Nintendo is rolling out its E3 2009 line at noon today. Yes videogames have come up in the world of entertainment, dominating movie and music. Nintendo promises a new leap forward in game control and several new Mario adventures to go with. The Nintendo team is adding more hard core game s to it’s line-up including some developed in house. Keep up with all latest here.
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Nintendo and Starlight Starbright Children’s Foundation plan to place hundreds of Fun Centers featuring the Wii in hospitals across the United States and Canada this year. Nintendo is currently assembling 1,250 new Fun Centers. Starlight plans to have 500 installed in hospitals by the end of the year.

To help mark the introduction of the new Fun Centers, two units, donated by Nintendo, will be presented to Childrens Hospital Los Angeles at a special Super Mario Galaxy-themed launch event on June 25. Child star Allen Alvarado, of Discovery Kids’ Flight 29 Down, and video game icon Mario™ will be in attendance. Allen has had personal experience with Fun Centers, which kept him company and aided in his recovery when he was hospitalized for several weeks at Childrens Hospital after an automobile accident last fall.

Nintendo and Starlight have placed more than 5,000 Gamecube Fun Centers in more than 1,000 hospitals since the beginning of their partnership. Gamers who want to aid Starlight in its crusade to help seriously ill children can find out how on the organization’s website, courtesy of William Shatner.

People who want to help support the mission of Nintendo and Starlight Starbright Children’s Foundation can visit Starlight’s Site of a Million Stars at www.millionstars.org. Click on Mario’s star to place a star in Nintendo of America’s Galaxy. Starlight’s goal is to unite 1 million caring people and organizations to bring seriously ill children and their families out of the dark. Placing a star in Nintendo of America’s Galaxy is free and includes space for a message about the nature of your support and a link to your favorite Web site. You can also choose to add special features to your star or upgrade to a constellation for a tax-deductible donation of $5 to $100.

via Press Release

There have been the highs (Conker’s Bad Fur Day) and the lows (Perfect Dark Zero) for developer Rare. Going from what was essentially a second-party position to a Microsoft-owned developer, the company has gone through some dramatic changes, and yet with the announcement of a Viva Pinata sequel and a third game in the Banjo series, we find ourselves in familiar but somehow new territory.

1UP recently spoke with Rare’s Gregg Mayles about how Rare has always set itself apart from the rest of the game development world, where the inspiration for Banjo’s new game mechanic came from, and how things have changed between being Microsoft owned and developing for a single system rather than dragging games through several generations. (See: Perfect Dark and Kameo)

So for Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, did the idea of making your own vehicles, which is a central game mechanic, evolve from coming up with new things to do with Banjo? Or was that a separate idea that made you think, “Hey, this works for Banjo“?

It came from a separate idea. It came from a very simple idea of wanting to combine pieces with different abilities. The beauty of the concept was [that] the player could combine those pieces in any order they wanted to, and at the end of it, whatever they created, you’d put into the game. It would just work. The player wouldn’t need to calculate very complicated processes; the software would do that. And no matter what you built, the size, the weight, the shape, you’d be able to put it in the game, and it would just work. But until Xbox 360, we’d never had a piece of hardware that’s been capable of doing that. So that’s where the idea in its infancy came from. It’s been around for a while, and at the same time, we were considering doing a new Banjo game but didn’t want to just do what we’d done previously.

The platform-game genre…has probably not had a lot of games in it recently. Obviously, Super Mario Galaxy has come out and it’s very nice, but it’s quite traditional in its approach, and apart from that, there probably aren’t too many major releases in that genre. So we thought, ‘If we’re going to reenter that genre, we need to do something that’s going to make people look twice at it,’ rather than just dismissing it as, ‘It’s Rare, there’s going to be millions of things to collect, and everything’ll have googly eyes.’ We had to do something different, so we wanted to take a different approach to platform games.

We looked at how traditional games have approached that — the designers create the abilities, we give them to the player, and the player can only use the abilities as we’ve defined. So we thought, “Can we approach that from a different direction, where the players actually get to define their own abilities so they can choose how they want to complete whatever task they’ve been set?” And then, suddenly, we had this concept sitting here, this idea of approaching platform games from a different direction, and then we brought the two together. The result is the new Banjo game.

For the full interview, head over to 1UP.

Every year Time magazine lists the top 100 most influential people in the world, and this year Shigeru Miyamoto is one of the finalists. While I was pleased to see him listed when I opened my copy yesterday, I was not surprised. The creator of Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda,Super Mario Galaxy, Wii Fit, etc is definitely one of the most influential people in my book, and if you would like to see him listed go here and vote for him now.

So far, Rain (Korean pop star), Stephen Colbert, Stephenie Meyer, Jon Stewart, and Roger Federer are the top five.

Get on over there and vote for Miyamoto, you know you want to!

A common point made by those who dislike the Wii is that its library is filled with garbage. Which, to be honest – it is. There are a number of great games, but for every Mario Galaxy there are countless copies of Bass Fishing, Ninja Reflex, and Asterix at Olympic Games. If I were asked to provide some of the negatives of the system, it’s probably a point I would even make. You don’t hear people defending shovelware everyday.

So that’s why Chris Kohler’s editorial over at Game|Life is particularly interesting. He contends that, not only is shovelware not a bad thing, but that it might prove to be a good thing.

And if third parties are too scared of failure to do anything without somebody first lighting the way, what does it mean for us that companies like Bold have proved that there is a market for inexpensive Wii games that are light on features? Surely Capcom could come up with some $20 game concepts. Or Electronic Arts.

And why do we think that consumers can’t figure it out? Why do videogames have to be the one product for which we believe they need to have their hands held? I loved He-Man as a kid. There were all kinds of crappy knock-off action figures in the cereal aisle at the supermarket for $1. Did anybody buy them for me? No. They knew what the real deal was and paid more for it.

Read the full article over at Game|Life.

The concept of a TV Guide channel on Wii seems rather impractical; unless you want to check out what time Reno 911! is starting after finishing up a session of Super Mario Galaxy, it doesn’t make much sense to use the Wii as a TV Guide. But there’s whole lot more to it, and it’s got both me and the Wii Fanboy guys jealous of our friends in Japan.

In addition to what you’d expect from a TV Guide, users are apparently able to rate shows, as well as share them with friends and mark shows off so that you can receive alerts via text message or email a half hour before the show begins. Not only that, but the Wiimote can be used as a universal remote so that you can change channels, tweak the volume, and move between the TV Guide and the actual television.

I downplayed the announcement back in early November, but I must say that I really wish we’d get this channel over here in the States. I’m literally buried in remote as it stands, so being able to take one or two out of the equation would be heavenly.

image via Wii Fanboy

I don’t know what to say about this image other than the fact that it’s certainly the most epic thing I have seen all weekend. Combining my love of Star Wars with a great game is one way to make me smile.  Mario seems to make a pretty good Luke Skywalker.  Perhaps Nintendo needs to get with LucasArts and run with this idea.

Mario is Luke Skywalker. Luigi is Darth Vader. Kirby is the Death Star. Link is Han Solo. Peach is Princess Leia. Donkey Kong is Chewbacca. Samus is C3PO. R.O.B. the Robot is R2D2. The Virtual Boys are a fleet or Tie Fighters. Pit is Boba Fett…

Via Geekster

Nintendo was honored last night at GDC 2008 with a Game Developers Choice Award. The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for Nintendo DS won the Best Handheld Game of the Year category. The game Developers Choice awards were presented during an annual ceremony the night of Feb. 20, 2008, at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.

Nintendo received three nominations this year; Best Game Design and Best Game of the Year for Super Mario Galaxy as well as Best Handheld Game of the Year for The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.

via Press Release

Much unlike the hardware NPDs for January, the software numbers aren’t at all surprising. While seeing Call of Duty 4 continue to rock the charts at #1 for the third straight month, with the PlayStation 3 version also making an appearance at #8. Other than that, it was a pretty standard month – Wii Play sold lots, as did Guitar Hero III and Rock Band, and of course a Mario trifecta of Mario Galaxy, Mario Party, and Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games.

January 2008 Software Sales

1. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Xbox 360) – 330,900
2. Wii Play w/ Remote (Wii) – 298,100
3. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Wii) – 239,600
4. Rock Band (Xbox 360) – 183,800
5. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Xbox 360) – 182,700
6. Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) – 172,000
7. Burnout Paradise (Xbox 360) – 144,100
8. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PlayStation 3) – 140,000
9. Mario Party DS (Nintendo DS) – 138,500
10. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (Nintendo DS) – 133,000

Burnout Paradise did fairly well with just over 144k given that it only had a little over a week to sell; the same goes for Mario & Sonic. Advance Wars: Days of Ruin likely suffered from that release period, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it make it into the top ten next month.

Activision seems poised to have another huge year (even though the fiscal year isn’t even up), and that Vivendi merger still isn’t complete. That must be scary for other publishers.

Nintendo came away from the 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards with two statues last night. The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences named The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass Handheld Game of the Year. Super Mario Galaxy took Adventure Game of the Year. The AIAA is part of the 2008 Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain conference in Las Vegas.

Nintendo was nominated for a total of nine awards in eight categories. The statues are a nice addition to the 2.5 million copies of Super Mario Galaxy and more than 1.1 million copies of The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass sold.

via Press Release