Author Archives: Steven

About Steven

Editor-In-Chief of The Wired Fish since 2010. Suggestions, praise, and hate mail can be sent to steven@thewiredfishnetwork.com

Earthbound Out Now On Wii U Virtual Console

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In their latest Nintendo Direct (Mini) presentation, Nintendo announced that the release of Earthbound had narrowed down to a specific date. That date: NOW! Yep, Nintendo has gone and released Earthbound to an unsuspecting public on the Wii U Virtual Console. On top of this, Nintendo has also made the original, larger than normal Player’s Guide available for viewing online. And yes, you can see the whole guide. You can view the guide right here. While it might look strange viewing it on a computer now, it’ll look just fine on a Wii U gamepad.

Earthbound was originally released on the SNES in 1995. Sadly, the game did poorly sales -wise despite a somewhat massive advertising campaign and positive critical reception. This lead to Nintendo not releasing anymore Earthbound material outside Japan, including the much requested Earthbound 2 (Mother 3) on the GBA. Interest grew for the game after Ness’ (and Lucas’) appearance in the Smash Bros. series, alongside the established cult following the game garnered. Due to its rarity and its absence on other platforms outside of the SNES, prices for the original game, both boxed and cart-only, would range from as low as $200 to as high as $1000. There’s even a website dedicated to getting Earthbound at a price you can afford.

Earthbound is now available on the Wii U Virtual Console for $9.99

Nintendo Direct Mini 7.18.13 [Youtube]

Project Aces Launch Teaser Site, Earlier Teaser Now Fully Viewable

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What was once “sky fell, the,” is now a full sentence. “That day our sky fell, the heavens split to create new skies.” In the back of my mind, I’m still thinking, “nah, it’s… probably another game from Project Aces, like Sky Crawlers or something.” But with talk of skies falling and the heavens and it splitting, I can’t help but think that this is definitely a new Ace Combat game.

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Pikmin & Olimar Are Back For Smash Bros. 4

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Today’s Smash Bros. 4 update welcomes a returning fighter who made his first appearance in Brawl. Captain Olimar from the Pikmin series has returned to wallop his opponents with the Pikmin he plucks from the ground.

Some wondered if he would be replaced since Pikmin 3 features three new characters, none of which were Olimar. It looks like that question’s been answered. However Pikmin 3 does feature some new Pikmin, like the Rock one. While it’s not shown in the screenshots on the Smash Bros. 4 site, one wonders if these new ones will be pluckable.

Super Smash Bros. 4. Wii U/3DS is scheduled to release sometime in 2014.

[via SSB4 Official Site]

Namco Bandai Tease Yet Another Image, Looks More Ace Combat Related

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Here we go again! Two weeks ago, Namco Bandai teased the Ace Combat crowd with an imaged emblazoned with the Project Aces logo. Now, we have a very up-close shot of what appears to be dialogue from this new game, posted on Namco’s own Ace Combat fanpage. While it’s partially shown, we can assume that the first word is “sky.” So, “sky fell, the”. What could this be alluding to?

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Club Nintendo Offering $30 eShop Credit If You Register Fire Emblem Awakening And Shin Megami Tensei IV

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Nintendo has launched a promotion on its Club Nintendo program that if you register both Fire Emblem Awakening and Shin Megami Tensei IV, you’ll get an extra $30 added to your eShop account. The promotion will last from the release of SMT IV (which is next Tuesday) all the way to August 31st. According to the press release, both games must be registered to the same Club Nintendo account ~~and within the time frame of the promotion~~. [UPDATE] Both games have to be registered by August 31st to qualify for the promotion. Also, it’s confirmed via Tiny Cartridge that if you registered your game beforehand, like around the FE: Awakening launch, it counts. It also says it at the bottom of the promo page. More details about how to redeem your $30 credit can be viewed on the Club Nintendo website.

While some might think this to be some random pairing of games for a promotion, this actually ties back to the fact that Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem actually still exists and that it’s in development. Sad we didn’t hear anything about the game at E3. But if this promotion is anything, that means this project is still alive and well.

[Club Nintendo SMT X FE Promo Page]

Persona 5 Domain Registered by Index Corp.

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Fresh off of the Japanese release of Shin Megami Tensei IV, it’s been confirmed via NeoGAF that Index Corp., the parent company of Atlus, had registered persona5.jp. Currently the domain leads to the domain registrar’s site, Onamae (think Japanese GoDaddy in terms of function). However when you pass the domain through a whois, The registrant is Index Corp. The last game in this Megaten sub-series, Persona 4, released in 2008. The Vita version, Persona 4 Golden, was released in late 2012.

The Persona team tested the waters of making games on HD consoles with Catherine, a puzzler that followed the exploits of Vincent and his fear of being unfaithful to his fiance. Following the successful release of Catherine, it was said that the team began work on the next Persona game, but not much was heard since.

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Dragon’s Crown Adding PvP Into The Mix

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Remember that mode in Double Dragon on the NES that allowed to to fight against your pals as either Billy or Jimmy? If you do, then this should be a pleasant surprise for you. It’s been confirmed via Famitsu (translated by Siliconera) that Dragon’s Crown will have a Player vs. Player mode in it where you can duke it our with others either locally or online. The article doesn’t state what kinds of matches are possible beyond a 4-player battle royale, but I’d imagine that other kinds would still be possible, like 2 vs. 2, handicap matches, etc. Since it’s possible to play as the same characters in the regular mode, I’m assuming the same can be done here.

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[Rumor] DLC Characters For PlayStation All-Stars Cancelled, Dart Left In Limbo

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For once can we get some kind of good news regarding Legend of Dragoon? PlayStation All-Stars, Sony’s answer to Super Smash Bros., had the advantage of having more characters added to the roster post-release, something that was never done for Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros Brawl. Unfortunately, that advantage seems to have been cut short as rumors began circulating that all future DLC plans have been cancelled. Shuhei Yoshida stated this, citing poor sales of the previous DLC characters Zeus and Isaac Clark (Not sure about Kat and Emmett since they were free at first).

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Today Marks The End Of Several Long-Time Wii Services

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Forecast Channel. News Channel. Everybody Votes. Check Mii Out. Nintendo Channel. These were several of the channels the original Wii offered to owners, some since launch. Forecast Channel reported on the weather. The News Channel fed you news straight from the AP. Everybody Votes presented questions for owners to answer and tallied them up. Check Mii Out gave you a chance to showcase the Miis you created to others worldwide. And finally Nintendo Channel was, in a way, the precursor to one-half of the current Nintendo eShop experience with videos, trailers, and the ability to rate the games you’ve played. From this day forward, these channels will cease to function.

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Is Namco Bandai Teasing A New Ace Combat?

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Over the weekend, the official Ace Combat fan page (which is run by Namco) updated its facebook page with images of what looks to be a new Ace Combat game. Project Aces is the dev team at Namco responsible for the Ace Combat games. The Facebook page’s primary promotion was for Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, with the last update related to that game posted on January 31 of this year.

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Nintendo: No Plans In Sight For A New F-ZERO Game

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As time goes on in the videogame industry, the Futuristic Racer genre continues to struggle. One of the granddaddies of the genre, F-ZERO, missed an entire generation since its inception on the SNES. Maybe with the Wii’s hardware, all we would’ve gotten was just another F-ZERO GX on our hands, i.e. not that much different (except for maybe an online component). But hey, looking towards the Wii U and its increased horsepower, maybe we might be zipping through the tracks in HD and with online multiplayer, right? Well not quite.

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Yoko Shimomura To Compose Her First Mainline Final Fantasy Game

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Known for her work on Street Fighter II, the Super Mario RPG/Mario & Luigi series, and Kingdom Hearts, Yoko Shimomura will be at the helm composing music for the newly named Final Fantasy XV. Listening from early trailers of the game, if you have a keen ear for videogame music, you can probably tell that she was composing music for this game from the get go when it was still Final Fantasy Versus XIII. After the reveal of Versus XIII becoming FFXV, Yoko’s gotten a rather noteworthy promotion as far as Final Fantasy games go.

The main Final Fantasy games have been composed by the likes of Hitoshi Sakimoto (Final Fantasy XII, Odin Sphere), Masashi Hamauzu (Final Fantasy XIII, SaGa Frontier 2), and the legendary Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy I-XI and XIV, The Last Story). Yoko Shimomura’s music, at least for the battle themes, is known for its marching drum beats and melodic violins. Other times, she’ll throw in that old-school flair for kicks. I covered her music her week of Composer’s Month, so go over there to get a feel for what her music sounds like.

David Wise Will Compose Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

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Upon seeing Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze being revealed during in our live reaction video, I expressed hope that since we’re getting another DKC game, this means that many of the songs in the game will be remixes of the music in Diddy’s Kong Quest (like DKC and DKCR). Chief amongst these remixes would be Stickerbrush Symphony, the song many consider either the best song in DKC2, the best song in David Wise’s career, or the best videogame song of all time. Kenji Yamamoto did an excellent job remixing much of Wise’s work in Donkey Kong Country Returns, so I was wondering how he’ll handle a song such as that. It looks like I’ll be getting my answer as David Wise will be teaming up with Yamamoto to compose for Tropical Freeze.

We really haven’t heard much from Wise in the videogame scene. Last we heard of him, he was making remixes for fan albums at Overclocked ReMix. Any chance we get to talk about Wise on the podcast turns into one long trip down memory lane. To see Wise come back to the series that made him a household name amongst gamers is certainly a plus for this game.

More about DKC: Tropical Freeze’s soundtrack [Destructoid]

Have Crappy/No Internet Connection? “Get A 360”

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In an interview with GTTV’s Geoff Keighly, Microsoft’s Don Mattrick was asked about how exactly they’ll court people into getting an Xbox One should they have no stable internet connection (or any for that matter). He replied with, “Fortunately we have a product for people who aren’t able to get some form of content. It’s called Xbox 360.” In other words, if you’re not ready to sign in every day at the parole offices of Xbox One, well then you’re not ready for Xbox One. Stay on the Xbox 360.

Mattrick probably won’t get any flak for this from his staff, but this is just a boneheaded thing to say. Right now, while Microsoft is still poised to sell Xbox 360 consoles, they’re primary focus is to sell as many Xbox One consoles as possible at launch. His comments also smack of his whole “Backwards” comment he made. I mean, it’s okay to tell your consumers to get an older console if they’re more comfortable getting that one, like Nintendo and Sony have done. But the delivery of his message is just arrogant.

They say that for each console manufacturer, the third consoles are the ones that see the company falter due to an overabundance of arrogance. It happened with the Gamecube (though it’s not the third). It happened with Sony and the early life of the PS3. And now it’s happening to Microsoft. I guess companies never learn.

Thanks to David for the heads-up.

[via Youtube]

[E3 2013] Nintendo Direct Live Reaction

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Well things are certainly going a differently at the house of Mario. Instead of having a press conference, Nintendo is holding a Direct broadcast showcasing what’s to come for the Wii U. The Wii U so far has had a very sluggish year with barely any games released for the console. However, will this be the Direct that turns things around for Nintendo? They did confirm that the next Super Smash Bros. will be shown. What about that mysterious “X” game from earlier this year? And what about Retro Studios’ newest game? All will be known today.

The Nintendo Direct Broadcast will begin at 10:00AM. The above embed is a live reaction of us watching the broadcast.