It feels like it’s been a long time since we have written about anything Nintendo related on our Gaming Weekly feature, but low and behold, just as we thought we may have to give up on our childhood surrogate babysitters, Nintendo pops back up.
So this week’s gaming weekly will be a rare occurrence indeed… it will focus mainly on the Mighty Nintendo!
It’s-a Meeee, Mario!
Bet you said that in an Italian voice! Yeah, it seems that everyone’s favourite plumber will be back for a 4th instalment in the initial chain of Mario games, as Nintendo has registered the domain name for Super Mario 4!
This isn’t the most shocking news as the little moustached man is one of gaming’s most beloved characters and any Mario game still does phenomenal sales to this day. Nintendo did initially announce that it was working on a new 2D Mario adventure game back in Janauary, but with the amount of Mario games about on the market its hard to tie Ninty down to a specific franchise of games.
Nintendo has registered a domain for ‘supermario4.com’ which is leading us to believe that we will be seeing the 4th instalment in the initial Super Mario World franchise in the near future. Now there have been many, many Mario games in the line-up but Nintendo has not followed on from its initial Super Mario series since 1988, when super Mario Bros. 3 was released.
Super Mario Release Timeline
- 1985 -Super Mario Bros.
- 1986 – Super Mario Bros. 2 (Japanese version)
- 1988 – Super Mario Bros. 2 (International version)
- 1988 – Super Mario Bros. 3
- 1989 – Super Mario Land
- 1990 – Super Mario World
- 1992 – Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins
- 1994 – Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3
- 1995 – Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island
- 1996 – Super Mario 64
- 2002 – Super Mario Sunshine
- 2006 – New Super Mario Bros.
- 2007 – Super Mario Galaxy
- 2009 – New Super Mario Bros. Wii
- 2010 – Super Mario Galaxy 2
- 2011 – Super Mario 3D Land
With the limited amount of information on offer all we can do is speculate at the moment, but with the DS line of Mario games being re-branded as ‘New Super Mario Bros.’ we can only assume the 2D Super Mario 4 will be a tent pole release and possibly for the new Nintendo Wii U console.
But with the E3 gaming Expo just around the corner we can surely rely on some top notch Nintendo and Mario updates coming then.
So yeah, Nintendo probably will be putting on a big show at this year’s E3, but for those gaming fans attending the European Gamescom event in Germany this August, there will be disappointment at hand.
Nintendo Germany has announced that “Although Gamescom is one of the most important fairs of the year for us, we’ve decided not to take part this year.”
“Instead we plan to broaden our post-E3 activities to introduce our retail and media partners to the Wii U and the newest titles for the Nintendo 3DS,” stated Silja Gulicher, press officer for Nintendo Germany, “On top of that, as part of the pan-European marketing, PR and event activities for later this year we are planning a whole array of events that will offer our fans the opportunity to try out our latest titles. We’ll have more information about that soon.”
Gamescom could have been the biggest demonstration of Nintendo’s new and forthcoming Wii U console that is sure to be announced or at least demonstrated at this year’s E3 conference. Now us lowly Europeans are either going to have to travel to the USA for E3 or just watch the updates through our interweb screens.
Nintendo… We are disappointed.
Man, catchin’ them all is hard work… but if you are a fan of the Pokémon series, especially of the Black and White versions, you can rejoice as news of the next instalment and first ever numbered sequel to a Pokémon game has hit the web.
Yes, Pokemon Black and White 2 will be coming in the next few months and whilst it’s a whole new game this will be a follow-on instalment from the original Black and White Gameboy games. Information on the games has been released with a few tasty titbits of information to chew over.
Firstly the action will once again take place on the Unova region that was in Pokémon Black and White, but the areas will feature new locations, new trainers, new gym leaders and a new rival. The game will also take place 2 years after the original games, and and the Unova region has undergone some major changes during the time that has passed, including map areas being shut off and large amounts being frozen off.
It was also revealed that the Unova Pokedex in these sequels has nearly doubled the Pokémon to collect with 300 Pokémon in it, rather than the 155 that Black and White originally had.
So for fans of the Black and White games and for Pokemaniacs alike this all sounds very interesting, and with the games hitting Japanese shelves in June we should expect the European release sometime shortly after that.
Sony has released yet another software update for its latest handheld gaming console, the PS Vita, making this the third update in 2 weeks. Fans of the console should be receiving the 1.67 update when connected to a Wi-Fi network ASAP, but this will mark yet another bit of downtime for gamers whilst the firmware update is downloaded and installed.
The update is a further 97 MB file and brings the number up to version 1.67, although the contents of the update have not been published as neither the PlayStation Blog in North America nor Europe has updated with news on the firmware at the time of writing this post.
It’s possibly just a security update though could be anther fix to the initially faulty 1.65 update that was released last week. All we know is that Sony had better pull their finger out as we want handheld gaming not handheld updates.
More, More, More:
A roundup of what’s been happening the rest of the week…
- Valve Working on a ‘Steam Box’ Games Console
- RETRO REPLAY ► Kickstarter Project Aims to Bring Back Leisure Suit Larry for Android and iPhone!
- Xbox 720 “Durango” Packs Powerful 16-Core Processing to Rival Top-End Gaming PCs
And Finally…
Now you can scream Fos-Roh-Dah across your living room!
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