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This Week on the Nintendo Channel: E3 interviews

by David Hinkle { Jun 22nd 2009 at 2:15PM }

This week, the Nintendo Channel has been flooded with a variety of interviews about big upcoming Wii titles. There are interviews with the folks behind FFCC: The Crystal Bearers, Red Steel 2, Cave Story, and, as you can see above, Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles. So, hit up the video above, then if you want more E3 interview goodness, be sure to boot up your Wii and check out what's on the Nintendo Channel.

Gallery: Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles (Wii)

Continued →

Nintendo celebrates one year of WiiWare

by JC Fletcher { May 12th 2009 at 2:45PM }

On May 12 of last year, Nintendo of America launched the WiiWare download service with Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King, LostWinds, Defend Your Castle, Pop, VIP Casino: Blackjack, and TV Show King. Today, on the one-year anniversary of that launch, Nintendo sent out a video featuring the highlights of the service's 81-game lineup.

For all the complaining Nintendo fans do about WiiWare, and Nintendo system releases in general, all the games presented in this video make for a pretty strong year of releases. In the press release about the anniversary, Nintendo gave us reasons to be excited about the next year of WiiWare, including Cave Story, Icarian: Kindred Spirits, Super Meat Boy, Cave Story, Bit.Trip: CORE, Cave Story, Final Fantasy IV: The After Years and CAVE STORY.

Nintendo of Europe reveals April-June WiiWare/DSiWare releases, including Cave Story

by JC Fletcher { Apr 8th 2009 at 10:25AM }

As mentioned in the announcement of Squibs Arcade, Nintendo of Europe is holding a WiiWare (and DSiWare) media summit this week. During the event, Nintendo released a list of WiiWare and DSiWare games planned for release between April and June.

On WiiWare, the biggest news is Cave Story! Even though we knew it was scheduled for release in April or May, seeing more confirmation of that (for more regions) is great! Swords & Soldiers is also on the way. In addition, there are also a few games we haven't heard much (or anything) about. Each game has a brief description in Nintendo's announcement.

Bonsai Barber
Cave Story
ColorZ
Crystal Defenders R1
Icarian: Kindred Spirits
LIT
Overturn: Mecha Wars
Robocalypse: Beaver Defense
Spaceball: Revolution
Squibs Arcade
Swords & Soldiers
Water Warfare

In DSiWare, the most exciting title (to us) is Nintendo's Art Style: PiCOPiCT, a retro-Nintendo-themed puzzler with reinterpreted NES music by YMCK.

A Little Bit of... Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training: Maths Edition
Art Style: PICOPICT
Mighty Flip Champs!
Mixed Messages
Pop Superstar: Road to Celebrity
Real Football 2009

[Via NintendoLife]

How Night Game got to WiiWare

by JC Fletcher { Mar 16th 2009 at 11:00AM }

The silhouette-style puzzle platformer Night Game represents the first WiiWare release from Knytt creator Nicklas "Nifflas" Nygren. Nifflas and Tyrone Rodriguez from developer Nicalis spoke with Gamasutra (specifically, Joystiq alum Eric Caoili!) about the new game and about its home on WiiWare.

Surprisingly, Night Game, which still isn't its final title, wasn't intended for WiiWare at first. Rodriguez made the call to put Night Game on WiiWare early in development. Nifflas told Gamasutra that "I've always wanted there to be a PC build of (Night Game), since many of my fans have been waiting for this game. I however respect Tyrone's decision here." Adapting the game concept to the Wii Remote led to a change in control mapping that "would have been an advantage even on a PC version. "

It was GoNintendo's RawMeatCowboy, according to Nifflas, who put him in contact with Nicalis, and therefore indirectly led to Night Game becoming a WiiWare title.

Cave Story dev: Nintendo opens Wii to Flash development

by JC Fletcher { Mar 13th 2009 at 9:00AM }

Nicalis's Tyrone Rodriguez went to a "secret developer summit" for Nintendo developers in Los Angeles this week, bringing back news of an important new announcement for WiiWare game creators: Nintendo has now made it possible to develop Wii games entirely using Flash -- something that is presumably most useful for WiiWare. We will probably hear more about this new WiiWare Flash functionality at GDC -- it seems an appropriate venue.

"This should open up the Wii to a lot of web developers who already can do killer Flash games," Rodriguez said. You may think of this as enabling more quick shovelware, but we think of it as enabling Dolphin Olympics 2.

In other news, The Escapist has posted an interview with Rodriguez and Cave Story creator Pixel that provides some insight into the kind of DLC planned for Cave Story. Rodriguez said that the structure is being designed to allow "all sorts of fun stuff like Boss Rush Mode or other fan-requested modes."

Cave Story coming in April or May!

by JC Fletcher { Mar 9th 2009 at 9:10AM }

The whole Nicalis team contributed to the latest Cave Story blog post, providing a fairly detailed snapshot of the game's progress at this point. "If all goes well," Tyrone Rodriguez said, "you'll be playing Cave Story by the beginning of May or even end of April."

Rodriguez is working on localizing the manual into Spanish and French, programmer Tiffany is working on the DLC, to make sure that "the game will be able to support all the new content that we have planned over the months following the initial release." And Yann and Nicklas (aka Nifflas) are finishing up the audio, and ... " also building the speech synthesizer that will sing lyrics over each song while the playing the game!" Which might be a joke.

Gallery: Cave Story (WiiWare)

Another Cave Story screen as the game nears completion

by JC Fletcher { Feb 15th 2009 at 10:30AM }

Nicalis has posted its weekly Cave Story screenshot, and we have, as usual, been staring at it for a good few minutes, just taking in the lovely backgrounds and the detailed sprites. More details are starting to be filled in as the game approaches release: as Nicalis's Tiffany points out, the weapon icons have been updated with new graphics, and the UI text is back in its proper pixelated form, rather than the "smoothed" look it previously had.

Tiffany also mentions that "the MIDI player is ready to go and the new music is on the way." Finally, the weak link in the WiiWare Cave Story experience, the music, is getting fixed! It sounds like the game is getting very close to release, and we could not be more thrilled.

Gallery: Cave Story (WiiWare)

Cave Story's graveyard reborn in new screenshot

by JC Fletcher { Feb 9th 2009 at 10:00AM }

Nicalis is still cruelly doling out Cave Story screenshots one at a time, and those screens continue to be gorgeous enough to be absolutely worth posting on their own. The latest image features the Mimiga graveyard, home of the marketably adorable Pignon mushroom creatures, in both normal and Giant varieties, and the Gravekeeper, whose duties seem limited to attacking people with a knife.

According to the blog post preceding this screenshot, Nicalis's Tyrone Rodriguez went to Kyoto this weekend to meet with Pixel and do something secret. Kyoto happens to be the location of Nintendo. Could there be some more wonderful Pixel projects on WiiWare, or even DSiWare, in the future? Or, you know, maybe they're doing something else in Kyoto. It is, like, a whole city.

Gallery: Cave Story (WiiWare)

New Cave Story screenshot would be lovable even without the puppy

by JC Fletcher { Jan 28th 2009 at 8:00AM }

Ah, now this is what the new site design is all about: the ability to post jaw-droppingly gorgeous Cave Story screens at near-full resolution. (To see it in fully full resolution, click on the image!)

This latest screen of the WiiWare version of Pixel's delightful game, posted on developer Nicalis's site, features new sprites for two of the game's creatures: a puppy, and ... that skeleton thing, which we bet has a name. (According to the leading Cave Story fansite, it is called a "Skeleton".)

In the accompanying post, programmer "Tiffany" says the game is "close to done", hints at some secret Wii stuff (the DLC, or possibly even more), and says something that should be the cause of relief among the entire Cave Story fan community: "One of the more obvious bugs from the initial port was a notable sound bug – you know "bleeding ears" and all–which I am currently working on. We promise to get it right!" They're going to get it right.

Gallery: Cave Story (WiiWare)

Brace yourself for a new Cave Story sprite

by JC Fletcher { Jan 9th 2009 at 6:17PM }

Following the post about DLC, Nicalis has now officially come back to blogging, and by "blogging" we mean "teasing us regularly about Cave Story". And, as they return to their schedule, we now find ourselves back in our weekly ritual of thinking dreamily about Cave Story in response to the posting of a new sprite from the game.

This time, it's Curly Brace, who protects a group of Mimiga children and eventually joins protagonist Quote on his journey. The new sprite looks pretty great to us, but one Nicalis blog commenter classifies her new appearance as "fattie". We guess ... that one shaded square in her midsection is now white? And now she's totally fat?

Gallery: Cave Story (WiiWare)

Cave Story Wii dev emerges, DLC confirmed

by James Ransom-Wiley { Jan 9th 2009 at 1:51PM }

Some Wiimakes are worth waiting for. Er, let us rephrase. One Wii-bound remake is worth waiting for: Cave Story. But with developer Nicalis playing the hermit through Thanksgiving and the month of December, the outlook was quickly bleak-ening. Had the recession starved dead this fragile indie? Was WiiWare destined to mire in sandy beaches? The holiday season passed without a glimmer of hope -- a promise unfulfilled.

But with the coming of the New Year, we renewed our faith, depositing 2000 Wii Points into our account -- just for Cave Story. Lo and behold, our call was answered! Nicalis emerged from the darkness, a so-called "night game" this week to bring testament: "Cave Story for Wii hasn't been killed," pledged the developer. "Truth be told we did try to make it in time for Christmas, however, we weren't able to do so." Fair enough.

Nicalis continued: "We're still working ... to make sure it's faithful to Amaya-san's original while adding a few things for the console release." Wait for it ... "One of these new additions, I'm happy to announce" -- almost there -- "is Download Content." Hmmm, an uncertain path for sure. Will it be "oh, here, buy this character we forgot to add" or "and here's that time trial mode you wanted ... for a little more" kinda DLC? Or, a legitimate expansion of the story -- beyond the cave, so to speak? Back to the waiting game for us.

(In the meantime, Nicalis has posted its updated Curly sprite -- seen above, on the right; and reminded us of the game preview in the January EGM -- the last issue in print ... ever!)

Gallery: Cave Story (WiiWare)

Life is worth living: Nicalis confirms new Cave Story DLC

by JC Fletcher { Jan 8th 2009 at 10:00AM }

After a lengthy hiatus, Cave Story WiiWare developer Nicalis has posted a new entry on their development blog, confirming two delightful pieces of information:

The lack of blog updates does not signify cancellation of the game, and
DLC!

Blogger "ara" said that the developer "... received enough e-mails demanding it that we're doing our best to include some new surprises in the WiiWare release." Nothing specific about the new content was divulged, but it's new Cave Story and we're having a hard time imagining how this news could get any better. We can only hope that this is new Pixel-developed, or at least Pixel-approved, material.

Gallery: Cave Story (WiiWare)

Cave Story videos are almost great

by JC Fletcher { Nov 27th 2008 at 3:00PM }

These videos of the Cave Story remake (best viewed at IGN in full resolution) clearly depict a work in progress. They'd better! The new graphics look very promising indeed, and the game looks appropriately smooth in motion. But the music is still janky (though not as janky) and every sound effect is rendered as loud white noise.

It's really distressing to have the usually delightful Grasstown stage marred by weird sound effects -- not to mention the occasional escape of text from the confines of the text box. We're giving Nicalis the benefit of the doubt, mostly because we want to make sure to continue sending good, happy thoughts their way. Cave Story requires your happy thoughts to live!

Gallery: Cave Story (WiiWare)

Cave Story's robot less blocky, but still blocky

by JC Fletcher { Nov 25th 2008 at 11:55AM }

How do you draw a more detailed sprite of a guy who's basically a bunch of rectangles anyway? That's the dilemma Pixel faced with this Cave Story character, Malco the friendly, explosives-loving robot. Pixel has done an outstanding job of adding definition -- and a mandible -- to a character who seemed impossible to detail. With that new jaw of his, he could destroy some gum base.

According to the blog entry accompanying this sprite, IGN will have new direct-feed videos of Cave Story tomorrow. Presumably, this will be our first look at the new artwork in motion!

Gallery: Cave Story (WiiWare)

One very worthwhile Cave Story screen

by JC Fletcher { Nov 19th 2008 at 6:20PM }

Cave Story remake developer Nicalis has been spreading exclusive content around the web, turning our daily news crawling into a delightful Cave Story scavenger hunt. The latest release is this screenshot found on WiiWare World, featuring the updated, redrawn graphics.

We have feared that the increased definition in the sprites and environments would change too much of Cave Story's unique look, but Pixel knows what he is doing. The new look is more detailed, but still retro -- it just looks like somebody sharpened the focus.

If you haven't tried Cave Story yet, don't worry about waiting for the WiiWare version. Play the freeware game now. You'll be ready to start again when the Wii game comes out.