Hasta La Gadget!

Fifteen years ago, Nintendo blew our minds with the Donkey Kong
Country series. Prerendered graphics brought out some of the best-looking games
on the Super Nintendo, and incredibly clever level design offered some of the
best gameplay this side of anything with “Mario” in the title.

The last Donkey Kong Country game came out in 1999, and
since then gaming’s most famous ape has been restricted to playing drums, kart
racing, rhythmic vine-climbing, and brawling. Now, in 2010, Donkey Kong Country
is back with Donkey Kong Country Returns on the Nintendo Wii.

The game looks and plays just like the Donkey Kong Country
games of yore. You play Donkey Kong and his buddy Diddy, jumping, rolling, and
throwing barrels across a tropical island in a quest to recover your precious
stash of bananas. Of course, that’s not all you do. You fight various bosses,
solve puzzles, collect banana coins, jigsaw puzzles, and the letters K, O, N,
and G to unlock different things in the game, and generally find many, many
excuses to play through the game’s several dozen states several times over.

Donkey Kong Country Returns is fun. It’s also hard.
Painfully, frustratingly, controller-throwingly hard. It’s safe to say you’re
going to die many times in this game. It doesn’t ever feel unfair, though; just
very, very challenging. Every time you fall in a pit, or onto some spikes, or
into an enemy’s path, you can be certain it was a matter of your own timing and
controls, and not the game’s glitches. That won’t soften the frustration when
you die for the 20^th time trying to get that elusive jigsaw puzzle
piece, though.

You might occasionally waggle and shake the Wiimote to
perform certain moves, but otherwise Donkey Kong Country Returns feels just
like the old Donkey Kong Country games, and that’s a very good thing. It’s
deceptively simple, remarkably challenging, and incredibly polished, and a
worthy purchase for any fan of old-school side-scrolling Nintendo action.

James Bond is back, sort of. Goldeneye 007 for the Wii is the long-awaited remake/reimagining/re-release of the classic Goldeneye 007 for the Nintendo 64, still recognized as one of the greatest multiplayer video games in history. If you’re expecting a nostalgic romp through the big set pieces of Goldeneye while engaging in a run-and-gun-and-sometimes-sneak gameplay worthy of James Bond, you’re going to like it. If you’re looking for a graphically improved remake of the original game that’s virtually identical to the Nintendo 64 release, however, you’re going to be disappointed.

Goldeneye 007 for the Wii is a completely different game from the N64Goldeneye. The story, the maps, the action, it all hits the same notes as the original game, but with some major structural differences. Besides a few landmarks, the maps have drastically changed. The characters have been reworked into virtually unrecognizable versions of their movie/N64 counterparts; Pierce Brosnan’s likeness has been replaced by Daniel Craig’s as James Bond, Valentin Zukovsky has morphed from a stocky, limping gangster into a night club-dwelling party animal, and Joe Don Baker’s Jack Wade (absent from the N64 game) has been replaced by a military contractor George W. Bush analog. 

If, like us, you’ve been waiting to see Kinect in control of a truly marquee game, your wait has now come to an end. The same fella that brought us the Kinect lightsaber has returned with a hack enabling eager nostalgics to enjoy a bout of Super Mario controlled only by their body contortions. OpenKinect was used to get the motion-sensing peripheral — originally intended exclusively for use with an Xbox 360 — to communicate with his PC, while a simple NES emulator took care of bringing the 25-year old plumber to life. The video awaits after the break.

Continue reading Kinect used to control Super Mario on a PC, redefine convergence (video)

Kinect used to control Super Mario on a PC, redefine convergence (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 28 Nov 2010 12:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Engadget German  |  yankeyan (YouTube)  | Email this | Comments

If there’s one event that’s immune to being overhyped, it’s the annual January expo of everything consumer electronics, known to you and us as CES. The only downer to this geek endurance test is that we’ve felt it’s been lacking a little on the gaming front lately, which is why we’re so giddy to hear the news that Nintendo will be rejoining the ranks of exhibitors over in Las Vegas in a few weeks’ time. CES 2011 will be the first time in 16 years that the console sales leader has deigned to pitch up a stand at America’s biggest tech show, with our suspicion being that the event will be used as an opportunity to remind the world about the upcoming 3DS handheld. Or to drop that Wii HD bombshell we’ve all been waiting for. Yeah, right!

Continue reading Nintendo returning to CES after a 16-year absence

Nintendo returning to CES after a 16-year absence originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Nov 2010 14:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

GameStop’s Black Friday ad leaked out a few days early, and there are some pretty decent deals if you’re buying a new console — each of Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo’s systems come with pack-in games, and they’re fairly good ones too. Still, the items your gadget-loving soulmate truly wants under the festive hearth are nowhere to be found in the ad — so don’t be surprised if you have to pay top dollar if you’re planning on grabbing a commemorative red Wii, hacker-friendly Kinect or a PlayStation Move as part of your holiday haul.

GameStop breaks out the bundles for Black Friday, but not the cream of the crop originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Nov 2010 06:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Joystiq  |  BlackFriday.info  | Email this | Comments