The bunny hat makes this. Extra points if you transform your house into an item rental shop (because Zelda games work on a points system). Big ups to DustBowler49 for the QR codes and pic.
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Yay, another odd promotion on eShop — Mega Man: Dr. Wily’s Revenge (GB) for 3DS and Mega Man X (SNES) for Wii U, both discounted to $2 until Wednesday.
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Somewhere at the beautiful and bizarre intersection of Rainbowdragoneyes (some lyrics definitely NSFW) metal-inspired, eurobeat-influenced chiptunes and Fang Island's progressive indie pop is where my brain decided to place this excellent track by Bubblegum Octopus. In fact, having only recently gotten around to hearing a good chunk of Bubblegum Octopus's music, I feel like I've neglected some great music for a little too long.
"888 Days Meow Fast" strikes me in a similar way, kind of breakcore but also “spazzpop”? A term I’m sure Bubblegum Octopus made up but is incredibly fitting.
MOREBad Happy, upcoming games, our holiday gift guide
Etsy seller WonderTreasures has a nice assortment of handmade Animal Crossing character 3DS cases, but I like Stitches here, because a) he is actually stitched to make this case, and b) Stitches is really pretty creepy when you consider he’s supposed to be a living bear.
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In case you didn’t see this blow up last week, Interstellar Selfie Station is a super cute app from Christine Love (Digital, Hate Plus) — Kill Screen calls it“Instagram meets Game Boy Camera”. Essentially it uses your computer’s camera to take photos/GIFs of you with lofi Game Boy-style filters.
Gonna post it here even if it’s late, though, because 1.) it’s coming to iOS/Android next Spring, and I want there to be an eShop version; 2.) I found that neat GIF from Drawings and Words; and 3.) this quote from Christine in a Daily Dot interview:
“What I like about the Interstellar Selfie Station is that it gives you just a little bit more control over how you look, and I’ve noticed this blowing up on my Twitter feed: Suddenly that makes people who are otherwise terrified to post pictures of themselves seem a lot more confident.
With my phone’s super-high resolution, high-colour 8-megapixel camera, it’s got enough detail to show all my pores and how uneven my complexion is and how messed up my hair is and whatever else.
Four colours isn’t enough for that. In four colours, every picture looks super flattering, and the weird outer-space colour schemes just add a little bit more distance, so there’s far less to worry about.”
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I haven’t been paying attention to Sonic & All-Star Racing Transformed at all, but apparently it’s a top-tier kart racer? I don’t think I can disagree, not when it has Shenmue's Ryo Hazuki drifting in an Outrun cabinet (just like this crazy thing I wrote about three years ago).
It looks like this might be free DLC coming to the PC version, though I haven’t seen it ruled out for the console editions yet. There’s also a pic of Ryo riding a Hang-on sit-down machine in water. O_O
Credit to Wario64 for the GIF taken from the Yogscast Humble stream.
BUYSonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed,holiday gift guide
In case you missed it last night, chiptune kings Anamanaguchi tore it up with this DJ set livestreamed from a business center at a damn Marriott Hotel probably somewhere in Ohio. What. Skip to 2:30 to start getting turnt up.
We’re seeing these dudes tonight at the Taft Theatre. Anyone else gonna be at that joint?
BUY Anamanaguchi albums,upcoming games, our holiday gift guide
Early tomorrow morning, Satoru Claus will sneak into all of our web browsers, ready to drop present bombs down our virtual chimneys. The subject of this month’s Nintendo Directmas: ”Wii U and Nintendo 3DS software launching through spring 2014.”
So Donkey Kong, Mario Golf (maybe), Bravely Default, perhaps Yoshi 3DS, and maybe some new stuff? Calciobit still hasn’t been announced for North America – fingers crossed for that one. Or Culdcept! Or Culdciobit…
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PC Engine games on Japanese 3DS VC! ⊟
Yeah, they’ve been on Wii forever, but this is a big deal because of portability (welcome to Tiny Cartridge). On Christmas Day, the Japanese 3DS Virtual Console will see its first PC Engine (Turbografx-16) games!
Gradius and The Kung Fu (China Warrior, a pretty bad game that I love) will cost 600 yen each. Meanwhile, Wii U gets a different PC Engine game, Bonk’s Adventure, and the MSX version of Gradius! What?
Just last month I was telling people to support Konami’s Hudson releases on 3DS VC, specifically so they’d think about PCE/TG16 games. Yay!
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Whattttt? A Zelda crossover with the Warriors franchise? Zelda Musou?! That is nuts, and completely unexpected. Under development at Tecmo Koei, the game is not considered part of the main franchise, if that’s not obvious. Hyrule Warriors (working title) is slated to release this spring in Japan, and some time in 2014 in North America.
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Ahh, I need this. Thank you, Year of Luigi.
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It’s a whole mess of vignettes from great NES games (and Urban Champion) remixed with new challenges. There’s also off-TV/Gamepad support, as well as Super Mario 3D World-style Miiverse features with 100 8-bit stamps. You can grab the single-player game today from the Wii U eShop for $14.99.
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We covered most of the big Wii U items from today’s Nintendo Direct in separate posts, so now here’s a round-up of all the 3DS news and media. There’s a lot of stuff!:
And there was a new Super Smash Bros. trailer and character (Rosalina)!
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Leftovers:
Consensus among Tiny Cartridge staffers: Hyrule Warriors is probably going to be fun, if not good. And don’t forget NES Remix, as that really happened.
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Just ask these kids who played NES Remix against Arino in this special mini-Game Center CX episode (fan translation, please!)
Seriously, this is Retro Game Challenge. Completing challenges in 8-bit games? Remixed vignettes of classics that focus on their best/most fun elements? Oh, and as Ray Barnholt points out, it’s developed by indieszero, the same studio that made the Game Center CX DS releases?
Not even angry that the Wii U eShop is charging $14.99 for this.
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Get on your computers, kids. It’s time for…
It’s time to look back on the handheld games that captivated us this year, in list-plus-short-blurb form! It was a very special year for handheld games, with a weirdly diverse selection of really, really obsession-worthy games. Everything from action games you could play for 5 seconds and enjoy, to a game that you could play continuously for years.
Sadly, no Luigi games made it on our list in this, the Year of Luigi.
Even so, our end of year list is special for a couple reasons:
Let’s look back at 2013!
10. Tearaway (Media Molecule)
This game hit all the right sentimental notes, and looked charmingly beautiful doing it. Though it doesn’t go so far as to totally justify the PS Vita’s dumb rear touchpad, it does make as much use of all the Vita’s various inputs as could be expected!
9. Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan (Atlus)
After years of this series’ infamous difficulty scaring us away, we finally tried out the first-person RPG with Etrian Odyssey IV… And it was fantastic! The newly introduced Casual Mode (along with the Jig Lizard) helped convince us to finally give it a spin, but we also appreciated exploring the overworld in an airship, the cooking system, and Yuzo Koshiro’s orchestral soundtrack.
And while we’ve heard Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl, the remake/overhaul of the first game also released this year, might be better, we have to give our vote to EOIV for integrating QR codes you can scan to unlock other players’ guilds and special equipment/quests — including a very special quest delivered to you by our mascot Tiny!
8. SteamWorld: Dig (Image & Form)
Probably the biggest surprise of the year, SteamWorld: Dig mixes the best of Metroid and Mr. Driller, creating one of the tightest and most addictive experiences of the year. This eShop-only game does so much right, from the efficient way it introduces you to new mechanics, to its simple balancing of resources that keeps you from just burrowing your way through miles of dirt without coming up for a breather.
We also have to commend Image & Form for setting a standard on the eShop, not just for what developers can do on the platform, but also the success small indie studios can enjoy with a polished exclusive released specifically with the system in mind. We really hope to see more of these indie eShop hits next year!
image via Geostar
7. Dragon’s Crown (Vanillaware)
If you grew up playing, I don’t know, Golden Axe or Final Fight or that kind of game, Dragon’s Crown is the version of those games that, back in the ’90s, you would have imagined would happen in 2013. Does that make sense?
Like, back then, you would have dreamed of cartoon-quality, high-res hand-drawn art, crazy huge bosses, and lots of secrets. You might not have thought to wish for seamless online play, but that’s because you were kind of dumb back then.
image via PaulHasTumblr
6. Pokémon X and Y (Game Freak)
The two of us can hardly compare this to previous Pokémon games… because we didn’t care that much about previous Pokémon games. But this one made a perfect entry, or re-entry, point for the series! It’s really great to look at and features speedy movement and UI that are surprisingly not at all annoying.
Plus one of the new Pokémon is a damn sword. And another is a keychain. This is a AAA game in which you can give orders to a sentient keychain.
5. Attack of the Friday Monsters (Millennium Kitchen)
We were already in love with Level-5 for putting together the Guild series of downloadable games and localizing them, but now we’re indebted to the publisher for Attack of the Friday Monsters. It’s the closest thing to My Summer Vacation (a nostalgic series about grade school summers spent in the Japanese countryside) that you’ll find on the 3DS — even directed by the same man, Kaz Ayabe — except it actually released in the States!
It’s a short, lovely tale about timid fathers, childhood myths, and afternoons spent making up games with friends. If you want to relive that brief period of your childhood when you had a favorite TV show about giant heroes fighting bizarre monsters, grab this from the eShop immediately. Like all Guild games right now, it’s on sale for $4.99 until January 9.
image via Dino
4. The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (Nintendo EAD Group No. 3 and Monolith Soft)
Did anyone expect that a new handheld Zelda game could rival the brilliance of Link’s Awakening? Even if you were that optimistic, there’s no way you could have predicted that this 3DS game — considered by many at first to be a lazy sequel to A Link to the Past— would be one of the finest Zeldas released in the franchise’s 25+ year history.
Everything is streamlined to get you started on your way as quickly as possible, and to make sure you’re focused on enjoying the adventure, not trying to figure out how to get to the next fun part. Even if you’ve played Zelda games and A Link to the Past to the death already, the new wall-merging feature switches it all up, making possible some really clever puzzles and inventive boss fights. It’s the kind of game you can give to anyone and feel confident that they’ll love every hour with it.
image via GameDesignNovice
3. Spelunky (Mossmouth and Blitworks)
It was one of the best games last year, and now it’s an even better version of that, but portable. Even before the addition of the Daily Challenge, Spelunky was as close to perfect as a game could be. Every single thing you can do in that game is fun, even if it ends in catastrophic failure, and it always will.
Spelunky is action platforming refined beyond anything else. Running, jumping, throwing, climbing, bombing: all feel exciting and easily manageable, and all work within an ever-shifting, complex machine of moving parts. Most of which kill you.
2. Fire Emblem: Awakening (Intelligent Systems and Nintendo SPD)
There are plenty of reasons why this was the Fire Emblem game that seemed to really put the strategy RPG series on the map: the new Casual Mode finally allowing you to play without permadeath, the avatar system dropping players into the story as customizable characters, and Yusuke Kozaki’s always amazing character designs chief among them.
But, real talk, the reason why everyone was posting dozens of photos of the game’s scenes on Tumblr and Twitter was the waifus. Voice-acted waifus. Waifus who will defend their spousus, or team up with them for attacks while next to each other in battle. Waifus in swimwear if you put down extra cash for DLC. Many of us experienced a Waifu Awakening this year thanks to Fire Emblem.
image via Nookling
1. Animal Crossing: New Leaf (Nintendo EAD Group No. 2 Monolith Soft)
The whole TinyCast team lost hundreds of hours to New Leaf, despite all being lapsed Animal Crossing fans. It’s just that good. And it’s not just that the actual game is that good – though it is, a perfect oasis where there’s always something new to do every day, be it collect outfits, decorate your house, run errands, or visit friends, and it’s all equally optional.
There wasn’t a better moment this year in games than the metagame we all made up for New Leaf, in which we share screenshots of our dream bathrooms and coordinate visits and trades on Twitter. Even when we weren’t in the town of Buttocks, we were able to think about Buttocks.
***
While we only had ten spots for the list, we wanted to make sure we mentioned the other great portable games that came out this year, like Atlus’ Shin Megami Tensei IV, Bertil Horberg’s Gunman Clive, Capcom’s Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, Dennaton and Abstraction Games’ Hotline Miami port to PS Vita, Daisuke Amaya and Nicalis’ Ikachan port to 3DS, and probably a dozen others we’re forgetting to mention.
There were lots of amazing games released in 2013 on all kinds of platforms, and this list, like most things we post, is based only on our own opinions! That said, if you didn’t play and love all of them we’re ashamed.
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That 3DS XL case! Sure, it’s a bit late for a Year of Luigi tie-in item, but Luigi is in our hearts forever. It also comes with a puzzle – with a bunch of Luigis against a green background. Good luck with that!
Other new items on Japan’s Club Nintendo include a notebook and pen, and the Dr. Luigi cleaning cloth set. I’m a bit jealous of these, even if we do get that crazy Luigi’s Mansion diorama in the US.
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A bunch of games from under-the-radar publisher Circle Entertainment will be on sale until an. 8. I don’t have details of the sale prices right now, but these games are already pretty cheap! Here’s what’s discounted (for NA and EU):
I’m pretty curious about Witch & Hero, myself! And whoa, Sweet Memories Blackjack! “Simply face your friend, and the memories will return. The time you spend playing blackjack together, increases the connection between the two of you, and you will find out that she is the perfect match for you.”
In more familiar games, Renegade Kid’s games are also on sale! Half off until Jan. 2. Check out that Bomb Monkey! Great old-school puzzle game that is, at the moment, officially hella cheap.
Nicalis also has Cave Story ($6.99), VVVVVV ($4.99), NightSky ($4.99) and Ikachan ($2.99) on sale until January 3, too.
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I can’t believe there’s an NES Remix challenge dedicated to killing Luigi. So disrespectful in this sacred year.
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TinyCast 18! We already shared our favorite tiny cartridges of the year, but we spent this episode talking more in depth about our choices. We also got Fran and Christian’s reactions to the end-of-year list, and discussed the games we liked that didn’t make it.
We recorded the episode before this week’s Nintendo Direct and are posting this late, but we’ll make sure to go over all the news in the next show!
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Episode notes:
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After you’ve listened to the episode (or before or during whatever), why not share your personal best-of-2013 list in the comments?
