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The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD Launches with a Wolf Link amiibo
REDMOND, Wash., Jan. 21, 2016 – The Nintendo games launching in the first part of the year are going to include some fun amiibo functionality. Games like The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD for the Wii U console and Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games™ for the Nintendo 3DS family of systems, both launching in March, use a wide variety of different compatible amiibo figures. Some new amiibo figures will also launch in March, including the legendary Wolf Link amiibo that is included in every physical version of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD, as well as three new figures in the Animal Crossing amiibo series, featuring fan-favorite characters like Timmy & Tommy, Kapp’n and Rover. The previously announced Ryu, Roy and R.O.B. (Famicom Colors) amiibo figures will also launch in March.
“New amiibo figures and functionality will keep surprising fans in 2016,” said Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America’s Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing. “All the upcoming amiibo prove that the must-have figures are continuing to evolve in unexpected and fun ways.”
When the physical version of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD launches on March 4 at a suggested retail price of $59.99, it will include a beautiful Wolf Link amiibo figure based on the same character from the classic game. Purchasing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD and Wolf Link amiibo bundle will currently be the only way to get this amiibo figure. When tapped to the Wii U GamePad controller, this legendary lupine opens the Cave of Shadows, a challenging new bonus dungeon in the game. After completing the Cave of Shadows, players can save their remaining hearts to the Wolf Link amiibo, and then use those hearts inside the Cave of Shadows to replenish life energy. After conquering the cave, players can save a record of their remaining hearts to the Wolf Link amiibo and attempt to beat their score at any time. Some of the data stored on the Wolf Link amiibo figure can also be used with The Legend of Zelda game for Wii U, which launches this year. More details about this functionality will be revealed in the future.
In addition to the Wolf Link amiibo, other amiibo figures in the Super Smash Bros. series like Link, Toon Link, Zelda, Sheik and Ganondorf will work with The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD. By tapping the Link or Toon Link amiibo, players can replenish their arrows. Tapping Zelda or Sheik will refill the player’s hearts, while, in a devious twist, tapping the Ganondorf figure will actually make Link take double the damage!
On March 18, new amiibo figures in the Animal Crossing series will launch in stores, including characters like Timmy & Tommy, Kapp’n and Rover. Digby will also be made available as a stand-alone amiibo. The next series of Animal Crossing amiibo cards also launches in March, bringing the grand total of available amiibo cards to be used in games like Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival for Wii U and Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer for Nintendo 3DS to a whopping 300. Let the collecting begin!
Fans who are ready to compete in Rio de Janeiro with Mario, Sonic and the gang in Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games will also have to warm up their amiibo-tapping fingers. When the action-filled game launches for Nintendo 3DS on March 18 at a suggested retail price of $39.99, both Mario and Sonic amiibo figures will be compatible*. By tapping the Mario or Sonic amiibo figures to the New Nintendo 3DS system (or on a Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo 3DS XL or Nintendo 2DS system using the NFC Reader/Writer accessory), players can boost Mario and Sonic’s outfits with that character’s power for the day.
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Pokémon, some of the Pokémon amiibo will be made available again at select retailers. Fans should be on the lookout for Charizard, Jigglypuff, Greninja and Lucario to once again return to shelves right next to Pikachu.
Finally, Star Fox Zero delivers a new beginning for the classic shooter series. With a unique control scheme that uses both the TV screen and the screen on the GamePad, players pilot multiple vehicles through intergalactic levels with Fox and his classic crew. The game launches exclusively for Wii U on April 22 and will feature amiibo compatibility. More details will be revealed at a later time.
MinecraftEdu has been used in classrooms around the world to help with the teaching of children, using a modified version of the original Minecraft game. Now Microsoft have snatched it up and will be re-launching it as Minecraft Education Edition later on this summer.
Originally the product of education software developer TeacherGaming, they combined the popular game of Minecraft with features to aid learning. MinecraftEdu was been designed to help teachers manage their pupils’ in-class gaming sessions and has been used to teach everything from maths to foreign languages so far. Minecraft Education Edition will keep those same core features but will be improving upon them, although Microsoft hasn’t yet given any clues as to how they’re going to do this. For the moment Microsoft have said that MinecraftEdu will be continuing as normal, including the hosting service, until Education Edition is working and ready to go. All existing users of the software at that point will then be given a year’s pass of use for Minecraft Education Edition for free.
TeacherGaming have published an FAQ to spell out differences between the two versions as well as giving assurances that Minecraft Education Edition will be a positive thing for everyone.
“Minecraft: Education Edition builds on the early learnings from MinecraftEdu, while growing and expanding its feature set. Working with the MinecraftEdu creators Joel Levin and Santeri Koivisto, we started with all the learnings from the EDU edition, and built its key features into the Minecraft: Education Edition. We also added new features including login and personalization, the student portfolio feature, a second screen experience for teachers, and the ability to save student progress.”
Exact details will be released within the next few days.
Rogue Harvest is an indie rogue-like game from Genetix Studios. It challenges you to survive in a procedurally generated world by gathering resources, crafting items, growing and killing food and most importantly making sure that you have shelter for the night.
The game itself has been out in Steam Early Access now for over two months, having released November 5th 2015. The studio’s plan is to keep the game in Early Access for a few months to have people play it and give feedback so that they can improve the game before they do a full release. So, how does it stand up?
Rogue Harvest is actually quite bug-free as I played it, with the only ones I noticed being the popping of 3 achievements just as I was loading in the maps the first two times (the 3 Mushroom Massacre achievements you get for killing certain numbers of the Mushkin enemies) without me having met the conditions. That being said wandering around the world you did often find dropped mushrooms in the midst of blood splatters so maybe the world generation has a thing against Mushkins?
Rogue Harvest is also quite a difficult game. You do start with 3 tools that never wear out, but other tools you craft as well as helmets/hoods all have a durability and so do walls as you’ll find out. You do start the game with a small hut to provide some shelter during the nights, but as monsters can easily chew through walls you’ll find out very quickly that a one layer wall is not enough to keep you safe at night. Although you do get warning that night is falling and have a handy day-night clock in the top-right corner it is easy to get yourself lost in the world and be caught outside, and if that happens you just need to keep running. Outrunning the monsters is possible and when day comes most of them will retreat again, just be very careful where you’re running lest you get jumped from the front. Of course, death is permadeath in this game as it is a rogue-like so if you value your crops and tools you need to be careful what you do.
Resource-wise there’s a fair bit you can do. You’ll find wild carrots, potatoes and other veg that you can bash to gain the vegetable to eat/cook or a seed to plant that crop yourself or potentially both at once. Trees are plentiful and most give a good few logs as well as leaves which I suggest gathering a lot of to snack on and keep your energy (hunger bar) stocked up. Stone ore comes most often in little chunks on the ground but you can find big cliffsides of stone, as well as ores and sometimes big chunks of marble that you can all use for crafting. Charcoal is one of the more important items, as crafting the Oven which makes your food restore more energy needs 4 pieces of it. To get it though you need to burn down trees, and you can’t really craft anything to do it yourself without spending resources on a fire wand that you could use for other things instead. Fire flower enemies are the best way to go about the task, but watch that you don’t get caught in the fireballs instead. Burning damage is a thing in this game, along with poison damage.
However, where it’s let down a little bit is that currently there’s not really a lot to craft or do. There is going to be a story implemented fully into the game upon release, but for the moment the only parts of it come during the intro cutscene, flashbacks you can generate upon touching random strange objects you can come across (like a sign to a hospital, a plane rotor etc.) and the dialogue boxes you seem to get at preset play times during the game. There’s three crafting lists of things to make, but that’s counting the upgraded picks, axes and swords as well as all the helmets/hoods and you can only wear one of those at a time. Speaking of helmets, currently the game doesn’t have any armour slot system which means that equipping your hood/helmet is from your inventory and that takes up a space you could be using for another thing.
The studio did tweet about a week ago that they’re working on end game content for the game though, so soon there will be more things added to the game. More items, more things to craft, more loot and the full story.
Starting work on the end of game sequence for #RogueHarvest if the game doesn’t hit you emotionally, I’ve failed as an #indiedev
If you’re interested in giving the game a go, you can find it now priced at £4.79 for UK Steam people, and $5.99 for the US. I’d say it was worth that much, because despite the lack of craftable things right now, the rogue-like element does add some replayability to the game which is worth five pounds/six dollars in my opinion.
Having teased on their Twitter yesterday that something new for Cities Skylines was coming, today Paradox have revealed their second expansion to their popular city-building game: Cities Skylines – Snowfall.
As their previous expansion added a day and night cycle to the game, Snowfall will be adding a weather system to the game allowing for rain and snow as well as a new temperature reading that will have residents huddling up for warmth. It’ll add a new mechanic to the game – making sure that your city is able to be kept warm enough during the times when the weather outside is terrible and keeping roads clear when the snow starts to pile up.
The expansion will also add some new transportation options to the game, including trams which were a much demanded fan-favourite to be implemented into the game next. Managing transport routes has also been made easier to do and a snowplow service can be called upon to clear roads that have a build up of snow upon them. There will also be wintery new parks and other attractions added to help draw your residents and tourists from miles around, as well as a new Chirp #yeahthereare.
Some of the cosmetic weathers such as rain and fog will be added to the original game free of charge in an update around the time that Snowfall releases along with other yet-to-be-announced features, and the expansion will be coming to Windows, Mac and Linux computers sometime later this year.
Oh boy. January 19th, 2016 is going to be a great day if you like RPGs, rogue-lites, horror or any combination of them. Red Hook studios is releasing Darkest Dungeon on the 19th, and they’ve put out a sweet new trailer to tease us all. For those that don’t know, Darkest Dungeon is a gorgeously hand crafted dungeon crawling rouge-lite. Part members can go insane with unpredictable effects, the risk reward is off the charts thanks to permanent death, and even the amount of gear you take into a dungeon with you is an often agonizing decision. We here at the station have put a ton of hours into the early access version, and we’re practically salivating over the thought of a finished game. But until then, wipe your chin off and gaze at this trailer.
