sauce, the recipe would be worth untold amounts of birthday-card money.

Nevertheless, the Pokémon team has some best practices it employs to attempt to keep the momentum rolling like a runaway Donphan.

Source:
http://www.wired.com...okemon-feature/

Excellent article by Wired. I highly recommend reading the entire thing.

Rumor: Pokémon Gray In Development

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 19:25:50 +0000

Aspiring Pokémon Trainers may soon have another game to snatch up. A company recently registered the domain name PokemonGray.com, perhaps the precursor to an official game announcement.

"So what if some random ass company grabbed a domain name?" you might ask. However, NintendoBuzz notes that registration was done by Melbourne IT DBS. They're apparently the same company that registered PokemonBlackWhite.com, the official website for Pokémon Black and Pokémon White.

Pokémon Gray would presumably be an enhanced version of White and Black. That would follow a pretty standard routine for Pokémon games: two similar titles with distinct sets of trainable Pokémon are released simultaneously and then a remake incorporating both games' content launches a year or so later. For example, Pokémon Blue and Red were followed by Yellow.

Source:
http://www.cinemable...ment-36214.html

Dragon Quest X Confirmed For Wii U and Wii

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 06:11:57 +0000

Dragon Quest X will be released for the Wii, Square Enix confirmed at a press conference today. But not just Wii. The game is also due for Wii U.

Officially titled Dragon Quest X Mezameshi Itsutsu no Shuzoku, the next numbered Dragon Quest game is an Online RPG. Players form parties and co-exist with other players in an online world.

The game is being developed internally at Square Enix -- a first for the series, which usually uses external development studios like Level-5 and Chunsoft. As always, Yuji Hori, Koichi Sugiyama and Akira Toriyama are returning for their roles as designer, composer and character designer.

While the game was confirmed for the Wii even before Dragon Quest IX's DS release, today is the first time Square Enix has confirmed it for Wii U. All Wii games can be played on Wii U, of course, but DQX will have a separate Wii U version with updated visuals. The two versions will be cross platform compatible, so players on either version will exist in the same world.

Source: http://www.andriasan...x_wii_and_wiiu/

A Dragon Quest MMO? Interesting, to say the least.

Nintendo files patents for a MSOG

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 05:49:10 +0000

Before you start wondering what a MSOG is, it stands for “Massively Single-Player Online Game“. Like you even we had a little idea about what this exactly would be but seems like Nintendo have a clear idea on what they have registered patents for about.
According to Gamespot that dug out these filings, the patent application points out a MSOG will be a game in which a particular players actions will affect the other users of the game but no two players will ever have to come in to contact with each other.
How does that work? Well, here an example. If you were to increase the economy of the game depending on the scarcity of an item in the game, the price would automatically be changed even for the other players on the game.

Source:
http://portal.aecorp...nts-for-a-msog/

Nintendo To Announce "Extremely Big Title"

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 05:38:54 +0000

While September 13th may be unconfirmed, it seems to be the date that everyone is talking about. This seems to be a ball-park time when Nintendo will shed a very bright light on gamers. Their announcement will not be about a Wii U controller or a redesigned 3DS. Their announcement will be about a new title, one which will be extremely big.

Let's take a few moments to think about this.

First, we can discount that the title will be for the Wii...that's out.

Second, the 3DS is Nintendo's "gold" right now so I'm going to go ahead and predict that the title will be for the 3DS.

If the title is "extremely big" and for the 3DS, we can narrow it down pretty closely, to some well-known franchises. Let's see...

Mario - no
Smash Bros. - no
Mario Kart - no
Animal Crossing - no

I'm going to go ahead and say that one of the following franchises will see a new and exciting title for the 3DS.

Zelda
Mega Man
Pikmin
Fire Emblem
Pokémon
Metroid
Donkey Kong

This is tough but if I had to pick one of these, I'd pick Pokémon. I could also be completely off course here, but these seem to be logical franchise candidates.

What do you guys think about Nintendo's upcoming big announcement?

What title would you guys like to see?