Club Nintendo is a part of the Nintendo website that gives prizes out for registering your games and consoles. You do have to complete relatively short surveys that take no more than a minute or two to fill up. Most of the games share the exact same survey that are mainly, “where did you hear about this game?” questions. Once fill out one, you don’t even need to bother reading the others, just tick away! There are draws, “purchases”, and of course the elite status giveaway for the prizes, and who doesn’t love free stuff?
Keep in mind that this year is coming to an end. This doesn’t really affect your purchases, but if you want to get ahold of the elite status prizes, you need to get 300 or 600 points by JUNE 30TH, 2009!
The DSi reviews are finally rolling out. I’ve been waiting to try out several carts at once before actually reviewing and scoring them so that I’d get a better look at what was available, so I had to delay some of the reviews quite a bit, and actually work on these simultaneously. Anyways, today marks the first of the DSi reviews, and over the next few days I will finish up the AceKard 2i review as well as the iTouch2 review. So keep your eyes peeled!
While I was typing away the Nintendo E3 2009 Summary, I was also watching the Sony conference. Rather interesting actually, it had quite a slow start (asides from the PSP Go if you thought that was exciting, or maybe the purple Hannah Montana PSP), but it quickly got exciting near the end with a bunch of nice announcements. Honestly though, I though Sony wouldn’t have anything to say today since everything seemed to have leaked out, but I was pleasantly surprised.
Again, to save you all from catching a rerun of the two-hour conference, here’s a condensed (somewhat) version of what happened, skipping all the stats and all of the boring talk:
Playstation Motion Controller - PS3 Hardware - Spring 2010 - Exclusive, NEWLY ANNOUNCED (leaked)
- So this prototype was just a black stick with buttons and a ball at the tip that could change colors. It seems to work with an eyetoy to capture movements that are apparently accurate to the millimeter. The tech demo was an actual demo, no trailer with happy families, instead a room filled with things like bats, rackets, swords, etc. The demo was really impressive, it is clearly 1:1 response. They showed how it would work for drawing, fighting, FPS, RTS, etc. It seems to be what people should have expected from the original Wii Remote.
Final Fantasy XIV Online - PS3 - 2010 - Exclusive, NEWLY ANNOUNCED
- Shocking to see yet another Final Fantasy game, seems to be an MMO this time. That’s right, this is 13, but 14 (for those of you who can’t read roman numerals). Nothing more than an impressive trailer, but this one WILL be EXCLUSIVE to the PS3. So much for Microsoft fans thinking they won everything with the Final Fantasy XIII takeover.
I’ll be honest, I missed the mark today, and slept through it. So I’ve just been reading up the live blogs and watching the videos from Youtube here. Anyways, again, this is to save you guys a bit of trouble:
Metroid - The Other M - Wii - 2010 - Exclusive, NEWLY ANNOUNCED
- 3D, absolutely beautiful! Watch the trailer…
Golden Sun DS - DS - To Be Announced - Exclusive, NEWLY ANNOUNCED
- Obviously one of the largest announcement in the show for any RPG fans. The Golden Sun series on the GBA have been called the best RPG games ever made time and time again, and people have been wishing for a Golden Sun DS since the DS came out. I can’t wait, I think the trailer says everything already.
Today, actually about 6 hours ago, Microsoft’s E3 press conference was streamed live in various webpages. It lasted around an hour and a half, and you could probably catch a YouTube video later on or perhaps somewhere else with the entire conference recorded, but you guys probably have better things to do than to watch all of it. Plenty of it is just boring or stuff we already knew.
Unfortunately I don’t have the time or money or even the desire to go to the E3, so I was just sitting here watching the conference. The things I do for you guys. And here is a quick summary of all the stuff I thought was worthwhile to note, and a bit of what I think of some of the more major points. Note, I’m posting in order of what I thought would have interested me and viewers, but some of them were really hard to place, so don’t flame me because I didn’t put Final Fantasy XIII at the top.
Project Natal - Development Kits Arriving Today - Hardware, Exclusive, NEWLY ANNOUNCED
- Easily the most shocking announcement for the press conference, Project Natal is the rumored Xbox Fluid. Basically it is a camera (+ microphone) that is able to record your movements. It isn’t an Eyetoy, it seems that it is capable of capturing 3D movements, facial recognition, full voice recognition, etc.
- Advertised as a no controller method of sensing your movements, the videos showed everything from fighting to skateboarding. Obviously you can talk to people with the camera as a chat service, but it also was used in menus (sliding with your arms or telling it to turn on), and gaming.
- Cool stuff was the ability to scan your own skateboard into the game and let it customize the in-game board to match the one you have in real life.
- Works on all old XBOX and all future XBOX (does this include the original XBOX and the next generation?)
- As cool as it is, I’m worried about the fact that it is release now. There’s no way this will come bundled into all future games and unlikely with consoles without raising the price significantly. The development kits are just arriving at places now, so there are no games at the moment, and isn’t this coming in a little late in the XBOX 360’s life? Only time will tell I guess.
Anyways, again, this is to save you guys a bit of trouble: