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One other game that was discussed during the first of October’s Nintendo Direct was the next title in the long-running Mario & Sonic Olympics franchise, titled in full as Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games Sochi 2014.
Fans of the franchise, one of your biggest criticisms of the series is finally over! For the first time in the series, players from around the globe will be able to compete simultaneously via the Internet – so says Satoru Iwata himself. Sochi 2014 will feature the ability to compete with Friends or with anyone around the Globe in four specially selected events for the mode. The events include three Winter Olympic staples – Freestyle Ski Cross, Snowboard Cross and Short Track Speed Skating 100m; and a Dream Event racecourse combining elements of all the different types of Winter Racing.
Competing Worldwide will pitch you against random other players across the globe also looking for matches; with each player acting as a representative for the country they selected as their home territory at profile creation. When you win any medal in an online contest, you will also win points towards your territories’ total score. A ranking system will be permanently in-place in the game, tallying up the scores, so countries can compare the performance of players representing them in order to see which country has the best players (or the biggest community of consistently medal-winning players – face it, some countries will always be behind just because others are bigger).
In other news, as well as selling the game on its own, Nintendo will make Sochi 2014 available in a bundle with a blue Wii Remote Plus also included. Both game and bundle will hit stores November 15.
If there’s one thing I both love and hate Nintendo for personally, it’s Nintendo Directs. I hate them because they spring up suddenly, often with very little advance notice; and the pace of reveals in them can go from sedate to break-neck making it often hard to keep up. Yet, I love them BECAUSE they’re surprising, exciting and often have a lot of cool stuff to show off. Conducting a Nintendo Direct at 3pm Yesterday, a 29-minute conference proved exactly my point, showing off tons of new information about multiple upcoming 3DS and Wii U titles.
First up was news about Super Mario 3D World, for Wii U. A two-minute trailer shows Mario, Luigi, Toad and Princess taking a midnight stroll watching shooting stars. But their attention is soon drawn to a transparent pipe that is half-buried in the middle of the path. All of a sudden, it straightens and a fairy-like character emerges from it. But before it can speak, Bowser pops out from the same pipe, catches it in its large hands and places it in a jar, taunting the gang. The gang follow Bowser down the pipe and a new adventure begins…
What also begins is a series of scenes showing off whole new features coming to the game. Naturally, Cat Mario takes most of the spotlight, Mario even picking up the Bell Mushroom that triggers the transformation from the floor of the level in a very early scene (which itself also confirms power-ups won’t JUST be in ?-blocks). Over the next few minutes we see even more of Cat Mario’s special abilities, such as touching grabbing an end of level flagpole. Instead of triggering it there and then, Mario climbs UP the flagpole and handstands on its top, triggering it at its very highest point and earning a 10,000 point bonus. Now, THAT’S a way to rack up the score! We also see Cat Mario jump against a Thromp and climb up its face, eventually finding himself atop it and able to ride it without taking any damage.
But hold on? Did we just see NEW Powerups? Why, yes we did! Collectable cherries in some levels see the collecting character (which Satoru informs us can be any of the players) split into two copies of themselves; and additional cherries adding one more. One scene shows four Mario firing a barrage of fireballs together, with some on higher ground and some on lower – though the mechanics aren’t made clear.
Also of interest is the return of Coin Block Mario. Once again it will be possible for Mario to wear a block on his head and have it shower him in coins as he runs, jumps and falls through the level. But it’s not the only headwear Mario will be sporting this time! Further scenes show off two other blocks worn on Mario’s head – a Cannon block that fires cannonballs in direction he faces at the time of firing; and the return of Propeller Blocks as wearable on-head objects. While we’re talking about Coin Showers – one level sees a geyser of coins falling through the centre of the level and Mario jumping through it to collect as many as possible. Oh Mario, has your anti-hero Wario’s greed rubbed off on you now? (Anyone who’s played New Super Mario Bros. 2 will probably say yes to that.)
And that’s not even the end! Further scenes see Mario riding through an Ice level in what appears to be an ice-skate version of the Kuribo’s Shoe (last seen in Super Mario Bros. 3); a Goomba Suit allowing Mario to look like a Goomba and enter a room filled with them without drawing attention. There will also be bombs in some levels that can be picked up and thrown, not just to blow up enemies; but also to trigger nearby POW blocks for chain explosions. We even see Mario holding a plant pot containing his own Piranha plant, which proceeds to eat any enemy within reach.
And then we get to the game world itself. The In-game Map sees levels referred to by both number and name; walking to World 1-3, we see the top-left corner of the screen refer to the level as both “World 1-3” and “Mount Beanpole”. Once in a level, each one seems to introduce a new touch to the proceedings. A level with a river flowing over part of the path sees Goombas floating around on life rings; while a Ghost House level sees Mario grab a fake flagpole that reveals itself to be an illusion created by several Boos. Elsewhere, a lava level sees Mario walk across a winding path that keeps disappearing but reveals itself with butt-stomps; while one level is played in the shadows of an unseen environment.
Driving towards the screen in a car decorated with several spikes, Bowser rounds off the Trailer by taunting us in front of his castle. Wait a minute… in a CAR? This isn’t Mario Kart…
Satoru Iwata rounded off the proceedings by informing us that while much focus has been on Super Mario 3D World being the first 3D Mario to allow co-operative multi-player, the game will also have a solid single-player campaign for those who prefer to take the challenge solo. Finally, as a special promotion, Mario and Luigi-branded Wii Remote Plus controllers will be made available in stores from November 1. These controllers are coloured either Red or Green with the appropriate Brother’s logo emblazoned on them, and yellow + and – buttons.
The last day of the Eurogamer Expo was rounded off with a live version of the Eurogamer’s podcast, featuring a number of indie game developers as well as some Eurogamer staff.
The main topic was, as to be expected with the guests, indie gaming. Smaller sub-topics were discussed such as what indie meant to the developers sitting up on stage, that the only real difference between AAA studios and indie developers was the need for indies to be ‘out there’ more, how new media and social networks could be a double-edged sword at times, allowing for that important word-of-mouth marketing while leaving themselves open to anonymous backlash and how indie gaming has risen from being practically nothing to carving out a sizeable niche in the gaming community.
Though really, it’s impossible for me to write an article that does this podcast justice. Just watch the video below.
Guests were:
(@vics_viper) Martin Robinson – Features Editor for Eurogamer
(@edstern) Ed Stern – Splash Damage
(@vlambeer)Ramil Ismail – Vlambeer
(@mikebithell)Mike Bithell – Thomas Was Alone
(@roll_7)John Ribbens – Roll7
(@wyp100)Wesley Yin-Pool – Eurogamer News Editor
Another indie game that’s coming out for one of Sony’s consoles was shown on stage today at Eurogamer Expo: a top-down roguelike advertised as Wasteland Kings but now renamed to Nuclear Throne.
In a talk that also covered how the developing studio Vlambeer had come to be and gotten to where they currently were, Rami Ismail revealed that Nuclear Throne was a rebuild of a game the studio had previously been working on and that the new concept had been developed during the Mojam charity event earlier in the year. Various different builds of the game at different stages of completion were showed off, some made purely to test out later-game concepts such as higher-level monsters. The game itself is set in a post-apocalypic world populated by mutants of many various appearances and abilities. The aim of the game is to fight your way through levels, using many different weapons (from guns to grenade launchers) to defeat the bosses and eventually find a fabled throne that would make you the ‘ruler’ of the wasteland you live in.
There are a number of playable mutant characters to be chosen from (including one who is a throwback to a boss from this game’s previous form as Gun Godz) and all of them have a different useful ability such as being able to make special high-powered shots with weapons that consume 2x the ammo to turning into a crystal that reflects enemy shots. There are also tiny green ‘nuclear’ pick-ups that allow you to upgrade your character through ‘mutations’ once you’ve gathered enough of them, after which you’ll be given a choice of 4 random upgrades to choose from. Vlambeer said that they didn’t want to have the traditional ‘cool-down’ on abilities either, instead choosing to make each ability have a positive and negative to them. No two games will be the same thanks to the random mutations offered each time and the randomly generated levels of the game.
Nuclear Throne already has had a release in its Wasteland Kings Mojam version through Humble and versions are coming soon for the PC, Mac Playstation 4 and Playstation Vita.
