Zelda

Top 10 NES Characters

The Nintendo Entertainment System holds a special place in a lot of gamer’s hearts, as it was the first console a lot of gamers owned, as well as introducing us to some of Nintendo’s most popular characters. To celebrate the launch of the NES mini, here is a list of some of the top Nintendo characters that featured in NES games:

  1. Simon Belmont:

Simon Belmont was the first protagonist to appear in the popular Castlevania series. First released in 1986 in Japan and 1988 worldwide by Konami, Simon was sent on the quest of defeating the Vampire Dracula. Whilst the franchise is more known nowadays for appearing on Microsoft and Sony consoles, it was the original Castlevania game on the NES that started it all.cv

  1. The Ninja Turtles:

There have been many Ninja Turtle games over the years, but few have the legendary memories of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game that was released on the NES in 1989. Notoriously hard, it was a rare feat to find someone that had completed the game. You could play as any of the four turtles, and it sold over 4 million copies, becoming one of the NES’s most popular games.tur

  1. The Dog from Duck Hunt:

Never has there been a dog that we loved to hate more than the dog in Duck Hunt. Constantly mocking us whenever we missed a duck, you’d often be left wishing you could shoot the dog too. As one of the release games on the NES, and one that came with the NES Zapper, this game has fond memories for many. The unnamed dog comes as one of the characters available in Super Smash Bros for the 3DS and Wii U as part of the Duck Hunt group.dog

  1. Donkey Kong:

Donkey Kong is one of Nintendo’s first ever characters created by Shigeru Miyamoto. The character was introduced as a character in an arcade game, but has since featured in many console games. The original Donkey Kong game was one of the three launch titles available on the NES, and in 1994, the character was relaunched in an entire new series of games known as the Donkey Kong Country series.dk

  1. Kirby

This pink, round and adorable character is a fan favourite that has been around since 1992, and was one of characters created by the late Satoru Iwata. Kirby debuted on the Game Boy, but the character also featured in one of the NES’s last games produced known as Kirby’s Adventures. Inhaling his characters and absorbing their abilities, Kirby has featured in over 20 different games.kirby

  1. Princess Zelda:

Princess Zelda is one of the main characters in The Legend of Zelda series of games and another Shigeru Miyamoto creation. Often the damsel in distress that is rescued by the series protagonist Link, she has been in most of the Zelda games since the first one on the NES in 1986.zelda

  1. Bowser:

Bowser, or King Koopa as he was originally known, is Mario’s main enemy in the Mario Bros series of games. Leader of the Koopa race, his main aim in life is to kidnap Princess Peach and rule the Mushroom Kingdom. He first appeared on the NES in Super Mario Bros in 1995, and has featured in many Mario games as the main antagonist since. bowser

  1. Samus:

Samus is the main character in the Metroid series of games. An ex-soldier of the Galactic Federation, this well-liked character is one of the earliest female protagonists in the history of video games. Created for the NES game Metroid in 1986, Samus has since been the main character in a further 11 games in the Metroid series.samus

  1. Link:

Link is another Shigeru Miyamoto creation, and the main protagonist in one of the most successful video games series of all time. The Legend of Zelda series has 18 games in total and has sold over 62 million copies. Link appears in various incarnations over the series, and first appeared in the NES game The Legend of Zelda in 1986. Link is also a popular character in the Smash Bros series of games, and has proved to be a common character for people to cosplay at conventions.link

  1. Mario:

When people think Nintendo, the number one character that comes to mind is the Italian plumber Mario. First introduced in the arcade game Donkey Kong as ‘Jump Man’ by Shigeru Miyamoto, he was later renamed Mario. Mario is Nintendo’s mascot and has appeared in over 200 different video games. On the NES alone he appeared in the popular Mario Bro and Super Mario Bros series alongside his brother Luigi, and has since featured in solo games. Mario is part of the best-selling video game franchise of all time, and a character that Nintendo fans have loved since he was created many years ago.

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Nintendo Presents a New and Very Different Zelda Game

This year at E3, it was all about the new Zelda game for Nintendo. Instead of a one hour Nintendo Direct, there was a full day of Zelda game play and announcements with Nintendo Treehouse live at E3. Fans have eagerly awaited more footage of the game, and what we were shown did not disappoint. With stunning graphics and a massive open world, this game is set to be the biggest and best Zelda game yet. No longer will we have to call the game Zelda Wii U, with the announcement of the official title ‘The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’.

The game play starts out with Link as we are traditionally used to him, sleeping. He wakes up to an unknown British voice that helps him progress into Hyrule, picking up clothes and other useful items on the way. Before going into Hyrule, the game has more of a futuristic feel, using technology rather than magic, and as Link progresses in the world he has to use natural resources to survive.

We are given a glimpse of how big the world will be as  Link looks over a cliff, and a zoom out on the map shows us a vast expanse of undiscovered areas. There are hints at traditional areas of the Zelda games, when you can glance a giant volcano and big lake in the distance. Unlike previous games, Link really has to rely on his surroundings. He can jump, play with fire, climb walls and trees.  There are no hearts in the grass, with Link instead having to depend on any food he can find.

You don’t start out with many weapons, and they often break, but throughout the game you can steal enemies’ weapons and use them as your own. The game encourages exploration, with so many items lying around that you can use. Things like pot lids found in enemy camps can later be used as shields. A new feature to the Zelda games is that the weapons have stats, which is definitely useful when fighting different enemies. Throughout the game Link finds a bow, an axe and multiple other weapons, so exploring your surroundings is key in this game.

The music is also different and unique. There are no big ongoing themes in the background like previous games; instead there are piano notes and chords, but the well-known smaller jingles remain. The art in the game is absolutely stunning, with beautiful sunsets, shimmering snow, tumbling waterfalls and flowing rivers. When climbing up temples and mountains, you really get to see how much detail has gone into the game. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild definitely feels like Nintendo’s most advanced game to date, and has left fans really excited to see more.

30 years since the NES was released world-wide

The Nintendo Entertainment System, or the NES as it is more commonly known, paved the way for the modern era of gaming. It was my first console, and for me, launched my love of gaming and Nintendo. This year the NES celebrates its 30th birthday, and if it wasn’t for the NES, consoles as we know them today might never have existed. It was hailed the saviour of gaming back when it first launched, as it helped revive the gaming industry after the video games crash of 1983.

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The video games crash is famously documented in Atari:Game Over, and it signaled an end to the second generation of video games. Many companies went bankrupt, but it wasn’t until the rise of the NES in America two years later that the industry started to take a turn for the better.

Whilst in Japan the NES was released in 1983 and better known as the Family Computer (Famicom), worldwide it wasn’t released until October 1985. Some polls state it is the best console of all time, with others placing it in the top five. Over its time, the NES has sold over 60 million units.

The NES controller design has become iconic, featuring on many t-shirt designs and accessories; some companies have even made NES soap designs. Apart from the controller, the NES has many other accessories. Possibly the most famous was the gun used for the game Duck Hunt known as the ‘NES Zapper’; other NES accessories included the R.O.B and the Power Pad.

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The NES saw the launch of many games franchises that are still liked today, including The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. There were over 800 games released on the NES, including more than 100 unlicensed games. Super Mario Bros. was one of the 17 launch titles on the console, with games such as Megaman, Castlevania and The Legend of Zelda coming out later in 1987. Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario Bros. 3 were all released on the NES, with the first in the series having sold the most copies.

The popularity of NES games is further reflected by the release of the game NES Remix, and the downloads of original NES games from Nintendo’s virtual console; the virtual console is available on the Wii, Wii U and 3DS. The NES Remix was well received enough to warrant two more games, NES Remix 2 and Ultimate NEX Remix.  The NES Remix series included games such as Super Mario Bros., Zelda, Kirby and many others, as well as extra mini games and challenges.

Whilst the NES had been discontinued in 1995 in America and Europe, and in 2003 in Japan, the consoles can still be found in many retro games shops and conventions; you could still get your NES repaired in Japan until 2007. Many people still enjoy the NES games either through the virtual console, or on an original NES that still works.  Whilst the console may no longer be available, the admiration of the franchises created during its lifetime live on to tell the tale.

The History of Nintendo

I have been a Nintendo fan since the massive success that was the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), but they weren’t always such a well-known console corporation. Nintendo started out as a Hanafuda card company nearly 100 years before the NES even existed. Fusajiro Yamauchi founded the company in 1889 in Kyoto, and it was kept in the Yamauchi family until the late Satoru Iwata took over as president in 2002.

The first electronic games that Nintendo produced were the series of games on the hand-held Game and Watch in the 1980s. They came as individual hand-held games that were pre-installed and played on a LCD screen; this differed from the later hand-held consoles which allowed interchanging of games via cartridges. Over the years, the Game and Watch had over 50 games available on the various models, and remained popular until the release of the Game Boy.

The Game Boy came around in 1989, with the idea of combining the popularity of the portability of the Game and Watch, and the cartridge based interchangeability of the NES. Various advanced versions of the Game Boy were launched over time, including the Game Boy Colour and Game Boy Advance, before Nintendo moved onto something completely different with the Nintendo DS in 2004.

The DS still stands today as Nintendo’s most popular console, coming second only to the PlayStation 2 in the best-selling consoles of all time. It differed from the Game Boy because it had a dual screen that also enabled touch screen technology; the DS also had a built-in microphone and WiFi technology.

The Nintendo 3DS was the first hand-held console to incorporate 3D effects without the need for 3D glasses. Sadly the 3DS  proved to not be as popular as the original DS, with Nintendo’s profits plummeting and staff wages having to be cut; it has sold only one-third the amount of units that the original DS did. Complaints when the 3DS was 1st released included the short battery life and the awkward angle needed to get the 3D effects to work; the 3DS XL addressed these issues and was received well at launch.

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Nintendo’s first home console came in 1983 (1985 in America) with the Nintendo Entertainment System, or the Famicom as is was better known in Japan. The NES helped the video game market to recover after the famous American crash, and it was the first of the cartridge based consoles. The NES saw the launch of some of its most iconic franchises that still exist today, including Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda and Metroid; many online polls consider the NES to be the greatest console of all time. The controller was the classic A/B brick design, but there were numerous special controllers released for use with specific games, including the NES Zapper and R.O.B.

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) arrived in 1990 in Japan and was worldwide by 1992. It was the first console of the 16 bit generation, but had tough competition from Sega’s new console, the Sega Mega Drive. Despite the competition, it was still the best-selling console at the time. It was considered the best console of the 16 bit generation due to the advance graphics and sound capabilities compared with the other available consoles. Whilst many classic games from the SNES are remembered, including those such as Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country, perhaps the one that stands out most is Street Fighter II as it was the first console port of the popular arcade game.

The N64 came out in 1996, with the name deriving from the fact the console had a  64-bit central processing unit. When the N64 arrived, so did two very well-known games; GoldenEye launched a new genre of games known as first person shooters, and the action-adventure game The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is considered by many to be the greatest game of all time. The creation of the N64 brought about major controversy due the fact Nintendo were in talks with Sony about making a disc based console instead of one that used cartridges. When the deal fell through, Nintendo went ahead with the cartridge based N64, and Sony went on to launch the first PlayStation; whilst the N64 was still a success, the launch of the PlayStation negatively impacted upon Nintendo’s sales and shares. File:Nintendo-64-wController-L.jpg

The next up in the list of Nintendo consoles was the GameCube, and whilst it was well received, it faced tough competition from Sony’s PlayStation 2 and Microsoft’s new console, the Xbox. The PlayStation 2 is the best-selling console of all time, with greater than 155 millions units being sold compared to the GameCube’s poor 22 million.

The Wii was available in 2006 and it was another major hit for Nintendo that helped them recover from poor File:Wii-Console.pngGameCube sales.  The revolutionary motion control sensor and wireless remote provided gamers with an alternative experience to that which Sony and Microsoft had to offer. The Wii outsold the PS3 and the Xbox 360 for a time, selling over 100 million units compares to roughly 84 million for the PS3 and Xbox 360. The success of the Wii is thought to have been due to the fact Nintendo tried to aim their new console at a different market to those that Sony and Microsoft were aiming at. They tried to incorporate the casual games market, as well as young children and families. The focus on fitness based games gave the Wii an edge over the other consoles, which they later tried to copy.

The most recent console, the Wii U,  saw Nintendo’s staff having to take another pay-cut due to terrible sales at launch. Even today, the Wii U has only sold just over 10 million units, which is on par with the low sales of Sega’s Saturn and Dream Cast consoles that caused Sega’s existence on the console scene to crumble.  Whilst the Wii U did differ from the Wii with its new gamepad technology, a lack of games at launch contributed towards poor sales.  The sales and number of games available have slowly been improving over time, but it might be a case of too little too late for the Wii U.

The future of the next Nintendo console is currently unknown, but there are plenty of rumours. The consoles code name is the NX, and it is thought that it might incorporate virtual reality. It would not be surprising if Nintendo did go down the virtual reality route as they are a very innovative company, but whatever the future holds for Nintendo, the next console will need to sell well to help them get back on top.

Summary of ‘The Big 3’ press conferences

When E3 comes round in June every year, talk turns to who will give the best presentation and win fans over. This year however, there was no clear winner or loser, with each company smashing their presentations. All 3 companies made their presentations mainly about the games. They finally listened to gaming fans that were fed up of having companies going on about things you could do aside from play games on your console, instead of talk about new upcoming titles. Whilst most gamers have welcomed additions such as Netflix, E3 has been lacking behind in impressive announcements; this year was different.

The first of the big 3 to show off their stuff was Microsoft. Opening their presentation with a 15 minute trailer for the new Halo game was enough to get any Microsoft fan boy hooked. A couple of game announcements later and Microsoft then revealed some good news; backwards compatibility with your Xbox 360 games! Although backwards compatibility is a great move forwards, some will say it’s too little too late as the Xbox One has been out since 2013. A snazzy new controller was also revealed, before Bethesda turned up and talked about the already announced Fallout 4. A few EA games later and a pretty looking Dark Souls 3 trailer was shown, as well as a game called Ion that not much is yet known about. Some ‘coming to Xbox first’ games were next, including Tacoma and the new Tomb Raider, demonstrating that Xbox was lacking in exclusive only titles. Towards the end, however, a handful of exclusives were announced, including the expected Gears of War and Fable Legends, a new game from Rare, as well as ‘Rare Replay’, a collection of 30 remastered games by the company from times gone by. Another Microsoft gem that stole the show was the augmented reality device named Microsoft Hololens. Minecraft was used to demonstrate how you could incorporate holograms into your game, creating the Minecraft world on any surface; more details on this are to be announced, but what was shown so far was definitely impressive.

Sony’s conference was up next and it blew everyone away by starting with a game that people thought had been long-lost; The Last Guardian. The Last Guardian is a game that has been in development since 2007, so fans had lost faith that it was ever going to come out. One stunning trailer later, and it has been confirmed for a 2016 release date. Another game that looked very interesting was Horizon. There is more to be confirmed about the game, but with dinosaurs and robots, it seems to have a winning combination. A few more games such as Hitman and Street Fighter V were shown off, before Sony pulled out the big guns; a Final Fantasy VII remake and Shenmue III. The prospect of a Final Fantasy remake had the crowd and the gamers at home going mental with excitement. Just when Sony fans thought they couldn’t top that, Yu Suzuki stepped on stage to announce a Kickstarter campaign for Shenmue III; the idea of this was so popular, it raised $2 million in 9 hours! Project Morpheus was mentioned briefly, but Sony were still not giving too much away.

Finally Nintendo, who instead of doing a press conference, once again opted for a Nintendo Direct presentation. It has long been thought that Nintendo can’t compete against the other big names anymore, but they don’t intend to; their games target a different demographic and they have always had a big focus on their hand-held consoles. The ever humorous Nintendo announced their 1st title by transforming puppets of the Nintendo directors into characters from the new Starfox game for the Wii U. A release date for Yoshi’s Wooly World was announced, and the story behind it described. A new Paper Mario game was also presented. There was a big focus on 3DS games, with Hyrule Warriors getting re-released on the 3DS, and the new Metroid and Zelda games also coming out on the 3DS; the emphasis of these seemed to be Nintendo trying to push the multiplayer options on the 3DS. The Zelda Triforce Heroes game looked like a lot of fun, and had a similar style to the popular Link Between Worlds. The main highlight of the Nintendo presentation (apart from the dancing puppets) was the multiple clips of Super Mario Maker. The game allows you to make your own levels from the Mario series; this is an exciting prospect for anyone that grew up with Mario and the rest of the Nintendo games. A lot of Nintendo fans were disappointed by the Nintendo Direct presentation due to a lack of content, but nowadays Nintendo announce things throughout the year rather than leaving it all to E3, so I am sure there will be much more to come from Nintendo soon. The lack of the new Wii U Zelda game was a big upset, but at the same time I understand that they want to make it as great as possible for Nintendo fans before showcasing it, and if there is one thing Nintendo does right it is a Zelda game.

All in all, this year’s E3 has been a lot better than expected, and has left a lot of gamers happy and content that console gaming is still going strong! There were lots of exciting new prospects to look forward to, with a mixture of some brand new great looking games as well as fans being pleased by the prospects of older games getting remade; 2016 is definitely a year that console gamers should look forward to.