Guessing time! ft. Nintendo Switch Presentation 2017

 

*checks his last post’s date*

Uh, so many months since my last article on this blog, wow. And so much stuff happened in the past few months, including…NX’s formal announcement, finally. Ops, sorry, I meant the Nintendo Switch’s formal announcement. An unusual kind of announcement, especially compared to what most people expected, form-wise: not a Direct of sorts, but a 3:30 video that teases the most relevant features of the device, some games, official name and logo, and then goodbye to January 12th / 13th (depending on your timezone) for everything else. And now, it’s just slightly more than two weeks before the day: that’s when we’ll see if the great and attractive package shown this October delivers and it crushes everything and shines more than the Sun and manly tears are shed for the awesome, or if it fails and crushes and brings Nintendo to their bottom and people will cry sad tears and-what’s going on with the hyperboles?

Seriously though, it’s going to be a major step in Switch’s life, and many people (me included, I’ll be honest here) hope the event will be good in several ways. So, I thought this is a good time to write about some games I’m expecting and / or hoping to see appear on stage or just getting announced. It should be fun to look back, after the Presentation, to see how much stuff I got right (or wrong. Mostly wrong, I’m sure).

E3 2016 ft. The Best and the Worst | Part 2

Aaaaand here we go. Several weeks ago, I talked about what I thought were the Best things coming out of this year’s E3, while promising a follow-up article on the opposite side of the spectrum, and (while very, veeeeeeery late, especially compared to my initial plans) this is it. In case you missed the former article, you can find about it here

https://theflyingthoughts.com/2016/06/23/e3-2016-ft-the-best-and-the-worst-part-1/

In any case, I remind this is not a ranking, but just a list featuring the stuff that surprised me the most (negatively, in this particular case); it’ll be clear how some items of this list would place in an imaginary ranking between each other, though.

This introduction sounds good enough to me; time start to dive into the second part of this feature (so ironic to say “time to” for such a long-delayed article, and after so much time passed since E3 ended, but they say auto-irony is a quality, after all…right?).

New rewards for MyNintendo worldwide

It’s update time again for Nintendo’s recently-established loyalty service, MyNintendo. As a matter of fact, several rewards are expiring today, July 1st (some at 08:00 AM GMT, others at 09:00 AM GMT), which means new rewards are starting to appear everywhere. If you have Golden and Platinum coins ready to be excahnged for goods and services (woo-hoo!), time to see what’s new, then.

E3 2016 ft. The Best and the Worst | Part 1

And another E3 came and went, quickly but still eventful enough.  It’s true, Nintendo did not show NX and had just one single game available to play on the floor, while EA made its own event, slightly outside E3, and several companies didn’t even have booths this year (including major players like Activision), but there’s still quite a lot of things to talk about, between game announcements, the conferences themselves, the cringe moments, the meltdowns…aah, that time of the year after all.

So, as a way to try to sum up what this E3 left to me, I’ve decided to make a list of the best at the show and one for the worst. These lists will include both games and extra-gaming stuff, like funny and awkward moments, specific elements of announcements. No, those won’t be rankings (even if it’ll be clear how some picking would’ve been higher than other in an hypotetical chart), but just collections of the things that surprised me the most, in both ways, as a mere viewer of a show that, when you really think about it, is a huge marketing monstrosity made of cringeness and (both intentionally and unintentionally) funny moments, with episodes of humanity here and there. Not the right time for this, though; let’s just enjoy (or despise) the best and the worst from this year’s E3, starting with the former in this piece.

 

New slogan for Nintendo of America?

If you followed social and retail activities from Nintendo of America recently, you have encountered a new colour / image motif from them: instead of the corporate grey logo on white background, white logo on red background. You can see it on every Nintendo Youtube’s video preview, as their new avatar on Twitter (the color scheme is used by Nintendo NY’s Twitter account too). Also, they renewed their retail presence back in the end of last year with the same motif and artworks of several Nintendo characters: two examples on the matter

Also, just see the already well-documented and not-praised-enough logo for MyNintendo, which is actually global compared to all the aforementioned initiatives, NA only for now.

Thanks to the recent 2DS price-cut commercial, it seems there’s a new element of this new advertising policy.

PSX memories ft. Crash 2 & 3. Or vs? Part 1

Ah, the first PlayStation, a console that I remember quite fondly. I was a child back then, and while I liked videogames, I still have way too many great if not amazing titles from that era I should’ve played (and that I should still play), but I’ve yet to even just try. Anyway, I have a good amount of gaming memories related to that console, like the first game I’ve ever played, Porsche Challenge. I still remember how I tried to steer in the game the first time I played it by actually steering the contoller. Ah, that Wii foreshadowing, if only I knew…

Seriously, though, I played several games on PSX, and, I have to be honest, there’s a series I’ve fell in love with back when it appeared on the first PlayStation, and it’s sad to see it now disappeared from Earth (…even if maybe not for long?!?): Crash Bandicoot “original” series.

MAJOR WARNING: This is a 4,000+ blog post, containing spoilers about both games. In case you haven’t played these games yet, avoid the rest of it. For all the others, see you all after the jump.

Culdecpt Revolt dedicated Direct announced

Nintendo and Omiya Soft have been developing the next installment in the Culdcept series, Culdcept Revolt, for quite some time. This represents the first actual brand new episode in 12 years. A few months ago, Nintendo announced it would have been released in July in Japan (no, don’t even ask for the West, that way you won’t be disappointed when it’s not announced for its release here), and it seems time for more infos on the game is coming soon

Humble Friends of Nintendo: the new titles

The most recent Nintendo-themed Humble Bundle, called Humble Friends of Nintendo Bundle has been a good performer so far: in just a week, it accumulated well over 100,000 bundles sold and over $1,000,000 of payments, with a very high average, over $9.70. The result has been surely helped by the good and great titles featured so far, like Affordable Space Adventure and Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse (and these are the ones available just by donating one single dollar. An insanely sick deal, honestly), or Darksiders II and Freedom Planet. But it’s now time to discover what’s getting added for all the people who pledged better than the average

New rewards for MyNintendo in NA and EU

Today is May 1st, which means that there are some new deals now available for all the people who created a Nintendo account and connected it to MyNintendo. At the time I’m writing this article, the new rewards are available only in North America and Europe, this article will get updated once rewards appear in Japan as well. Are you ready to see the new possibilities to spend some Platinum / Gold coins…or to not spend them if you’re not interested in the new proposals?

Nintendo FY2016 Earnings Results: the madness

A few hours ago, Nintendo announced their results for the just-ended FY 2016 (from April 1st, 2015 to March 31st, 2016), and outlined some of their plans for the upcoming Fiscal Year and OH GOD WHAT HAPPENED. Yeah, I’ll have to admit, most of the news I’ve read left me surprised, a bit baffled, and shocked. Now that a few hours have passed, and reactionary feelings have cooled off a bit, here’s my take on what has been already stated, before tomorrow’s Investor Meeting. A long introduction is not necessary this time, so I’d say to get right into the

No, not that. Already enough on the web today, seriously.