Saturo Iwata has been speaking about Nintendo’s future at the company’s third-quarter financial results briefing for the fiscal year ending March 2009. An English-language transcript of Iwata’s address has been posted on the investor relations section of Nintendo Japan’s official site, and it’s certainly an interesting read, giving a fascinating insight into the next fiscal year for Nintendo, and the ideas of Iwata himself.

He’s refreshingly honest about the success of Wii, suggesting that prior to launch, Nintendo was “hopeful that we would make this new system the best selling hardware in the next generation” but that “if you ask me if we were able to foresee today’s situation, I am not that optimistic so I have to admit that today’s situation is exceeding even our original expectations.”

Iwata suggests the unexpected nature of Wii’s success is the reason why third-party publishers have thus far failed to take advantage of the console’s large userbase, and that explains why “some are reportedly saying that they bet on the wrong horse or that they need to change course.”

Obviously, the current global financial crisis has made things difficult for third-parties, something which Iwata recognises - hinting that companies will have to reduce the overall number of games they make, but that we will soon see the focus on Wii and DS start to bear fruit. “Overall, we recognize that our relationships with the software manufacturers are shaping up better than before. So, in the mid-term, we believe that more attractive titles will be launched by them for our platforms.”

He also speaks frankly about Wii Music’s failure to scale the heady heights - at least in sales terms - of Wii Sports, Play and Fit, admitting that it’s not necessarily for everyone, but that its comparative lack of success doesn’t mean it won’t perform well in the long run. “I agree that Wii Music, as of now, has not achieved its true potential,” Iwata concludes. “I feel that Wii Music is a software that elicits largely two extremely different reaction from consumers. There are people who highly appreciate it and those who do not appreciate it at all. Usually for other software, if there is a fair amount of people who evaluate the software positively, the appreciation level of that software becomes slightly skewed toward a positive note, but on the other hand, if a number of people evaluate it poorly, the overall reaction to the software is bad.”

Iwata goes on to compare it to Brain Training, which wasn’t initially a huge success but went on to become the DS’s most popular software. Referring once again to the oft-discussed ‘long tail’, Iwata warns “we should not have the attitude that a game does not have sales potential because the first week or first month sales were small.” In other words, expect Nintendo to continue promoting Wii Music, and perhaps trying new strategies to sell the game to those unconvinced by its qualities. DLC would help, Iwata-san. Just saying.

Also, while many are saying this is the year Wii truly goes hardcore, expect Nintendo to continue to work on games which have real breakout potential - the kind of phenomenon that brought Wii success in the first place (Wii Sports, Fit) and those which helped DS dominate the handheld market (Nintendogs, Brain Training). Wii Sports Resort we know about, but that won’t be the only one, especially with Iwata talking of the need to create a new buzz around Wii - a cycle of new buyers who experience these mainstream hits with friends and relatives and decide it’s high time they owned a Wii for themselves. A new Wii Play would undoubtedly sell the idea of MotionPlus, but Iwata’s suggestion that it’s a new phenomenon Nintendo needs suggests something completely different may be on the cards.

As far as other strategies go, it seems Iwata is very keen for Nintendo to clamber aboard the user-generated content bandwagon. Indeed, to a degree it already has, with Wii Music offering the opportunity for players to easily share songs with other Wii Music players (though I maintain it would have better viral appeal were Nintendo to allow users to share their tunes with Wii owners who don’t own the game either). Iwata talks about the growth of network gaming being one way to expand the medium, but that to a degree its competitive nature can be off-putting to novices, with the gap between skilled players and beginners widening, and preventing those curious parties from taking their interest in gaming any further.

“This is where UGC comes in,” claims Iwata. “There are some people, although they may be a minority, who love to create something creative, share that with others, and enjoy seeing other people being entertained or responding positively to their creation. At the same time, great majority of people are rather passive and love to applaud the creative efforts by others and enjoy playing with them. In other words, UGC has the unique characteristic that, regardless of their game skills, people on both sides can enjoy.”

Iwata talks about Daigasso! Band Brothers and its music composition side, suggesting up to thirty times more users are downloading user-created songs than those who are submitting them, but that “both sides are happy”. And the next big thing in UGC is a small piece of software that’s starting to become the best reason for people to upgrade from DS Lite to DSi - the free application Flip Book, which allows users to create simple animations and share them online with other DSi owners.

Interestingly, he moves on to discuss the Japanese success of Wagamama Fashion: Girls Mode, suggesting that it is likely to be a big title for Nintendo in the west this coming year - but also that overseas markets were initially reluctant to embrace the idea. As Iwata explains, “when we announce that a new Mario or Pokemon software is developed, marketers of Nintendo products all over the world naturally look forward to the launches even when they do not know the contents of the game. On the other hand, when we make a presentation to the same people about software which has had no previous track record and no name recognition, their reactions are not positive for most cases. I am not trying to offend our people in overseas marketing companies at all, and actually, their attitude is quite natural. If one is presented with two products, and the successful sales of one of them is guaranteed, and if they have to anticipate allocating a lot of resources to sell another, it is only natural that people have higher expectations for the one guaranteed to sell.”

He uses Nintendogs and Brain Training as examples of this phenomenon, and then moves on to talk about Girls Mode and Rhythm Heaven - admitting that reaction to the titles in the west was cool to say the least. But Iwata is happy with proving the ideas in Japan before selling them overseas - “we are establishing a system where we produce some tangible results in Japan first and thereby encourage overseas people to get excited in order to sell them locally, and I see no issue with this system,” adding that “overseas subsidiaries are looking forward to the launch of Girls Mode and Rhythm Heaven as strategically important products in the next fiscal year.” In other words, expect big marketing pushes for those two.

More exciting, perhaps, is the suggestion that Nintendo will be developing more titles in the west. Iwata observes that the difference between eastern and western cultures means that even a publisher as universally-loved as Nintendo has to tailor its content according to the territory. “As we strive for the expansion of gaming population worldwide, we are also thinking of developing products that cater to the American or European markets. We are actually working on U.S. and Europe-originated Touch Generations products, which may have a smaller demand in Japan than overseas. I can not tell if it will go well or not at this moment. I think one or two of these initial trials will reach the market within this year. If they actually flourish, I think our strategy will have to take the next step.” Fingers crossed.

It’s not all good news, of course. It seems we’ll be paying a premium for DSi when it finally makes the journey over from Japan. “Considering the current foreign currency exchange rates, there is no possibility of selling DSi overseas with the same price as DS Lite at all. There will have to be a difference in price. With this price difference, I think that the DS Lite and DSi will be sold side by side in the Americas and in Europe, but I will not be able to comment on their ratio today as we have not announced the prices and we will have to see how people react to the announcement.” With DS Lite still selling well in the west (as opposed to Japan, where it was starting to labour a little against the renaissance of the PSP) Nintendo will do well to provide compelling enough reasons to upgrade. The camera and its photo-manipulation tools will help. Flip Book, too. But is that enough to convince Lite owners to move on, and - as seems likely - pay upwards of £130 for the privilege? I’m not so sure. That said, I can see GAME doing well from trade-ins - allowing DS Lite owners to swap their old handheld plus a wodge of cash for a spanking new DSi.

More than anything else, this all proves that Nintendo absolutely has the right man in charge. Iwata clearly has an excellent awareness of the current market, and for someone in charge of a massive corporation, he stays well on top of things at ground level. He’s refreshingly honest about where his company has gone wrong, and has plenty of ideas on how to keep Nintendo on top, even in these trying times for the global economy. 2009 represents a very important year for Wii and DS, and if anyone can steer the good ship Nintendo through the choppy waters that are claiming all sorts of victims in the videogame industry at present, it’s Satoru Iwata.

The full document can be found here.

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On the day it was revealed that Japanese players are getting more exclusive downloadable items (life really isn’t fair sometimes), I finally managed to get to see the aurora borealis in my village, only to accidentally delete my snap of them when my finger brushed against the 1 button whilst changing the batteries in my remote. Grr.

Hence the snap above of me in my favourite haunt, The Roost. I’ve struck up quite the friendship with Brewster now, to the degree where he’s regularly offering me a splash of pigeon milk in my coffee. He’s carrying about thirty of my gyroids now, though I don’t have any full sets just yet. Talking of full sets, I’m amassing quite the collection of modern furniture, while my old-school Nintendo collection is also coming along nicely, my father-in-law sending me a ?-block through the post.

Speaking of my father-in-law, I was most perturbed to find that he received ten cards on New Year’s Day, to my pathetic one (from Moose the mouse). Proving that Animal Crossing really is a game where you get out what you put in, it’s clearly his regular visits to his villagers’ houses - once a day, every day, apparently - that made him so popular. In AC, pleasantries are always rewarded.

Having recently become slightly disillusioned with the game, City Folk is definitely sucking me back in, with its routine feeling almost soothingly repetitive rather than irritatingly so. Its numerous tiny graphical and aural tweaks start becoming more noticeable when you’re actively looking for differences as much as similarities, while being able to send letters online is a definite bonus. And the more friends you have, the more you’re going to enjoy it - visiting other villages to sell turnips on for the highest possible price is easy and allows you to make some serious bells in next to no time. And I wouldn’t have almost every type of fruit in my village - apart from cherries, if any WiiWii.tv readers can oblige - if it wasn’t for adding a few friend codes to my roster.

That, and the familiar old pleasures of giving your villagers silly greetings and changing your town tune (mine is now a fair approximation of Kings of Leon’s Use Somebody) remain. If Nintendo can get us westerners some DLC soon, then I might just stick with City Folk for a little while longer, even if I sometimes feel guilty for playing a game I’ve all but played before when I’ve so many other titles unfinished.

Ah well, The Capital Wasteland will just have to wait - I’ve got a styraco torso to find. 

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Let’s Go To The City? Let’s Not Bother, more like. I’m starting to tire of the same dialogue from the animals gathered around the fountain in the town square - even if Chow Down Meltown does sound like a good name for a bistro. And it’s a bit odd that they all change every time I exit a building - like they were all waiting for me to venture inside and then legged it so they didn’t have to speak to me on the way back. And the auction house is possibly the most pointless thing in a Nintendo game since the controls in DK Barrel Blast. Or the tracks in DK Barrel Blast. Or DK Barrel Blast in general. So far, in my four weeks of playing the game, I’ve seen one - one - item in there, which I bid on, and the stupid gyroid that runs the place still can’t tell me if I’ve won or not. And Redd’s run out of stuff until Christmas Eve, and I wanted to go in and give him a piece of my mind after he flogged me a dodgy painting. Again. Not happy.

Thankfully, things are going pretty well in Meltown - Nook has upgraded his store to the two-storey Nookington’s, and I’ve now earned enough points to get my hands on a Yoshi egg (which wriggles and yelps ‘Yoshiii!’ when you prod it). The HRA is officially in love with my house, and my new asymmetrical stripe top seems to be going down well with the locals. I’ve made two perfect snowmen so far and received two special pieces of furniture for my troubles. Oh, and I got a hat that makes me look a bit like Kapp’n. Gar!

Best of all, I’m now bezzie mates with Brewster in the museum’s coffee shop - ’pon the advice of WiiWii.tv reader Richard Schroeder (thanks, fella) I ventured in there for his finest pigeon blend for seven days in a row, and he expressed an interest in storing my gyroids for me. Rather than taking up valuable cupboard space, I can now pass them to Brewster, and can look at my collection any time. He’ll also tell me if I have any duplicates so I can sell them on to Nook. Well worth the 200 bells a day for a cup of java, methinks.

It’s little touches like this - and seeing Prince having a cuppa in the Roost the other day was another pleasant surprise - that makes your village feel more alive than ever before. But it’s disappointing to see Nintendo has left out as much as it’s put in. The GBA holiday island from the GameCube game? Nowhere to be seen. Surely it couldn’t be too much effort to allow DS owners this additional bonus. Of course, the more glaring omission is the lack of portable t-shirt creation tools - which the DS would be perfect for. Designing a top on your bus ride home and then importing it to your Wii? Makes perfect sense to me - especially given that the DS is more suitable for such a task than the GBA was. Nintendo might have had its hands bitten with the whole connectivity malarkey, but given that it allows the DS to be used as a suitcase to travel between villages, surely this isn’t too much of a stretch for the hardware?

(Incidentally, it doesn’t allow travel between villages from different regions - I transferred my items from my US copy of City Folk to travel to my father-in-law’s PAL village, and couldn’t transfer the info over. Bah.)

With DLC still yet to be announced by Nintendo - will it happen at all, or was that always just going to be a possibility rather than a reality? - it’s still arguably too early to effectively review Animal Crossing. It’s certainly got the most potential for expansion of any Wii game. Let’s just hope that Nintendo makes good on its early promises - even if it’s just a few pieces of Ikea-branded furniture or a Coke machine in the museum. The caffeine might help Blathers stay awake, after all…

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Time for the Wii list now then, and this time I’m doing things a little differently. As we’re a UK-based site, I’m only going to pick titles that were released in the PAL region this year. Meaning that a couple of games on here I actually played in 2007, but given that the Wii isn’t a region-free machine, it would be unfair for me to feature Fatal Frame IV:  Mask of the Lunar Eclipse or Captain Rainbow (particularly as I’ve only played about five minutes of the latter). Blogging about it is one thing, including it in a top ten quite another.

So here’s my list of what I think are the ten best games released in Europe during 2008. The top five will arrive tomorrow, but in the meantime, feast your eyes on the bottom-half of the ten.

10. Boom Blox 

Spielberg’s first videogame of the millennium wasn’t quite what people expected when they first heard the hirsute uber-director was venturing into this medium. Far from an effects-laden blockbuster with a syrupy climax, Boom Blox was instead a fun, addictive party game with ace controls, brilliant physics and pretty basic (albeit cute and occasionally amusing) presentation. From Jenga-like puzzles to shooting galleries, and with a genius level creator which was easy to learn and genuinely enjoyable to mess around with, suddenly Spielberg’s involvement made perfect sense - he’d once again crafted a family-friendly, almost universally-appealing piece of entertainment.

9. Zack and Wiki: Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure

Okay, it falls apart in the final couple of stages, but until then, Capcom’s cartoony puzzler seems to have brought the point-and-click genre kicking and screaming into the 21st century. The story might not be all that, but those brainteasers are bloody clever - intricate, ingenious and bizarrely logical given that they can sometimes involve a combination of objects that sounds utterly baffling out of context, but which makes perfect sense when you’re playing. Like shaking a monkey-turned-bell to turn a snake rigid so you can grab a key. It’s gorgeously presented, hugely charming, and offers a lasting challenge. Oh, and there’s some sublime use of the Wii remote in there, too.

8. Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon

 

The roguelike isn’t a genre for everyone - unapologetically hardcore, often involving repetitive dungeons and infuriating randomness, it’s one for those who think modern games are too easy. Chocobo’s Dungeon is a particularly rare beast, then - an accessible dungeon-crawler which  keeps the most important elements of the roguelike template intact, but tweaks a few things to make failure a little less punishing. While its cutesy presentation arguably makes it even more niche, it’s great to look at, and even better to listen to - with its soundtrack comprising many remixed FF themes that franchise fans will instantly recognise. And once you’re done, there’s an incredibly hard extra dungeon to keep you playing for dozens of hours longer. 

7. Trauma Center: New Blood

It took its sweet time to get here, but the sequel to Second Opinion isn’t just more of the same. Granted, some of its operations are a little familiar, while the new virus is GUILT in all but name, but the presentation is vastly improved, with fully-voiced story sequences and a host of other tweaks to make for a more refined experience. Still rock hard, obviously, but the steep difficulty curve can be more easily navigated with a second pair of hands. Yep, it’s the co-op mode that makes New Blood so great - tackling operations with an assistant by your side, passing you the tools or suturing the wounds from tumours you’ve excised is one of the most unique and entertaining local two-player experiences you can have that doesn’t involve the removal of clothes and the transferral of bodily fluids. Well, unless you count one of you taking over from pus-draining duties. Yuck.

6. de Blob

The finest game to come out of Jamaica since Rasta World Dizzy on the Spectrum*, de Blob is a bright and charming colour-em-up that sees you enlivening worlds by bounding around them and splatting gobs of primary-coloured paint all over the place. It’s a particular breath of fresh air if you’ve been playing grey and brown shooters for weeks on end, and it’s so jolly that you can’t help but feel uplifted by the whole thing.  With excellent controls, a surprisingly efficient camera, and a characterful art style, de Blob is one of the best and most original third-party games on Wii. Naturally, as is the way of things these days when it comes to engaging, unique third-party games published without the benefit of huge marketing spends, it sold pretty poorly. Rectify this now, you fools!

*This may not be entirely true.

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Finally! Snow has fallen in Meltown, and it means those dig spots are much easier to locate - the grey-brown of the ground not showing those telltale cracks nearly as well as a layer of pure white. With precipitation comes gyroids, and so I’ve only dug up a few fossils over the last few days, but my cabin wardrobe is bulging with squat dingloids and mega lamentoids and such. I’m keeping them for when I’ve got a basement, but if I keep spending my money on daft hats from Mabel and Sable’s tailors - latest additions: a mandarin hat and a cat mask - then I’m not going to pay my second mortgage back any time soon.

I’ve also managed to venture to another village, as the picture above shows. This is my father-in-law and me wandering around his town, swapping fashion tips and fruit - his town’s standard is apples, while my pears will no doubt come in handy in his orchards. We didn’t experience any real lag or problems during my admittedly fairly short stay, and the text and Wii Speak chat seems fairly robust. It’s also nice to give Booker and Copper something to do - standing by those gates all day must get fairly boring if your villagers are otaku like me.

It’s not just new threads I’ve been picking up from Mabel and Sable, instead designing a t-shirt of my own. It’s quite a simple one, which just involved me pressing a load of different coloured stars onto a black background, but I’ve already spotted Moose sporting my design, so hopefully it’ll catch on. It might be just my imagination, but the animal interaction somehow seems slightly different from previous Crossings - I’ve noticed plenty of chats between other villagers, while gossip is often offered when I strike up a conversation. I am slightly concerned that Prince wants to talk to my wife about “fashion flair” though. And he’s very exacting about my telling her so - suggesting that he won’t listen unless she puts it just like that.

Wendell visited once more, offering another corner piece of a pattern which might yet look good on an umbrella or hat. And I encountered Pascal for the first time - an otter who swapped me a piece of pirate furniture for the scallop in my pocket. Sure, a keg might not go particularly well with my current room layout, but then I bet it’s worth a fair few Bells at Nook’s.

Three weeks into new Crossing, then, and I’m as hooked as I was on the GameCube game, despite it being very similar indeed - the new additions are enough to make it feel different, the additions are pretty much all welcome ones, and while I do miss my secret island hideaway (surely DLC could solve this problem) and the NES games, it seems like the most refined Crosso yet. I’ll give this diary another week or so, and then I think it’ll be review time.

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It’s December, and while Tom Nook’s getting all festive, getting flags, candles and a whopping big tree in stock (all of which are now taking pride of place in my newly-expanded house), I’ve not actually had any snow as yet. This is in contrast to my father-in-law’s game, as it’s been falling in his village for three days solid now. I feel cheated.

Yet everything else is fairly hunky dory. Well, apart from Goldie locking herself out of her house (she’d dropped her key in the river and I had to fish it out) and Harry the hippo upping sticks for another village - and yet to be replaced - all is well. The animals seem to be getting on, I’ve had two paintings in a row from Crazy Redd’s place in the city that weren’t counterfeit, and I’m currently rocking a grandpa hat and tuxedo look which is both exceedingly cool and incredibly cute.

There’s still room for improvement though - I managed to lose all my possessions thanks to a problem with my DS suitcase. When attempting to visit my father-in-law’s town, I downloaded my details to my DS and when I attempted to transfer the info over, his PAL Wii was having none of it. So it seems that while you can communicate between Wiis of different regions, DSes are another matter. Indeed, my dad-in-law had been playing the DS game for three years, and had a pretty full catalogue. Sadly, his was an imported Wild World, and his PAL Let’s Go To The City didn’t recognise the saved info. Shame.

It’s clear from week two that Crosso has been improved in a number of subtle ways - like animals asking you to talk to other villagers about certain topics (Nan told me she wanted to chat to my wife about “wall designs”) and the interactions with creatures in the city who chat about the villages of people on your friends list. Whether we’ll see any further improvements by way of DLC any time soon I’m not sure. But wouldn’t it be nice if Nintendo gave us all a special downloadable Christmas present?  

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Regular readers of this blog will know just how enamoured I am with Wii Music. But that’s not to say that Miyamoto’s latest is without its flaws. On the contrary, there are some glaring issues which will almost certainly prevent it lasting as long on my current playlist as I’d like. What’s interesting is that most of these problems could be quite easily rectified, as you’ll see if you read on. So here are the five things I’d change about Wii Music, to not only make it a better game, but to substantially increase its longevity.

5. Overdub Omission

A bizarre one, this. Let’s say, for example, you’ve just finished the final part of a tune, but you want to listen to the song again before deciding whether it’s how you want it, or you’d like to remove one instrument which sounds out of place. Returning to the instrument selection screen, you finally get things sounding perfect and then you want to save your tune. Only problem is: you can’t. You’ll have to go through and overdub one of the instrument parts you’ve already recorded - either that or choose an instrument and then remain silent for the whole song before saving your music video once it’s over. Surely there should be an option to save without having to complete the final part of a song and then save. A patch to fix this wouldn’t be too much effort, I’m certain.

4. Handbell Hell

The Handbell ringing and orchestra-conducting minigames are hugely enjoyable - if lightweight - diversions that undoubtedly add to the fun of Wii Music. So why do we only get a choice of five songs in each? Opening these games up to cover a wider selection of music - if not the entire tracklist - would certainly make them more worth revisiting. But no - once you’re done there’s only high scores to aim for. Handbell remains entertaining every now and again if you’ve got friends round, but there’s little to keep the solo player returning once he or she has mastered each tune.

3. WiiTube

As you can see from the video above (and indeed the many similar ones featured on the site) YouTube is full of Wii Music owners videoing their performances to share with the world. It’s one thing to be able to swap tunes with Wii pals, quite another to be able to demonstrate to a potential audience of millions what Wii Music is capable of. It’s a tremendous advert for the game, so why can’t we just save YouTube-compatible vids for easy uploading rather than having to set up our video cameras for shaky and/or poor-quality footage of our best work? Games like Skate have proved it’s possible to do, and Nintendo would be wise to add a similar feature.

2. Battle of the bands

Mario Kart Wii has undoubtedly benefitted from regular online challenges and even the Check Mii Out channel offers competitions to inspire Wii owners to get creative. An excellent way to extend Wii Music’s lifespan would be to set regular monthly tasks - like performing the Animal Crossing theme in a jazz style, or tackling Material Girl only using wind instruments. There could be prizes on offer for the best examples, and the songs would be available for Wii Music owners to download and watch as further inspiration. Makes sense, no?

1. D.L.C.

Above all, Wii Music would be a much better and longer-lasting game if it offered regular downloadable content. I’m not asking for much - a new song or two every now and again to spark players’ imaginations into gear, the odd new instrument to master, perhaps even a new set of Jam Mastery lessons teaching you a whole new style, or the option to use the balance board for percussion instruments outside the special drumming mode. While fifty songs and sixty instruments sounds like a lot, there are bound to be tunes which people don’t want to bother with, and some of the novelty music-makers won’t be touched by those who take their Wii Music a little too seriously to bother with dog and cat noises. Given that Guitar Hero World Tour offers the opportunity to download tracks to an SD card, it’s not as if the lack of memory space would be a serious issue. At least think about it, eh, Nintendo?  

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Things in the delightful village of Meltown are going pretty well. I have ten villagers, I’ve upgraded my initially-tiny house and Tom Nook has had enough of my money to build a new store - Nook ‘N’ Go having replaced Nook’s Cranny. I’m collecting mushrooms on a daily basis, and occasionally finding the odd piece of furniture when I bend down to pull up certain fungi. That, and I just gave excitable pink rabbit Chrissy a migratory locust and she now thinks that I ‘totally rock’. Life is good.

Or is it? Because all is not well in Meltown. Just yesterday we had the Harvest Festival, with mayor Tortimer expecting the arrival of a turkey. Trouble was, said bird was still alive and well and hiding behind a tree close to the museum. Franklin - for that was his name - informed me that he was to be roasted and eaten, and proceeded to request I give him my knife and fork, which Tortimer had passed to me so I could ready myself for the feast. I did get a nice piece of special Harvest furniture for my troubles, and so decided to repeat the process until I got the full set, taking knives and forks for the other villagers until poor old Tortimer got so confused he couldn’t remember whether he’d given me any or not. After about the twentieth hunt round the village to find Franklin, I gave up hoping to get a Harvest carpet as he handed over a Harvest bureau for the third time. So I’m one rug short of a full set. Here’s hoping I can trade with someone who was lucky enough to get said carpet. In the meantime, I’m stuck with this lunar floor (above) which I obtained from travelling camel Saharah, who swapped three old carpets gleaned from my animal neighbours for an exclusive design. Nice, but it doesn’t exactly tie the room together…

And that’s not the only trouble. While I’m quite a fan of froggy pal Prince, other characters have been making complaints to me, with ordinarily pleasant dog chum Goldie admitting she struggles to find any good in him. Blimey. As I’m now able to inform Pelly at the town hall whether any animals are causing trouble, I’m reluctant to snitch on my pal - even if he does rub a few people up the wrong way.

Still, with plenty of bells in the bank, and a funky tuxedo from GracieGrace wowing all and sundry, things look fairly rosy. Let’s just hope there’s something more special in store for next week, as this one has induced quite a strong feeling of deja vu. City area aside, there’s just not enough new stuff here to suggest I’ll last as long in Meltown as I did in its GameCube equivalent a few years back.

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If you’re anything like me, you’ll have put the remote and nunchuk down as the credits rolled on Super Mario Galaxy and wondered: how on Earth is Nintendo going to top that? Well, over the weekend, I’ve been thinking about an idea which could be the next step for Mario, and a giant leap for Nintendo towards appeasing those who’ve recently felt neglected by its increasing focus on casual gamers.

Welcome, dear friends, to Super Mario Universe. Hit the jump for more… Read the rest of this entry »

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Of all the consoles currently available, the DS in particular has a thriving import scene. Why? Well, because the DS itself is region-free, so it can play carts from any country, plus unlike Sony, Nintendo hasn’t imposed any restrictions on retailers flogging games to overseas players.

There’s also the simple fact that a great many games never make it to Western shores. Sometimes, it’s because their inherent Japanese-ness would be a turn off to most, while others are too niche for publishers to take a chance on localising. If you’re a DS owner and you’ve never imported, then you really don’t know how much you’re missing out on. With US releases commonly appearing months before their PAL counterparts - and usually for a lower price - there’s no reason why you shouldn’t.

For this feature, I’m focussing my attention not on the games which may reach PAL shores but haven’t quite yet, but the games which will never see the light of day outside the land of the rising sun. So hit the jump for the Top 5 Japanese Imports on DS.

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