Entertainment Electronics Blog

After a fairly hefty wait, Metroid: Other M is finally hitting Wii shelves next week. The new issue of Famitsu magazine in Japan has the first review, and by and large it’s pretty complimentary — Nintendo and Tecmo’s collaborative effort got three 9’s and one 8 for a total of 35 points.

The sheer variety of moves available to Samus in Other M received adulation from nearly every one of Famitsu’s reviewers. “The Sense Move lets you move quickly and easily dodge attacks, which make the controls feel really good,” one said. “You occasionally lose track of where you’re going next, but that in itself is very Metroid-like. Switching to first-person by holding the remote vertically also works surprisingly well.” “There’s a wide variety of moves available, but Sense Move is by far the best,” another added. “It allows even casual gamers to enjoy the battles well enough.”

“It’s impressive how many moves are at your disposal, especially considering the lack of buttons,” a third editor wrote. “Switching to first-person instantly takes some getting used to, but you can use it in both exploration and combat and it gives the game a very fun Metroid-like vibe.”

The writers also had praise for Other M’s exploring and fighting aspects. “Every map has tons of stuff to interact with, and some of the puzzles can be hard to solve,” one said, “but the feeling you get when working them out is something else. The bosses work the same way; they all require some sort of trick to defeat.”

The chief complaints the reviewers had with the new Metroid all had to do with the difficulty. “The game’s tough, making you wish for a difficulty selector at times,” one writer said, “but the high-tempo action and dramatic story are enough to keep you enthralled.” Another brought up “the way minion-level enemies respawn” as “debatably annoying.”

Other M officially comes out August 31 in the States.

After a decade of creating low-profile products, subsidiary Nd Cube is now wholly owned by Nintendo. And along with the company, the platform holder now employs several key members of the Mario Party development team.

Founded as a joint venture between Nintendo and the advertising agency Dentsu, Nd Cube developed titled including F-Zero: Maximum Velocity and Tube Slider. A recent Iwata Asks revealed that Nintendo now holds a 96 percent stake in the company (via Siliconera).

In a roundabout way, Nintendo now employs several members of the former Mario Party team as well. The group opted to move on from Monegi following the release of Mario Party 8 and ended up at Nd Cube. Like that company, Monegi was created as a joint venture, though in this case it was with Hudson.

Nd Cube’s most recent project is Wii Party, which launched in Japan early last month. Given that games success — it sold some 230,000 units in its first week — and the fact that Nintendo now owns the company, it seems as if we can expect more Wii Party soon.

Among the titles confirmed for the newly-unveiled Nintendo 3DS is a sequel to Nintendogs.

The new title will be developed by Shigeru Miyamoto and his team, and feature cats. The name is — you guessed it — Nintendogs + Cats.

Expect more information soon.

MDK 2 will be the latest classic to be remade as a downloadable release, Interplay announced today.

A WiiWare version of the venerable third-person shooter is being developed for the Nintendo Wii. A high-definition version is also planned for the PC.

“MDK 2 was a great title to work on and we’re happy to have some of the original team working on these new versions,” Beamdog co-founder Trent Oster said in the official release.

The original game was developed by Bioware, and stars the janitor Kurt Hectic, the eccentric scientist Fluke Hawkins and the mechanical six-legged dog Max. It’s fondly remembered as much for its sense of humor as its action.

The Wii version will be out this winter. The PC version wasn’t given a timeframe, but it will be available through Beamdog’s digital distribution platform.

We’ve seen a short teaser demo with the Ocarina of Time title screen, more or less confirming this rumor. This appears to be legit, Ocarina of Time is coming to the 3DS.

The Nintendo 64 classic The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time may be coming to the Nintendo 3DS, according to allegedly leaked images from Nintendo.

1UP user OKeijiDragon blogged about the find earlier today, saying that he found the images tucked away in the company’s E3 press packet.

The images have since been removed, but we’ve rehosted them below.

Nintendo had a ton of new games and demos to demonstrate the 3DS at E3 this week, but one particularly curious demo reel showed off not just a lot of older games, but really older games — all from the NES and SNES era.

As Kotaku reports, this reel included Mega Man 2, Castlevania, Urban Champion, Kid Icarus, Yoshi’s Island, Smash Ping Pong, Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros., Tennis, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and Mystery of Murasame Castle. They all were shown with 3D effects that gave them a “pop-up book feel,” and when asked whether they were all actually planned for eventual release on the 3DS, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime said that yes, yes they were.

He also said not to think of them as full-blown “remakes,” but that they might be “potentially getting more than just ported over.” Other than that, there weren’t any other details on this gaggle of planned old-school rereleases, so there’s no telling when or how they’ll be coming (this is pure conjecture, but perhaps they’ll be released as downloadable games, like the Wii’s Virtual Console?).

Meanwhile, you can read our impressions of all of Nintendo’s other 3DS games and demos shown at E3 this week right here. No official price or release date for the 3DS has been announced yet.

Despite our fairly extensive E3 hands-on time, the 3DS is still a mystery in quite a few ways. A few new rumors have popped up since Nintendo debuted the device at their press conference, but keep in mind these are entirely unconfirmed. Nikkei (via Adriasang) reports that the device will include software installs, letting players copy games to internal memory. Multiple games can be stored, reducing or eliminating the need to swap cartridges. Keep in mind this is unconfirmed, but Nikkei’s reporting may have forced Nintendo’s hand in making the 3DS announcement via press release, so they have a good track record.

The other rumor comes straight from one of Nintendo’s own developer interviews. Ryan Stradling, senior director at EA, referenced some of the online functionality of the portable system. He talks about seeing what friends are doing and getting updates, but speculation has kicked up from his comment about “exchanging achievements.” The words were emphasized in the video, so this seems to be a key point. We can’t tell for sure if it means an integrated achievement system like the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, but Nintendo has experimented with rewards in titles like Metroid Prime 3. Consider both of these features rumors for now, and we’ll keep an ear out for official confirmation.

Considering that Nintendo and Mistwalker’s The Last Story is due out on the Wii before the end of the year, the Hironobu Sakaguchi-run developer is being awfully quiet about the game. A full-on reveal will probably have to wait until the E3 show in June at this point, but until then, Nintendo seems content with releasing tiny little drips of info on the RPG — partly on the Japanese teaser site, and partly in previews published in Famitsu and other Japanese game mags.

A few of the tidbits released so far:

- The game’s fictional world is a pretty orthodox take on the sword-and-sorcery genre, without the sort of SF-style trappings often seen in Japanese RPGs.

- Much of the game is set in Ruli, a peninsular bay home to a thriving merchant metropolis. Ruli has survived relatively unscathed from the war and devastation over on the main continent, and the city in its center is massive and filled with twisty back alleys. It is run by Count Alganan, a cunning leader with shrewd political sense and a full knowledge of magic and its potential powers.

- Mistwalker has revealed concept art of the main hero and heroine (above). Their names haven’t been divulged yet, but they are apparently members of Ruli’s mercenary class, putting them pretty low on the social ladder.

- Battles in The Last Story take place in realtime, but you’re allowed to pause the action and enter commands manually should the need arise. Notable in the media shown off so far is the presence of “pointers,” lines drawn outward from enemies indicating where their attention is currently focused. As the hero, you’ll be able to “gather” enemy attention and divert them away from allies, useful for protecting spellcasters and ambushing monster hordes.

No US date has been announced for The Last Story yet, but an American release seems all but inevitable. Stay tuned for more coverage.

Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver have yet to hit the States, but they’re already gearing up for the next DS installment of the monster hoarding series over in Japan. The official Japanese Pokemon website (via Serebii.net) broke the news this morning that a new Pokemon game is on the way in 2010.

Details are still scarce, but the announcement makes it relatively clear that this will be a continuation of the main Pokemon RPG series and not a spinoff like Pokemon Ranger or the Mystery Dungeon games. They also promise brand new Pokemon to capture, but that’s pretty much a given.

Even if this currently unnamed Pokemon title hits Japan within the year, that doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll be seeing it in the U.S. anytime soon. The localization process for the series has historically resulted in a release gap of roughly six months or more between the Japanese and North American launches. So if you absolutely must catch them all in 2010, then you’d better warm up to importing.

This week, the epic Tales of Monkey Island series concludes with its fifth installment, for the usual price of 1,000 Wii Points ($10). Alongside it is Tumblebugs 2, a PC puzzle port for 800 points ($8). Digital Leisure adds 5 in 1 Solitaire for WiiWare this week, at a cost of 500 points ($5). And Virtual Console brings Alex Kidd in Shinobi World for 500 points, a Master system crossover (or parody) that places its cutesy mascot in the land of of the ninja. Imagine Mario stumbling across Ninja Gaiden and you understand the gist.

Meanwhile, DSiWare brings several new games to be excited about — so long as you get excited about cards and golf. True Swing Golf Express is published by Nintendo, and costs 800 DSi Points ($8). It only supports one player, but offers 3-, 9-, or 18-hole courses with difficulty settings. Legends of Exidia from Gameloft is also 800 points, and has the player fighting off an army of demons. Downtown Texas Hold’em from EA costs 500 points ($5), and is probably what you’d expect with that title. Multiplayer support is included for up to 20 players. Move Your Brain Rollaway Puzzle is also 500 points, and it uses the DSi camera to detect movements which tilt the ball. Finally, Digital Leisure adds 5 in 1 Solitaire for DSi this week, at a cost of 200 points ($2). If you’re getting a strange sense of deja vu right now, that’s because you read almost the exact same sentence a minute ago. Digital Leisure released a solitaire game for both systems today, so pick your poison if you love lonely games and haven’t gotten your fill of other solitaire offerings.