Since day one, the name “Wii-U” has been ridiculed. If you weren’t groaning over the fact that Nintendo just lazily slapped a “U” at the end of an already criticized console name, you were one of the people making references to Ling from Kung Pow! Enter the Fist. After much debate, it looks like Nintendo agrees — the name (probably) won’t work.
Now that 2011 is done with, it’s time to stop reminiscing about the year that was and look forward to 2012, which is already starting to look like it might be a great year for games. With titles like Soul Calibur V and Mass Effect 3 set to drop all within the first quarter of 2012, gamers (and their wallets) won’t have much a reprieve to recover from the holiday rush before 2012′s best titles come at them, and there’s no telling what other possibly great, game changing announcements may come at this year’s E3 and TGS. 2012 is going to be an exciting year for gamers, and now is a good time to look ahead to the many things we have to look forward to.
According to Game Informer, Disney announced a sequel to their popular, million-selling Wii adventure game Epic Mickey in a newsletter, possibly before they intended too, as the information was put up on Disney site StitchKingdom.com, then quickly taken down once word got out. Thankfully, some fans managed to copy the info and get some box art on the upcoming multiplatform title before it was taken down.
A Michigan family arrived home one night to find that one of their Wii remotes had exploded, sending pieces of plastic around the area and engulfing the room in smoke.
Reports from WXYZ Action News (via Kotaku) claim that the family had replaced the supplied alkaline batteries — the recommended type for Wii remotes — with lithium batteries, a big no-no according to the user manual.
The 3DS launch was nearly an abysmal failure and it was most due to the poor pricing that Nintendo set for it, expecting people would see it as a premium device. President Reggie Fils-Aime has told Reuters that the company doesn’t want to repeat this scenario with the Wii U launch, saying “The initial price on the 3DS was also too high, something that Nintendo will be careful about this time around.”
While Wii sales (and reasons to play the Wii) have slowed to a trickle this year, this system still somehow manages to sell a respectable number of units each month, and is still the market leader by a wide margin. Nintendo is hoping to boost slowing Wii sales with some new bundles this holiday season, including bundles that package the system with copies of Mario Kart or New Super Mario Bros. Wii (protip: trade in that copy of NSMB for either Mario Galaxy, if you don’t have them already). But while Nintendo wants to get the word out about the value of these new bundles, they left out one important tidbit: these new Wii’s are missing Gamecube backwards compatibility.
The Wii U made a big splash when Nintendo unveiled the upcoming console at this year’s E3, but while the thought of finally being able to get a Zelda or a Mario game in HD was enough to whet the appetites of most gamers who felt alienated by the original Wii, the true draw of the new console was it’s tablet-like controller. But as potentially innovative as the Wii U controller could be, it had one massive draw back– only one of the new controllers could be used with each system at a time, forcing other players to use standard Wii-motes or linked 3DS’s. Apparently, that’s changed.
In a recent interview with a European gaming site, Zelda series produced Eiji Aonuma confirmed that another Legend of Zelda game is already well into development for the 3DS. While Aonuma was coy when it came to any concrete details regarding the game, he did say that the game will be completely different than the previous DS Zelda’s and will use the system’s 3D screens in a way that will “have meaning,” though he didn’t elaborate on what he meant by that.
There is a bit of a fanaticism that goes with the Zelda franchise. It’s part of the territory; The Legend of Zelda is beloved and never ceases to amaze its many fans. With the release of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword approaching in a mere month, Zelda fans can feel their palms just itching. With a new Zelda game comes new skills, new tools, and new lands to explore and discover; this game is chock full of all of them.
Nintendo took a note out of a page in the Xbox 360 manual that specifically says whenever there is a high profile game coming, bring out a new addition of the console as a way to entice your consumers to spend more money. It is a working marketing strategy (Halo Reach, Arkham City, Gears of War 3), and Nintendo has done it before with their Wii (the red console for their New Super Mario Bros. game). Well they are doing it again, this time in promotion for their new Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games.
Currently the number one pre-ordered game at Gamestop’s online store is The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword bundle. The $69.99 bundle include the special edition Wiimote plus and the game’s soundtrack, in a addition to the game of course. For $10 over the cost an Xbox or PS3 game you get an extra controller and one of the best Wii releases of the year, perhaps of all time.
Square Enix finally unveiled the oft-delayed next entry into their mega popular Dragon Quest series today, Dragon Quest X. The series has been famous for being fiercely traditional and slow to implement any changes to it’s simple but successful formula; that changed with 2010′s Dragon Quest IX on the DS, which changed the focus of the usually single-player series into multiplayer dungeon crawler. Now, DQX is taking that even further by expanding the series into a full-blown online MMO.
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