I wish I was kidding, but Super Mario 3D Land has actively taken pity on me. It’ll take pity on you, too, and shame you in the most unspeakable way. It’s more of Nintendo’s casual-friendly approach of “making the game stupidly easy in the stupidest way,” taken to a horrible extreme.

If you die enough times on a level (between 6 and 8), the game creates a Pity Block. It’s a flashing block that makes a glowing raccoon leaf. If you pick up that leaf, you become Raccoon Mario… with unlimited invincibility. Yes, this game doesn’t simply hold your hand or show you how to win. It turns on god mode for you.

Does it disable star coins, or mark levels you beat it with a scarlet S, for You Suck As A Gamer? No. You don’t get penalized at all. There is no record of your failure. There is no punishment. There is no way to even keep track which levels you had to lose through. There is just your crippling shame and the gnawing uncertainty of the entire game and your ability as a gamer.

I’m fine with giving casual players a way to see all the game (or most of the game) without much effort. It’s fine to give them an autopilot and let them beat the game. But to get everything in the game, including those star coins that basically show you how good you are at playing, is just wrong. Take out the coins. Put a mark on the level. Put something there to show when you take the easy way out. The shame is so much worse when only you’re aware of it.

The word “meta,” or at least the modern, popular use of it, seems to be the best word to describe Pokemon Rumble Blast for the Nintendo 3DS. It takes Pokemon, the game series that spawned tons of cartoons, cards, toys, and other things, makes up a new Pokemon toy line based on the series, then makes a game based on the made-up toy line. From a storytelling perspective, it’s the Pokemon Centipede. It’s not bad, but its concept is very bizarre for a game that’s basically Gauntlet with Pokemon.

Did you know there’s a new Tetris game out for the 3DS? Tetris Axis is the newest Tetris game available, and it brings 3D graphics to the block-dropping series. I know, when you think of 3D and Tetris, you think of those horrible 3D Tetris games that were hard to control on the PC. Well, don’t worry. The 3D isn’t a game-crippling change of perspective that shows why Tetris only works on a two-dimensional plane, it’s only an incredible unnecessary effect that shows why Tetris only works on a two-dimensional plane.

Tetris Axis is a decent compilation of Tetris game types developed by Hudson Soft and published by Nintendo, but compared to the stellar (and actually Nintendo-themed) Tetris DS, it falls flat. The two best things I can say about Tetris Axis is that it has regular Tetris and that’s always fun, and it’s only $30.

Kirby’s the little guy among Nintendo’s main, first-party characters (not counting Pit “Chuck Cunningham” Icarus). He’s not as beloved as the plumber, the bounty hunter, or the elf, or even the furry space fighter pilot. Still, he’s managed to consistently be in solid games ever since his first appearance. After years of sucking up enemies and spitting them back out, Kirby got a bit of a change in Kirby’s Epic Yarn, where he became made of string and turned into different things. Now Nintendo’s mixing up Kirby’s style again, by exploding the poor pink guy into bits.

Kirby Mass Attack puts you in control of 10 Kirbys, all commanded entirely through the touchscreen. That’s a two-gimmick gameplay concept, which sent up a lot of red flags. Amazingly, Kirby’s Mass Attack (maybe Kirbys’ Mass Attack) isn’t just a passable game. It’s a great game, as long as you can tolerate the monsoon of sugary bullshit you see in every Kirby game. It is, after all, Nintendo’s “kids” game series.

I admit it, I’m new to the whole BIT.TRIP thing. I didn’t pay much attention to the games when they first came out because I thought they were just artsy indie games with blocky graphics and chiptunes music and sound effects. That and Commander Video freaks me out. He’s faceless and disproportionate, like an Atari Slender Man. Still, after the bitterness of Star Fox 64 3D and the desire to keep my 3DS valid, I picked up BIT.TRIP SAGA in hopes of finding some arcade-style gameplay that feels rewarding and deep, despite its simplicity.

Well, jackpot. BIT.TRIP SAGA doesn’t have any extra content like BIT.TRIP Complete on the Wii, but all six BIT.TRIP games together alone justify the $40 price tag of a retail 3DS game.

After over a decade, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time came to the Nintendo 3DS and it was great. It followed that another Nintendo 64 classic, Star Fox, would fit just as well on the handheld. Nintendo put out Star Fox 64 3D, and… well, it’s all in the name. This is Star Fox 64 in 3D, and that’s it. You don’t get anything else.

Star Fox 64 is still a fun game, but in terms of sheer content for a $40 game cartridge, it falls short. It was groundbreaking in the mid-90′s, but unlike Ocarina of Time, which still got its own master quest port to add to the value, it doesn’t justify itself. It’s a shame to see Nintendo succumb to the temptation to make another relatively lazy port of an old game. The graphics are slightly better, but that’s all it has.

If you bought your Nintendo 3DS before August 12, you’re a 3DS Ambassador and will get 10 NES games now and 10 GBA games later. The NES games are ready now, but like most other things involving Nintendo and any kind of online content, it’s a convoluted pain in the ass.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just tap a “Download 3DS Ambassador games” on the 3DS eStore? Well, you can’t. If you want your games, you need to go into the Settings menu, then into Your Downloads. Then you need to do it again and again for each game. On the bright side, the games are free.

The full list of NES games 3DS Ambassadors get are:

• Super Mario Bros.
• The Legend of Zelda
• Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link
• Metroid
• Wrecking Crew
• Balloon Fight
• Ice Climbers
• Yoshi
• Donkey Kong Jr.
• NES Open Tournament Golf

I was completely certain Nintendo would cut the price on the Nintendo 3DS before the holiday season. I wasn’t expecting them to cut the price so much and so fast. Nintendo just announced that, starting August 12, the 3DS will retail for $169.99. That’s a $80 price drop on a system that came out four months ago.

Whether Nintendo is slashing the 3DS’ price because of disappointing sales or because of fear the was-equally-priced PS Vita would dig too much into its market share is uncertain, but it’s clear Nintendo is getting ready to barrel into fall with more 3DSes sold and a stronger grip on the market by the time Sony’s new handheld launches later this year.

To stem off the inevitable tide of 3DS owners who dropped $250 on the system, Nintendo has announced the 3DS Ambassadors program. If you go online and download anything by August 11, you’ll be automatically enrolled. When September 1 comes around, all Ambassadors will get ten NES games for free on their 3DS, including Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, before they become available on the Nintendo 3Store. Nintendo notes that when they do hit the Nintendo eStore, Ambassadors will be able to download the “updated versions” for free, implying that they’ll be given away as 2D versions but will be 3D Classics when they go live. Later this year, Nintendo will give Ambassadors ten more Game Boy Advance games, including Yoshi’s Island: Super Mario Land 3 and Metroid Fusion. Those games won’t be released on the eStore for some time, if ever, according to Nintendo. This is big, because Nintendo hadn’t previously announced Game Boy Advance games on the Virtual Console.

Does this change things for you? If you haven’t already gotten a 3DS, will the $170 price tag tilt things in its favor? If you already got one, is the 20 games-to-be-released-later enough to make up for the $80 you could have saved by waiting?

E3 went down a few weeks ago and while there were no real earth shattering announcements (thanks to the ever persistance subculture of everything getting leaked), all in all it was a pretty good show. The rest of the year is looking pretty good indeed, with some of the smaller titles like Child Of Eden, Catherine, and Shadows of the Damned (all of which you should buy, for the inevitable rarity if nothing else) coming now to avoid the epic cluster**** that is the fall launch lineup. But the future of gaming? That is an entirely different story altogether. Let’s take a look at current state of gaming, focused on the three big console manufacturers.

First up: Nintendo.

Andriasang reports that highly anticipated 3DS title Mega Man Legends 3 has been cancelled. This come in spite of the numerous fan contests, promotions, and the planned demo/fund-raising pitch, Mega Man Legends 3 Prototype. According to a message posted on the game’s official site, the game was cancelled due to not reaching certain conditions for continuing development, though fan speculation believes that the bigger cause was the desparture of Mega Man creator and Legends 3 project lead Keiji Inafune from Capcom some time ago.

This is quite a blow for the still floundering 3DS, as a number of people, myself included, were looking forward to the return of this franchise considering the second ended with a cliffhanger. It’s worth noting that currently, Capcom officially has no Mega Man games in development, so unless Mega Man 11 (or Mega Man X-9) are announced, the franchise might very well be dead.