Better late than never, right? New Play Control! Pikmin 2 released over three years ago in European territories, but American fans looking forward to seeing the updated Wii version of the GameCube classic have been forced to wait. Nintendo Power says that’ll be changing later this year, with Olimar and the creatures of “Distant Planet” making their way to North American shores once again this June.

Exciting news, but one has to wonder what took so long. Following something of an unfortunate trend for the publisher’s North American office, Pikmin 2 is the latest in a long line of titles that the publisher has brought to the United States months or years after hitting other territories. On top of that, over a dozen great titles have yet to see localization – a sad fact of life for any Wii fan lamenting the console’s sparse release calendar.

If you’ve been content to enjoy Pikmin 2 in its original state and have instead been looking forward to the next entry in the franchise, Shigeru Miyamoto recently confirmed that Nintendo will be bringing that title with them to Los Angeles for E3 later this year.

Pikmin 2 Finally Reaches North American Wiis Soon [nintendolife via Siliconera]

Last time we talked about Pokémon + Nobunaga’s Ambition, we reported that it was selling well in Japan, but there was no news about it coming stateside. That changes today! Nintendo just announced that they are bringing the now renamed DS game, Pokémon Conquest, to the US on June 18.

In Pokémon Conquest you play as a young Warlord who uses Pokémon to battle Warriors and Warlords inspired by the Japanese feudal era. While the game doesn’t contain all 600+ creatures known to date, it does contain “nearly 200 Pokémon, including many from the recent Pokémon Black and White” iterations. As a Pokémon fan and a lover of SRPGs, I can’t wait for June.

[Source: Business Wire]

Here’s a bit of news that doesn’t come as a shock: the latest Pokémon game, Pokémon + Nobunaga’s Ambition topped the Japanese DS charts according to Media Create’s weekly retail chart with 172,027 units sold.

But there’s a twist to those numbers.

Now here’s the part that’s a little shocking. According to several retailers, the game isn’t following the expected pattern and appealing to children. Instead Pokémon + Nobunaga’s Ambition is selling well to adults. One retailer’s report collected by Siliconera said, “the entirety of buyers at his store consisted of college kids.” Another agreed that “[sales] only picked up at night, which is when adults started to arrive at the store.” Of course these are just anecdotes and don’t represent the whole picture, but it’s still worth noting.

I can see why the strategy RPG that mixes Nintendo’s creatures with Japanese warlords might appeal to older gamers as it doesn’t have the manic collect-them-all nature of the original Pokémon series. I hope this one makes its way to North America. The image of samurai and scythers mixing it up in a turn-based, isometric strategy game is just too awesome to miss.

[Sources: Andriasang, Siliconera]

I’m going to put this on record: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is my least favorite Zelda game of all time. But I’m not stopping there; not only is it a poor Zelda game, it’s also a poor videogame in general.

Without even touching upon the love ‘em or hate ‘em motion controls, there’s more than enough evidence to show that Nintendo should’ve taken a step back, looked at Skyward Sword’s innovations, and asked themselves, “Are we sure these ideas are good?”

Gameplay Mechanics

“Nintendo never innovates with Zelda” and “Every Zelda game is the same” are some of the arguments Zelda detractors tend to throw around. They have some merit; almost every game follows roughly the same structure: you get a slingshot, a bow, some bombs, etc. etc. and then you use that “dungeon item” to defeat the dungeon boss. So with Skyward Sword it seems Nintendo took those complaints to heart. They added new gameplay mechanics and some new items. Too bad many of them are terrible.

Let’s start with the stamina meter. Link gets to sprint now! Yay? Problem is, whenever you start sprinting, a big, green meter shaped like half a lime pops up to show you how much stamina you have left. Not only does it look ugly and out of place with the game’s aesthetic, but Link has the wind of a 70 year-old smoker. In previous games, if you wanted to run faster you’d equip the Bunny Hood, ride Epona, or perhaps do a little bit of Goron rolling. Now you can sprint for a few seconds, wait for the gauge to refill, then sprint some more.

But the stamina gauge affects more than just sprinting. Almost every other activity in Skyward Sword is dependent on that little citrusy meter. Climbing, spin attacks, carrying things, pushing and pulling blocks are all dependent on Link’s incredibly tiny stamina pool. While a stamina meter could create a fun sense of risk vs. reward, the fact that it lasts for such a pitiful short time in Skyward Sword makes it more frustrating than anything else. How can Link sprint away from an enemy if they’ll just catch up in a couple of seconds when it runs out? I suppose he can politely ask them to wait to attack him after he’s caught his breath. Everyone knows monsters obey the rules of Time Outs.

Let’s move on to dowsing. Dowsing. I shudder every time I hear that word now. We get it, Nintendo. Skyward Sword is played with the WiiMote–a thing you point at the screen. We don’t need a gameplay mechanic to remind us of this. Dowsing has to be one of the dumbest things ever, and it only gets worse when you realize you have to use it all the damn time.

Here’s how pretty much all of Skyward Sword goes: you go to a new area, Fi (more on her in a bit) pops up and says that something (or things plural) is hidden in the area, she suggests you dowse for them, and then the game turns into a hot n’ cold, hide n’ seek simulator. Were gamers supposed to be impressed at this “innovative” way Nintendo managed to include the WiiMote’s pointing ability?

You’re trying to find Zelda? Dowse for her! You’re trying to find some lost forest bird/plant things? Dowse for them! Musical notes swimming in a lake? You guessed it; dowse for them! I’m not complaining that dousing required the use of the WiiMote. It still would’ve been a terrible mechanic if you were moving the cursor around the screen with an analogue stick. The problem is that dowsing made the game resemble a bunch of never-ending fetch quests.

There are other mechanics I could touch upon–flying and the loot system–but I have other things I want to talk about. So just know that those two are also filled with bad ideas, but let’s move on to the game’s narrative.

Narrative

I’m a fiction writer, so a game’s narrative is always something I pay attention to (see: Killzone 3). Zelda games aren’t known for their incredibly deep narratives. Rescue the princess, stop Ganon, save Hyrule, rinse and repeat. But I remember reading reviews and other articles that raved about how Skyward Sword had a better narrative than previous Zelda games. Unfortunately that narrative ends up being distilled into: you need to prove yourself; go do these fetch quests; eventually defeat some evil demon monster.

For the record, I’m not against Zelda’s “save the princess” story. It’s simple, but it works. However, I do have a problem with the way Skyward Sword’s presentation, both its in-game narrative and the design choices surrounding that narrative. You can tell a simple but effective “Zelda story” without having to resort to the same design choices (like how Thompson points out that all of Link’s items function as keys) over and over again.

In Skyward Sword for every new dungeon you encounter, it seems like there’s a new time-consuming sidequest just to “purify yourself” or “cleanse your spirit” or some such nonsense before you can even enter. From a gameplay perspective these quests ruin the flow of the game as they keep you from actually experiencing what Zelda is all about: exploring dungeons, getting new items, and beating bosses.

From a narrative perspective these quests and the reasons given to the player as to why you have to do them break the flow of the narrative. While he tends toward exaggeration, Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw puts it best at around the four minute mark. The fetch quests and weak narrative reasons for them sap any sense of urgency from the story.

The game tells me (over and over again) that I need to stop the Imprisoned and save all of creation, but before actually letting me do that, I have to prove myself worthy. Over and over again. By the end of the game, I’d actually forgotten why I was collecting all the different doodads. I just knew I had to do it to get through the game. It bled any sense of desire to figure out where the story was going right out of me.

Characters

But what’s a story without characters to sell that story? For the most part I have no complaints with Skyward Sword’s iterations of Link and Zelda. They’re both the same archetypes they’ve always been, and by now that’s blandly inoffensive. I don’t care if they get developed more than that or not.

But early on in the story you meet Fi, Skyward Sword’s version of Navi. She’s a Goddess-created computer program that lives in your sword and speaks in auto-tune. At first, her overly verbose way of explaining everything was entertaining. Early on, I exclaimed to my girlfriend, “I like Fi! She’s funny.” I spoke too soon. For as annoyed I got with Navi’s incessant “Hey! Listen!” she’s got nothing on Fi.

Skyward Sword already has a bad habit of telling the player its story through longwinded conversations instead of showing, or because this is an interactive medium, letting the player do and experience the story more organically. But then Fi has to step in. She steps in after every conversation where an NPC tells Link where to go or what to do and repeats all of that information in the most roundabout way possible and always with made up probability statistics. I grew so tired of having to read lines like “There’s an 85% chance that Zelda is in the vicinity,” that I groaned every time Fi would pop up on the screen. Without her, Skyward Sword would have some fine, if a bit bland, characters, but with her, the game is worse.

“If it ain’t broke…” or Innovation for Innovation’s Sake

Skyward Sword gets so many things wrong because it felt like Nintendo was trying to silence the innovation-demanding subsection of their fan base. Instead all they needed was somebody on the development team to remind them of the old phrase “If it ain’t broke (and this ‘it’ happens to be a beloved, 25 year-old franchise), don’t fix it.”

Link never needed a sprint button, dowsing is a mechanic that wouldn’t be needed with more focused level design, and Fi should’ve been scrapped at the drawing board stage. In trying not to make another Ocarina of Time rehash, they’ve moved themselves away from that all-important videogame tenant: fun. And frankly Skyward Sword wasn’t any fun at all.

It seems like some of the efforts of Operation Rainfall have borne fruit. Xseed Games announced that they and Nintendo are partnering up to bring Wii RPG The Last Story to North America sometime this summer.

Hit the jump for more info about The Last Story and the announcement.

The Last Story is one of three Wii RPGs that came out in Japan that Nintendo originally was not going to localize for North America, despite plans to translate them to English for PAL territories. The Last Story marks the reunion of two videogame legends: Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi and acclaimed composer Nobuo Uematsu. More info about the game can be found on The Last Story’s brand new official Facebook page.

The game has already been well received in Japan, and is slated for release in two days in Europe, but until this announcement, it wasn’t going to make its way to American shores. Xseed Games is a localization house located in California that already has a proven track record when it comes to bringing RPGs to North America. Some of their past accomplishments include the localizations of The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky and the Ys series.

This announcement comes after Operation Rainfall campaigned hard for Nintendo release Pandora’s Tower, Xenoblade Chronicles (coming to North America on April 2nd), and The Last Story in North America. Operation Rainfall even declared January 27 to February 24 “The Last Story Month.”

[Source: @XSEEDGames]

The Smithsonian opened registration Wednesday to attend a special lecture held by famed game designer Hideo Kojima. This conversation with Kojima will take place on the second day of the Smithsonian’s Game Fest, a three day festival kicking off the museum’s new The Art of Video Games exhibit. Game Fest begins Friday, March 16 in Washington DC.

If there ever was hesitation around attending this event, the Smithsonian seeks to dispel not only with the confirmation of Kojima but also with the price of attendance — free.

Other panels will include design and development notables like Ken Levine (BioShock, System Shock 2), RJ Mical (LittleBigPlanet 2, God of War III) and Kellee Santiago (Guitar Hero, Q.U.B.E.). In addition, attendees will be treated to screenings of the original TRON and The King of Kong.

The Art of Video Games exhibit will feature games spanning from the early 1980′s to now. Attendees will get a behind the scenes look at design documents, learn insights from top developers and, of course, play. A list of featured games can be found here.

Slim pickins’. That’s all I got to say about this week’s new offerings from Nintendo. But you know what they say, “One man’s slim pickins’ is another man’s DLC GOTY.” Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s how the saying goes.

Hit the jump for this week’s full list.

Nintendo eShop

• Sakura Samurai: Art of the Sword

Nintendo eShop + Nintendo DSiWare

• GO Series: Undead Storm

Nintendo Video

• “Drown in the Now” by The Crystal Method

Iwata Asks

• Swapnote

WiiWare

• Carmen Sandiego Adventures in Math: The Great Gateway Grab

[Update - the redesign is live! Go grab your games!]

2011 isn’t the greatest year on record for Nintendo news, but the year isn’t over with yet! Nintendo Everything is reporting that the new and improved Club Nintendo will offer something the original storefront was severely lacking: digital downloads. These downloads won’t break your virtual bank either – they’re reasonably priced at around ~100-150 coins per item (roughly 2-3 retail game redemptions).

The first reported offering consists of Fluidity (150 points), Super Mario Kart (100 points), 3D Classics: Xevious (100 points), and Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again! (150 points). Thankfully, these games will be cycled out in quick succession for new ones on January 10th – could it be that Nintendo is finally making that big push for online infrastructure? Stay tuned in 2012 to find out, as the Wii-U will be the Big N’s biggest online test yet.

If you have a few Nintendo product codes lying around, make sure you create a free Club Nintendo account and register them!

Source: Nintendo Everything

Worried that the looming specter of the Wii U is staged to make your favorite paper weight even more useless? Well, Reggie Fils-Aime is hear to quash all your fears, give you a pat on the head and lull you to sleep in those giant meaty arms of his. The Nintendo of America executive believes there’s plenty of room in the closet for both consoles.

“The consumer buying Wii hardware today is going to be a different consumer than the one who will be buying Wii U in the future,” said the beefburger boss. ”This is the first holiday that the Wii is available at $149.99 or below, so it’s an expanded demographic we’re reaching.

“We haven’t announced pricing for Wii U, but you can definitely expect that pricing is going to be different and that the games are going to be different,” added the tenderloin tycoon “We do believe that Wii and Wii U will coexist for some time. As we drive the install base of Wii, we’re really setting people up to take their gaming library and be able to transfer it over to Wii U.”

When asked about what will keep the Wii afloat heading into the future, the pastrami president touted Nintendo’s WiiWare and Virtual Console services and their weekly updates — funnily enough purchases that will likely not be making the transfer over to the Wii U thanks to Nintendo’s brilliant online program. See, there is a reason to keep the Wii around after all. And besides, with no Wii U GCN support, you’re going to want to keep that Wii around to play P.N.03 anyway.

Nintendo’s Reggie Fils Aime Talks Zelda, Future of Handhelds and Wii’s Big Holiday Push [Time]

In its heyday, the JRPG was one of the the most well loved, paradigmatic experiences in the entire medium of videogames. Unfortunately, all empires must eventually fall and the the tale of the JRPG has been one of stagnation and decline. Rapid technological improvements brought many eastern studios into an uphill battle, where all too often gameplay suffered at the expense of modern graphics.

We are left with an aging genre where stories are often absurd and incomprehensible, combat is frustrating and needlessly complicated, and high-definition visuals are prioritized above all else. Luckily, Xenoblade Chronicles proves to be a rare exception.

Two gigantic titans were once locked in a timeless battle for superiority amidst a vast ocean. Eons have passed, yet the giant’s lifeless forms remain, frozen in their eternal conflict. Life has taken root on their fossilized bodies. It is on this strange landscape that the story of Xenoblade unfolds.

More than just a back-story, this unique world permeates Xenoblade at nearly every level. Aesthetically, it provides magnificent sights to behold, landscapes that you just wouldn’t be see anywhere else. In addition to lush green countryside, bio-luminescent swamps, and landscapes you’d expect from a science fiction title, there is the strange moment the player looks up for the first time to see the gigantic body of the titan looming above, an ominous, breathtaking sight to behold.

On the narrative front, the fight that once existed between the titans has now been passed to their residents. One titan has been populated by a myriad of creatures, including several colonies of humans, while the other hosts an army of machines intent on the destruction of the colonies. A year ago the humans won a victory over the invading forces of the “Mechon” in a great battle, but they have returned.

The story centers around Shulk, an adolescent boy who wields the Monado — an ancient weapon of untold power. After a surprise attack on his and the grisly murder of a loved one, Shulk and a small party of warriors set off on a suicidal revenge mission to defeat the Mechon. At a glance it looks as though Xenoblade uses a formula seen a thousand times before, but there’s more to this than what meets the eye.

Xenoblade is a lot like your favorite band getting back together for a new project. What first seems like an old, familiar song soon gives way to an incredible amount of depth. It may have been twenty years since you were singing along with them on the radio, but that’s twenty years they’ve had to become better artists, hone their craft and separate what works from what doesn’t.

It’s been a while since JRPG experienced the golden age of the 16-bit era, but it seems like Monolith Software has been taking notes. Everything you love about the genre is here in one form or another and it’s been streamlined with slight improvements that highlight what once made the genre so popular and enjoyable. Even grinding is kept to a minimum, thankfully.

Xenoblade‘s combat system is similar to that of Final Fantasy XII. Combat takes place in an overworld, in real-time, rather than in turn-based attacks on a separate battle screen. Instead of random encounters, enemies can either be approached or lured away from their groups. Particularly aggressive enemies will pursue the player, while others will run for their lives when you attack them.

Standard attacks occur automatically in regular intervals, but do little damage. Special attacks, called arts, are chosen from a “battle palette” at the bottom of the screen. Arts perform a variety of actions from healing and protection spells to knocking enemies off balance so they can be tackled to the ground. During combat a gauge fills that, when full, unleashes a devastating chain attack à la White Knight Chronicles. Chain attacks allow the player to choose arts which each character performs in unison.

The player takes control of one of the party members, each of which fulfills a different role in combat. The tank draws the aggro with the healer shooting from a distance, allowing Shulk to attack from the flanks. The Monado has its own unique set of arts that are unveiled steadily throughout the game and are essential to success in battle. Overall, it’s an engaging, fast-paced, tactical experience that highlights the genre’s best qualities.

Xenoblade may be one of the among the best JRPGs of the generation, but it is far from the prettiest. It goes without saying that this Wii role-player won’t be competing with its peers on a graphical level. That’s not to say that the game looks bad, it just looks like a really nice GameCube game. If you don’t mind looking at Twilight Princess or Shadow of the Colossus you’ll have no problems here.

One of the title’s other flaws lies in the English localization. It’s not terrible, but considering the game is well over 50 hours in length, it can definitely grate on you. Nowhere is this more evident than in battles, where you’ll hear the same one-liners over and over for hours on end. Luckily, there is an option for Japanese voice with English subtitles, and all the terrible can be gone in the click of a button.

There’s so much more to Xenoblade than a story strung along by battle sequences. I could go on and on about the vast world Monolith has created to explore or the side quests, gem crafting, and collectibles that can keep you playing for hours even after the story has run its course. There are even nice, user-friendly touches like fast travel and story memos to help get you back on course with ease if you’ve wandered off the beaten path.

Here lies a game grounded within a genre that refuses to change despite decades of innovation in game design. However, this is far from a bad thing. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, Monolith Software has perfected it with subtle enhancements that only serve to streamline and improve the experience. Comfortable to tread on familiar ground and deliver excellence, Nintendo delivers one of the best JRPGs in recent memory with Xenoblade Chronicles.

While attention has shifted from gamescom to PAX Prime without us even thinking about it, there is a summit that will fly mostly under the radar this year — Cloud Gaming USA. Just after we’ve gone home with our swag bags and hangovers, this event will take place in San Jose, Calif. September 7 – 8.

Industry professionals will fill a conference hall adjacent to Silicon Valley in efforts to shape the future of how we play games. Most likely, the future won’t look like the above picture. Albeit, a look at the attendees may provide insight as to why we should pay attention.

Cloud Gaming USA released their attendee list Tuesday. It features those one would expect to show up, the Cloud Notables so to speak like Amazon, Comcast and Gaikai. Or, in other words, those who would stand to profit most from gamers migrating from owning to paying for access. Dig a little deeper into the list, and one finds a bevy of publishing and developing names like Namco Bandai, Nintendo and THQ.

Are we to expect the likes of Tekken, Mario/Zelda/Donkey Kong and Saints Row soon to be found in the cloud? That may be the most visceral reaction. It’s more likely that these companies are interested in offering additional cloud based services, something like a persistent profile that maintains a copy of all your saves and purchases similar to the rumblings coming from EA, Ubisoft and Sony, who also will be attending.

Xenoblade Chronicles landed on European shores last week, and so far it looks like the Wii RPG is performing pretty well at retail. The highly anticipated title is currently charting at number seven for entertainment software sales in the United Kingdom.

On the Wii-specific charts Xenoblade is second only to the ever-popular Zumba Fitness, which has enjoyed ten straight weeks in the top spot. Well that’s certainly exciting news. But if you’re still on the fence, our official review is on its way.