I managed to fully complete 16 games this year (same as last year) plus a lot of games I didn't get to finish. I was very surprised to see that I spent more time playing a downloadable DSi game more than any other game this year. And even though I didn't "complete" it, I definitely played it more than Super Mario Galaxy 2. Odd. Completed Game Played Most: Super Mario Galaxy 2 Not Completed Game Played Most: AlphaBounce Games Completed: Games Played (Not Completed): Games Played at E3:
1/22/11
2010 Games Played
1/7/10
2009 Games Completed
I managed to fully complete 16 games this year with a lot of games I didn't get to finish. Some of them were because they were far too difficult (Henry Hatsworth), I just wanted to try it with no real intention of beating it (Devilish, Incredible Hulk, or any iPhone game), or the game doesn't ever seem to end (Okami, Boom Blox: BP, Scribblenauts). Completed Game Played Most: Peggle: Dual Shot Not Completed Game Played Most: GTA: Chinatown Wars Complete Game Most Enjoyed: New Super Mario Bros Wii Not Completed Game Most Enjoyed: Wii Sports Resort Completed: Partially Completed: Played at E3
5/18/09
Boom Blox Braveheart
In honor of the new Boom Blox game coming out this week (Boom Blox Bash Party) I thought I would make one last creation to get myself excited for the game. You may remember another great Boom Blox piece of mine posted over at VGPC.com a few months ago making 8-Bit Games in Boom Blox. Well this one is recreating a movie instead.
Below you will see my recreation of the Battle of Stirling from the movie Braveheart.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it.
2/23/09
Nintendo DSi Info Video, P.S. I've Got Mine Reserved
As you can tell by my Twitter post (in the upper right of the page) I have now successfully pre-ordered my Nintendo DSi system. If you aren't aware of all the really cool features that the new handheld has then be sure and watch this video.
April can't get here soon enough.
[Update:]
I also found this video that proves to everyone that a DSi is a necessity.
1/7/09
Games Played/Beaten in 2008
I did this last year and it seemed to work out pretty well. I simply keep a tab on every game I played throughout the year so I can look back on it later and see what all I enjoyed. I successfully completed 14 games this year (compared to 20 last year) and played a total of 45 this year (compared to 43 last year).
All in all it seems like I managed to beat fewer games this year but played more. I think the fact that I got married in the middle of the year may have put a small hindrance on my ability to beat more games. I think you all know why.
So without further ado, here is the list of games I played throughout the entirety of 2008. And later I will post my predictions for 2009 as well as my prediction score for 2008.
Completed (No Order):
1) Halo 3 (Xbox 360)
2) Super Mario Galaxy – Luigi and all 242 Stars (Wii)
3) Contra 4 (DS)
4) Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles (Wii)
5) Super Smash Bros. Melee (Gamecube)
6) Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii)
7) Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii)
8) Lost Winds (WiiWare)
9) Mario Kart Wii (Wii)
10) No More Heroes (Wii)
11) LOL – Completed by having an awesome time (DS)
12) Picross (DS)
13) Boom Blox (Wii)
14) Lost Winds (Wii)
Partially Completed:
15) Bomberman Wii (Wii)
16) Tetris DS (DS)
17) Tetris Party (WiiWare)
18) Star Wars: Force Unleashed (Wii)
19) We Ski (Wii)
20) Gears of War 2 (Xbox360)
21) Rock Band (Wii)
22) Zack and Wiki (Wii)
23) Rock Band (Xbox 360)
24) Carnival Games (Wii)
25) Animal Crossing: Wild World (DS)
26) Art Style: Orbient (WiiWare)
27) Locks’ Quest (DS)
28) Dancing with the Stars (Wii)
29) Call of Duty 4 (DS)
30) Spore Creatures (DS)
31) Endless Ocean (Wii)
32) Personal Trainer: Cooking (DS)
33) NHL ’08 (Xbox 360)
34) WiiFit (Wii)
35) Resident Evil 4: No Kills Run (Wii)
36) Star Wars: Rogue Leader 3 (Gamecube)
37) Super Mario Strikers: Charged (Wii)
38) Geist (Gamecube)
39) Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (Wii)
40) Super Metroid (SNES)
41) Super Mario Bros: Lost Levels (NES)
42) Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (DS)
43) Guitar Hero III (Wii)
44) Medal of Honor Heroes 2 (Wii)
45) Wii Sports (Wii)
12/31/08
Club Nintendo DS Case Received
So I successfully managed to hit Platinum Status on my Club Nintendo account and decided to take advantage of the prize options. What did I go with as my choice? Well, see below.
Here is the DS Case in it's clear plastic protective cover.
This shows the neat little tag with the Club Nintendo logo. The back of the tag says, "Since 2003." Yeah, not in America.
This shows the DS with my DS sticking out the side.
This shows the inside. Perhaps the best part, it has a slot for you to carry two extra games in the pouch. So you aren't stuck with just the one in the system.
All around, considering this is really just a gift on Nintendo's part, I would have to say I am quite pleased. If you guys have yet to sign up for Club Nintendo I highly recommend you do. It has some neat perks.
9/4/08
Google Receives the Morph Ball Upgrade
I think Google may have ripped off one of Nintendo's greatest gaming characters special abilities and put it in logo form. Behold the incredible similarities.
And for those of you that don't recognize the ball on the left, it is from the Metroid series of games starting on the NES and most recently on the Wii. She upgrades her Morph Ball throughout the games to different abilities and colors.
It does make me wonder though, if Google is as powerful a company as it is and it's just now getting the Morph Ball upgrade, what happens when it gets the Power Suit or Varia Suit upgrades? Only time will tell.
5/26/08
Wedding Invitations
As you may or may not know by now, I am set to be married this August. I made it my responsibility to create the wedding invitations and pitch the idea to the loved one but I knew I had to make sure the initial mock was good enough or she may never go along with the idea. The idea was, of course, adding Mii characters to the invitations. Who doesn't love those cute little guys, gamer or not.
After many different alterations to the design itself, and a good chunk of time spent in Photoshop creating the character's outfits, below you will find the final piece.
We mailed them out a few days ago and so far we have had quite the wonderful response. Even grandparents and cousins who don't even know about the Wii thought they were cute. The key to using Miis on the invitations for us was that they still looked classy, hence the gown and tux.
So, what do you think?
5/15/08
EA Console Announced by 2012
Do you think a fourth gaming console could enter the market and have all four survive? Many were surprised with the fact that three could survive after the last generation ended. All were profitable last generation and even now, with the start of a new generation, all three companies are making (or starting to make) profits in their gaming divisions. But how would a fourth entry in the gaming industry compete?
If the fourth console was backed by Electronic Arts (EA), that's how.
At first thought it would be easy to think that a fourth console would fail in an already crowded market. Microsoft and Sony are dueling with blades it seems, each trying to one-up the other, while Nintendo is trying to create a new audience. Thrown in the mix of things are third-party companies trying to figure out which of their games will succeed on which systems. EA is one of the only third-party companies large enough to structure an entirely new strategy.
Electronic Arts, the largest third-party developer in the industry, is about to take things into their own hands. No longer will they be forced to decide which existing console to put their games on. No longer will the decisions of their future be made by other companies. In the very near future, EA will have successfully purchased a company by the name of Take-Two (the makers of the Grand Theft Auto series).
In the last few years EA has purchased multiple developers (listed below) putting them in a prime position to call the shots. All they need now is Take-Two.
- Bioware
- Pandemic Studios
- Black Box Games
- Studio 33
- Mythic
- Criterion
- Maybe Ubisoft
There are some smaller game development and networking companies not in the list above but it's plain to see that just in the last few years alone EA has managed to gather up a hefty sized list of developers. Dare I say EA has enough development power to sustain an entire system on it's own. Just imagine the sheer mess it would make for Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo if EA decided to stop producing games for their systems.
If you are curious, here is a quick list of games (or series) that would soon be exclusive to the EA PSWiiBox (name copyrighted).
- Madden Football
- Grand Theft Auto
- FIFA Soccer
- All other sports titles
- Bioshock
- Sims (all versions)
- Spore
- Rock Band
- Burnout
- Battlefield
- Medal of Honor
- Skate!
- SSX
- Black
- Need for Speed
- Command & Conquer
- BOOM BLOX (I had to throw that one in there)
11/28/07
Nintendo's Best Week Ever
Nintendo announced today they had a very successful Thanksgiving week of sales. How sucessful you ask? The most successful in the history of the company. In the span of time between November 18-24 Nintendo broke company records, and for the company that essentially put gaming on the map, that's saying something.
During this massive week of sales Nintendo managed to sell 653,000 Nintendo DS systems. This is the highest single system sales Nintendo has ever seen in a week's time. The previous holder of this position was the Gameboy Advance which sold close to 600,000 units during the Thanksgiving week in 2005. At the time the Gameboy Advance had a price tag $50 cheaper than the DS.
Now let's not forget the Wii which also saw drastic system sales. Nintendo managed to sell an incredible 350,000 units of the Wii which I am certain was all the units available. I would have to think with the current demand for the Wii it could have hit the 500,000 mark easily had there been that many units on shelves. This also marked the highest single week sales the Nintendo Wii has seen since the initial launch week. And the word on the street is that Nintendo sold around 300,000 units of the Wii last week making the two-week sales of the Wii close to 650,000. If these numbers continue the next two weeks we could see the Wii sell a million systems in a month's time. Wow, that's all I can say.
With Nintendo making money on every system sold, unlike the competition, there is no better way to demonstrate this news but with the following image:
And if you don't know that's Miyamoto (creator of Mario, Donkey Kong, And Zelda) on the left and Iwata (President of Nintendo) on the right.
10/17/07
NES No Longer Repairable Through Nintendo
This may come as a surprise to some of you but Nintendo is officially closing down their repair service program for the Famicom game system (NES in America). What's that, you're more suprised they were even still supplying repair parts and doing maintenance on a system that is over 20 years old? Yeah, me too. According to IT Media at the start of next month though, things will be back to the way they were, thirty seconds ago, before you even knew this existed.
To be perfectly honest, I was more suprised to hear they were still even thinking about these systems in this day in age. It makes me wonder though, can I still find parts to fix a broken SNES. Well the answer is no, you can't. Nintendo is also ending repairs and maintenance to the Super Famicom (SNES), Nintendo 64, Gameboy, and Gameboy Pocket. Apparently the Wii's Virtual Console is enough to give those wanting their fix of old games what they need.
10/10/07
Women Are the Majority Gamers in Japan
There was a giant retail conference by Nintendo last night in Japan where they announced multiple new games, Wii channels, and statistics. Sonic the Hedgehog is a playable character in Super Smash Bros Brawl (now an early 2008 title), DS demo and Mii comparison channels were announced and dated, and many original WiiWare games were announced. The biggest (or should I say suprising) news of them all was in regards to some data Nintendo released about the Wii and DS demographics in Japan.
According to a Times Online article Nintendo has announced that women are now the majority gamers on Nintendo systems. According to Nintendo’s own Japan-only figures, 51 per cent of Wii users and 53 per cent of players on the handheld DS machine are women. That is an incredible statistic considering the gaming industry has always been dominated by males. Essentially what this means is Nintendo has essentially doubled the market for the gaming industry. If women are now willing to buy video games, they have a far larger group of people to draw sales from. This doesn't mean the market has doubled exactly, but judging by the sales of the Wii and DS in Japan, the market is definitely increasing.
10/3/07
Nintendo Stock Still Rising?
I'm not sure if any of my readers out there took the initiative when the Wii was first announced and bought Nintendo stock, but there is good news to any of you who did. Reuters just released an article stating that Nintendo's stock has reached an all-time high and is predicted to increase their profit forecasts again. When Nintendo first unveiled the Wii, now currently the market leader, back in July of 2005 Nintendo's stock was floating somewhere around the $17 mark. As of yesterday it is sitting around closer to $67. With the holiday shopping season coming around the corner, WiiFit about to launch in Japan, and Super Mario Galaxy and Smash Bros Brawl coming as well it appears these predictions could very well hold true.
9/5/07
Nintendo Spreading Hardware Even Thinner
Ok, this just doesn't make sense to me. News24 announced today that Nintendo will launch the Wii in South Africa starting this October. So....... you are already struggling to meet demand everywhere else in the world why spread your resources even thinner? [/sarcasm] It has been rumored that the company has started giving Japanese systems to North America in order to help meet demand in that region. Why would the company decide to launch the system in a whole new country right before the holiday season? Does Nintendo have a surplus of systems just hiding somewhere waiting for the holidays or are they trying to keep the "sold out everywhere" idea in consumers' heads by limiting hardware allocation?
Can someone please explain this to me; is there another option that I'm missing?
8/31/07
Wii Sales Dropping In Japan
Welp, it appears Nintendo has started to hit its stopping point in Japan. The hardware sales for last week in Japan shows the Nintendo Wii as only selling 46,283 units. Compared to last week's sales, 73,938 units sold, the system dropped by 63%. That is a pretty drastic drop in sales if you ask me.
| HDW | Sales |
|---|---|
| DSL | 100,430 |
| Wii | 46,283 |
| PSP | 26,089 |
| PS3 | 16,393 |
| PS2 | 15,139 |
| Xbox360 | 2,044 |
| GBM | 423 |
| GBASP | 163 |
| GC | 116 |
| GBA | 65 |
| DS | 30 |
But why would this happen you ask? What could change in one week to drop the sales so drastically? Well, I may have the answer.
Last month Nintendo posted record sales for the Nintendo Wii (it outsold the DS Lite) and it took the first place position in North America. Many were wondering how this could happen considering Nintendo's failed attempts at increasing production. The answer: massive allocation change. Nintendo, for whatever reason, was rumored to have relocated a large portion of Wiis to North America to increase sales in that area. These new sales numbers definitely help support those rumors. It is also important to note that all hardware sales were down in Japan this week for all systems. What a hoot!
8/29/07
Gamecube Controller Possibilties
Some awesome news was discovered by Gizmodo today regarding a prototype controller for the Gamecube back in 2001. A company called Gyration, which Nintendo has invested in, created a sort of hybrid controller with similarities to the PS2 Dual Shock and the Wiimote. If you can imagine a PS2 controller with a detachable right half where the right half then becomes the Wiimote for motion sensing you would have the idea. I just hope they would have made the thing more appealing to look at had they actually released the thing.
I wonder how last generation would have been different had Nintendo went this direction for the Gamecube. Would it have been as successful as the Wii is today? Would both the PS3 and Xbox 360 have motion controls more similar to the Wiimote now? I do know one thing is for certain, without the IR Sensor that the Wiimote has, this GyroPad would not have been as successful. Thoughts?
8/23/07
Nintendo Wii Takes First Place
VG Chartz, a site that gathers unofficial sales numbers for the videogames industry, has announced that Nintendo has taken over the first place position in worldwide market share for the next generation with the Nintendo Wii. I emphasize worldwide market share because the Wii is still about 3 million or so behind the Xbox 360 in market share in North America. The key to Nintendo's success is the fact that they have sold well in all three major regions (North America, Japan, and Europe) rather than extremely well in one region, decent in the other, and totally awful in the third (Japan). According to VG Chartz, the Nintendo Wii holds just over 41% total market share while the Xbox 360 holds right at 41%. The PS3 is currently holding third place with about 17%.
There are a few things to mention with these numbers though. Microsoft's Xbox 360 just released a huge game in Bioshock (receiving rave reviews) and they have the massively selling Halo 3 coming out in September. Granted Nintendo has a decent line-up for the next few months but I could very easily see the next few months going back in favor of the Xbox 360. This holiday season looks to be more trouble for the PS3 with their biggest seller Grand Theft Auto IV being delayed until next year and their next biggest games being Heavenly Sword and Haze, both new IPs that tend not to sell quite as well. This generation seems to be a total flip of last generation. It will be interesting to see where the rest of this battle leads us.