nintendo

It always weirds me out a little bit when companies come up with "traditional" toys based on video games. You know, like that Nintendo Monopoly board game from a few months back. Now, according to Kotaku, Nintendo has officially licensed a Mario Kart race track. I suppose this is the company's way of reaching out to an audience that might be too young for video games, so that it can indoctrinate them into the Cult of Nintendo.

I suppose a parallel example would be if Apple released a toy iPod for little kids. That'd be weird, … Read more

Toshio Iwai, the designer of beloved Nintendo DS music game Electroplankton, has been showing a prototype of his jaw-dropping Tenori-On instrument since 2005. Last week, Yamaha announced plans to turn this Star Trek-worthy digital sound toy into an actual shipping product, retailing with an estimated price tag of around $1,000. For most consumers, that is an insane price for a beautiful sound toy, but electronic musicians and artists are falling all over themselves for this thing. The Tenori-On is a touch screen grid of white LEDs that allows you to compose music by activating little squares that trigger built-in … Read more

The Wii is quickly solidifying itself as the gadget that is perpetually making us think, "Hm, I never thought of that, but it's a cool idea." First the whole Wiimote thing, then Wii Sports, then the Opera browser, then the weather and news channels...this is one gaming console that's full of nutty features and add-ons that might seem wacked out at first, but which inevitably catch on in that kitschy Nintendo way.

And Nintendo's far from finished. Rumors are flying about the latest additions to the Wii, and the video game blogs are scrambling … Read more

With the video game market credited for racking up $7 billion in annual sales, even trade shows about the industry are big news for legions of loyal gamers. With the demise (or at least downsizing) of the Electronic Entertainment Exposition--the gigantic video game show held in LA each spring--smaller events, such as the Game Developers Conference are picking up the slack.

The show floor is bigger than last year's, and companies such as Sony and Nintendo have set up large E3-style multimedia booths, making the event's higher public profile one of the biggest stories coming out of GDC … Read more

The rumors were true: Nokia's N-Gage is returning, but it will be a gaming platform available on several new phones rather than on a single gaming handset. Gaming blog Kotaku was among the first to report on the news, which Nokia will expand upon at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco. Top mobile publishers such as EA, Glu Mobile and THQ Wireless are said to be on board, and Nokia is showcasing at least six N-Gage games, including versions of such well-known franchises as Brothers in Arms and FIFA 2008.

Nokia's press release specifically mentions that … Read more

As any avid--and increasingly, non-avid--gamer can tell you, the Nintendo Wii is harder to find than an urban square mile without a Starbucks. Up until recently, I was one of those people vainly rechecking Amazon.com and calling every Best Buy, Circuit City, and CompUSA within a 30-mile radius to see if they had any in stock. It was frustrating, of course, but not for the reasons you may think. Constantly hearing "not in stock" wasn't the problem; rather, it was annoying because the whole process took a lot of work. And this was after I thought … Read more

When public relations companies send games to reviewers, they seldom send just the game. Usually it's the game, plus some colorful tissue paper, a snow globe, a mouse pad, or something like that. That's known as "swag," which is used by marketing departments and public relations firms to help build up hype about products.

Sometimes said marketers/PR reps make strange choices.

We recently got sent Wario: Master of Disguise for the Nintendo DS. It's the usual story of Wario stealing treasures and whatnot, this time using a magic wand (read: DS stylus) that can … Read more

Nintendo can't seem to make up its mind. The company was no longer manufacturing GameCubes or developing titles for the console, according to company spokesperson Perrin Kaplan (quoted in a GameDaily interview earlier this week). That prompted a slew of teary-eyed GameCube retrospectives and obituaries. Now comes word from Nintendo's U.K. arm (as reported at Eurogamer) that the company is "still continuing production of GameCube hardware and GameCube software."

That's enough for Kotaku to declare the 'Cube as being "still alive and well," but it's missing the real story. Whether or … Read more

Wiiminder is a site that adds functionality to your Wii browser. Navigating to Wiiminder.com on your Wii provides you with multiple tabs, a search tool, an address bar, and a really neat drag and drop favorites folder that's much snappier than the one that ships with the Opera browser. Best of all, all the buttons disappear when not in use, saving precious screen real estate. There's also a tie-in with Finetune, the Internet radio service I looked at earlier this month.

Wiiminder takes care of several issues I found on my comparison of the Opera browser to the Playstation 3's. … Read more