Anyone for Tennis? - Mario Tennis Open Review.

Mario has certainly been in his fair share of sports game throughout his illustrious career. He’s had a stab at football, golf, tennis, volleyball, and hockey to name a few; he’s even an Olympian these days! Of all Mario’s sporting efforts though, the Mario Tennis franchise has been one of the most popular over the years and now 3DS owners will have the chance to take to the court with Mario Tennis Open.

It all began twelve years ago when Camelot released Mario Tennis on the N64, one of the best games on the console and my personal favourite tennis sim of all time! Okay, so Mario Tennis isn’t the most realistic tennis sim out there but I find it to be the most enjoyable! It’s essentially a simplified version of the sport with tonnes of action, loads of vibrancy, and the Mario Brothers instead of the Williams sisters. However saying that realism is definitely needed in some degree or the game simply doesn’t work. Just look at the below-bar Gamecube effort Mario Power Tennis where ‘power moves’ were added allowing the player to make an unreturnable shot once they'd built up enough power. The only way to return one of these shots was to have a power shot at your disposal too; you can probably see why this stopped the game from being a success.

Take. My. Money. - Nintendo E3 Conference 2012.

So with the other two big hitters having done their conferences, it was left to Nintendo to close up with theirs and they did it a little differently this year. Instead of having one big conference they used other means to tell us all what they’re doing over the next year. First of all before the conference itself they did a Nintendo Direct to reveal a few things with the gamepad being the main news, then they had the conference itself where they focussed entirely on the Wii U and its games, and then they finished off with a 3DS showcase, showing off several upcoming 3DS games.

Compared to their big rivals, Nintendo’s conference was much more modest and humble. Whereas Sony had a ridiculous arena full of people, Nintendo used a much smaller venue to set the stage for the Wii U. This played out pretty well for Nintendo as it felt a lot more homely and it allowed Reggie Fils-Aime to do what he does best.

The Highs and Lows of E3 2012.

Last week the games industry came together once again for the annual E3 conference in Los Angeles. It’s the time of year when all gamers get excited and glue themselves to live streams of conference after conference hoping to get a good look at some of the games developers have to offer.

Overall it was a decent expo; some developers did well, others less so. There were plenty of highlights to be found and of course inevitable lowlights… All in all there was something for everyone.

If you like shooters for example you should probably check out EA’s conference as that’s pretty much all they’re bringing out in the coming year with Medal of Honor: Warfighter, Battlefield 3 DLC (no idea why this was shown), Crysis 3 and Dead Space 3 all being shown off. For those who don’t like shooters there’s always SPORTS! Sigh.

Seventh Heaven? - Mario Kart 7 Review.

Though the 3DS was critically acclaimed upon its birth into the marketplace back in 2011, it had a very slow start with pretty underwhelming sales. This was largely due to the relatively high price tag and the poor catalogue of games that were on offer at launch.

Nintendo rectified this by firstly lowering the price making it more affordable for their customers to actually buy one, and then they boosted the catalogue before Christmas by adding Ocarina of Time, a remake of the N64 classic; Super Mario 3D Land, a brand new Mario Land; and the big one: Mario Kart 7.

Mario Kart has always been a huge staple for Nintendo, appearing on every single console since its genesis on the SNES. In terms of gameplay it’s as simple as you’ll find – Mario characters racing about in go karts, but this simple formula is so unique to Nintendo that many have tried to replicate it, and all have failed. In terms of racing games, this is as good as it gets; you can keep your realistic F1 games – all I want to do is toss a barrage of red shells at the leader and steal first place!

Beta Testing.

It has been nine months since the Nintendo 3DS launched and up to now I have done my upmost to resist its lure.

Yes, like a particularly attractive mermaid the 3DS has been tempting me with its gorgeous looks and upped visuals and so far I’ve managed to stay strong and keep hold of my money.

My brother gave in instantly on launch and bought it with Street Fighter 4 and Pilotwings but was starved of games really until Ocarina of Time and Starfox 64 came out. Yet he is being rewarded this Christmas for purchasing on launch, and rightly so as Nintendo dropped the price only a few months later.

Enrolling at the Wii U - Nintendo Conference.

Nintendo were last in line to do their conference at E3 this year and of the three they were probably the winners. Sony should take notes regarding the start to the conference; they chose to show a boring five minute montage of game footage, while Nintendo blew the audience away with an orchestral rendition of various Legend of Zelda themes mashed into one, in honour of the 25th anniversary of the Zelda franchise.

Shigeru Miyamoto was out first to talk about the Zelda franchise as a whole. He started off talking about the music and he used the orchestra in front of him to full effect, having them play chimes from the game such as the classic ‘item get’ music and the fairy fountain theme. Ah fairy fountain, that takes me back, already I sense this is going to be a good conference! I do love Miyamoto though, he’s like 58 now and he’s still a child at heart, mucking about on stage, doing the actions for opening a treasure chest. It was great, even if the orchestra played it too quickly and the translator spoke over him the whole time.

The Good, The Bad and The Downright Embarrassing - E3 2011.

The biggest video game event of the year took place a week ago and I’m always happy when it comes around. The Electronic Entertainment Expo has been visiting Los Angeles now for 16 years, and although in recent years it has downsized a little, it still has the magic all gamers know and love.

I love it when E3 is approaching, the anticipation for what’s going to be shown, what’s going to be playable, new hardware, new games, new ideas. It represents the biggest stage video game companies have in showing off their products to us. And boy do they like to show off!

I personally love E3 because it reignites the gaming industry and gets me interested again. People start talking again, forums start buzzing, Twitter explodes, everyone has an opinion and there are plenty willing to argue til their faces turn blue!

It pays to be the strong, silent type.

Earlier this week, one of gaming’s greatest heroes reached the major milestone that is his 25th anniversary. The gaming hero? The one and only Link from the ever popular Legend of Zelda series.

Well I say the one and only but in truth there have been several different Links, each with their own story and past and of course in most of his adventures he isn’t usually called Link at all, he’s called whatever you want. In my case: Andy.

Connection Failed.

It’s been a tough old week. Studying and working away tirelessly until your eyes themselves start perspiring. Naturally when I went for some downtime with my faithful friend, the Xbox, I just wanted to kick back and play some games. But it was not to be.

The stupid thing starts prompting me to update it, and it won’t let me progress until I do so. So what do you do? You update it, and sit there waiting for it to download and install. A few boring minutes later and it’s done. Fantastic. Now what?

A new dashboard, cool. I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to new versions of stuff, every time I update my iTunes I’m jumping up and down gleefully waiting to see what new changes they’ve made to my lovely little neat media player. Of course when I load up iTunes afterwards, I find that nothing has changed and I’d just wasted five minutes of my life watching a status bar move from left to right. And it’s much the same with the Xbox.

It’s all kind of changed without really being different. All the menus are still there and the submenus are now white instead, making it look like Apple. I’m sure that’s just a coincidence. Oh, and for some unknown reason my avatar has grown about two feet and looks like a ganglier version of Robert Pattinson with blonde hair. Why is this? And then it dawned on me.