PNM - Your independent source for all things Nintendo

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Cloudberry Kingdom
+ Interview with Dan Adelman + Video Game Music: Koji Kondo

Issue 12 - Aug/Sept 2013

Exclusive

Table of Contents
4 6 10 12 18 22 24 34 40 42 44 50 52 54 60 62 64 66
Character Profile: Tom Nook Zelda Symphony LA Concert Getting to know AC: New Leaf Dormant Nintendo Franchises Game Music : Koji Kondo Dan Adelman Interview Cloudberry Kingdom Interview Spin The Bottle Interview Disney Retrospective LYTTP: Pokemon LT: Game Difficulty EarthBound Retro Review Gear Review: Sumo Sultan Reviews Virtual Console Suggestions Pixel Puzzles Upcoming Releases Top News

MESSAGE FROM

THE EDITOR
Welcome to our 12th issue of PNM! Pikmin 3 is finally in stores which means Ill be be alternating my game time between it and AC: New Leaf. - Justin Sharp, Editor-in-Chief
Issue 12 marks the one year anniversary of PNM in print! Our first ever print issue was our Aug/ Sept issue last year which featured Pikmin 3 on the cover. I dont think anyone from our staff guessed it would be one year later before Pikmin 3 released but here we are. We have several exciting features in this issue including an extensive look at Cloudberry

purely_justin

magazine contact
magazine team
Editor-IN-CHIEF: Justin Sharp e. justin@purenintendo.com Head Editor: James Higginbotham e. james@purenintendo.com LAYOUT EDITOR: Katelyn Sharp e. katie@purenintendo.com ASSISTANT EDITOR: Justin Hinton e. jhinton@purenintendo.com SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER: Ben Stitzer e. ben@purenintendo.com EDITOR: Jake Spafford e. jake@purenintendo.com WRITERS Eli Courey J Casalino Kevin Klein Tristan Meiman Christian Mills Matt Paxton Alex Schramke

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Published by Pure Media LLC purenintendo.com

Kingdom from concept to final product, an interview with Dan Adelman of Nintendo of America, an interview with the team behind Spin the Bottle: Bumpies Party, our first

Video Game Music article, and much more. Also, be sure to check out our full review of Pikmin 3. Hint: Its the next must-have Wii U game.

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character profile
By Alex Schramke

Tom Nook
My name is Alex Schramke and I have a problem. I am addicted to Animal Crossing. For the past month, my 3DS has been taken over by the villagers of my town. With Animal Crossing on my mind, this month well take a look at Tom Nook, the dedicated shopkeeper of the series. In the North American localization of the games, Tom Nook has been portrayed as a hardworking raccoon with dreams of expanding his humble shop into a large, full-scale department store. Interestingly enough, Tom Nook is referred to as a tanuki (a raccoonlike animal famous in Japan) in the Japanese version of the game. He has two nephews, Timmy and Tommy, who help him work the shop when it reaches its full size. It is rumored that Nook had dreams of starting a successful business, and being so work driven, moved off to the big city leaving behind all of his friends to pursue his dreams. After succumbing to the harsh life there, he returns to the players village with nothing to show for it and begins his dream anew. While Tom Nooks work ethic is admirable, it seems that not all of the animal villagers see him in a positive light. While talking to some of the villagers, some may hint that Nook

Tom Nook in New Leaf

Tom Nooks first shop, Nooks Cranny

Tom Nooks second shop, Nook n Go, the first upgrade

helps the player remodel and customize the exterior of their homes with his now full-time real estate business. Have you ever wondered why in the Animal Crossing series furniture turns into a leaf when placed in your pocket or in storage? Believe it or not, this is directly related to Tom Nook. As mentioned earlier, in the Japanese versions of Animal Crossing, Tom Nook is said to be a tanuki, not a raccoon. Tanukis are popular animals in Japanese folklore known to use their shape shift-

has a checkered past, and the fact that the local black market merchant, Crazy Redd, has a history with him and considers him to be his rival suggests that our beloved Raccoon merchant may not be as innocent as he seems. Nook has been in every game of the Animal Crossing series to date, and he serves as a guide to the player at the beginning of the game. Taking the player under his wing, Tom Nook sells you your home in the village and hires you as a part-time worker at his shop to begin paying it off. His shop, Nooks Cranny, is small and modest at first, but with the help of the player, the shop grows into the huge department store, Nookingtons. Nook also helps the player upgrade their house with his on the side real estate business. Up until Animal Crossing: New Leaf, this has always been the hardworking raccoon merchants role. With the release of New Leaf, Tom Nook has left the shopkeepers game to his two nephews and now

ing powers for pranks. Since they are creatures of the forest, tanukis are able to turn objects into leaves in order to play pranks on people. With this in mind, it is interesting to think Tom Nook is

using his shape shifting powers to help you carry your furniture around. It may also explain why Nooks shop symbol has always been a leaf. No matter how you view him, Tom Nook has always been an important part of the Animal Crossing series. He was the first friend you made when you stepped out of the train into your new town back in 2002 when the game first came to American shores, and he even helped turn your home into your dream mansion. Tanuki or raccoon, there is one thing that is certain. He is a beloved character to the Animal Crossing series, and the games just wouldnt be the same without him.

Tom Nooks third shop, NookWay, the second upgrade

Tom Nooks fourth shop, Nookingtons, the last upgrade

CHARACTER PROFILE TOM NOOK

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By Tristan Meiman and Alex Schramke

During our time at E3 a few of the PNM staff had the opportunity to attend the The Legend of Zelda Symphony of the Goddesses concert at the Greek Amphitheater in L.A. The concert showcased music throughout the Zelda franchise as well as new arrangements that werent included in the concerts first tour. Here are our impressions of the concert performance. first E3 even more memorable by attending this show! After the second day of E3, Alex, Matt, and I got all dressed up. We keep it classy here at Pure Nintendo. Once we arrived at the Greek Amphitheater, it seemed like we went from one convention to another. All around us there were fanboys and fangirls alike cosplaying as their favorite Zelda characters. There was even someone playing the Hyrule Market theme from Ocarina of Time outside the main gate. Sadly, with our random ticket purchases we all werent sitting together. Matt and I tried to beat the system, but the system was on to us and it was back to our respective seats. While we werent sitting next to each other, we were dead center with the stage right in front of us. Now allow me to set the stage for you (I would say close your eyes and picture this, but then you couldnt read the article). The stage was full of talented musicians while three large screens loomed over them causing me to wonder what visuals would accompany the music. Soon after the orchestra was done tuning, Eimear Noone took the stage and led us into our first piece. The projectors began to show gameplay of all Zelda games in their chronological release date to show us just how this beloved franchise has evolved over the years. The audience was in for a special performance, as the repertoire was different from previous concerts. This was titled The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses Second Quest. New musical pieces were introduced that brought back waves of nostalgia for Zelda fans. Coming from somewhat of a musical background, Ive attended other orchestra concerts in the past. While each show Ive attended has been nothing short of beautiful, The Symphony of The Goddesses touched home for me. The Legend of Zelda is a franchise that made me really feel a sense of accomplishment for my actions. To hear this music redone by an orchestra backed up by a beautiful and epic choir line gave me goose bumps and brought a tear to my eye. Whats so amazing about this

Tristans Take
Before the trip to E3, I was in my room packing my bags and building up excitement for the trip to come. I then got a text from one of our writers, Alex, asking me if I was going to the Zelda Orchestra concert. While Ive heard of this concert before, Ive never attended a show. It never seemed like Kentucky was ever on the orchestras map. Why not make my

concert is while there are other popular franchises out there, how many of them have their own devoted orchestra? Not counting Video Games Live (which is still on my list of concerts to see), you wont be finding the Halo symphonic orchestra or the Metal Gear Solid orchestra. While I would love to see other gaming franchises follow this route of having their own devoted musical group, Im glad to know that Zelda has its own. Long story short, if you love Zelda, music and the arts, then I highly recommend looking at their schedule to see if theyre playing in a town near you. You owe it to yourself, my reader. You truly do.

Alexs Take
Bravo, Tristan! Bravo! (I am imagining YOU, the reader, are saying this now as you read Tristans heartfelt words that praise The Symphony of the Goddess.)

What a fantastic article! you say, Encore! Encore! Well my friends, I hear your imaginary pleas for more inside my head, and I aim to deliver! So please, sit back, relax, and enjoy my thoughts about the concert that I have now dubbed, The Legend of Alex: My Thoughts on the Concert. Its needless to say that I am a huge Zelda fan. If youve seen our readers section of the June issue then you know I have an impressive Zelda gaming collection. One of the most beloved aspects of the series is its music. In a Zelda game, the music can make you feel adventurous and bold, it can be touching and heartfelt, and it can even leave you feeling

REVIEW SYMPHONY OF THE GODDESSES

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melancholy when it needs to. When you go to this concert and hear your favorite songs orchestrated beautifully, it takes you back to when you first heard that piece of music, and the nostalgia and mood the song creates is amplified. As mentioned by Tristan, the three large screens above the stage display images of gameplay to go along with the music, and at times the visuals pair beautifully with the music to create a powerful effect. As the musicians finished tuning and began to play the intro to Links Awakening, I noticed a familiar little ship bobbing up and down on the rough seas on the screen overhead. It was my first ever Zelda game, and listening to some of my most cherished melodies

fully orchestrated brought tears of joy to my eyes. What I enjoyed most was the brief intermissions before a movement. Both the conductor and the composers of the symphony took time out to tell us what was in the next movement and the memories they had associated with it. It really built up a sense of camaraderie with the audience and the musicians, and the highlight of the show was when the conductor used her very own Wind Waker baton to conduct the Wind Waker piece. The Legend of Zelda has some of the greatest fans out there, and its this love that brought this concert together. Go to this concert for the incredible music that will bring back happy memories, go for the fans who cosplay as their favorite characters, and go for the sense of camaraderie you get as you listen to the music that took a game series about a young man in green tasked with saving a princess, and made it a legend.

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To hear this music redone by an orchestra backed up by a beautiful and epic choir line gave me goose bumps and brought a tear to my eye. -Tristan Meiman

009

Getting to know
By Alex Schramke
Its been a couple of months now since the release of Animal Crossing: New Leaf, and everyone and their grandmother has been talking up the game. You have been looking for a new game for your 3DS, and youre curious about the series, but you dont want to make that leap of faith and purchase a game youre unsure you will like. To help you decide if the series is for you, here well examine the game and get to know Animal Crossing. The most common question I see to play online? Invite friends to your town over Wi-Fi and show off your house or play mini games on the island. Feel like relaxing and taking it easy? Go shopping in the game or write letters and talk with your villagers. Its this type of set-your-own-goals gameplay that will have you playing the game for a few minutes one day and hours the next, depending on what you feel like doing that particular day; and dont worry, those suggestions are just barely scratching the surface of what there is to do within the game. Enough with the long-winded questions and answers though, you want to know more about being the mayor, right? As mayor, you have two special abilities: you can create town ordinances, and you can create public works projects. To help you with these tasks is your perky assistant, Isabelle. Although slightly clumsy, Isabelle the dog works hard to carry out your projects and give you advice on how to make your village a better place to live. Talking to Isabelle from the mayors seat in the back of town hall will let you pass a town ordinance, a law you can pass to help tailor the game to your play style, or let you build a public works project, a monument used for decorating and customizing your town. Talking to Isabelle from the front desk will allow you to get suggestions on how to make your town a great place to live, and new players can get advice from her on

about Animal Crossing is what do I do in the game? This can be a tricky question, though, because Animal Crossing can have as much or as little for you to do as you want. The game can loosely be described as a life simulator where you take on the role of mayor in a small village filled with animal residents. Events happen in real time based on the 3DSs internal clock, so on certain days you may have special events or guests who visit your town, and insects and fish will migrate to and from your town with the changing seasons. As there is no predetermined goal to beat the game, it is up to the player to decide what goals to create and achieve, and this is what makes the game so addictive. Do you want to pay off your houses loan so you can increase its size? Spend the day catching fish and bugs to sell and make some extra money. Want

how to make a living in your humble village. Isabelle is an invaluable asset to you, and with her help customizing your town is fun and rewarding. Speaking of making a living, you will need a place to live. Lucky for you, Tom Nook, (a business-savvy raccoon) will help you find a place to live. Tom owns a shop downtown, and its there that you can get a loan to increase the size of your house or purchase different house exteriors to make your place unique. While upgrading your house takes money, there is no pressure as you can pay the loan off at your own pace. Having a bigger place means having more space to decorate with furniture, though, so youll quickly make paying off your loans a priority. Purchasing different exteriors such as fences, mailboxes, pavements, and roof colors offers a fun way to customize the outside of your home anyway you like. While being able to purchase house upgrades is nice, were going to need to learn how to make money. Your towns currency is known as bells, and they

can be earned by selling the bugs and fish you capture, harvesting and selling fruit, or buying and selling turnips in the stalk market. You can sell any unwanted furniture or items you collect to Reese, an alpaca who runs the flea market known as Re-Tail with her husband. You can even place your old furniture for sale in her shop, and sometimes your villagers will visit the shop and buy the items displayed there. If youre feeling lucky, you can buy turnips on Sunday mornings from Joan the old boar. Throughout the week, Reese will give you different prices for turnips, so its important to buy low and wait for a high price to sell. Wait too long, though, and after a week has passed your turnips will rot and be worthless. Its a bit of a risk,

but if your instincts are good, you can earn a lot of money this way. The most common way of making money, though, is by selling the bugs and fish you catch in your town. Youll need a fishing rod to hook fish and a net to catch bugs, both of which can be found for sale at Timmy and Tommy Nooks shop in the shopping area. Sneaking slowly is the secret to catching bugs, and patience and timing are critical when landing a fish as it takes the bait. With a little practice, youll be catching the rare bugs and fish before you know it. Once youve caught your very first rare bug or fish, you then face the dilemma every Animal Crossing player must confront, do you sell the rare bug or fish for a ton of bells? Or do you donate it to the towns museum so you can admire it on display? Blathers, the owl who runs the museum, may be a little chatty, but his dream is to have a full museum that completely chronicles every bug and fish that may visit your town. In addition to the insects and fish, the museum also collects pieces of famous artwork and dinosaur fossils. Filling the museum is no easy task, but it is incredibly rewarding if you enjoy collecting things, and the museum features plenty of interesting facts about the items you donate to it. Animal Crossing is a game that some people may not be used to. If you enjoy collecting things, acquiring furniture sets to decorate your house and filling up your museum will be incredibly fun and

rewarding for you. If you have a creative side, you can create your own patterns with an in-game pattern maker to use for a custom clothing line. Combining patterns along with public works projects and clever landscaping of the flowers and trees in your village can result in some impressive looking themed towns (there are entire animal crossing communities online devoted to this). If you simply feel like relaxing, you can enjoy the games slower pace by talking with your neighbors to earn extra items and enjoy Animal

Crossings quirky writing. While some days are more eventful than others, you may find yourself playing for a few minutes one day and a few hours the next, there is a little bit of something for everyone. By this time, if you are very curious about the game and it sounds appealing, Id suggest picking it up. There is plenty of content I havent even mentioned for you to explore, and pretty soon you too will be caught up in the Animal Crossing craze.

Nintendo franchises that need a COMEBACK

by harrison milfeld

et me tell you about a time when Nintendo consoles were not just built on the foundation of Mario and Zelda. Think back to the mid to late 1980s and youll remember that Nintendos video game catalogue for the Nintendo Entertainment System was growing month by month. The library of games was staggering, despite being filled with the occasional obscure title or piece of shovelware. At that time, Nintendos two most popular franchises, Mario and Zelda, were becoming household names, with each of their games breaking sales records. Not only that, but hundreds of other titles became financial successes, many of which were from third-party publishers. With a plucky plumber and green-clad hero giving millions of kids a reason to own an NES in the 1980s, one must remember that Nintendo provided us with even more options from their internal development studios. What am I talking about exactly? Im talking about the forgotten or dormant Nintendo franchises that the company has seemingly shrugged off or not had enough ideas to conceive of a follow-up. These are the obscure or cult-classic

titles that are either brought up in nostalgic discussions or found in a local yard sale. As Nintendos home consoles continued to get bigger and graphically more advanced, the flush of original Nintendo IPs began to shrivel up. Some titles found a new home on the Game Boy line or Nintendo DS but not on a proper home console. In addition, more popular franchises from Nintendos repertoire soon began to take a back seat in favor of the companys moneymaking mascots such as Mario and Link. Its easy to admit that Nintendo has continued to survive as a console maker by both its dedicated fanbase and established franchises, which it has continued to retool and reconfigure. But maybe, just maybe, theres some room to resurrect or reboot some of these forgotten franchises for a new audience. So, whats keeping them from taking a trip back in time to relive a Star Topics, a Wave Race, or an Earthbound revival or two? Easy. Its because of their audience and whether or not the company can find an enriching gameplay mechanic to build around. Still, Nintendo is known to take risks, and taking a chance at making a new IP or revisiting an old one would help please the

companys most dedicated fans. Nintendo of America President and COO, Reggie Fils-Aime has spoke on the matter of dormant franchises on previous occasions. An interview with MTV shortly after E3 2013 saw Fils-Aime discuss the idea of revisiting some forgotten classics from Nintendos past. Nintendo is a very fortunate place, we have over 30 different franchises, and we look constantly for opportunities to bring those franchises to bear on our most current systems. Im not making any promises, and Im not making any commitments, but certainly we are thinking about, for Wii U and for 3DS, what are those franchises? Maybe those franchises that have been dormant for a few years, that we can lovingly bring to those platforms to drive our business forward. Without promising anything, Fils-Aime is indicating that there are indeed some forgotten franchises that might be coming to light in the future. It is here that we take a look at some of Nintendos sometimes-closed shut treasure chest of IPs and see what the Wii U can offer for a new type of experience.

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star tropics
Last appearance : NES : 1990
Star Tropics has grown to be a cult NES classic among todays video game message board population. Small contingents of gamers have clamored for an update, while others have continued to go back and relive the series sci-fi quest. And yet, despite its status as an oftentimes forgotten title, its audience grows steadily. Released in 1990, the game almost never saw the day of light outside of Japan. Similar to The Legend of Zelda, Star Tropics featured a top-down 2D perspective. Star Tropics certainly owed a lot to the Zelda franchise by including puzzles, dungeons, and even an eerily familiar registration screen. However, unlike the Legend of Zelda, Star Tropics was both linear and had a constant storyline, both of which were divided into chapters. The story of the game followed the protagonist Mike Jones, who was on a visit to C-Island to visit his uncle. Soon after, Jones is caught up in an adventure involving ancient ruins, space, and even time travel. Jones journey to defeat the alien overlord Zoda is filled with twists and turns that take the player through (as the games box art presents) a test of island courage. Not to be overlooked, the games main antagonist, Zoda, still resonates with many retro gamers as one of Nintendos cult villains. Star Tropics would see moderate success in the states and was later given an NES sequel, Zodas Revenge: Star Tropics II. Star Tropics would soon be given a proper Virtual Console release in 2008, which led IGN to declare it a natural evolution of the Zelda franchise. Since the release of Star Tropics NES sequel, the series faded away into obscurity and later became the talking pointing of several rumors revolving around Retro Studios developing a sequel. But that never came to fruition. Part of the blame for the series demise can be attributed to Zodas Revenges poor sales during the late run of the NESs life cycle. And to think that seeing games released on an aging console three years after its successor would be somewhat commonplace. Seeing as Nintendo cannot have enough of Zelda-inspired titles, a Star Tropics sequel or reboot would be a welcome addition to bolster the Wii Us library. The Wii Us graphical capabilities, although limited, would not hinder a Star Topics follow-up chance of being polished. But, how should it be approached and how can Nintendo make the games jump to 3D not feel like a rehash of ideas from previous 3D Zelda titles? The easy solution would to be ensure that Star Tropics can be Nintendos flagship core experience with an engrossing storyline and gameplay elements that derive from the Legend of Zelda, but to then take it in a whole new direction. Take, for example, what weve seen from the evolution of 3D Zelda titles from Ocarina of Time to Skyward Sword. With those various titles, we saw a slight shift in combat mechanics but also a new way to explore and solve puzzles in dungeons. It is here that a Wii U version of Star Tropics could become a breeding ground for unused Zelda dungeon ideas or puzzles. Now, as mentioned, it would be foolish to build a brick-by-brick 3D Zelda clone from Nintendo. One would simply find it to be the easy way out in development. In order to correct that, Nintendo would have to do something that it almost never does when developing a title: Put story first and build the gameplay around it. That notion may spell disaster on many fronts, but Star Tropics seems ripe for a different storytelling experience unheard of for a while from Nintendo. Like how we clamor for the Zelda franchise to evolve into a grander and cinematic experience, Star Tropics may be the right substitute. Plus, another sci-fi genre adventure such as Star Tropics for Nintendo would go right alongside as a mystical counterpart to the Metroid series. For those who happened to pick up an NES cart of Star Tropics when it dropped in 1990, it was a unique experience that took elements from Zelda and refined them for without being just a quick re-hash. A revisit to C-Island or an encounter with the evil Zoda has been demanded by a minority of fans for years, and the Wii U would be the perfect way to re-connect the series from the old to the new.

earthbound
Last appearance : SNES : 1995
Oh, Earthbound (or Mother as its known to fans in Japan). You have eluded us for so many years, and Nintendo has kept teasing us time and time again. One of the definitive cult Nintendo RPG series (more on the other later), Earthbound has had quite an interesting history of skipping out on the Americas. The series first made its appearance outside of Japan in 1995 with a decent advertising campaign (remember the scratch-and-sniff ad in Nintendo Power?) and even included a strategy guide in the games packaging. Still, like some Japaneseexclusive Nintendo properties, Earthbound failed to gain any booming financial success during the late end of the SNESs life cycle. An N64 sequel title called Earthbound 64 was initially planned but was later cancelled and later retrofitted to a Japan-only release on the GBA in the form of Mother 3. Since then, Nintendo has released a Mother compilation exclusive to Japanese audiences without a hint of a release in the States. Earthbound fans are an intriguing bunch,

014

as their following is not only the perfect install base for another shot at making the series financially stable outside of Japan, but it is also one of Nintendos most dedicated and knowledgeable groups. As mentioned, fans have been teased and teased, but their only consolation was various appearances of series protagonists Ness and Lucas in the Smash Bros. series and finally the long-awaited release of Earthbound on the Wii U Virtual Console.

So, where is the love? Quite frankly, it again comes down to sales figures and Nintendos right vision for the series. Nintendo has mentioned in the past their desire to give the Earthbound series a proper resurrection in North America, but that would prove to be a false claim as years and console generations passed. With the original Earthbound getting a much-deserved release on the

North American Virtual Console, would this mean that something could be afoot? We can speculate all we want, but the Wii U could be the right destination to see how our friends from Eagleland or Nowhere Island are doing these days. Just imagine how Nintendo can reconnect the series to both its cult following and soon-to-be new audiences. Things have changed a lot since the mid-90s, so another shot at presenting an Earthbound reboot or follow-up to the public could garner that success in North America that Nintendo originally wanted. Now granted, again, Earthbound has an audience, especially with grassroots sites such as Starmen.net that provide everything you need to know about the series. Not only that, but recently a group of Mother fans had translated the Japanese-exclusive Mother 3 into English and offered their services to Nintendo to code and use their script for free. Since then, Nintendo has yet to respond to the fans adamant request. So, what would it take to bring back the Earthbound series to the Nintendos latest home console? The ideas with the Wii Us GamePad are limitless and could offer a unique chance to bolster the series gameplay and RPG-centered elements to a new level. The obvious choices are there with choosing attacks via the GamePads touch screen or displaying an off-screen map, but what else could be implemented? Possibly evoking memories of the games U.S. release with a free strategy guide (despite todays information-laden world where finding a walkthrough is as easy as finding a funny cat video)? Build off Mother 3s rhythm-based

battle system? Or maybe use the Miiverse community to suggest new party members to join in via Nintendo Network? Whatever the case, Earthbound has something up its sleeve: its characters and humor. Eathbound is known for its parody of American culture and the RPG genre in general, and Nintendo has the writers to do so with more results. A new take on this would obviously have to be tongue-and-cheek, but given the audience, it would be welcome. However, the idea of another Earthbound title may still be stuck in purgatory. Series designer Shigesato Itoi (whose creations are based on his real life experiences) had announced in 2005 after the release of Mother 3 that he has no plans to develop the series any further. A cultural icon in Japan, Itois past statements seemed like a punch in the gut to series fans who dream of further adventures in the Earthbound/Mother franchise. In April 2013, a fan even took to Twitter to ask for an update, Mr. Itoi, please tell us a way to get you to makeMother 4. Itois response to the eager fans question: Impossible. A hard to swallow response, yet even to this day, the Mother/Earthbound fanbase keeps chugging along in hopes of a seemingly impossible task. Like any series Nintendo handles, giving development duties to an outside developer wouldnt be that far-fetched of a possibility. Simply put, Earthbound has the audience that Nintendo first clamored for when the series arrived in the States almost 20 years ago, and the time might be right to give it another chance at redemption for the series community.

star fox
Last appearance : DS : 2006
Theres no denying that Star Fox is a well-known and financially viable property from Nintendo. Fox McCloud is one of the more recognizable characters in Nintendos catalog of IPs, but has taken a bit of a back seat for the last couple of years. With the classic Arwing all but grounded, another reboot to the series formula (and maybe story) is in order. With financial stability in its ranks, theres no reason why the Star Fox series should be ignored or seemingly pushed aside. First appearing on the SNES in 1993, the Star Fox series has had its fair share of ups and downs. A sequel titled Star Fox 2 for the SNES was near completion for the SNES in 1995 but was cancelled at the last minute. Series creator Shigeru Miyamoto had stated that he wanted a clean slate between 2D Nintendo franchises before they made the jump to 3D. Several ROMs of the games code can still be found online if one looks hard enough. So, in return, work began on Star Fox 64, which in essence was a spiritual reboot, forgetting the canon established in the SNES original. What later followed for the series was a Rare-developed Zelda-style game titled Star Fox Adventures in 2002, a 2005 Namco collaboration in the form of Star Fox Assault, and a DS exclusive called Star Fox Command in 2006. The only peep weve seen from the series was a 3DS remake of Star Fox 64 in 2011. Rumors swirled that a Retro-developed Star Fox/Metroid crossover was in the works, but later proved to be a piece of fan fiction that thankfully never came to fruition. A good chunk of time has passed since weve had a proper Star Fox title, and now would be a perfect time to hop back into the Arwing and traverse through the Lylat System once more. For starters, the Star Fox franchise is keen on non-stop, on rails action. So, it makes sense that the series stay far away from moving back into the out-of-thecockpit third person gameplay from Assault. What made Star Fox Assault a love or hate type of game was that it tried to balance the Arwing and ground missions to compensate for a diverse experience. The problem with this mixture was that the ground missions were a complete mess with camera issues, broken weapon selection, and a control scheme sloppier than Star Fox 64s voice acting. In addition, the design of these ground missions was too simplistic and lacked that pure, unadulterated action that the Arwing missions possessed. As you can see, keeping the Star Fox series solely as an on-rails shooter rather than mixing in third-person action is a safe move. Now, if given to the right developer, one could

OPINON NINTENDO FRANCHISES THAT NEED A COMEBACK

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see the on-foot missions streamlined and polished a bit more, but thats not what Star Fox is about. Its about the thrill of space combat and taking the best elements of various onrails shooters, such as intense difficulty and wall-to-wall action.

In terms of control, the Wii Us GamePad is a different kind of animal (no pun intended, Star Fox fans) for the Star Fox franchise. While Fox McCloud and co. have tested the waters of touch screen features with Star Fox Command on the DS, many felt that aspect made the title hard to control given the DS lack of an analog or circle pad. With the GamePad, these nuances can be corrected with ease, but would it benefit with different control options? We have seen from Sin and Punishment: Star Successor that the Wiimote and Nunchuk can give the player an intuitive way of control for an on-rails shooter with precise shooting accuracy and comfort, even with said games difficulty. Thats one option to consider, yet whats

left with the GamePad aside from reworking what Command started on the DS? The simple solution could be to take full effect of the accelerometer for first-person flight, scanning items, or advanced radar. One idea that has popped into a few peoples minds for GamePad control would be to implement a new way to choose flight or destination paths. In almost every main series Star Fox title, your difficulty ranged from what path you took from planet-to-planet in the Lylat System. This usually depended upon on a certain amount of enemies you defeated or how fast one would complete a mission. These varied for each mission and gave the player opportunities to explore what path suited ones needs in terms of challenge. In the case of the GamePads touch screen, upcoming paths could be highlighted or unlocked with a simple touch or even bookmarked for future reference. Now, that would most likely spoil the surprise of finding a new path for seasoned Star Fox players, but it could be used in a unique way without ruining the joy of discovery. For example, by touching certain spots on the GamePad to unlock panels or switches and sending in members of the Corneria fleet could add new ways to alter the battlefield. This way, the playing field is made to give options for the player to see what can or cannot be done to unlock a new path to a different boss or outcome. But, much like the Wii Us GamePad, the ideas being listed have potential and must be used correctly to garner a different experience that could sway one from using just a Wiimote/Nunchuk or Wii U Pro controller. A proper return to the Star Fox

universe may not be far behind, but how it is implemented is what will be speculated for months and months until Nintendo ever mentions anything. If there is one developer who could handle the task of reinventing Star Fox, look no further than Treasure. Famed for Ikaruga and the Sin and Punishment series, Treasure is no slouch when it comes to onrails shooters. However, they are known for their unforgiving difficulty in their games. If we combine the best aspects of Star Fox Assault, the gameplay mechanics of Treasures shooters, and Nintendos overall influence, it would strike a friendly balance. As a series, Star Fox may not be neglected or forgotten like some Nintendo franchises, but it is deserving of a return to home consoles. For Nintendo, I leave you with some wise words from Peppy Hare: Use your instincts!

F zero

Last appearance : gamecube : 2003

You know whats missing in our Nintendo home console lives? No, not a Pokemon MMORPG, but that idea still circles in my mind. No, whats missing is a futuristic racer thats built for high speed, harsh difficulty, and a certain character known for Falcon punching. That series is F-Zero. Its been almost ten years since we last saw a home console release F-Zero, and the time seems right for another installment on the Wii U. But, those thoughts and dreams came crashing down in early June after E3 2013 when Shigeru Miyamoto stated to IGN that hes unsure what direction to take the series. I certainly understand that people want a new F-Zero game, Miyamoto told IGN. I think where I struggle is that I dont really have a good idea for whats new that we could bring to F-Zero that would really turn it into a great game again. Certainly I can see how people looking at Mario Kart 8 could see, through the anti-gravity, a connection to F-Zero. But I dont know, at this point, what direction we could go in with a new F-Zero. Miyamotos statements were tough to swallow for fans of the dormant racing series. Nintendo had mentioned that they would like to internally develop an F-Zero title as opposed to when they handed the series to

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Amusement Vision for F-Zero GX. Its reasonable why Nintendo has shifted its focus to increase its development staff to further the creation of more games (both new and old), and F-Zero is a prime candidate even if the ideas arent there yet. With non-kart racing titles having a bit of surge over the years with Forza and Need for Speed, reinstating the F-

Zero series would be a nice balance to coincide with the casual appeal of Mario Kart. For F-Zero, its the intense speed and unforgiving difficulty that beckons players to master every track with the fastest time or right finish. F-Zero GX further established this, even if those who are impatient could not get past the games learning curve. With the Wii U being Nintendos first foray in high-definition, the tracks and vehicles of F-Zero could be a joy to behold. Imagine how Big Blue or Mute City would look in HD with the architecture and color popping out at every corner. Given the Wii Us controller options, this could be implemented in the same way as Super Smash Bros. Brawl did for the Wii and how the soon-to-be released Pikmin 3 will be adapting. This way, the difficulty will not be hindered but will give beginners a chance to choose the right control option when travers-

ing through different courses. In addition, online play must be considered. Online play should not be seen as some form of curiosity for Nintendo and its franchises but as an integral part of the experience. Adding F-Zero to that list of online communities would not only benefit the series but Nintendo as well. With what weve seen with Mario Kart Wii, an online F-Zero community would offer the chance to bolster the games popularity to sit alongside Nintendos popular kart racing series. Nintendo may not have any concrete ideas yet for a new F-Zero title, yet the name alone is being thrown around in various interviews, so its not out of the realm of possibility to see its return. However, we saw this during the Wiis lifecycle without a mention of a GX follow-up. The world knows that it needs its fair share of futuristic racers, and F-Zero fits the bill for a Falcon Punch into the uprights.

golden sun
Last appearance : DS : 2010
I know what youre thinking: But, we already got a Golden Sun sequel for the DS three years ago? Its not a forgotten franchise. Those claims are true to an extent, but theres one problem, which is that Golden Sun is an underrated RPG series that clamors to be given a home console release. Now, I would welcome another edition of the Camelot-developed series to hit the 3DS, but a home console, open-world installment would give the series its due for the spotlight. As mentioned earlier, Golden Sun and Earthbound are two peculiar, yet deeply mesmerizing RPGs whose potential Nintendo seems to see outside of Japan. Granted, the Golden Sun series has seen all three of its installments released in North America and Europe, yet it begs the question of why a home console version has never become a reality. Financially and critically successful, Golden Sun has a steady audience on the handheld platform, so the transition from the small screen to the big screen wouldnt be that large of a gamble. It should also be noted that the JRPG genre hasnt been as dominant in the past. Last generation, the quantity and quality of JRPGs (not named Final Fantasy) was lower than past console generations. There were a few bright spots along the way with the late release of Xenoblade Chronicles for the Wii, yet the genre hasnt sustained its grip on the market. With Monolith Softs X slated for release sometime in 2014, Nintendo has the opportunity to establish a forefront of JRPGs, and Golden Sun can be just that as well. Propelling the series into a full-fledged 3D world would do wonders on the Wii U, not only from a visual standpoint, but also from a storytelling one. Golden Sun is ripe with lore, even though the series covers three games in total, and expanding its characters and culture could bode well for fans and newcomers alike. When I say newcomers, I mean by not dropping them into a world where theyll be lost in the story from the get-go. Ease them in with a story they get accustomed to or allow some creative ways to give a quick run down of the series. In addition to the games story, an extensive use of the series patented psynergy mechanic can be evolved for creative gameplay uses with the Wii Us GamePad, as well as the Djinn system (a unique feature of the series that uses creatures with elemental powers that enhance the characters class). These features are what made Golden Sun popular among Game Boy Advance owners, and the sales numbers show it. Critically, Golden Sun is a hidden gem among Nintendos catalog alongside Earthbound, and stretching out these particular RPG IPs could satisfy fans of the genre. Overall, the series follows a tried-andtrue RPG theme with its gameplay and Camelot could be up to task to make the games jump to home consoles. If not, Nintendo has the in-house development team or outside help to make Golden Sun on the Wii U a longawaited reality.

OPINON NINTENDO FRANCHISES THAT NEED A COMEBACK

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Video Game Music

By Tristan Meiman

KoJI Kondo
What is a game without music? Even if its a next gen title, it could look life-like and be in something beyond 1080p, but without sound and music, its lifeless. In games, music adds to the immersion and gives the player a sensation that they are a part of this world just as much as the main character. Throughout the years, Koji Kondo has brought that immersion to Nintendo titles and to this day continues to pull us into these pixilated worlds. While attending university, Kondo never focused his studies particularly around music; rather, his focus was on the general arts. He gained personal experience combining the use of piano variations and computers. Given that this was in the 80s and computers were still growing as a form of technology, this was a pretty impressive feat. Kondo was hired onto Nintendos team in 1984, as they were looking for someone who could make musical composition for their games. Kondo would work on creating music for Nintendo arcade games such as Punch Out or Golf and would finish off his first year by creating music for the Famicon title Devil World. Kondo had a great start at Nintendo, but it was in 1985 when we would be blown away by his catchy songs that gamers and non-gamers alike know by heart to this day. What is truly amazing about Kondos musical pieces, other than how timeless they are, is how they accent the adventure you may be on. In Mario games, were given a happy upbeat song that lets you know that youre in the colorful world of the Mushroom Kingdom. In Zelda, youre reminded by the triumphant theme that youre the hero in the land of Hyrule.

I have a good feeling that most of you have played the original Super Mario Bros. for the NES. For most of us, this was our first introduction to gaming and this title alone seemed to put Nintendo on the map in the gaming industry. So many fantastic memories. We remember our first power-up, our first time discovering the Warp Zone, the frustration knowledge that the princess was in an-

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other castle. The list seems never ending. But what about the music? There are a grand total of five tracks in Super Mario Bros. Theres the over world theme, underground and underwater theme, castle theme, and star theme. Even the Legend of Zelda has only three tracks. The over world theme, dungeon theme and Ganons Lair. Again, like Mario, the lengths of these tracks are quite short. However, just like Mario, these songs are incredibly catchy, as you will find yourself humming the games theme even after playing. Earlier I mentioned how immersive music can be. After playing The Legend of Zelda for hours on end, being exposed to both the overworld and dungeon music repeatedly, its when you enter Ganons Lair that youve realized how far youve come simply by the dramatic change in music. Whats so fascinating about these tracks is that theyre only a few minutes or seconds long until they repeat themselves. From the many many MANY years of playing these titles, I never once grew tired or annoyed by the constant repetition of these chip tunes. Koji Kondos musical talents would continue on throughout the years, as he would compose, arrange and supervise an extensive list of Nintendo games. His most recent work is musical composition and working alongside with Mahito Yokota for Marios upcoming adventure, Super Mario 3D World. Whenever I play a Nintendo game featuring a major IP, I always listen keenly to the music to figure

out if it has that Koji Kondo sound and I am always excited to see his name in the credits. With years of catchy themes and memorable songs, my ears cannot wait to listen to his next masterpiece.

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Dan Adelman Interview

By James Higginbotham & Justin Sharp

PNM: Nintendo indie strategy has shifted to be approachable and open to helping indie developers. What was the reason for this change and what makes the Wii U (or this generation) different from the Wii? How aggressively does Nintendo want to pursue indie developers to their consoles? How has this shift made it easier to develop on the Wii U? DA: Nintendo has been very open and approachable to indie developers for a long time since the beginning of WiiWare more than five years ago. Developers have always been able to make their content available on our systems since the WiiWare days without the need for an intermediary publisher between the developer and Nintendo. Some of the best indie games of the last 5-6 years got their start on WiiWare. The most obvious examples are World of Goo, And Yet It Moves, LostWinds, Cave Story and the BIT.TRIP series. We also had some really experimental stuff that not as many people remember like LIT, Toribash and lilt line which was definitely the intent with WiiWare. So weve always been supportive of indie developers and enabling people to experiment on our platforms. That said, one of the biggest challenges for any business strategy is that it needs to have alignment across every facet of the process, and I think thats where weve seen the most improvement with Wii U and Nintendo 3DS. We are finding more ways to make things even easier for developers to get started on our platforms. Probably one of the best examples of making things easier for developers is our relationship with Unity, which as you know is one of the most popular game development tools among indie developers. While Unity supports all major platforms, the platform

Dan Adelman Business Development Nintendo of America

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license fees can be quite expensive. Nintendo has a special arrangement with Unity whereby Nintendo is covering 100% of the Unity license fees for Wii U development. So if youre a developer working on a Unity game, there are no obstacles associated with doing a Wii U version. PNM: Pure Nintendo was one of the first sites to report on Nintendos decision to drop the requirement that companies needed an office space in order to become official Nintendo developer. What was the reason for this change and what exactly does a developer need to do to become a licensed Nintendo developer? DA: The process of getting set up as a licensed developer is definitely a lot easier. People who are interested can go to wiiu-

tion for the Wii U/Nintendo 3DS? DA: We have nothing to announce at this time. ters, trade shows, events, social media and Nintendo eShop merchandising. The nice thing about the Nintendo eShop is that we have a lot of flexibility on this point. We can make adjustments without much lead time. After that, we rely heavily on consumer feedback to determine what games are most important to highlight. In addition, Wii U has great search functionality so that players can find the games theyre looking for, and Miiverse is an outstanding tool for discovery. PNM: During GDC Nintendo announced the Nintendo Web Framework. How will this change the landscape of development for Nintendo eShop? DA: Nintendo Web Framework is a framework for developing Wii U applications. NWF uses Webkit as a base and supports the standard Web technologies like HTML5, Javascript, HTTP and CSS. NWF provides a way for network service developers to bring their content to Wii U and enables them to use the various unique Wii U features, including the Wii U GamePad controller. In addition, NWF has high compatibility with Web-type development to make it easier to make games to sell in the Nintendo eShop, and developers also can use it to support the prototyping of traditional games. PNM: How is the progress going for the Nintendo Web Framework? When could we learn more about it? DA:Nintendo Web Framework is available now for licensed developers. PNM: The use of the Nintendo Web Framework could very well open up opportunities for non-videogame apps. What are Nintendos plans for these non-videogame related apps and could we be seeing an idea sometime soon? DA: The intent of Nintendo Web Framework is to reduce the barriers for both game and non-game developers to release applications on the Wii U console. PNM: The recent save backup feature for the Nintendo 3DS is small but powerful. Could we possibly see a cloud save backup soluideas and see them through to completion. The Nintendo eShop allows smaller developers to explore new ideas and themes, such as building a game around the idea of learning about the evils of consumerism and getting players to think about how they are spending their limited time on Earth, as in Little Inferno. Or making a game based on the idea of planting musical seeds and using their growth to explore the world around you while escaping the spreading darkness, as in Starseed Pilgrim. These games may not be for everyone, but in many ways, that is the point. These games force people to reexamine their view on what a game can be and in the process raise their expectations. PNM: Everyone seems to be embracing the indie developer as a major part of the gaming community. In your opinion, what has caused this change and why is it important to embrace it? DA: I cant speak for the entire games industry on this, but from my perspective, gaming is an art form, and for an art form to stay relevant, its got to evolve and grow and change. I love AAA retail games as much as the next guy, but the challenge many of those games face is that they are so expensive to develop, and there is so much financial risk associated with those projects, that its really hard for those games to try to do something thats never been done before. The way the process works at most large publishers is that as part of the internal greenlight process, there need to be some financial projections about how the game might do based on comparable sales of similar games. But what if the game is trying something thats never been done before? How can they show comparable sales projections? Its really falling to the indie community to come up with these

developers.nintendo.com to fill out an online form. And once youre a licensed Nintendo developer, you can generally release pretty much whatever you want on the Nintendo eShop. If developers believe enough in their games that they are going to spend the time and money into making it, we want to enable them to bring their content to our platforms. PNM: For the most part, it is up to the indie developer to market and promote their game releases to the masses. Nintendo does help a little, with the featured games sections on the eShop, and the occasional indie mention on a Nintendo Direct. Could it be beneficial for both the indie developers and Nintendo for a partnership to help promote more upcoming indie games? DA: We try our best to give visibility to every new game when it launches. Our Licensing Marketing team does a great job of supporting our partners through a number of available channels, including email blasts, newslet-

INTERVIEW DAN ADELMAN

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Holy Moley! Its out of control!

INTERVIEW CLOUDBERRY KINGDOM

025

Welcome to Cloudberry Kingdom! The first ever platformer with fully randomly generated levels. Every level is brand new and never seen before. The difficulty level can match any need, from the casual to the hardcore. Unhappily ever after? Thats how it starts. The Orb resurfaces and the classic characters return. Kobbler with his mania, Princess with her endless boredom. Its only a matter of time before Bob, our hero, shows up to put order back to madness. Three powers struggle for victory and the fate of Cloudberry Kingdom hangs in the balance. What will become of the retired hero, Bob? Will saving Princess one last time win her love? Could true love ever stop Kobbler and the power of the Orb? No, probably not. But hey, its worth a shot. -Pwnee Studios

By Justin Hinton
Pure Nintendo had a chance to talk with Jordan Fisher, President; Michael Suswal, Director of Business Development and T.J. Lutz, Vice President, from Pwnee Studios at E3 about their premier game, Cloudberry Kingdom. Pure Nintendo: How did the relationship between Pwnee Studios and Ubisoft come about? Pwnee Studios: Our relationship with Ubisoft started about a year ago, we met with them at E3 actually. We were sneaking around and dodging security so we could head up to the offices upstairs and speak with some publishers about helping us get Cloudberry Kingdom onto the Xbox 360. We managed to get into contact with a number of publishers, but Ubisoft seemed the most interested, and gave us the best deal. Weve been in a good relationship with them ever since. PN: Since Ubisoft is now publishing Cloudberry Kingdom, has the development process changed at Pwnee Studios at all? How do

things differ now compared to developing Cloudberry Kingdom prior to Ubisoft? PS: When it comes to actually working on the game, there have been no changes at all. Ubisoft has let us maintain 100% control of Cloudberry, and wants us to make the game the way we want to make it. When it comes to the more messy parts (paperwork, certification, testing, legal stuff) Ubisoft has basically taken that load off of our shoulders, and let us put our full focus on the game. So really, the only thing that has changed is that they have

given us the ability to focus more on making Cloudberry Kingdom better, and worry less about all of the other nasty stuff that comes with making a game. PN: What is the plot of Cloudberry Kingdom? PS: We really wanted to do something a little off of the beaten path. So you know every platformer is always about some guy saving a princess. The story in Cloudberry is really like 30 years later. Like what happens when the hero is washed up? Hes saved the princess

the legibility somewhat of an issue. One of the things we focused on the most with the game was making sure that the player was able to identify his player immediately among everything on the screen. With the papercraft style in-game, the characters just werent standing out quite as well as we wanted them to, so we decided to take a more classic approach. PN: All of the levels in Cloudberry Kingdom outside of the story mode are all randomly generated. What kind of work went into putting that together? PS: Before we even started working on the game, the art, and the story we spent about two years just on the artificial intelligence behind the game. We spent a lot of time into teaching it how to put flow into levels, timing, how far you can space blocks and still make 200 times and never really gotten anything out of it. What does that do to a guys head? So that is kind of the story. Our hero Bob doesnt really care about the princess anymore. He knows that she is not going to love him in return. So hes just like yeah, whatever but somehow he still gets sucked into the whole charade of having to save the princess. PN: The cut scenes used in the Cloudberry Kingdom trailer have a very unique papercraft styling. The Pure Nintendo team really likes that art style and we were wondering why this was not applied to the game itself. PS: We have to give all the credit for the papercraft style to Tigar Hare Studios. They wanted to explore that direction for the cinematics and we thought it sounded like a pretty cool idea. Obviously, we were pretty excited about the results! We considered using the same style within the game, but it made

jumps, and so on. It was a truly fun challenge and once we had that technology, then we could really utilize it to make a kick ass platformer. PN: What was your inspiration behind the random levels, art style, and the game in general? PS: Definitely old school Mario, like Mario 3, love that game. While we were working on Cloudberry, Super Meat Boy was just getting big. It was really cool to see a hardcore retro platformer really take off. We really wanted

to bring that hardcore element to a game like Mario, like the same mechanic, while having a game that no matter how good you get at it, there is always going to be a new challenge waiting for you. It can always get harder. PN: What are the different difficulty levels in Cloudberry Kingdom? What difficulty level does the dev team usually set Cloudberry Kingdom to? PS: Through most of the game, we have a smooth gradient when it comes to difficulty. Think Tetris. But in Freeplay Mode, we have a few preset options for people to choose from if they so desire. They are: Training, Unpleasant, Abusive, Hardcore, and Masochistic. They more or less translate to Easy, Medium, Hard, Very Hard, and No. Our difficulty preferences mostly depend on how were feeling at the time. Jordan likes to challenge himself

pretty much all the time, so he will normally play on Hardcore. I like to just be able to zone out for a while and relax, so I like to play on Abusive. But then we both get super competitive and challenge each other to an Arcade Mode duelthats what it always boils down to. PN: If there is a level that youre having particular difficulty with, are there ways of getting help or being guided through the level? PS: Absolutely, one of the things that we taught the AI how to do is not just to design levels but also play levels. So its almost a perfect platformer AI. So any level you get, there could be 200 fireballs on the screen but it will always find a way to get through. Anytime during the game you can pull that up, have the computer kind of show you how to do it. So if you are stuck on a spot, you can

ning to have a patch pretty soon after launch, maybe a month or two, where well have the online sharing feature for the levels. PN: What modes in Cloudberry Kingdom can be played with multiple players? PS: Every mode in the game can be played with multiple players. We really wanted this game to be an experience where you get together with friends and have a great time. When playing together, you only lose a life if every one of you dies on a level, so playing together can be very beneficial! Bring your friends! PN: What modes will be available in Cloudberry Kingdom and what kind of experience does each of the modes provide? PS: We have three main game modes in Cloudberry Kingdom: Story Mode, Arcade, and Free Play. Story mode is the traditional

try and figure it out. PN: Has the team at Pwnee Studios ever beaten a really hard level and if so, how long did it take to beat it? PS: Once upon a time, we beat a level with every obstacle cranked all the way to 100%. It took us around 8 hours, switching back and forth, and over 1000 attempts. We knew the level was possible because we watched the computer complete it. Im not sure what came over us, but we decided that we ABSOLUTELY HAD TO beat that level. I think it was worth it. PN: Is there going to be a level sharing feature in Cloudberry Kingdom? Like maybe you get past an especially difficult level, are players going to be able to share them with friends? PS: Right now on all of the systems you can save levels. Right now only on Steam can you send a level off to a friend. But we are plan-

campaign mode for most games. The player will have infinite lives and will follow a story of our three main characters, as well as be introduced to multiple styles of gameplay through different hero abilities (more on those later). Arcade mode is separated into 4 mini-games. The basic jest of all these games is that they are a faster paced experience with limited lived and a specific hero ability. You can play as Bob with a jetpack, Bob with doublejump, Bob in a minecart, and others. There is also

a mode where your hero type changes each new level, it gets pretty nuts. Free Play is a sandbox mode where you get to customize your own levels and hero types. You are able to make levels ranging from super easy to some of the most insane levels you have ever seen. You can adjust each obstacle to place as many as you like. Big fan of lasers? Crank it up! Hate dealing with falling blocks? Turn them off. Want your hero to be able to jump super high with no friction and

super gravity? Done. The A.I. will design the level to your specification, even taking into account which hero type you picked. PN: What kinds of customization options are available in Cloudberry Kingdom? PS: So for your hero you can pretty much customize everythingyour beard, your hats, your colors, everything. And then if you really want to get into it, rather than have a level editor where you place blocks individually, we have this cool kind of sand box feature where you

can say Give me lots of fireballs and a few falling blocks or whateveryou give that information to the AI and it will make a level exactly to that specification. In addition to that, there is also a Hero Factory where you can define your hero physicsmore friction, more gravity, run faster, jump higherall of that is in there as well. The AI will take that and make a game based around that new hero. PN: The bungee, where all of the players are tethered together by bungee cords, seemed

to be the most popular customization during our hands on at E3. Where did this idea come from and do you guys plan on expanding on this idea? PS: Bungee mode started off as a crazy idea when we were loopy tired a few years ago. We ended up laughing until we cried that night and decided that we had to keep it. We have always wanted to expand the idea more in the game, but were never quite sure how well people would respond to it. Now that people seem to really enjoy it, we definitely plan on adding more bungee modes and a few more of our crazy ideas in the future. PN: The length of individual custom levels can be adjusted. Have you ever thought of creating an infinite level just to see how far you can get, maybe getting progressively harder as you go? PS: Yep, we have definitely thought about that. Thats kind of the mentality behind the Escalation Mode it just keeps getting harder and harder until you just cant take it. So that is kind of the inspiration there but we would love to have, and I think we might pack this in the DLC, just like one infinitely long level rather than an infinite number of levels. PN: Are there going to be online leaderboards? PS: Uh huh. Absolutelyyep. We already have

support for all of that. Yeah. PN: Do you plan on releasing any DLC? Maybe new characters, new traps or enemies, and things like that? PS: Yeah absolutely! So I think we are going to have a beard packright now we only have five beards and thats just not enough. But we have some new obstacles and heroes planned. So definitely expect some more coming out! PN: What sort of feedback have you been receiving at E3? PS: It has been really positive. It has been awesome to see people just showing up, playing the game. People really love seeing the super hardcore levels and then seeing someone beat it or even seeing the computer beat it because it is just so mind bending like how is that possible?! Its just been a lot of fun. PN: Are there ideas that you were not able to include in Cloudberry Kingdom? Any ideas for

a sequel or something else youre working on? PS: Yeah, I mean there is a million things that we would love to add to Cloudberry. Hopefully Cloudberry does well and well get to come back and make a Cloudberry 2 for everyone. PN: Is there anything else that you would like to add about Cloudberry Kingdom that nobody else knows about yet? PS: I wish we hadnt spilled all the beans. Kevin Sorbo is our voice actor for the hero,

Bob. From Adventure Time, The Lord of Evil, Martin Olson, is King Kobbler, and the princess is actually Kevin Sorbos wife. PN: Is there anything else you would like our readers to know about? PS: We love your support and thank you for reading about us.

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By Justin Sharp
do with this hardware since KnapKnok has a good relationship with Nintendo from previous projects. PNM: How long has the game been in development? SG: From the get go... Id like to say a year, I think so anyway. It started around Nordic Game Conference 2012, and there has been one more since then. Theres been a lot back and forth with Nintendo and our two offices, since we are two companies working on this project. PNM: What was the inspiration for the character designs in Spin the Bottle: Bumpies Party? We had the pleasure to talk to Simon Gustafsson and ask him a few questions about Knapkoks unique party game, Spin the Bottle: Bumpies Party. PNM: Spin the Bottle is a very imaginative game. Did you come up with the idea right away when you first saw the Wii U GamePad or were there several ideas you tried first? SG: Well, I didnt really come up with the idea. Lau did, or rather, one gazillion horny kids did back in the 70s or something. I imagine the idea came up after some sort of drunken brainstorming session about what one could SG: The main inspiration was the limitations of the style itself. How I could make them feel personal and differ from each other while still only using banana shapes. Well, theres a hiney and a poop as well. PNM; Are the personalities of the characters based on any of your friends or co-workers? Be honest ;) SG: Not really, they are all based on characters from very famous books by very boring and pretentious writers. Oh, wait... you said be honest. PNM: Who is your favorite character in the game and who are they modeled after? SG: My favourite is Boomba. Because he has the craziest excited animation. I could watch that for hours, really happy with it. Hes modelled to look like a person bending over. PNM: Can you discuss the work that went into the art style for the game? SG: It was an opportunity for me to do what ever I wanted, as I initially had no guidelines at all. So I choose to work with a minimalist art-style, because the art in games I like the most are games like Loco Roco and such. You know what I mean. The colored sausage approach was something of a win-win, KnapKnok wouldnt have had the time to reject it because it was a short deadline for submission to the Nordic Game Program. I was pretty confident they would know what I was trying to do, theyve met me before. PNM: How big of a role does audio play in the game? Are there audio cues to help with the actions when players are not focused on the GamePad screen? SG: The audio plays a huge, huge role in the game, and games in general. I can not stress this enough. Niklas (Snorkel) has made music and sounds for basically every project Ive

INTERVIEW SPIN THE BOTTLE BUMPIES PARTY

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ever worked on and he brings everything to life in some magical way. In this case he has made most of it on a little curcuit bent semi-toy synthesiser, which is a feat in itself because it sounds bloody amazing. As for the audio cues, yes, there are definitely stuff like that, Beach tennis is probably the best example of this but its hard to explain. Lets just say theyve worked a lot to make the audio part feel good everywhere. PNM: Are there Miiverse features included in the game? If not, could it be included in a future update and what other features do you have in the works for the game? SG: Nothing except the standard sceenshot sharing stuff, unfortunately. Well, I guess so! But its not likely. Future updates will include more mini-games and such, and if they pay me enough, more characters. Stuff like that. PNM: Does the Wii U GamePad take pictures as players do each action? It would be a fun addition to see how people accomplished each action. SG: Wouldve been cool. But the problem is that the GamePad would have to be aimed at the people for that to work, and handling the GamePad has to feel casual. Probably drunks, kids and/or young spirited elders will play this, so it has to be kept pretty... easy to

handle. I think its tricky enough to handle as it is with the rules of the minigames. PNM: How much will Spin the Bottle cost and when will it be available on the eShop? SG: 6.99 , because 7 is just too damn much, we want people to be able to feed their kids, you know. It will be available in August, there has been some delays because Nintendo is pretty picky, but hey, what could I expect?

After the planned update, it will cost 9.99 , but all updates will be free for the people who allready purchased the game until that point. PNM: Lastly, whats your favorite action to do in the game and why? SG: I think Im the only one who feels this. When you go from the scene where the characters sit around the Wii U GamePad, you click the screen, graphics slide out. Everything is white. And then the spinning bottle etc. pops out. Like pop, rough cut. I love that

[stuff]. If you meant the actual minigame action I like Beach tennis the best. It tickles my imagination the most, and it doesnt require me to do too much awkward stuff. You know, Im Swedish. PNM: Thanks Simon! Spin the Bottle: Bumpies Party releases on August 8 for Wii U.

Coming August 8 for Wii U

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Experience the interactive tablet version today

purenintendo.com/magazine

By Tristan Meiman
Who doesnt remember getting home from school, turning on the TV and watching Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, or the Disney Channel? Well if you were really a kid, this was how you spent your downtime when you werent playing video games. Shows like Darkwing Duck, Duck Tales, Chip n Dale Rescue Rangers, and Goof Troop are just a few of the many Disney cartoon shows that stick with our childhood and to this day, their opening theme songs are permanently ingrained into our heads. Ill go ahead and give you a chance to YouTube your favorite show themeok youre back? Then lets get to it! We might solve a mystery or rewrite history, but no matter what, the Goof Troop will always stick together and with that said, lets get dangeroussee what I did there? In case you lived under a rock, Disney had a solid cartoon show line up. Although it didnt have as many fart jokes as Ren & Stimpy, it was still charming in its own way. Then came along a game company called Capcom. Chances are, you know of this companys work on games such as Resident Evil, Mega Man, Street Fighter, Devil May Cry and others. Capcom had a rousing success in its early days with the Mega Man franchise and decided to take its platforming talents to a familiar world. Needless to say, Capcom did an amazing job working with Disney to bring our favorite icons to a gaming console near you. With that said, lets take a look into a few Capcom/Disney games that I experienced. These are just three of many Disney/Capcom games that are out there. Although some of them may be hard to come by, I highly recommend exploring these titles for yourself. Also, if some of these shows are unfamiliar to you, do yourself a favor and watch an episode or two and experience the 80s/90s.

Ok who didnt see this one coming? DuckTales is not only a fantastic NES title, but its also getting a polished HD remake entitled DuckTales: Remastered. This little gem of a game had its own place in the world of great platforming titles. Players took the role of Scrooge McDuck on a quest to become the richest duck in the world. Along with great platforming came a great soundtrack. Whether you were in the Amazon jungle, a haunted mansion in Transylvania, or on the moon, each world was accented with fitting music that made you remember that you were in a Disney adventure. While the remastered version might be great to play, I highly recommend checking out the original NES version. Who knows, maybe theyll release it as a Nintendo Virtual Console exclusive.

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I AM THE TERROR THAT FLAPS IN THE NIGHT! Released for the NES in 1992, Darkwing Duck took that familiar Mega Man approach of jumping and shooting, giving us a very addictive and challenging game. Crime has started to sweep the once fair city of St. Canard, and its up to our duck vigilante to save the day! Remember when I said how the game is similar to Mega Man? Well, its also similar in difficulty. This game is by no means a pushover, as pixel perfect jumps are needed and enemy placement can seem frustrating at times, making you plan your actions at the last second. Throughout the game, you could find upgrades for your gas gun such as lightning gas, heavy gas and more. Not only was this my favorite Disney cartoon(well, next to Gargoyles), but its a fantastic title that every gamer should experience.

Saving the best for last, this game is not only my favorite of the Capcom/Disney games but is a game based on my favorite Disney movie in general. Im pretty sure you all know the story, but heres the quick version. The Sultans Royal Vizier Jafar is in need of a lamp hidden in the Cave of Wonders, but he is in need of a chosen individual. A diamond in the rough. In terms of gameplay, this is your basic platformer. Aladdin uses an acrobatic fighting style to handspring off enemies, posts or other grounded objects. Throwing apples can briefly stun enemies, giving you a window of opportunity to attack. Like DuckTales and Darkwing Duck, it comes as no surprise that the music is outstanding. Taking familiar songs from the movie while adding their own original songs really shows the quality and care that went into this games presentation.

HISTORY OF DISNEY GAMES

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Linking You to the Past

By Jake Spafford

Pokmon
A Boy
Once there lived a boy named Satoshi Tajiri. Satoshi lived in rural Tokyo. Satoshi loved collecting bugs. But then Tokyo grew and developed, and the rural areas began to be consumed by the urban crawl. Forests and rice paddies were replaced by arcades, and bugs were replaced by Space Invaders. Satoshi loved video games and while still a teenager, he started a magazine called Game Freak. He handwrote the magazine, then photocopied the pages and stapled them together. He met and began working with a friend named Ken Sugimori on the magazine, and a fateful partnership was born. music. It took the small team six years to come up with a finished product. Many members left due to lack of pay, and Tajiri himself worked without a salary, living off of his parents income. He worked irregular hours, often working 24 hours straight and sleeping for 12. One of the key game mechanics for this pair of games, Pokemon Red Version and Pokemon Green Version, would utilize the Game Boy Link Cable. Tajiri loved the capabilities of the Link Cable but felt that it was being underutilized at the time. In an interview with TIME Magazine in 1999, he said the following about his use of the Link Cable. TIME: Why did Game Boy seem right for Pokemon? Tajiri: The communication aspect of Game Boy. It was a profound image to me. It has a communication cable. In Tetris, its first game, the cable transmitted information about moving blocks. That cable really got me interested. I thought of actual living organisms moving back and forth across the cable. TIME: Wasn't the cable being used for players to compete with each other? In Pokemon, players are sharing, too, aren't they? Tajiri: Yeah, everyone was using it to compete. The idea I had was for information to go back and forth. It wasn't about competition. Even before Game Boy, there was a communication capability at game arcades--like two race car drivers sitting next to each other to compete. That's all anyone was doing, using it to compete. TIME: But if you're not competing, games aren't all that much fun, are they? Tajiri: I liked competition too. But I wanted to design a game that involved interactive communication. Remember, there was no Internet then. The concept of the communication cable is really Japanese: one-on-one. It's like karate--two players compete, they bow to each other. It's the Japanese concept of respect. TIME: Like the ritualistic elements of sumo? Tajiri: A more casual form of sumo. Over the Internet, communication can be directed to anyone in the world and it's anonymous. But with a communication cable, it's one-on-one and the players pick who they play against. It doesn't really get aggressive.

An Idea

The two gathered a team around them and turned Game Freak into a video game development company. Instead of writing about games, many of which they found were mediocre, they decided to make their own. Tajiri took his love for catching bugs and came up with the idea for Pokemon (an abbreviation of Pocket Monsters). With some initial funding from Nintendo and one of its subsidiaries, Creatures, Inc., Tajiri started working on the game with a small team of developer, with Sugimori providing the art. Junichi Masuda (currently a game director and Director of the Board for the Pokemon games) composed the

It's an intricate style of communication. Almost subtle.

A Craze

The games were finished in 1996, but Tajiri was scared. Because the games took so long to develop, the Game Boy was becoming obsolete as more advanced systems entered the market. Nevertheless, Nintendo took the game and started to market it. While it seemed like the Game Boy might be left in the dust, it continued to be bought by young children in Japan who couldnt afford the flashier, more expensive systems. Pokemon sales increased, fueled in part by rumors (started by the staff at Game Freak, no less), of a secret Pokemon hidden in the game. This rumor happened to be true, and the mysterious Pokemon turned out to be Mew, a Pokemon only obtainable by receiving it from a special event. This, combined with increased attention from the magazine CoroCoro, kept pushing Pokemon sales. Although it didnt immediately explode in popularity, sales grew steadily over the period of over a year and a half until it became entrenched as a top selling game. The eventually overwhelming success of Pokemon prompted a slew of spinoff products. A manga, a trading card game, an anime, and a movie. These products made their way to the states, with the games (now titled Pokemon Red Version and Pokemon Blue Version) and the TV show debuting in 1998. Despite Nintendos fears that American audiences wouldnt be excited about the cute little monsters, the games became a huge success and spread like wildfire. I found myself, like many of my peers,

swept up in Pokemania. I got a Game Boy and Pokemon Blue Version for Christmas of 98, and Pokemon became my life. I would wake up and watch the TV show before school, I would trade cards with my friends at recess, and then I would come home and play the Game Boy game. I was not alone in my obsession. In fact, the craze became such a phenomenon that TIME Magazine ran an article called Beware of the Pokemania in November of 1999.

A Legacy

While the craze has quieted, the legacy of Pokemon has not gone away. The followup games, Pokemon Gold and Silver versions, were intended to be the last of the franchise, but they continued to sell. And Tajiri and his team at Game Freak continued to develop. To date, there have been five generations of Pokemon games, with a sixth on its way. This makes for 21 main series games with many spinoffs like Pokemon Snap, Pokemon Colosseum, and Pokemon Pinball. The anime has aired over 800 episodes and 15 feature-length theatrical releases. This October, Pokemon X and Y Versions will be releasing, and they will continue to exhibit Satoshi Tajiris original design philosophy. They will continue to make the most of the consoles capabilities (this time around, that means seeing Pokemon in 3D), and the focus will still be on sharing and interacting, now possible through a Wi-Fi connection instead of a link cable. One boys youth spent collecting bugs and spending afternoons in arcades has now evolved into an internationally successful franchise, one of the most popular in the world.

LINKING YOU TO THE PAST POKEMON

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Lets talk
Game Difficulty

Different people have different definitions of what is easy and what is hard. For some the challenge is welcomed, but for others its off-putting.
Kevin Klein Writer

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LETS TALK GAME DIFFICULTY

Are Games Getting easier?

Video games have changed a lot in the past few decades. With that change has come a lot of broadening. As a result, there is a huge range in game difficulty. As games increase in popularity and their target demographics change and broaden, they experience a lot of diversification. There are a lot of markets to conquer and many niches to fill. What this means is that there are games now that are as hard as, or harder than, earlier games. These games can be challenging, frustrating, and ultimately rewarding. This satisfaction is an important part of gaming. Restarting a game of Fire Emblem over and over until you can successfully complete a mission without losing any of your characters feels amazing. Some games thrive off of being just difficult or inaccessible enough to appeal to a market of hardcore gamers. However, video games have also become increasingly popular to casual gamers and families. For this reason, its great that there are a lot of easier games out there. A growing emphasis on social gaming, whether local or online, takes focus off of the difficulty of a game and places it on the possible interactions to be had with other players. And you dont want a hard game when you pop in NintendoLand for something to do with your family members who havent picked up a Wiimote since Wii Sports. Its also worth mentioning another more recent trend in gaming: achievements and unlockables. A lot of games now have stratified difficulty. They might be easy to finish but difficult to complete. That is, it might be easy to simply get to the end of the campaign or story, but that isnt where the game ends. There could be extra goals, challenges, or objects to unlock. This is a way of providing a fun game for casual players while still providing an additional challenge for the more experienced. Jake Spafford Writer

Andrew Augustin joins us on the subject of game difficulty.

Overall, theres nothing wrong with there being easier games in the market, I just dont want to see the classic difficulty of games being phased out.
Andrew Augustin Creator of Super Ubie Land

The standard difficulty of games has changed over the past 25 years. I am sure this is due to the major increase of video game popularity and casual players. Difficulty is a hard subject to really decipher because it really all depends on what someone would consider difficult. Certain games require you to endure long durations of action and platforming before being able to save/rest, while some may not punish players with death but require the player to use their brains and figure out puzzles. Overall, theres nothing wrong with there being easier games in the market, I just dont want to see the classic difficulty of games being phased out. Checkpoints have changed the way gamers play games. At one point, they were used sparingly to keep the player from having to play the ENTIRE game over just because they died once. Checkpoints were more of a reward because they were placed far enough to keep players on their toes at all times. Now, checkpoints are used every 30 seconds to the point where dying isnt much of a consequence anymore. Players dont fear death/losing as much as they used to because of the reliance of checkpoints. Games can still be difficult even with the frequent use of checkpoints but that only changes the style of difficulty. The Resident Evil series is a good example of the changes in difficulty style based on the checkpoint/save system. In Resident Evil 1- Code Veronica, players would be terrified of any and every zombie that came across their path because of the possibility of death which meant that they would lose any progress that theyd made since their last save/checkpoint. Death had much more weight to it in those games than it did in Resident Evil 4-6. Those games utilized frequent checkpoints, which allowed the player to die as many times as they wanted without much consequence outside of having to redo maybe 2 minutes worth of gameplay. But frequent checkpoints allows for much tougher individual segments without frustrating the player too much. Then there are examples of not using death to punish the player, such as Kirbys Epic Yarn, which didnt allow the player to die at all. Instead they presented a different form of difficulty by having players collect various hidden items throughout the game. Temple Run and many other games on mobile devices have been tailored for shorter, quicker, more reaction based gameplay. One could argue that they are extremely challenging because of how difficult it is to actually live beyond 45 seconds or so while others may argue that theyre not really difficult because dying is inevitable and is basically the game itself. Overall, my personal opinion is yes, video games have become easier throughout the years. Completing the average game on the NES will certainly pose more of a challenge to players than completing the average game on current gen systems and devices. Andrew Augustin Creator of Super Ubie Land

LETS TALK GAME DIFFICULTY

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Gamers that grew up in the 80s, including myself, can attest to the fact that video games used to be difficult. There were many times as a child where I was forced to play various portions of video games repeatedly because I was having trouble overcoming an obstacle. Over time this has become a less frequent occurrence in video games. Modern video games hold a players hand and help them through the experience rather than allowing players to figure it out for themselves. In modern video games, many gamers expect to get from point A to point B without any issues and move on to the next game. On top of this, as gamers grow older they are not moving to games that are more difficult but begin playing games that are more gritty and violent. Young gamers are now growing up with titles like Call of Duty, which are for adults because of the content but are not difficult to play by any means. What I find even more disconcerting is that there are even gamers that claim that there are games that are too difficult and will stop playing games because they are just too hard. In my experience, there is never a video game that is too hard. I will describe some games as brutally difficult or one of the hardest games I have ever played but you will never hear me say this is just too hard. I may even have to put a game down and walk away because it is just that hard but I will always end up coming back for more. Most popular modern day video games hold a players hand too often, and this is why some gamers feel that some games are just too hard. For instance, Assassins Creed will pretty much tell players exactly what needs to happen step by step throughout various missions leading players through to completion. Even the combat in Assassins Creed is based less on a players skill and more about mashing buttons to unleash outrageous attack maneuvers. Retro games continue to provide a challenge even for todays young generation of gamers. Modern games have game mechanics that were not available in early video games, such as the Super Guide found in recent Mario game releases that help players that are having difficulty with a particular level and provide an easy way out. This kind of help can prove to be useful to a gamer that is finding a particular level to be too difficult and keep people playing instead of just walking away. I dont often use these handouts because I enjoy the challenge, and I think that more gamers should challenge their skills. I would like to see more young gamers embrace a games difficulty instead of running from it. Some of my most memorable video game experiences come from the most difficult games available. I am glad that there are some developers out there that still provide those soul crushing games that offer a viciously difficult level of gameplay. Justin Hinton Head Editor

I think better terms for todays games might be approachable or forgiving. They simply give me the choice to play how I want to play.
J Casalino Writer

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As a gamer, I love being challenged by games. It is incredibly satisfying to complete a goal that I struggled to finish, but not everyone likes to struggle. Different people have different definitions of what is easy and what is hard. For some the challenge is welcomed, but for others its off-putting. Often it feels as though developers are dumbing down the challenge in order to capture a wider audience and in the process alienate the hardcore players. Over the last few decades, games have gone from simply easy, medium, and hard modes to utilizing increasingly creative ideas like in-game guides and special power-ups to ease players that are struggling. I, for one, am all for adding these features, as long as they are optional. I do think some games are easier today than compared to their previous entries. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, it does bring up the questions of whether I have outgrown certain games or if I am no longer their target audience. I feel that developers should make games challenging but add features and opportunities for struggling players to get help. For instance, with Injustice: Gods Among Us, if players fall during a fight in story mode, the next fight will be slightly easier. This gives all players the opportunity to finish the story mode. Easy video games are not bad, theyre just not as satisfying. With Nintendo, I feel like they are constantly trying to come up with clever ways to keep games challenging and accessible to all players. New Super Luigi U is a great example of Nintendo creating a challenging game but adding a new playable character that makes it accessible to all players. Nabbit doesnt take damage from enemies, so struggling players can focus on platforming and other obstacles. What I love about this it teaches players certain principles that will only make them better players and allow them to take on more challenging tasks. The creative in-game options dont take the game from the gamer but instead help and teach them. Obviously, developers want to strike a good balance between being challenging and being inviting, and they often fall on the less challenging side. I hope the industry keeps evolving with unique ideas to make games for both sides. Kevin Klein Writer

Yes, I do feel as though video games today are a lot easier than the NES or SNES games that I grew up with. Games like New Super Mario Bros. U have the bubble system and the super guide to get you through the level without any effort. When a game has to ask me to put down the controller so it can beat the level for me, it is kind of insulting. I might have fallen down the same pit numerous times, but I promise this 52nd time will be different! After giving it some more thought, I understand why todays games are easier. Nintendo appeals to both the hardcore and casual gamer with select titles. Mario games typically have up to four players, and these can be friends, family or people who have never played a video game in their life. This makes sense to have a bubble relay system so less skilled gamers can play but still enjoy the game. While I do feel as though this is a good marketing idea on Nintendos part, it seems to rob gamers of that rewarding sensation that comes from beating that one difficult level. But take a look at for example Zelda titles. While there are hints throughout each dungeon either given by your companion or obvious dungeon placement, it is never hand-fed to you. The game still requires you to put on your big boy tunic and figure it out. If you look at the size of data an NES game holds, its about a few kilobytes. Nintendo made their games difficult so you felt as though you got your moneys worth. How you would feel paying around 50 bucks for a game only to beat it within a few hours? And while yes, these games were hard, they were not unbeatable. Perhaps the game designers wanted to put enemies in hard to kill areas so that the players would take their time playing the game and learn from their mistakes. That is what makes a challenging game so good. The rush of knowing that you beat what at first seemed impossible makes you truly feel unstoppable as a gamer. So how does one fix this little problem? There are young kids who are just getting their gaming feet wet and cant exactly tackle a game like Super Mario: The Lost Levels on the first try. Giving gamers the option of a much difficult quest seems to be the most viable answer. For example, Mega Man 2 for the NES, while difficult, can be played on Normal mode. This gives gamers a challenging yet beatable game, but gamers can choose the more difficult quest at their leisure. That, to me, seems like the biggest factor, giving gamers a choice. Im sure gamers other than myself would love to take a shot at a much more difficult Mario quest or games that would give us the challenge level that is known as Nintendo Hard. Again, games like Zelda already have their challenge level; its just that other games that seem to hold your hand all the time could use a change. Gamers need to test their skills; they just need the option to do so. Tristan Meiman Writer

There are young kids who are just getting their gaming feet wet and cant exactly tackle a game like Super Mario: The Lost Levels on the first try. Giving gamers the option of a much difficult quest seems to be the most viable answer.
Tristan Meiman Writer

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For me, being a gamer as a kid meant hours of practice, patience, and dedication. To society it meant living in ones parents basement, not taking a shower, and having no one really love your smelly, dirty, almost hippie-like self. Now, 15 years later, all of that has changed and a huge thank you can go to the Nintendo Wii. People who considered themselves hipsters should probably have hated the Wii. The Wii was the first video game system that really went mainstream. All the known video game media, parents, grandparents, were enamored with this new crazy technology. The Wii even made Nintendo popular enough to birth thousands of Nintendo-themed blogs/sites. So what effect, if any, does this have on the industry now? The industry has shifted to become more accepting of all gamers. What Nintendo, and I could add smartphones, did was to bring a whole group of casual gamers into the world of video games. As the success of this casual market took off, the eyes of the video game executives grew for the possibility of what this new demographic of gamers could bring. Nintendo turned themselves from a 25 million seller with the Game Cube, to a 100 million seller with the Wii. Tapping into this casual pool is something the industry still hasnt fully figured out. It is hard to say if the gamer or the industry has become lazy. A big part of me is leaning towards the idea that industry trends are causing this laziness. The rush to support the causal market has changed the focus of developers. Shovelware aside, which has been around since the start of gaming but has become worse with the casual boom, the industry is struggling to find that happy medium. Developers want a game that will appease the core market but still tap into the ever-flowing river of the casual gamer. This is how we get these watered-down games that we once struggled with and enjoyed. Games like Mario still feel similar to the core fans but at the same time offer a guiding hand to the casual gamer, with hints, guides, and in some cases, easier gameplay. This goes beyond just Mario games. All games have seen this shift to help out the casual market, even if its just by the slightest. Games that once punished a player for dying now offer consistent checkpoints, spawn points, and lives. The punishment for failing a level has been drastically altered to just a slap on the wrist. As of right now it is hard to see what the exact solution is to this lazy-casual problem. Last generation has put the industry through growing pains, and right now they are not sure what to do with their extra size. The industry will figure it out and hopefully we can find a happy medium were both type of players can live happily ever after. James Higginbotham Web Editor-in-Chief

I am not sure Id call games easier now than they used to be. I think complexity, speed, and timing are all just as prevalent today as they were in older games. In the early days, gamers like me were left on our own without any map or hints to point us in the right direction. I remember spending hours playing Metroid trying to find the Ice Beam and Kraids lair, and even full Saturday afternoons trying to get my timing just right to pass by that stupid saw blade or bird in Mega Man 2. Many of us even resorted to drawing our own maps and trading them at school until the next Nintendo Power issue came out, because without its maps and counselor tips, you could easily remain stuck in a game forever. The inclusion of a map system in todays games just keeps me from spending hours wandering around to figure out where I am and where to go next. This allows me to complete a game in a more reasonable time frame, even with more content. Today, games can be measured by the number of hours they take to complete. Some games may take upward of 60 to 80 hours of gameplay if you work on all the side missions and trophy achievements. But they always create a path which will allow a player to skip all the nonsense and complete the main mission in 20 hours or less. With that, I can still be satisfied with my achievement. Reminisce with me about Castlevania for a moment. If an enemy hit you, it would knock you back and potentially off a platform, straight to your demise. Even worse, some games didnt let you continue if you died -- you were stuck starting over from the very beginning. The Konami code was invented for a reason. Contra had similar issues. Legend of Zelda was the first game that ever included a battery which allowed you to continue from where you left off the next time you turned on your console. This was revolutionary for its time. Lots of games today retain similar mechanisms and obstacles, but if you dont happen to hit exactly the right timing, youre still likely to get past that part. You might not slip as easily off a platform, or you may have an escape mechanism like the Batclaw in Arkham City for those times when you really mess up. You may even be able to work your way out of a pit by wall jumping. These ideas for ease of play rarely appeared in earlier games. I think better terms for todays games might be approachable or forgiving. They simply give me the choice to play how I want to play. I dont have to use the map. I can choose my level of difficulty. And ultimately, I can choose how much of the game I want to play through. That seems like progress to me. J Casalino Writer

This last generation has put the industry through growing pains, and right now they are not sure what to do with their extra size. The industry will figure it out and hopefully we can find a happy medium were both type of players can live happily ever after.
James Higginbotham Web Editor-in-Chief

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I definitely think video games are easier than they used to be. The most obvious evidence of this fact is New Super Mario Bros. 2 for the 3DS. I recently replayed the original Super Mario World and Super Mario 3 on the SNES, and those games are difficult. The later stages took me plenty of lives to be able to finish, but once I did the satisfaction was immense. In NSMB2 you have basically an infinite amount of lives, so you never have to worry about having to use a continue or lose progress. Also, if you die 3-4 times on a level, it just gives you the Golden Tanuki Suit which allows you to just fly over all of the obstacles and get to the end flag for free! It is a SUPER easy game that removed most of the satisfaction of platforming. Besides Mario games, in general games are easier too. Ten years ago, there were hardcore games, but no one really threw the title around because lots of games were hard to beat. Nowadays you have series like Dark Souls that are special just because they are difficult, when ten years ago people would have just noted Dark Souls as being slightly more difficult than usual. I can understand the change in the trend. Gaming has slowly become more casual with the adoption of mobile gaming and Facebook games. Game companies have the opportunity to reach a far broader audience than they ever have in the past, and many companies want to capitalize on this. One of the side effects is the watering down of even mainstream games. I dont mind hand-holding tutorials or the occasional hint box, but when the game might as well play itself, like with modern Call of Duty single player campaigns, then there is no challenge. Games are still enjoyable, but for a lot of them Ive played recently (Shin Megami Tensei 4 aside) completing the game has been a breeze. It has been a long time since Ive had to look up online how to beat a boss and I think that is a crying shame. Christian Mills Writer

It has been a long time since Ive had to look up online how to beat a boss and I think that is a crying shame.
Christian Mills Writer

LETS TALK GAME DIFFICULTY

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9.0

Hello readers, and welcome to a very special retro review! What makes it special, you ask? There are two reasons: First off, this game is extraordinarily popular in the Nintendo community and is a very rare title, with an unopened box of the game costing up to $600. Second, prior to this review, Ive never played this game. All of my previous Retro Review games are titles from my own personal gaming collection, so I was thrilled to give the juicy breakdown of this hit RPG title. Now lets take a dive into one of the most highly anticipated Virtual Console games for the Wii U to date.

By Tristan Meiman

Story
We start things off by seeing the quaint town known as Onett in the middle of the night. Suddenly, a large meteorite crashes atop a nearby hill, waking its citizens. Then enters Ness, a boy chosen by fate to save the world. After approaching the meteorite, you are befriended by a small bug named BuzzBuzz. It seems as though Buzz-Buzz comes from ten years in the future where things are

pretty grim. A hostile alien known as Giygas has taken over the universe. Ness is informed that he and three others, Paula the psychic, Jeff the boy genius and Poo the prince from a far-off land, must gather eight strengths from the earth and defeat Giygas before he becomes too powerful. So lets see here. A bug ten years from the future tells you that you and three other children (again, just kids) are the chosen heroes to save the world from an alien that single-handedly takes over the universe in the future? Seems legit to me!

Gameplay
Your typical RPG elements are present in this game. You have your health points, experience points, leveling up, equippable items, you name it. I wont go into in-depth details. Theyre standard elements that youre likely familiar with. The big difference is the change from magic. In Earthbound each character has Psychic Points, otherwise listed as PP (go

050

ahead and get your giggles out of the way, and yes, I know it doesnt help that one of the characters is named Poo). Each character will have their own particular skill set that accents who they are. Ness and Poo will have a variety of attacks both offensively and defensively making them all around balanced characters. Paula is your psychic powerhouse, as she learns most of the offensive attacks. Jeff actually has no psychic powers. Instead, he makes up for it by fixing broken pieces of equipment and operating machinery that can be used in battle. Speaking of battles, Earthbound does not use a random encounter system. Players will have the option to either maneuver around enemies, or get the jump on them for a pre-emptive strike. But be careful, as running away from an enemy not only keeps you from leveling up but also can cause the enemy to get the jump on you instead. Im going to vent really quickly about an RPG element that really bugs me. Have you ever played an RPG where youre at, lets say, level 50, and you run into an enemy thats significantly weaker than you? Youre stuck fighting this enemy that you know is a waste of your time even if the battle will be over less than a minute. We know darn well that were

stronger than them so why waste our time with an encounter?! The developers of Earthbound saw this as a problem and fixed it. As I was walking through Onett, I accidentally ran into a snake that I knew would instigate a fight. The screen began to spiral as I would soon be taken to the battle screen. But that wasnt the case. Instead, the screen just flashed and said You Won! I gathered my experience points and hey, I even leveled up! If youre obviously a higher level than your opponent, the game wont waste your time with a fight. The battle will automatically be over with you as the victor and all the prizes that come with it. At times, enemies will even run away from you. The hunter has become the hunted! Why some RPGs never learned from this Ill never know.

find the hospital and pay a doctors fee to bring them back to life. Guess they dont have free health care in Nesss world. By far the most unexpected status aliment was homesickness. Yup. It only affects Ness, and its due to your not calling your mother enough. In the middle of a battle, Ness could not concentrate on the fight due to his missing home. When there seemed to be no end to the amount of player-inhibiting elements, Earthbound threw another curveball. Another quite challenging aspect is the leveling up system. The RPGs that Ive grown accustomed to have spoiled me. Whenever a new character joined my party, they were either a level or two ahead of my main character, or the same level overall. Thats not the case in Earthbound. Whenever you get a new character, they start right at level 1. This then leads to pointless grinding which takes away from the games pacing. Not only that, the enemies youll be facing will be nothing for your current characters, and yet the newest addition to the group will get killed faster than you can say Mr. Saturn. Yes, this is a challenging element, but it is one that I could do without.

The Challenge
Let me go ahead and warn you. While this game may be a cult classic, there are many moments where it will chew you up, savor your delicious defeat, then spit you out. Starting out, the game poses a challenge, but a beatable one. You defeat one enemy, then get strong enough to defeat two. You die a few times before defeating a boss, but you come back remembering what went wrong. Victory will shine upon you but will then be quickly clouded by the new enemies that you encounter. This is an RPG that will keep you humble about your growth no matter how high your level may be. Right after defeating a boss, which was quite easy, I then left to progress further in the game. With each characters level in the low 30s/high 20s, just advancing to the next area seemed to take me back to level 1. Enemies will throw status aliments that are only curable at a local hospital. When someone in your party dies, and if youre like me and have no item to bring them back, you have to journey all the way back to a local town,

Final Verdict
While my last few paragraphs may have given off the impression that this game is too hard to play, that is not the case. Sure there are challenges here and there, but thats what makes a game great. An obstacle that can be completed by using careful planning and recalling your past experiences. This, in turn, will help you grow along with Ness and company as you go on your quest to save the world. I cannot begin to express how fortunate we are to have this game downloadable to play, as I would rather spend $10 than $600 any day of the week. If youre looking for a challenging RPG with a creative story and world, then I highly recommend this title. Just be prepared to put your RPG skills to the test.

RETRO REVIEW EARTHBOUND

051

GEAR REVIEW
By Tristan Meiman

Sumo Sultan Bean Bag

Every gamer needs a comfy place to sit. I mean, how many hours do we as gamers clock in weekly? We need a piece of furniture that will supportnaycradle us with such comfort that we are both entranced, not only by the game we are playing, but by the chair our butts relax in. Recently the good people at Sumo Lounge sent me one of their high-end beanbags known as the Sultan. When this bad boy first arrived, it looked like a mini-fridge was shoved into a cardboard box. After freeing the Sultan from its cardboard cocoon, it was still encased in airtight plastic and after I cut it open, I understood why. Once the plastic was pierced, the Sultan began eating all the air around me and took form. What was once an airtight marshmallow was now a round bulbous bag. The version of the Sultan I received was the microsuede red. You can also get multiple covers, which range from microsuede, corduroy and now ultra fur. These covers not only come in a variety of colors but are machine washable as well. After getting the beanbags cover on, which thankfully my brother helped me with, I then took my position and fell back into what would be my gaming butts new home. Immediately, I let out a sigh of comfort and a big smile grew on my face, and I knew this was a gamers throne. But it was time to put this chair to the ultimate test. I pulled out my SNES, popped in Super Mario RPG: Legend of The Seven Stars, and began a new file. Some serious gaming hours needed to be put in to give this chair the justice it deserved. A month after receiving the Sultan, I am still extraordinarily pleased. If at any point it looses its support or any form of discomfort, all it takes is a good fluffing or simply flipping it over and BAM, just like new. The Sultan is not your average beanbag. While most are filled with small beads, this has a mixture of polyester fiber and beads, which continue to eat surrounding air so it not only molds to your body but also retains its shape whenever you get up. While the Sultan may be large, it feels designed for one person. Im sure you can squeeze another individual on there, but be prepared to get comfy as you will be shoulder to shoulder. But hey, have a significant other? This is a great beanbag to cuddle on as you watch a movie or game it up as a romantic nerd couple. If the Sultan sounds like something you would be interested in, head over to their website at www.sumolounge.com and place an order. While the $250 price tag may be a bit much, know that youre getting a product that will last you in the years to come.

052

Time to relax and play games

Reviews
New super luigi u
REPORTER: Justin Sharp EMAIL: justin@purenintendo.com BLOG: purenintendo.com New Super Mario Bros. U has recently received its first DLC pack in the form of New Super Luigi U. I say first since I bet Nintendo will continue to offer more DLC packs for New Super Mario Bros. U in the future. New Super Luigi U is not simply a few new levels like Nintendos previous DLC packs for New Super Mario Bros. 2. The game features more than 80 new levels for players to explore as Marios lanky brother, Luigi. The world map is largely unchanged from New Super Mario Bros. U, but each level is very unique. One of the new twists in New Super Luigi U is the 100 second time limit. This smaller window of time means levels are a little shorter than those in New Super Mario Bros. U. The star coins in each level are also easier to locate but are not necessarily easier to obtain. In the first few worlds I was able to retrieve every star coin as I progressed. However, the later worlds are more challenging and star coins arent as easy to get on the first play-through. Another twist in the game is Luigi himself. Not only does Luigi jump higher, but he can also stay in the air longer. Luigis physics are more like Marios when hes eaten a mini Mushroom. It feels like Luigi is jumping with less gravity. Luigi also takes longer to come to a full stop. His slide is a little longer than Marios so youll want to be careful next to ledges or enemies. The other twist in the game is the ability to play as Nabbit. Nabbit cannot use powerups but he also doesnt take damage from enemies. I was hopeful that Nabbit might make the game easier for my nephew but the shorter time limit really made it more difficult, even with the invulnerability of Nabbit. New Super Luigi U has a lot of new content and has the same great presentation of New Super Mario Bros. U. There arent a lot of differences visually between New Super Luigi U and New Super Mario Bros. U, but there are some impressive levels in the game. The levels that feature a starry sky in the background also

7.5

feature a beautifully rendered comet. Its a subtle difference but one that certainly makes an impression. Other impressive moments involved just the sheer amount of enemies or animating platforms. One of the water levels featured several water spouts that launch enemies in the air. Another level had several round, spinning platforms that made for a unique speed run. Sometimes the extra insanity made for a nice challenge but other times it felt like it was too much complexity. Theres a limit to adding more enemies, and I felt some levels were unbalanced as a result. The enjoyment I had playing New Super Luigi U was definitely less than New Super Mario Bros. U. The game has several high moments, but I felt the smaller levels were detrimental overall. The moment you get to appreciate a levels design, youre already on to the next level with all three star coins. While players get a lot of content for $20, it may not be worth it for everyone.

054

pikmin 3
REPORTER: Justin Hinton EMAIL: jhinton@purenintendo.com BLOG: purenintendo.com Pikmin is a Nintendo franchise that has exploded in popularity, like many Nintendo franchises have done in the past. Pikmin is an unusual game where players spend their time lobbing small, colorful alien-like beings at enemies, treasures, fruit, and other items. Many veteran Nintendo fans are already familiar with the cute little Pikmin, but there are other gamers who became fans of Nintendo during the Wiis console cycle and may be new to the series. Pikmin 3, which was originally slated to release on the Wii, is finally here after years of development and is the defining Pikmin experience. Pikmin 3 follows Alph, Brittany, and Charlie as they try to find food and return to their home planet, Koppai. Longtime fans of the series and newcomers alike will have a blast playing Pikmin 3 on the Wii U. Pikmin 3 is stunning in almost every aspect, but the graphical splendor that splashed across my television screen after popping in the game is astonishing. Pikmin 3 has some of the best graphics out of the current library of Wii U games. The fruit, flames, vegetation and other items in Pikmin 3 look almost life-like, and the game is a great visual representation of the Wii Us graphical capabilities. The sound design in the game is also very nice and players will find classic Pikmin tunes as well as new, pleasant surprises (try running through a patch of tall, slender, red mushrooms). Pikmin from the first two games in the series make a return in Pikmin 3 and are now joined by two new types, pink and rock Pikmin. Pink Pikmin can fly, which allows them to carry objects over water, ledges, and hills. Pink Pikmin also help out by lifting barriers to grant access to new areas in the environment. Rock Pikmin can smash hard objects that other Pikmin cannot break through. Both of the new Pikmin are just as adorable and useful as their friends but also add an interesting twist to the game. Players will also take command of three main characters, Alph, Brittany, and Charlie, to solve puzzles throughout the game that can only be surmounted by using two or more of the characters. They can also be used to split up tasks so that players can make more efficient use of their daylight. New Play Control! Pikmin 1 and 2, which were both released on the Wii, familiarized players with the Wii Remote & Nunchuk control scheme, and this setup is still available in Pikmin 3. When using the Wii Remote & Nunchuk, the GamePad or KopPad, as its called Pikmin 3, acts primarily as an interactive map but players can also find gameplay instructions/hints, information/status on Pikmin in the field, fruit information, and even a camera. Each of the features available on the GamePad functions very well and provides extremely useful gameplay

10
pictures can then be captioned and sent to Miiverse for the whole world to see. The GamePad can be used by itself instead of the Wii Remote and Nunchuk controller configuration, but the controls are a little more complex and take some practice to master. Pikmin 3 can also be played entirely on the Wii U GamePad using the off-TV play feature, and the Wii U Pro controller, which has the same control structure as the GamePad, is supported as well. The multiplayer options found in Pikmin 3 are limited to local, co-op play but actually offer a very expansive experience. There are two different modes, Mission and Bingo Battle. Mission mode is a cooperative experience that can be played by oneself or multiplayer with one additional player. In Mission mode players can work together collecting fruit, defeating enemies, or battling bosses. Each of the three events has several levels that are unlocked by obtaining medals from the preceding level. Bingo Battle is a competitive multiplayer experience where players will scramble to find the items on their Bingo cards before their opponent. In Bingo Battle there are different stages to choose from and even if players choose the same stage, they will start with different Pikmin and run into different enemies or obstacles. The multiplayer modes are a lot of fun and contain plenty of content to keep a couple friends busy for quite some time but co-op multiplayer during the Story mode would have been a favorable addition to an already great game. Despite the feeling that Nintendo missed the opportunity to create a fantastic two player story driven experience in Pikmin 3, there is nothing I could find in in the game that I did not thoroughly enjoy. After so many years in development, Pikmin 3 exhibits the hard work that Nintendo has put into the game. Pikmin 3 is full of surprises and everything from the Pikmin themselves to the frantic nature of the co-op multiplayer is just pure, unadulterated fun. Pikmin 3 is overall an outstanding game and players young and old will find themselves lost in a world of Pikmin for hours.

information. The map, information about available Pikmin, and camera seemed to be the most useful features of the bunch. The detailed, interactive map is by far the most informative feature and allows players to pan around the environment and scope out their surroundings. One of the more interesting additions to Pikmin 3 is the GamePads camera function and affords players the opportunity to finally feel like they are in fact surrounded by Pikmin. When using the GamePad as the camera; players will hold the GamePad in front of them, use the GamePads motion controls look around the environment in first person perspective, and snap photos of the game world around them. These

055

SHANTAE (3DS VC)

REPORTER: Jake Spafford EMAIL: jake@purenintendo.com BLOG: purenintendo.com
Shantae was something of an ill-fated game. Despite receiving generally good press, it was a victim of poor timing. The game was released in 2002 for the Game Boy Color--thats a year after the Game Boy Advance had come out. So unfortunately, due to its late release, not many people had the opportunity to play this delightful platformer. Well, now we have that opportunity, as the original Shantae is out on the 3DS Virtual Console. The game follows the titular Shantae, a half-genie assigned to watch and protect the small but bustling Scuttle Town. But one day, the nefarious Risky Boots, the lady pirate, comes to town and starts causing havoc. As Scuttle Towns resident guardian genie, it becomes her duty to hunt down and defeat Risky Boots. Thus begins a very charming and challenging platformer. Shantae will feel very familiar to those who remember the days of side-scrolling platformers on the GBC or Super Nintendo. Running, jumping, solving puzzles, and defeating enemies. In this case, the fighting is done mainly with Shantaes luxurious purple ponytail (she can eventually learn moves like jumpkicks and elbow attacks). To add to the variety of platforming, Shantae can learn different belly dances that transform her into a number of animals, like a monkey or an elephant. Each of these animals brings a different skillset to your platforming experience. For example, the monkey is small, fast and agile but cannot attack.

7.5
The game is very Metroidvania. That is, it is very nonlinear is the sense that you will often be required to revisit past areas once different abilities have been unlocked. Individual dungeons as well are very nonlinear and require lots of traversing to complete. This makes for a pretty challenging game, and this is coupled with the fact that there is no semblance of a map. Paying attention to where you are, what people have said, and where youve been is very important. Like WayForwards other games, such as Mighty Switch Force, Shantae is very charming. Also like Mighty Switch Force, the characters are cute and sexy without feeling too overbearingly sexual. Just a sexy cartoon genie fighting a sexy cartoon pirate with the help of her sexy cartoon friends, no big deal. The dialogue is entertaining, with everyone you meet being completely smitten with Shantae. Theres plenty of enamor and shameless flirting. All around, its a fun little romp. Shantae is a solid GBC puzzle platformer. Its substantial, its challenging, and it features an adorable heroine and memorable characters. The game can be daunting without a map, and sometimes jumps are honestly a little too hard to gauge since the screen doesnt give you a very good view of your surroundings. But hey, the frustration that comes from falling into a pit repeatedly while platforming is all part of the fun...right?

PROJect X zone
REPORTER: Jake Spafford EMAIL: jake@purenintendo.com BLOG: purenintendo.com
Project X Zone (pronounced Project Cross Zone) is a game that really shouldnt work. How do you combine characters, worlds, and storylines from dozens of games and multiple developers and throw them all together into a cohesive game? Turns out, you dont. Dont get me wrongProject X Zone is surprisingly fun and satisfying considering its drawbacks. I think the best thing to do here is to explain everything that bothered me about this game, and then explain why I enjoyed it so much anyway. But first, a quick summary. Project X Zone is a massive crossover project developed by Namco Bandai with the cooperation of Sega and Capcom, developed for the 3DS. It masquerades as a tactical game (but Ill get to that later). There is no overworld to concern yourself with, just a series of battles, interspersed with cutscenes and story development. The plot is what you might imagine from this type of crossover: Rifts start opening up in timespace, alternate histories and parallel worlds start colliding, and a bunch of displaced adventurers and busty women try to put it all right again and get back to their respective worlds. It plays like a standard tactics game (think Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem) with a twist. When one of your units attacks an enemy, the screen changes to something you might see in Street Fighter (remember who made this game). Your pair of units on the right, the enemy on the left, and you have the chance to input some commands. You have a few attacks in your arsenal, and timing them is important to chaining combos, keeping your enemy off guard, and doing more damage. Okay, I know I compared the game to Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem. Forget I said that. Its completely different. There is no fulfilling sense of advancement and customization. No upgrade paths, no jobs or classes. When a character levels uphe gets stronger.

6.5
The only thing is, it feels pretty arbitrary. You do more damage, but the enemies have more health. Its basically a wash. There also isnt really a whole lot of tactics going on. All your characters are basically identical, which is kind of a shame, considering their incredible diversity. Their differences are mainly aesthetic. Yeah, they have skills like heal everyone or move a couple extra spaces, but I rarely found myself using those since they expend the same resource (XP, or Cross Points) used for crazy finishing moves that are best saved for the bosses. The best part of this game is the presentation. With the multitude of franchise-spanning characters, it might be easy for them all to get lost in the fray. However, to Project X Zones credit, every character stands out. They have personality, and theyre written well. The dialogue is at times actually very funny (although heads up, its pretty heavy on the sexual innuendos). Its incredibly entertaining, actually, to watch all of these characters from all over time and from different worlds collide and interact with each other. Simply put, Project X Zone is a fun, rewarding game. It isnt a deep tactical game, and it isnt a deep RPG. It is, however, quite an entertaining romp with a great combat system and well-written characters that carry a lot of charm and humor. Its not a game for everybody, but I would highly recommend it to anyone who is familiar with Namco Bandai, Capcom, or Sega (and Id imagine thats a lot of people). Even if its just so you can see Dead Risings Frank West creepily snap photos of all the well-endowed women from your favorite games

056

Game & Wario

REPORTER: James Higginbotham EMAIL: james@purenintendo.com BLOG: purenintendo.com
Game & Wario for the Wii U is exactly what one would expect from a console Wario title. There really arent any surprises to the game or anything that make it standout. There are the mini-games, the mischief, humor, and the crude innuendos one comes to expect from Wario; but thats about it. The sixteen single player games offer more depth than expected. Surprisingly, there is a story to play through. Surprising because the story may not be noticed, as a story, until the end. The story is told with short Wario style cut scenes before the start of each mini game. These scenes can be entertaining at times, but I found them more of a nuisanceand something standingin-betweenme and the start of the next mini-game. Only one mini-game is made available at the start of a newplay-through. The player has to complete each game before the next one is made available. This does give the opportunity for the player to play each game, at least once, before casting judgment on the game. Once played through, each of the sixteen mini games seem to offer at least one to five more playable game variations to the original mini-game. This does add a little more to the re-playability factor of the game and may give a reason to go back and play a game that wasnt liked in the first play-through. I dragged my wife into my Game & Wario experience to at least help me with, what I thought was going to be, a deep multiplayer aspect. The one multiplayer game that was most enjoyable is based on the number one party game of all time, Pictionary. In this game, one player uses the GamePad while the other/s look at the TV. The player

7.0
with the GamePad is shown a word to draw on an adjacent space of the GamePad. While the drawing appears on the TV screen, the other player(s) scream out random words to try and match the drawing (I am sure most understand the basics of Pictionary). Once the word is guessed, the player with the GamePad hits the correct button to move onto the next word. This is all done within a time limit. There is the ability to skip a word, but a penalty of twenty seconds is allotted. The game offers a wider range of interesting and fun words that can be drawn. Another interesting aspect of Game & Wario is Miiverse Sketch. This takes one of my favorite games, Sketch,out into the world of Miiverse. Here players can Sketch words other players have suggested through Miiverse or suggest their own words for others to sketch. There is also the ability to check out a gallery of other sketches and trending words. Game & Wario is probably a game that should have come out at the launch of the Wii U. It has some high moments, and some very low moments in terms of gameplay. What would have made this game so successful at the Wii U launch is the fact it may show off the capabilities of the GamePad a lot better than Nintendo Land. If you love the quirkiness of Wario games and looking for some fun mini-games for the Wii U, this game is for you. For everyone else, this game may not be worth the buy unless you are desperately looking for another Wii U game.

shin megami tensei IV

REPORTER: Christian Mills EMAIL: chris@purenintendo.com BLOG: purenintendo.com
Shin Megami Tensei 4 is hard. Very, very hard. If there is one thing I want to get across in this review, is that this game is not for the easily frustrated or weak willed. Combat is very unforgiving, where one mistake can cause your party to lose their turns, and then get pummeled into the ground by what appear to be floating water balloons. So save often! Boss fights end up being a game of find the weakness which may or may not take multiple reloads. But once you find the appropriate weakness, you can whip a team together that have the right element attack, then the fight becomes winnable. Not easy mind you, but do-able. SMT 4 also suffers from chronic lack of direction. At a disturbing frequency you will pick up quests with unclear objectives. Continue searching for (spoilers). Continue searching? What does that mean? Continue searching where? Apparently it means wander around until you get so frustrated you look it up online. There are many things holding SMT 4 back, but even they dont manage to completely obscure the positive aspects of the game. There is just immense amounts of customization. There are over 400 demons in SMT 4 and almost all of them are recruitable onto your team. Then you can combine those demons together to create other, usually higher level, demons. You can also customize

7.8

your equipment, and buy abilities with App points you get when you level up. I have not seen this level of customization in a game in a very long time. It makes the game incredibly compelling and drives you to level up just one more time to see what cool demons lay just around the corner. Dont let this review scare you off from playing Shin Megami Tensei 4. I actually enjoyed my time with it quite a bit, but it is definitely made for the RPG enthusiast. The customization and advancement systems are enthralling enough to encourage you to continue playing. The story kept me interested until the end, and some of the twists and turn honestly caught me by surprise. The game just keeps getting in its own way. The hardcore difficulty keeps combat intense but causes lots of downtime as you are reloading or sitting through death cutscenes. The lack of direction can be easily be remedied with a walkthrough or a strategy guide but the fact that outside information is almost required is just sad. If you have played other SMT games and love them, or are excited by the possibility of colossal amounts of customization and rewarding advancement, this is the game for you. If this is your first forray into the SMT series or are inexperienced with RPGs in general, I would tread lightly, and please, please, please save often.

057

6.5
urban trial freestyle
REPORTER: Tristan Meiman EMAIL: tristan@purenintendo.com BLOG: purenintendo.com
Coming this week to the 3DS is a great addition to the world of addicting dirt bike stunt games (pretty sure thats a game genre). Urban Trial Freestyle, created by Tate Multimedia, was released for the PS Vita back in February and is now making its debut on the 3DS. Visually, the game looks great on the 3DS. Using the 3D offers great visual depth but sadly offers no pop out features. Playing in 2D mode is just as nice looking, but I mean come on, its called the 3DS for a reason so be sure to play it in the mode its meant to be experienced in! Like most stunt games, getting from beginning to end is your goal while being as stylish as possible. There are two game types when playing courses, stunt and time trial. Lets talk about stunt mode. Throughout each track there are specific objectives you are required to complete. These range from precise jumps, long jumps, the amount of flips preformed, high jumps and speed tests. While Im used to previous stunt games giving you points for random stunt acts, it was nice to have goals set up at certain locations within each level. The time trial mode is exactly what it sounds like. Get from the beginning of the level to the end as fast as possible. No stunts needed, just shear speed. If theres one thing that Urban Trial Freestyle will teach you, its control. Slamming down on the gas can easily cause your bike to flip over. Not only that, but when going up steep hills or flying through the air, you have to take into account the games physics. Using the control stick, you can keep your balance when going in and out of flips or squaring yourself up to land. Overtime, gamers will be able to get through stages without crashing, as it will save you from loosing points. Your crashes are added up at the end and can cause your score to suffer. Depending on how well you complete said mode will depend on your overall score. The more stunts that are pulled off will grant you more stars and the faster a track is completed will do the same. Getting the highest score possible is essential to unlocking more courses or bikes. This adds a great deal of challenge, as your skill is necessary to advance further in the game. Throughout each level, there are bags of money that can be used later on to buy bike parts or new outfits. I highly recommend picking up the bike parts first as the outfits are simply cosmetic. In terms of the games challenge, its hit and miss. While there are some levels that I breezed through no problem, others I caught myself crashinga lot. But with each crash, I began to understand the games mechanics and overtime mastered them. When I first started playing the game, I would usually finish with two or three stars. As I kept playing, I would finish with either full five stars or four. A feature that is exclusive to the 3DS is the level editor mode. This allows players to create their own tracks to their hearts content. Level editor mode utilizes the 3DSs touch screen perfectly, as creating felt easy to use with little to no issues. With a total of 30 empty tracks, youll have plenty of space to go crazy with creativity! Overall, I found my time, albeit short, with Urban Trial Freestyle to be enjoyable. The game has a decent amount of replayablilty, especially if youre the type that enjoys getting all five stars in each track. If youre looking for a good handheld dirt bike stunt game (again, pretty sure thats a genre) then check out Urban Trial Freestyle for the 3DS later on this week on the eShop.

Dr Robotniks Mean Bean Machine

REPORTER: Thomas Jones EMAIL: tips@purenintendo.com BLOG: purenintendo.com
Everybody rejoice! Dr. Robotniks Mean Bean Machine has made it onto the 3DS virtual console. No, Im serious. Ive long been a fan of MBM on the Sega Genesis, and now, its Game Gear counterpart can be played in the palm of your hands, all without burning through 6 AA batteries! The gameplay of MBM is based on the Puyo-Puyo series of games and has the same addictive puzzle feel as Tetris. The screen is split vertically down the center, with the player controlling the left panel, whilst Robotniks android cronies controls the right. The beans fall in coloured pairs from the top of the screen, and it is your job to match them in groups of four or more, thereby clearing them from your grid. It sounds simple, but where the real challenge lies is in thinking at least one step ahead at all times. The aim is to fill the opponents screen with clear Refugee Beans which are deposited on their grid every time the player makes a good chain reaction, so visualizing how the placement of the beans will cause the others to react, is constantly at the front of your mind. The refugee beans are removed by clearing adjacent beans. Managing reactions and bean placements can become increasingly challenging throughout each stage as the speed of the beans falling increases, and therefore so does the difficulty. In this game, as Sonic would tell us, you gotta go fast! Taking your time will definitely be your downfall. The Game Gear version includes 4 modes. In the main Scenario Mode you are presented with an overview of the stages, featuring Robotnik surrounded by his mechanical regimen. Once one robot stage has been defeated, you move onto the next, each level becoming increasingly tricky, and occasionally adding more bean colours for you to sort

7.0

out. The player goes through twelve badniks, some of whom will seem familiar from The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog animated series, such as Coconuts the monkey, and others who demonstrate Robotnik spent far more time hatching this plan than naming his robots. Take Arms for example, a robot with, you guessed it arms. After defeating all twelve of the inventively named robots, the player takes on the evil professor in one final puzzle battle. The game maintains a high difficulty level throughout, and even beating the first stage is no breeze. This causes a great desire to stick with the game as the satisfaction of defeating the level is a reward in itself. I find myself sporadically returning to my 3DS throughout the day, determined to clear the next stage. Expect to use the restore point feature! The game never veers into obscene levels of difficulty and after a few playthroughs it soon becomes easier to clear each stage. The Game Gear iteration of the Genesis original is extremely faithful and is only inferior in some of the graphical capabilities of its 16 bit equivalent. The robot portraits arent quite as animated as the console version, which is a shame because its always satisfying to see the badniks deteriorate as you gradually wear them down throughout the conflict. It also gives you greater motivation, and clearer indication of how close you are to success. Having said that, it is still a vibrant and attractive game that matches the quality of gameplay found in the Genesis original, a real accolade for an 8 bit handheld clone. Its fair to say that the game does have its blemishes. Overall, for the price that is being asked on the eShop MBM is more than worth the money.

058

ATTACK OF THE FRIDAY MONSTERS! A TOKYO TALE

REPORTER: Christian Mills EMAIL: chris@purenintendo.com BLOG: purenintendo.com
There are many things in this world that are so adorable that, as an adult male, I cannot handle. Baby pygmy hippos, narcoleptic goats and three legged dogs are some of them. ATTACK OF THE FRIDAY MONSTERS! A TOKYO TALE tops the list. You control 4th grade student Sohta as you investigate the mysterious monsters that appear every Friday night in your town. The setting is 1970s Japan, when giant monster shows like Godzilla and Super Sentai (original Japanese Power Rangers) were beginning to become popular, so the children of the town are all enthralled by the appearance of monsters. The story is amazingly cute and the dialogue is clever and well written. The conversations Sohta has with the other characters, which is the bulk of gameplay, are funny and often made me legitimately laugh. The hand drawn artwork is gorgeous and looks like it is straight out of a Hayao Miyazaki movie. The computer-rendered models fit decently into the hand-drawn environments, and the 3D is almost nonexistent, but that isnt a big deal since I play with 3D off anyway. The problem with ATTACK OF THE FRIDAY MONSTERS! is that Im not entirely sold that it is a GAME. Yes, it is on a video game handheld and you do interact with the game by pressing buttons, but that is about it. The gameplay mainly consists of walking around and talking to people. Sure, other games focus on conversation almost entirely as well, but usually there is a choice or some other aspect involved. In ATTACK OF THE FRIDAY MONSTERS! there are Episodes that are initiated by talking to various people in the town, and then resolved by talking to other people in the town. To progress the main storyline, you just talk to the RIGHT people in the town. This results in the majority of the 3-4 hour game being: Talk to everyone in town, advance the story, everyone moves around, talk to everyone in town again. Rinse and repeat. The storyline is great and I definitely enjoyed it, but the game ends

7.2

up feeling rather flat. There is a card battle mini game, but it is just dolled up Rock, Paper, Scissors. You each have five card, each with either a rock, paper or scissors symbol, then then you arrange them face down against your opponent. The game then tells you how many wins, losses and draws each player has, reveals two of the match-ups then allows you to shift the position of two cards. It is very simplistic and once you figure it out, it is easy to win almost every time unless you just get atrocious luck. You gain cards by gathering Glim scattered throughout the world, but the motivation to find them is very minor considering the Monster Card game is pretty simple, and you get many Glim by just completing the Episodes. Also, for most of the game there are only 4 or 5 opponents and once you beat them once, you become their boss so they help you investigate the city (and cast a spell on them that causes them to fall down. No, this does not get old), but if you played them again and lost they would become YOUR boss and stop helping you, so there is little incentive to play any opponent after you have become their boss. I loved the story and characters in ATTACK OF THE FRIDAY MONSTERS! A TOKYO TALE, but I felt like I might as well have been watching an Anime rather than playing a game. The minigame was easy and two dimensional and, without any proper incentive to play it, forgettable. I really wish this game was better. I wish it had the depth of gameplay that the story and writing deserved, but there wasnt much there. Running around and talking to people was FINE, but it was boring. I would love to be able to play this game multiple times to uncover more about the story, but after you beat it in a couple of hours, there is little reason to ever touch it again.

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Virtual Console recommendations

By Tristan Meiman

SHANTAE Genie-girl Shantae is the protector of the small fishing village known as Scuttle Town. Things are quite peaceful, until the pirate Risky Boots learns of recently un-earthed treasure. This means trouble for the people of Scuttle, as it is up to Shantae to ward off these pirate invaders for good! Learn transforming dance magic to gain new powers as you explore over 50 locations in this hit Game Boy Color title!

MEGA MAN 6 A robot world tournament has begun and the blue bomber himself has entered the competition! On the eve of the tournament, a new foe Mr. X reveals that the tournament was all a scheme so that he may control the worlds most powerful robots. Put your pixel perfect skills to the test in this classic platformer as you jump and shoot your way to victory!

DONKEY KONG The title that started it all for Mario and Donkey Kong. This smash classic was for some the first arcade game they ever played. Climb your way up the construction to save your girlfriend Pauline from the gruesome Donkey Kong. Jump over barrels, fire balls and springs as you make your way to the top. How high can you get?

SUPER MARIO BROS. 2 While on a picnic, Mario and friends stumble upon a mysterious door that takes them to the world of Subcon. But things are not what they seem, as the evil King Wart has taken over the land! Filled with familiar and new enemies, gamers will master the different skill set that comes with Mario, Luigi, Toad and Princess Peach as they explore a platform unlike the rest. Can you find all of the secret warp zones?

REPORTER: Katelyn Sharp EMAIL: katie@purenintendo.com BLOG: purenintendo.com Follow the numbers left to right and start coloring the squares as you go. The numbers are highlighted with various colors to indicate what color is needed next. Say the number 3 is highlighted in blue, that means that there are three blue squares. Each puzzle has a color guide and legend that will show you what colors to use and where. If you dont have any colored markers, pens, or pencils you can substitute the colors for various shades of grey, or just do the black highlighted numbers, if there are any. I have given a hint on the right for the three puzzles. Can you figure them out before starting the puzzles? Answers are on page 67.

Pixel Puzzles

Pink Colors needed 10 4 6 822224 7 1 53 1 3 6 1 1 534 52 1 57 4 1 1 22 1 9 3161 18 2 1 1 42 1 1 8 2 1 1 3 1 2 1 1 1 1 24 2 1 131 1 131 1 14 2 1 4 1 1 1 1 1 224 3 1 1 1 35 1 1 4 3151514 31 1 1 1 1 161 4 3 1 47 1 4 3 1 1 1 25 1 1 1 4 433 1 1 44 72 128 929 20

Black

Grey Light Green Green Dark Green Red 013

White/Blank

White/Blank Colors needed Red 20 14 2 2 2 922 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 4 4 1 1 1 22 22 1 3 1 4 28 1 1 2 1 33 1 3 1 4 1 1 212121 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 13 1 1 2141 141 121 1 1 2 1 2 1 1 1 1 42 1 1 1 32 1 2 1 1 1 33 1 1 1 25 1 1 432 1 1 1 1 3 22 1 1 3 5 1 222 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 5 6 1 1 32 1 1 5 6242 1 5 51 1 1 1 1 1216 596 10 1 2 1 6 11 2 7 20 White/Blank Colors needed 20 52 1 3 9 41 1 21218 4 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 36 413 121 1 16 2232 1 1 1 1 1 6 1 1 2 1 22 1 1 45 1 1 1 151 1 1 1 1 15 1 1 1 22 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 5 2433 1 52 4 1 2 1 1 1 2 1 2 1 22 4131 13121 12 532 1 1 2 1 1 1 3 5 1 1 1 1 1 23 1 1 3 4 3 2 1 2224 3 1 22 1 1 32 5 4 10 6 10 1 2 1 6 11 3 6 20 Blue Red Black Grey Yellow Dark Yellow 015 Yellow Light Yellow Green Black Grey Light Grey 014

Dark Blue

upcoming Wii U releases

See whats coming up next for the Wii U. Not all box art is final.

Aug 1, 2013

Aug 4, 2013

Aug 6, 2013

Aug 13, 2013

Aug 20, 2013

Aug 25, 2013

Sept 3, 2013

Sept 15, 2013

Sept 30, 2013 Oct 8, 2013 UPCOMING Wii U RELEASES 064

Oct 25, 2013

Oct 29, 2013

See whats coming up next for the 3DS. Not all box art is final.

upcoming 3DS releases

Aug 6, 2013

Aug 11, 2013

Aug 13, 2013

Aug 18, 2013

Sept 30, 2013

Oct 12, 2013

Oct 12, 2013

Oct 22, 2013

Oct 31, 2013

UPCOMING 3DS RELEASES

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Top News of the past month

June 13, 2013

Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds launching in November

purenintendo
technically possible. Currently its just an idea so an official port isnt yet in development but it would be a great game to have on the go. June 13, 2013

featured news

Super Smash Bros. Wii U/3DS wont feature cross-platform play

JULY 25, 2013

Nintendo has cleared up the winter release time frame for The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. During an earlier analyst meeting, Nintendo announced it will be coming out sometime in November. June 13, 2013 In a recent interview, Director of Sora Ltd. Masahiro Sakurai, tells Joystiq that the Wii U and 3DS versions will not offer cross-platform play. According to Sakurai the two games will offer completely different stages, which would make it hard for cross-platform play. Sakurai did confirm the two version will still interact in some way. One way will be the ability to transfer ones customized character to the Wii U. June 17, 2013

call of duty: ghosts confirmed for wii u, launching nov. 5

Nintendo confirmed via Facebook that Call of Duty: Ghosts is officially coming to the Wii U on November 5th. The game is being developed by Treyarch and will feature GamePad enhancements like Call of Duty: Black Ops II had on the Wii U at launch. This is very significant news as the Wii U version is launching the same day as the game is coming out on other platforms.

Cloudberry Kingdom for 3DS a possibility

When speaking with Michael Suswal, Director of Business Development at Pwnee Studios, he said the idea of Cloudberry Kingdom working on the 3DS seems

ware added the ability to download four new Streetpass games. The system comes with Find Mii and Puzzle Swap but now fans can download even more Streetpass games. Each game costs $4.99 and gamers can also pay $14.99 for a bundle of all four.

Updated 3DS firmware adds new Streetpass games

The latest version of the 3DS firm-

Indie game Teslagrad headed to Wii U

Press release: We at Rain Games are proud to announce that our puzzle sidescroller game Teslagrad is now heading to the Wii U. This new version for our videogame

June 22, 2013

joins the already announced releases, which will be available this fall (Q4 2013); PC Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Playstation3. Teslagrad will arrive to Nintendos eShop simultaneously with the other scheduled versions.

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July 2, 2013

Injustice: Gods Among Us DLC now available on Wii U

All of the DLC that was released on the PS3 and Xbox 360 and then some is now available on the Wii U eShop. There is a rather large update that has also been

featured rumor

Nakamura, of the latest issue of Famitsu, Miyamoto talks about introducing new games next year after a general selection of Nintendo titles have been released for the Wii U.

JULY 26, 2013

Pokemon Rumble U coming to eShop

released along with the DLC. It is kind of odd that this content was released without any formal announcement from the developer or publisher. July 7, 2013 Pokemon Rumble U has been slated for an August 29th release in North America, although it will be releasing a little bit earlier in Europe (August 15). This is the Wii Us first exclusive Pokemon game and follows Pokemon Rumble and

July 17, 2013

New wii u and 3ds bundles on the horizon

Now here is a rumor to get excited about. According to an inventory system at a major US retailer, two new Nintendo bundles will be coming later this year. The first bundles would be a red and blue 3DS XL bundled with Pokemon X and Y. The second would be a Wii U bundled with The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD. The rumor also mentioned a Black 3DS XL which has since been confirmed by Nintendo on July 30th. I would still take this with a grain of salt but with the confirmation of the Black 3DS XL, it may yet be true. July 22, 2013 looking at you, Turtles in Time) with co-op sidescrolling gameplay. The game is supposed to cover the gap in between the first and second seasons of the show. Whats weird about the game is their release platforms. The game is scheduled to release on Xbox 360, 3DS, and the Wii. Kind of a random assortment, but oh, well.

New TMNT game from Activision

Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword were both tested on the Wii U
Many gamers have probably wondered why Nintendo chose Wind Waker as the first Legend of Zelda title to be upgraded to high definition. In a recent interview with Eiji Aonuma, producer of The Legend of Zelda, he talks about testing both Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword on the Wii U. After testing some of the games, Wind Waker ended up surprising Nintendo more than the other titles when upgraded to HD.

Activision releasing 6 Wii U titles this Holiday

Pokemon Rumble Blast. The game will be supplementing the Wii Us currently paltry eShop collection and will sell for $17.99. July 18, 2013 Activision has just announced a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game. This upcoming game will be based on and take place in the same world as the show on Nickelodeon and is due for release this October. The game takes TMNT back to its wonderful, wonderful roots (heres Activision confirmed the following games for Wii U this Holiday: Call of Duty: Ghosts, Skylanders: Swap Force, Angry Birds: Trilogy, Angry Birds: Star Wars, SpongeBob SquarePants: Planktons Robotic Revenge, and Wipe Out: Create & Crash.

July 25, 2013

Earthbound finally launches July 14, 2013 on Wii U Virtual Shigeru Miyamoto teases Console new Nintendo IP After months of anticipation,
Nintendos very own Shigeru Miyamoto talks about Nintendos future plans, including the new IP that he has been working on. In a translation, by Kotakus Toshi Nintendo has finally announced the release date for Earthbound on the Virtual Console today. Earthbound abruptly appeared on Nintendos official site and is listed as being released on July 18, 2013.

Pixel Puzzle Answers

#013 Chikorita from Pokemon Gold/Silver (GBC) #014 Cyndaquil from Pokemon Gold/Silver (GBC) #015 Totodile from Pokemon Gold/Silver (GBC)

purenintendo.com