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.

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.

I’ll admit I had completely missed any mention of this new Final Fantasy title before andriasang posted this trailer, and I’m a little bummed it’s not a new RPG for the 3DS. Now the invented word “theatrhythm” makes a bit more sense. The game is a rhythm/music game with scrolling dots similar to Guitar Hero/Rock Band, except it throws a track list culled from Final Fantasy’s long, long history at you.

I gotta tell ya, I’m not all that excited about a stylus-tapping game set to the ballroom scene from Final Fantasy VIII and a bunch of other cinematic and gameplay video from the series. I will concede one point, though: I got a little stoked when the boss fight music from Final Fantasy VI kicked in, and the rhythm tapping accompanied a graphically revamped battle with Ultros. That was a track that just always sounded like Go Time to me.

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

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.

I’m a lifelong Nintendo fanboy. I grew up with the NES and SNES. During the first 3D console war in the mid-90′s, I sided with the Nintendo 64 despite missing out on many, many great games until years later. I was optimistic for the Wii, and the DS completely won me over. That said, I’ve realized something about Nintendo that I think always floated around in the back of my mind, but that I didn’t really accept until the WiiU was announced.

Nintendo doesn’t care about wooing hardcore gamers. Yes, jaded gamers think this is self-evident, but it’s actually worse than it seems. Nintendo doesn’t care about wooing hardcore gamers because we’ll come back to them anyway. That is the truly terrible thing about Nintendo’s current strategy. It doesn’t matter how disappointing their hardware is, how inept their handling of online services is, or how much they bother to build a platform that third party developers actually feel like using to make a decent game and not just a half-assed semi-port.

Let me be crude but concise. Nintendo is our cheating ex-girlfriend who, every six months or so, calls us up at 2:00 a.m. looking for action. And, because we are idiots and she does that one thing we like, we come over. Maybe it’s a one-night stand, maybe it’s a short rekindling of the relationship, but it always ends with her completely ignoring us and sleeping with our little brother.

One of the most anticipated games for the Nintendo 3DS has finally come out. Unfortunately, it’s a remake of a Nintendo 64 game. Make of that what you well, but either way we’re going to look at The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D. This is going to be a fast review, because there’s only so much you can say about a remake that doesn’t radically change things, and, like nearly everything else that comes from Nintendo besides game controllers, there isn’t any radical change here. It’s the same great game we all played 13 years ago, but it’s also the same game we played 13 years ago.

Sometimes marketing just creates itself. There was just no way Nintendo was going to fail to capitalize on the fact that an actual celebrity – Academy Award winning actor and Gay Elmer Fudd Voice enthusiast Robin Williams – named his kid after the namesake of the most iconic video game series, second only to Mario. It’s hard to say what’s more epic, his beard or his geek cred for having a daughter named Zelda. And make no mistake, this is no coincidence, no trick of fate that Zelda Williams shares a famous video game name. He’s just been a huge fan since the 80s, and in this ad, father and daughter manage to be both smarmy and yet nonetheless sweet.

Side note: how is it even remotely possible that this mega-hairy, rubber-faced lunatic had a kid that looks like this?