Nightly News Roundup: 10.17.2012

A launch window for Pikmin 3 announced, new insight into the Wii U GamePad, plus the final roster of Nintendo Land games!

By Pierre Bienaimé. Posted 10/17/2012 17:00 Comment on this     ShareThis

Nightly News Roundup

Pikmin 3 to Launch Next Spring

Though the game was originally speculated to make the launch window, it seems Pikmin fans will have to wait that little bit longer. The general release window was shared in the latest round of Iwata Asks interviews.

art_Pikmin3

The news comes on the back of delays announced for both Rayman: Legends and Epic Mickey 2.

But Pikmin fans are especially inured to wait times. What’s another couple of months, right? Think back on the time it takes for an unplucked Pikmin to mature into a flower. Surely that’s what’s in the works here. And in the meantime, have you read our preview of the game? Or Bradly’s opinion that game delays don’t truly matter?

Source: Nintendo Life


Final Three Nintendo Land Games Announced

The last three games of the dozen are strictly single-player offerings. Like the rest of the 12 games (impressions on which you can get right here), they borrow from Nintendo’s biggest franchises. Captain Falcon’s Twister Race will have you guiding a speedy wind-up vehicle, GamePad held upright, to the finish line.

art_NintendoLand

Yoshi’s Fruit Cart tasks you with collecting fruit visible on the GamePad but not on the TV.

And Octopus Dance is a challenge to both your sense of rhythm and your memory. Think of it as a dance-infused take on Simon, using the GamePad’s analog sticks and gyro sensor.

Source: N-Europe


Scribblenauts Unlimited to Feature Nintendo Characters!

On the Wii U version alone, that is. Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment announced the inclusion by means of a cute image. Four characters from the Mario universe, and four from Zelda’s. Think that’ll be it?

The publisher shared that they “will behave in the fun and fantastical ways they do in their respective game worlds,” along with the potentially buzz-kill detail that players will not have the option of applying adjectives to these characters.

Nintendo fans will remember similar mashes of different franchises, as to be seen in Tekken Tag Tournament 2: Wii U Edition. There’s also the case of recent Soul Calibur rosters inviting different fighters depending on the platform! With Wii U, it seems Nintendo is ramping up its efforts to catch up with the big boys. Not only is the company bringing great third party games into the fold, it’s making them more attractive in their very availability and branding on Nintendo platforms.

Scribblenauts Unlimited drops on Wii U’s release date– November 18th– and will also be available on Nintendo 3DS and PC.

Source: The Verge


Iwata Asks About the Wii U GamePad

While the latest edition of Iwata Asks may have brought some bad news about Pikmin 3, it also offers some interesting insights into the development of the Wii U GamePad.

In this series of interviews, the team of engineers at Nintendo discuss many of the hurdles they faced during the console’s development, like the difficulty of streaming images and content wirelessly to the GamePad without any noticeable latency, giving a detailed account of how they were able to come up with creative solutions to overcome these issues:

Iwata: How did you design the system? You had to carry out a series of actions, compressing the Wii U images, sending them wirelessly as radio waves, receiving and decompressing them on the Wii U GamePad, and then displaying them– and all without any noticeable delay!

Ito: Generally, for a video compression/decompression system, compression will take place after a single-frame of image data has been put into the IC [integrated circuit]. Then it is sent wirelessly and decompressed at receiving end. The image is sent to the LCD monitor after decompression is finished.

But since that method would cause latency, this time, we thought of a way to take one image and break it down into pieces of smaller images. We thought that maybe we could reduce the amount of delay in sending one screen if we dealt in those smaller images from output from the Wii U console GPU on through compression, wireless transfer, and display on the LCD monitor.

The team also talks about the GamePad’s design as well as its wireless range, which will be particularly interesting to those wondering if they’ll be able to stream a title from their bathroom (short answer: depends on your home’s layout). The full set of interviews can be found at the link below.

Source: Iwata Asks

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Log In 0 points Log in or register to grow your Ninja Score while interacting with our site.
Nintendojo's RSS Feeds

All Updates Podcast
News Comments
Like and follow usFacebookTwitter Friend Code Exchange + Game with Us Join the Team!