Club Nintendo 2011 Platinum Status Reward: Mario Pins. Yes, Mario Pins.
The Club Nintendo yearly rewards have gone out, and if you got 600 Club Nintendo coins in the last year that means you got the Platinum Status reward. Last year, it was a Mario statue. The year before that, it was a Mario hat. Now, it's Mario pins.
No, it actually doesn't suck. Well, not entirely. I got the package in the mail today, and I'm fairly surprised by the quality of the whole presentation. For slavish Nintendo game registration, you get 25 pins in six boxes, with a shelf-worthy display.
The boxes are as much a part of the reward as the pins themselves. They're six long cardboard rectangles that can be rotated to make three different shapes: Mario, a mushroom, and a goomba. The other side of each box has cut-outs to show the pins. It's just thin cardboard, but you can stack them and they look... presentable? Okay, it's not the statue from last year. At least it's not completely half-assed, like a handful of pins in a plastic bag.
The pins are... pins. They're nice pins, and they're well-made, all-metal, with Super Mario Bros. characters on them. However... they're pins. You can't do much with pins, except put them on a bag or a jacket or something. Okay, not amazing, but pretty neat, hard-to-find Nintendo swag from Club Nintendo. And so it has a place on my Nintendo shrine shelf with all my Nintendo crap.
Many Marios Mob Manhattan: Super Mario 3D Land Comes to Times Square
Okay, a picture of Mario kissing Peach in Times Square would have been much better, but how can I resist a squad of Marios heroically raising a flag?
Saturday, Nintendo held a huge event at Times Square for Super Mario 3D Land. They built an entire Mario course on Military Island, with trampolines, blocks, pipes, and giant piranha plants (statues). You already know that Nintendo was giving away some awesome and ridiculous tanuki tails and ears, but the swag was only part of it. Get a look at the course, and the trained Mario free runners who ran through it, below.
Greatest Nintendo Event Swag Ever: Mario Tanuki Ears and Tail
Nintendo usually goes big with its events, but I wasn't expecting the sort of thing it did today with its Super Mario 3D Land launch event. Mario took over Times Square, turning Military Island (the plaza next to the police station and recruitment center) into a huge Mario course. There will be more on that soon, but for now let's focus on what they were giving away: a mustache, tanuki ears, and a giant tanuki tail.
The Tanuki tail is like a huge beanbag with a belt. When you put it on, it bounces a bit and stays lifted slightly. You can spin attack people and really irritate them with it. The ears are soft and covered in felt, on a headband that's also covered in felt. The moustache is the only thing that seems like it won't last more than one use. The tanuki gear are joining my Mario hat in the Closet of Nerdy Swag.
Super Mario 3D Land Will Shame You
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.
Know Your Mascots: Platformers
It's time for me to arbitrarily pull another series of feature stories out of my ass because I got a good idea late one night. This is the first in several Know Your Mascots stories, a guide to understanding gamings' biggest faces based on game genre, using that genre's absolute biggest face as an archetype. This week, we'll look at platformers, and what platforming mascot is bigger than Mr. Nintendo himself, Mario? We all know him. Italian. Overall-wearing. Fire-throwing. Jumping. Voiced by Charles Martinet. But how do other mascots stack up against him? Let's find out.
Nintendo Adding Game Gear and TG-16 Games to 3DS VC, 3D Mario On the Way
While the tech world has its eyes on Cupertino and the new iPad announcement, Nintendo dropped some pretty big bombs at GDC.
The 3DS Virtual Console won't just include Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, but Game Gear and Turbografix-16 games as well. There are already 63 TG-16 games on the Wii VC, but we probably won't see them all pop up on the 3DS at launch. If Nintendo's good at anything, it's dragging its feet with legacy titles.
No Context Needed
I'm sure he does.
Contributed by someone who found it on a message board. No idea where this store is, or if its prices are, indeed, crunk enough for Super Mario.
Are Mario, Link, Sonic, and the Belmonts’ Best Days Behind Them?
I have some bad news, people. It's been staring us all right in the face for years, and it's time to come to terms with it. Your favorite game series? The ones where you eagerly wait weeks and months after preordering, the ones where you squeal when you read the announcements, the ones that have a nearly religious significance to you and helped shape your upbringing? They won't ever be as good as they were. The best chapters in those series are long gone, and all we have left is empty hope and nostalgia. Yes, there will still be competent, very good, and even downright excellent games in your favorite series, and they'll keep coming. Unfortunately, the absolute best games have come, gone, and been played to death years ago. Most Nintendo series fans are aware of this. Every Sonic fan is painfully aware of this. It's time to come to terms.
Read on, pick out your favorite game series, and strap on your nostalgia goggles. We're gonna go in.
Super Mario All-Stars Wii $60-100 on eBay
I'll give Nintendo credit for this: when they say "limited edition," they mean "limited edition." Despite releasing a shoddy, lazy port that not only added nothing to a 17-year-old release but added a lag that made it nearly unplayable, Nintendo has indeed kept true to its word and only produced a single run of Super Mario All-Stars Limited Edition for the Wii.
eBay is flooded with Super Mario All-Stars for the Wii, but the games are being bought, and for over twice their retail price. On the first search page of completed listings, only 4 of the 50 copies that came up went unsold. The others sold for between $60 and $100, averaging in the $70's. For reference, the game sold for just $30 in stores a few months ago. The game went out fast, and is completely gone from the shelves of Best Buy and Gamestop. You can still order it from Amazon... from Marketplace vendors selling it starting at $68.
As a side note, just for a splash of contrast, the Halo: Reach Legendary Edition is still readily available. Amazon has it for $99
From the Past: 25th Anniversary Wii Limited Edition Super Mario All-Stars
Yep, it's still the 25th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. The limited edition Wii version of Super Mario All-Stars
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