Nintendo’s apparently all about announcing games tied in with Square-Enix this week, the latest update being that the Square-Enix developed Sports Mix will see Mario and company bringing hockey, basketball, volleyball and dodgeball to a single Wii disc on February 7, 2011.
The game offers 4-player trash talk opportunities both locally and online, and that’s pretty much the gist of the announcement for today.
Though if you are craving more you can catch the trailer and some art after the break.
I wouldn’t have anticipated Mario tossing his trademark hat into the ring for the most divisive release of 2010, but here we are. The 25th Anniversary Edition, which essentially wraps a book and CD around the SNES release of Super Mario All-Stars has produced equal shares of grumblings and indifference from some acquaintances this week, while at other places, Eurogamer comes to mind, you can hear people rustling pitchforks over the release and review.
Odd as it may sound, at no point did I stop to consider this a game release, or something that was reviewable – just a commemorative grab that made it to North America in time for the holidays and potentially prettied up the shelf. All-Stars simply fills the inside of the box to justify the package getting space on retail shelves – if it was just a random box of Mario swag, where on earth would poor Nintendo stock it after all?
In some ways the release could come across as something better suited to Club Nintendo, but then of course it would cost one hundred times more. In other ways the release could have offered more not only from the Mario library to create a truly commemorative game, but also as a videogame release, seeing as that is the medium Mario is celebrating his place as a founding institution of.
What say you sugarfiends?
Heaping scorn on Other M this year may have become one of those instances where critical analysis is undermined by a perceived wave of venom sweeping away valid points into the faux deep sea known as “haters gotta hate.”
There’s a frequent knee-jerk reaction to that perception, which encourages going against the grain, digging for the deeper importance of a game simply to prove the bastards wrong. Some people do this because human beings are creatures capable of holding different and legitimate opinions, and others do this because standing against the crowd guarantees some level of attention. And rightly so, because if you can sing against the choir to find value where so many others have not, I’ll certainly give your words a read.
lilt: “to sing or play in a light, tripping, or rhythmic manner.”
Recently released by Gaijin games on WiiWare, lilt line is a game being marketed as “a retro rhythm racing beat ’em up action game with a dubstep flavour,” which bothered when I first started the game.
I took one look at the UI and level design and flashbacks of raver kids tripping on E wearing stunna shades at HARD Summer’s electro festival came to mind, not dubstep. Around here, dubstep is a mellow, mostly downtempo scene, devoid of bright neon colors, and saying “rapid” is almost an oxymoron, so I feel it is an imperfect visual representation of dubstep. The scene is becoming a bit more commercialized as groups like Magnetic Man lead it into the mainstream, perhaps melding perceptions of dubstep into an all-encompassing view of electronic music, but I digress.
I want to thank everyone that took up our artistic challenge and sent in an impressive amount of spins on Sonic.
Bitey the Contest Hedgehog dropped in to give us a hand judging entries, and after many long hours it has been decided that Maria P is the winner of Sonic Colors for the Wii, and Peter Kimball is the winner of Sonic Colors for the DS. Maria’s attention to detail really seemed to win the judges over, while Peter’s complete subversion of the original image was hard to ignore, and a little frightening.
You can catch both winning submissions after the break, as well as all the entries on our Facebook page.
Rose tinted retina make the Sega of my youth an experimental laboratory, a torrid love affair of success and failure, never short on wonder by the means in which releases explored the boundaries of evolving genre templates. I’m entirely uncertain whether such pretty words apply here, whether Sonic Team’s latest attempt to put the hedgehog on track has tapped the original spirit of the endeavor, or if the law of averages has inevitably produced a title better than those released since the demise of the Dreamcast.
It’s ever tempting to suggest that the demise of the hardware was responsible for the continual release of the Sonic missteps we’ve suffered with, but that would be the real red nostalgia talking. From the beginning, Sonic has struggled to run outside the lines that structure the platformer, while awkwardly seeking to incorporate elements of that genre even while fighting to escape it – the shift into three dimensions simply made the conflict more visible, and often frustrating.
During a year when Sega seeks to appease fans with a classic revisit of the series’ roots via Sonic The Hedgehog Episode 4, Sonic Colors continues the quest for a solution to that long running problem. It’s as polarizing as ever, but Sonic Colors hits upon the reason we continue playing through a conflicted franchise, reminding us that when Sonic finds his groove, the experience can reach heights worth all the heartache.
I admit to digging that WiiWare now has fireplace gaming, though I don’t know if that counts as gaming? You can alternate between automatic and manual modes though, and switch themes to suit both festive and romantic occasions – finally a legitimate reason to make love by the light of the Wii!*
Catch a whole lot of log burning after the break.
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