Disney wants to take Epic Mickey to ‘Nintendo levels’ on the Wii
Gamasutra got a chance to speak with the executive VP and GM of Disney Interactive Studios, Graham Hopper, who says that Disney is swinging for the stands on their future game releases. The games division is learning from “pure” gaming studios and their success, and while Hopper admits that the company hasn’t always treated their properties correctly on the gaming side, starting with Disney’s Epic Mickey, it wants to “give their projects the time and appropriate resources to be successful.” In other words, let them stand on their own as games, rather than squeeze them up against a movie’s release date.
And Hopper hopes for quite the payoff, too — while third-party titles on the Wii have been hit or miss (mostly miss), Hopper expects Epic Mickey’s success to go “to Nintendo levels.” He does say that they don’t want to turn Mickey into Mario by “simply using him as an icon or an avatar in a game,” but Disney’s goal in the future will be to make sure that each of their properties’ appearances are worth it. Hopper says if they port a film to five different gaming platforms, customers should expect “not the same story five times over, but five different stories, each uniquely suited for the platform they’re on.” A good plan to have, but much easier said than done.
Disney wants to take Epic Mickey to ‘Nintendo levels’ on the Wii originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 00:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Super Mario Galaxy 2 flies into retail space May 23
Those of you eagerly awaiting more exploration of tiny, gimmick-filled planetoids don’t have long to wait. At its Media Summit event today, Nintendo announced the May 23 release date of Super Mario Galaxy 2 in North America.
Last night, news from Nintendo of Australia suggested that Galaxy 2 would see a summer release, and we’re delighted that the wait for a more specific date — one that applied to America, as well — wasn’t long at all. Speaking of delight, we’ll now get to see just how high Mario can jump when he ditches Yoshi mid-air … in space!
Super Mario Galaxy 2 flies into retail space May 23 originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Miyamoto recognized with prestigious BAFTA Fellowship
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts has announced that it’ll be awarding Shigeru Miyamoto with the storied BAFTA Fellowship award, which is “the highest accolade the Academy can bestow on an individual for their creative work.” Miyamoto will receive the award in a ceremony next month. It’s a pretty high honor for his work in film and television, which includes this Mega64 video and this old kids’ television series.
Oh wait, no — it’s actually part of the British Academy’s Video Games Awards, and it is honoring him as the creator of Donkey Kong, Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. That makes much more sense. Nobody should be giving anyone awards for the Super Mario Bros. movie.
Miyamoto recognized with prestigious BAFTA Fellowship originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Free Valentine’s Day Cards for Gamers
It’s that time of year again. Love is in the air, suicide rates are spiking, and businesses everywhere are lying and trying to take advantage of you. Some companies are spending millions in television advertising to convince you that buying pajamas on the internet will get you laid. Or perhaps the woman you desire will finally surrender to you once she sees that you’ve bought her a teddy bear that cost more than the Prestige Edition of Modern Warfare 2? What about diamonds, or the boxes of chocolates where you only end up getting one or two bites of the one you really like? Maybe a really expensive, super-special arrangement of flowers from that guy with the commercials who gives off the distinct impression he might be considering marriage someday in the state where they make the pricey teddy bears? That’s not likely to do it either.
The brutal truth is that the only people guaranteed to be stimulated this evening are the flower shop owners and Hallmark store managers. Plus, in the opinion of this aging writer, if you’re having to pay for it you’re with the type of chick you might as well try and get the money back from once she’s refilled your health meter. Instead you need to keep your Modern Warfare 2 NVGs turned on and eyes peeled for the type of girl that cares more about a players Mana then his gold. A woman who’ll start an Army of Two with you and always give her all playing Co-op even when you’re wounded and it looks like you won’t have ammo enough to make it to the next save checkpoint.
They are hard to spot and even harder to convince to join your party. After all, if your a hardcore gamer reading this then evolutionary psychology has your desirability level just above someone in high school band, and just below chess club members (who tend to go on to having higher average incomes).
But don’t despair – I’m proof that even the biggest nerds can end up with amazing women. (Happy Valentine’s Day, Noelle. I love you and thanks for all your patience and support.)
Until you find a really good co-op player yourself, save your money! Rather then fattening up Hallmark by surrendering $5 for a sappy poem in a piece of folded construction paper, print and cut out the handy Valentine’s cards we’ve provided. You’ll know she’s a keeper if she’s impressed by how frugal you are and gets the gaming jokes. Heck, if she turns out not to be “the one”, there’s still a good chance she’ll appreciate even a poor Gamer just needs to get his health gauge refilled sometimes.
(Originally created for a previous year, some might have lost a little of their relevance over time. Art by the amazing Chris McGuire.)
This pirahna plant keepsake box is ironic
Honestly, we’re not sure how anyone could come up with the idea of a pirahna plant keepsake box. A keepsake box, ideally, is designed to keep your precious items in a safe place so you’ll always know where they are. Pirahna plants, on the other hand, are about as far away from safe as you can get. They’re man-eating plants, some varieties of which can breathe fire. Still, despite all that, this keepsake box — designed by Etsy user lostmitten — still manages to be kind of cute. As of this writing, there is a single one available for purchase at $60.
We suppose you could pick it up and store your old high school love notes in there. Just watch your fingers when you open it up.
This pirahna plant keepsake box is ironic originally appeared on Joystiq Nintendo on Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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A step towards peace: Master Mario Chief tattoo
The Console Wars[TM] have been raging since before some of us were even born. For a majority of gamers, this is all they know, but thankfully one man is stepping up to try and bring an end to this eternal conflict. In combining Halo‘s Master Chief and Nintendo’s iconic mascot, Mario, he’s created one super tattoo and blueprint for the future prosperity of all gaming peoples. This Master Mario Chief is able to squash Goombas at alarming speed and save not only the Mushroom Kingdom from despair, but all of humanity in the year 2553 — he’s a figure every console owner can love.
Frankly, we applaud this man’s courage and dedication to acknowledge that there are good things on all consoles via this permanent tattoo. Instead of blindly trashing the opposition as inferior, he celebrates each console’s merits. Except for anything on Sony platforms, though, because Sony totally sucks.
[Via Hawty McBloggy]
A step towards peace: Master Mario Chief tattoo originally appeared on Joystiq Nintendo on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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NPD: New Super Mario Bros. Wii sales have surpassed Super Mario Galaxy
New Old Mario is stomping all over the mark left by his globetrotting counterpart, with sales of New Super Mario Bros. Wii having already surpassed Super Mario Galaxy in the US. According to the NPD, Galaxy has sold approximately 4.1 million units in the two years since its November 2007 release, while NSMBW has amassed 4.2 million sales in about 45 days.
As IGN notes, the Wii’s install base is much higher now (26 million in the US), but that still doesn’t explain why Galaxy, which has had far more time on retail shelves, was passed by so quickly. We’d posit that there’s something nostalgic about NSMBW, which makes it stand apart from Galaxy and speak to the Wii’s demographic. Of course, Super Mario Galaxy 2 will have the benefit of being quite familiar too …
NPD: New Super Mario Bros. Wii sales have surpassed Super Mario Galaxy originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 21 Jan 2010 12:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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New Super Mario Bros Wii becomes fastest selling Wii game in Japan
New Super Mario Bros. Wii maintained its launch momentum in Japan, going on to become a phenomenal hit and selling over 3 million copies in seven weeks. Famitsu reports that Mario’s latest adventure is the third Wii title to sell over three million units. Ironically, the club of top-selling Wii games has Mario’s tubby physique in the company of Wii Sports and Wii Fit.
Mario isn’t doing badly in other regions, either, with NSMBW recently surpassing 2.5 million units in Europe and 4 million in the States. Mario knows how to make coin.
[Via Andriasang]
New Super Mario Bros Wii becomes fastest selling Wii game in Japan originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 19 Jan 2010 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Nintendo to Greenpeace: We do care about the environment
Greenpeace harshed on Nintendo’s eco-coolness last week, and this week the House that Miyamoto Built is firing back. It’s released a statement to Gamasutra saying that it takes environmental responsibilities seriously, and that the company is committed to saving energy, making both of its consoles energy efficient and using carefully picked and clearly-labeled materials in an effort to make post-usage recycling easy.
To be fair to Nintendo, most of Greenpeace’s argument against it was that the company didn’t share information about what it did for the environment, and let’s be honest here: Nintendo’s not really one for sharing. While Nintendo did get blamed for increasing its CO2 emissions, most of Greenpeace’s other complaints (as you can see in the PDF) were not actually about mistakes Nintendo was making, but its failure to share information or release reports about its operations. We can’t really blame Nintendo for that — on at least a few of its points, it seems Greenpeace’s methodology was more responsible for the big N’s bottom-of-the-barrel listing.
[Via GoNintendo]
Nintendo to Greenpeace: We do care about the environment originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 03:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Pen tapping along with the Super Mario song
“Clicking out beats to the Mario tunes with disposable pens” sounds a lot less impressive and awesome than this video actually is, so you might as well go ahead and check the video after the break to watch for yourself. We can’t help think that Shane has better things to do, but this is what the kids are up to nowadays, we guess. No more useless than pogs were back in the nineties, and a lot cheaper to boot.
A better question might be: Where can we get that T-shirt? Our extensive Google-searching turned up lots of great Mario shirts, but we couldn’t find that one for sale. If you see it online, let us know in the comments below.
[Via GoNintendo]
Continue reading Pen tapping along with the Super Mario song
Pen tapping along with the Super Mario song originally appeared on Joystiq Nintendo on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 20:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Top 10 Best Selling Games
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