NintendoWare Weekly: Urban Champion, Flight Control

by JC Fletcher on Aug 18th 2011 9:25AM

During a convention like Gamescom, with news flying out in all directions, you have to bring your A-game if you want to get attention. Nintendo of America has brought ... Urban Champion. Specifically, the 3D Classics remake of Urban Champion, available today on the 3DS eShop.

Nintendo also mentioned that a new Jason Derulo video will premiere on Nintendo Video today, if that's something you want to see and hear.

WiiWare finally gets its port of air-traffic control puzzler Flight Control, so if you don't own any smartphone or a DSi, you can now see what all the fuss was about.

3D Classics: Urban Champion (3DS)

WiiWare

Flight Control (Firemint, 1-4 players, 500 Wii Points): Guide airplanes to runways so they can land without smashing into every other plane.

3DS eShop

3D Classics: Urban Champion (Nintendo, player, $4.99): Experience Nintendo's first, most awkward fighting game in 3D. Try to knock your opponent into a manhole, but keep cool if the cops drive by.

DSiWare

Build-a-lot (Mumbo Jumbo, 1 player, price unknown): Buy, build, and renovate houses to earn as much as you can.
Blockado: Puzzle Island (Bitfield, 1 player, $4.99/500 DSi Points) Shift blocks to move a treasure chest in this puzzle game.
Zoonies - Escape from Makatu (Kiloo, 1 player, $4.99/500 DSi Points) A cartoony platformer in which Leo, the lion (obviously), flees from the shaman Makatu while trying to find his family.

Source: Nintendo

Tags: 3d-classics, 3ds, blockado-puzzle-island, build-a-lot, ds, dsiware, eshop, flight-control, nintendo, nintendoware-weekly, urban-champion, wii, wiiware, zoonies-escape-from-makatu

Reader Comments (34)

:/

...ish. (Expect this comment almost every Thursday)

@CaptainProtonX

It's Nintendo. They've never been digitally fixated. The retail releases is what I'm waiting for and what I bought the system for. If I want good downloadable titles, it's what I'll have a Vita for.

@Shockwave

Uh...There's ample quality software Nintendo can distribute digitally.

I'm not commenting about the weakness of the platform. I'm commenting about the weakness of their effort to utilize digital distribution.

And what system are you referencing? Wii, 3DS. or DSi?

@CaptainProtonX

It is really upsetting. Nintendo has an amazing back catalog that they seem content on painstakingly trickle out. Why on earth don't they just put everything on the eShop at once? Does it really take that much work to port a 20 year old game to the 3DS?

It's like Nintendo doesn't want my money :-/

@NaeemTHM
Yeah, srsly.
I really want to support them, but I'm not going to throw $5 of hard earned, would-be gaming money on URBAN CHAMPION. :\ I'll go some socially uplifting booze instead and hope next Thursday's offerings will be a little more enticing.

@CaptainProtonX so if a 3D remake of a NES game is $5 would i assume that NES games on the 3DS would be less than $5 when they come out?

@CaptainProtonX LOL "weakness" on their digital distribution.
Way to understate it like a champ!

I guess it's a lot more kid friendly then what I would say about Nintendo's digital efforts.

@CaptainProtonX

Mainly referring to their portables, but it applies to their consoles as well. Wasn't really disagreeing with you, and not saying they don't HAVE things they can distribute.. just that they won't. They've always been like this.

They had a golden egg with the VC and they really didn't use it to their fullest capabilities. To be honest, they rarely update it and not having console games on the 3DS VC is a bad idea.

@Shockwave
It's a right shame, really. When the Wii launched, VC was going hella strong, with multiple new titles every other week. Then WiiWare came out, and they put all their eggs in THAT basket, leaving VC update-less for a good period of time. Fast forward to now, where they've only slightly reneged and give us one title every other week.

What the hell happened?

Actually, I've been thinking the same thing about Sony's handling of PSOne Classics, so Nintendo's not alone in this. Many weeks have gone by recently where nary a PSOne Classic makes it to the PSN. In Sony's defense, though, they tend to have much, much more in the way of more modern content to upload each week, so it's nowhere near as bad. Nintendo... usually REALLY doesn't.

@Shadow Hog
"When the Wii launched, VC was going hella strong, with multiple new titles every other week."

Make "every other week" just "every week". My apologies for the gaffe.

@Shadow Hog
In the end it all comes down to licensing issues. Even some of their own products, like Earthbound, have the damnedest of licensing issues.

@Shadow Hog Licencing issues are what stops a lot of the games. It's hard especially when certain development teams or publishers are no longer around and assets are split up, etc. Or in the case of first party titles, laziness.

You gotta wonder what Nintendo would be like if they published good indie games instead of 3d remakes of old Nintendo games not named Balloon Fighter.

I mean, the only real legacy to it has been a FLASH GAME. Imagine what could happen with 8 players on a Balloon Fight screen.

I need to pick up a 3DS, since Urban Champion is like OMG BESTEST GAME EVAR!

Jokes aside, I seriously want one.

As someone who skipped out on the DSi I'm shocked by the amount of previously exclusive crap on the download store.

It's entertaining to laugh at DSiWare games and ponder how they managed to get approval.

@Rain

Actually, a surprising amount of stuff on DSiWare is also already on iOS...usually for 1/5 of the price.

@Rain
While there is crap there's actually quite a few good games on the DSiware that most people ignore either due to stupid names or the ammount of crap you need to shuffle through.

I watched the Jason Derulo video out of morbid curiosity and that had to be the single worst 3D conversion I've ever seen. Seriously...if you have a 3DS, watch it just to see how bad it is.

@squallgengar

i tried to get through that video, but by the end of the first 32 bars
(i really did try to give it a chance) of that shitty anti-art wannabe r&b garbage of a 'song' i had to slap my 3ds shut in disgust... i definitely do not want anything like that automatically downloaded onto my system in the future, i do not want to support that type of 'artist'... fkn hire some people with a clue and some taste to select these videos ... for real ... im starting to get pist.

The eShop was off to such a good start. What the hell are they doing? Urban Champion was such a piece of garbage. It's not even the kind of game you play because it's so bad. Why don't they give a shit? Where did the quality GameBoy titles go? Where are Super Mario Land 2 and 3? F-1 Race? Pokemon?! The much more modern Kirby's Dreamland 2? Ugh... Urban Champion...

@SonicRift

Pokemon seems like a no-brainer...but only if they can figure out how to do the transferring. Unless you can trade or move your monsters from game to game, it's just not worth going back and playing the old games.

@SonicRift I'm buying it,It's an old Arcade game it's not meant to be on the level of super mario land 2.

Yikes, this is getting embarrassing. Luckily, Link's Awakening is such a big game that people will probably still be playing that until the free games hit Sept.1.

@baby sea tuna Yeah, at the moment, Link's Awakening is the only 3DS game I have.

The only reason i have not purchased a single download game from the eShop is that they have not announced all the free titles for the ambassador program. Once i know that I wont for some odd reason end up buying something that they decide to throw in the package I will start buying games off of the download service.

@shoan

Shouldn't have to worry, all 20 games are new to the eShop, they aren't providing us with content currently available.

awesome thanks much for that one. I guess as soon as i finish with lego pirates I will look into buying one.

A big problem I have with eshop is you have to buy chunks of Nintendo money before you can spend it on games. They keep you continually buying more than you need, so you have a left over balance that's not quite enough to buy the next game, and on and on. I had to pay $10 for Link to the past, and now have $3.71 left over. Anything I've thought about buying since then would require me to buy another $5 just to make up the extra 48 cents I need for a $3.99 plus tax game. Nintendo will never get online purchasing "right."

@SolidSnakeEyes

Your bitching applies to pretty much any online distributing game service.

@Co Hey tough guy, I've never been forced to buy $5 increments of money up front before aside from Nintendo services. Playstation Network doesn't do it. Steam doesn't do it. Direct to Drive doesn't do it. iTunes doesn't do it. I could go on.

@SolidSnakeEyes
STEAM and PSN both force you to start out at $5 then go up. Say I wanted to buy a PS Mini I'd be stuck putting $5 on my PSN account, or say I want to buy a $2 indie game I'm stuck withputting $5 on my STEAM account.

@The Aquacharger I'm aware of that and have no problem with it. The difference is beyond that $5 they will allow you to pay in exact change and you're not left with a random balance in your account afterward. Nintendo makes you buy credit beforehand no matter what the price of your items are, and therefore you're always left with a balance unless you live somewhere that doesn't charge tax and you happen to be buying something that comes out to a multiple of $5. This eshop system ends up being no better than Wii points, it's actually worse because at least with the point system you pay tax on the points and tax doesn't then come out of your balance, leaving you with random amounts of change.

@The Aquacharger Another reason I don't mind the minimum funding of $5 on PSN is I know I'll eventually use up that extra balance on my next purchase before long and likely zero out my balance on the next buy. On eshop I may not want to buy another game for months, and when I do I'm stuck paying in $5 increments again, not exact change. On PSN I can buy something for exactly $6.99. On eshop I have to pay $10.

I think we can all agree they have it set up to leave just enough money to where you will eventually add to it to buy another titile. It's really lame if you ask me. Why the heck if a game cost's 2.99 can't I pay 2.99? This question goes out to
Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft!

NintendoWare Weekly: Urban Champion, Flight Control

3D Classics: Urban Champion (3DS)

Reader Comments (34)

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 9:28AM CaptainProtonX said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 9:31AM Shockwave said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 9:46AM CaptainProtonX said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 9:59AM NaeemTHM said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 10:06AM foxhound said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 10:08AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 10:16AM hami83 said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 10:47AM Shockwave said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 1:33PM Shadow Hog said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 1:35PM Shadow Hog said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 5:01PM The Aquacharger said

Posted: Aug 24th 2011 6:01AM Dcmac said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 9:35AM Destati said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 9:44AM KGameLover1 said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 9:50AM Rain said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 10:14AM baby sea tuna said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 5:02PM The Aquacharger said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 9:52AM squallgengar said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 12:22PM iamerror said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 10:06AM SonicRift said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 10:15AM baby sea tuna said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 10:26AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 10:18AM baby sea tuna said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 12:47PM Kyattsuai said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 11:09AM shoan said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 12:02PM teamnintendo said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 12:08PM shoan said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 1:37PM SolidSnakeEyes said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 4:47PM Co said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 4:59PM SolidSnakeEyes said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 5:07PM The Aquacharger said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 5:12PM SolidSnakeEyes said

Posted: Aug 18th 2011 5:15PM SolidSnakeEyes said

Posted: Aug 19th 2011 4:27AM GamerTrekster said

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