Nintendo

The Total Sales for Pokémon Are Staggering 

This year marks Pokémon’s 20th anniversary. Starting in 1996, when Pokémon Red and Blue launched in Japan, the world has purchased millions of Pokémon games and its spin-offs. Over 279 million, that is. Think about that number for a moment. Dual releases aside, it’s incredible. According to Famitsu, that’s the latest global sales figure for…

A Beautiful, Animated Tribute To Satoru Iwata

There are lots of awards and drinks and congratulations going on at the Game Developers Choice Awards tonight, but proceedings were stopped dead in their tracks for a few minutes during a most touching tribute tolate Nintendo President Satoru Iwata It was made by Raber Umphenour,Shawne Benson and Braid artist David Hellman, with some help…

Nintendo Just Made A Maddening Change To Mario Maker‘s P-Switch

When Nintendo updated Super Mario Maker last week, it secretly tweaked the way P-Switches work in the game. It’s causing headaches for everyone. Traditionally, the P-Switch is used to swap solid blocks into coins and vice versa. But more complicated stages have found uses familiar to anyone who’s ventured into kaizo-style levels or the expert…

Terra and co. entering the coal mining town of Narshe for the first time. Orioto’s fan-art captures the moment from Final Fantasy VI’s intro perfectly and brings back some good memories. Dayshot is an image-based feature showcasing some of the prettiest, funniest game-related screenshots and art we can find. Send us suggestions if you’ve got…

Nintendo Still Won’t Explain Why They’re Deleting People’s Mario Maker Levels

Nintendo is still deleting levels from Super Mario Maker’s online community for mysterious reasons. The latest victim? Mario’s youngest fans, apparently. BakeToRise, a Mario Maker creator and father of a designer-in-training daughter, posted a distressing story on reddit today. His daughter spent three hours putting together a level called Maria Cake Yoshi. After receiving a…

Mario And Luigi At The 2016 Kids’ Choice Awards

Nintendo’s favorite son and his brother or whatever took the stage at last night’s Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards, followed by a live-action Super Mario Bros. bit featuring that Goodburger guy. Mario was as animated as ever. Luigi sounded a bit tired. Together they passed it on over to Kel Mitchell, who is essentially the Luigi…

Magikarp’s Stage On The Pokémon Fighting Game Is Pure Fire

Magikarp isn’t a fighter in Pokkén Tournament, but damn if it’s not stealing the show anyway. So, there’s a stage in the Pokémon fighting game called “Magikarp Festival,” which you can see below in GameXplain’s video. You’ll note that the stage takes place on a fishing boat, and you can see Magikarp floppin’ about everywhere.…

Nintendo announced that Miitomo, its upcoming smartphone app, will be released in Japan on March 17 (the exact time is TBA). The last day to pre-register is March 16. For those in Japan, there’s still time!

Baseball Team Turning Players Into Walking Game Boys

These days most professional sports teams, regardless of where they are in the world, tend to dabble in limited/variant jerseys. But few go as nuts for the ideas as minor-league American teams. I’ve posted about the weird union between video games and sports jerseys before, but most of those cases were relatively straight-up commercial agreements.…

A Brief Update on Zelda Wii U

The last we heard the Zelda Wii U was delayed, which is something Nintendo always does. Wondering how things are going? In the most recent issue of Famitsu, series producer Eiji Aonuma was asked just that. “Busy,” he replied. Continuing, he said, “When we did Skyward Sword for the Wii, at the end stages of…

A Ten-Minute Tour Of Pokkén Tournament Wii U

The Wii U version of Namco Bandai’s Pokémon fighting game has landed at Kotaku, along with strict time constraints on how much video we can share. So here’s quick look at training, fighting, customization and Amiibo unlocks of Pokkén Tournament. Before review day arrives we are able to share 30 minutes of direct feed (non-streamed)…

First Details on Nintendo’s Universal Studios Collaboration

As Kotaku reported last year, Nintendo is coming to Universal Studios Japan. Today, the first details—namely, how large the Nintendo area will be, how much will be spent, and when it should be completed—have been made public. According to Sankei News, forty billion yen (US$351 million) is being invested in this project with the deal…

The Ugly New Front In The Neverending Video Game Culture War

Gaming’s culture war hasn’t ended. It’s still roiling, with new fights, new targets, new depths of ugliness, but also many of the same tactics. If you’ve witnessed this kind of “Chanterculture”/GamerGate drama before, you know the playbook: discredit, harass, shame, isolate, maybe find a skeleton in a person’s closet that calls their reputation into question.…

Nintendo Is Leaking Like Crazy

In 2013, when I visited Nintendo’s Redmond HQ for a feature on the company’s Treehouse localization team, staffers there opined that secrecy was essential to their operations. “We’re keeping things confidential until we’re ready to share them with the world,” Treehouse manager Leslie Swan told me then. “We work really closely with the development teams…

Google Maps Has A Legend of Zelda Easter Egg Today

You know what they say, it’s dangerous to go alone. If you load up Google Maps today, there’s actually a cool little easter egg waiting for you on the bottom right corner: See that Link icon? It lets you toggle Street View images. If you click it and browse in Street View, you’ll then see…

Goofy Nintendo Execs Are the Best

Meet Satoru Shibata. He’s the President of Nintendo Europe. Honestly, I don’t know if he’s good at the business, but I do know that he’s good at the Yo-Kai Watch dance. Very good. From the most recent Nintendo Direct for UK/Europe: Always nice to see execs in suits willing to have fun and not afraid…

New Metroid Prime Federation Force Trailer Rapidly Down-voted On YouTube

“At E3, there was one game we introduced that left fans with some questions,” Nintendo’s Bill Trinen said today in a Nintendo Direct, which was basically an indirect way of acknowledging the backlash to the multiplayer-centric shooter that the company unveiled last June. Fans still seem upset about it. Seconds after the game’s new trailer…

Nintendo’s SNES-Themed 3DS Is Just Beautiful

This was announced as part of Japan’s Nintendo Direct this evening. It’s a New 3DS XL that shares the colour scheme/design elements of the timeless Japanese/PAL Super Nintendo America, because your Super Nintendo was purple and gross and sucked, you’ll likely never get this. But with a slight change of wording on the back, maybe…

New 3DS Game Lets You Play As Kirby In A Mech Suit

Kirby: Planet Robobot is a new Kirby game for the 3DS. You’ve got a Kirby mech that you upgrade, and there’s also a four-player co-op mode. In addition to the new game, there’ll also be a Kirby line of Amiibo, which you can check out below.

Super Mario World and Other SNES Games Coming To New 3DS

Good news, Virtual Console fans. Starting on March 3rd, a slew of Super Nintendo games will be hitting the new 3DS. Here’s the line-up. March 3rd: Pilotwings, Super Mario World, F-Zero. March 24th: Super Mario Kart, Earthbound, Donkey Kong Country. April 14th: A Link To The Past, Super Metroid, Donkey Kong Country 2. It’s kind…