Can you hum the theme song to Super Mario Bros.? What about Mega Man? It’s amazing how just a few notes from an old video game theme song can bring back the glorious memories of Saturday morning cartoons and giant bowls of Captain Crunch. A simpler time: A time when bragging rights came in the form of your three initials on the highest bar of a title screen. If you liked recalling those memories, then these pictures are meant for a gamer like you: Just last weekend we attended the Video Games Live interactive symphony in Portland Oregon. The show included music clips from Mario, Zelda, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid and Metroid to name only a few. Here are some pictures from the Video Games Live show.
Tag Archive: Zelda
Classic Nintendo Franchises Live on with New Tech at E3
With the line to try Zelda: Spirit Tracks stretching outside and around Nintendo’s monolithic white E3 booth, it was pretty clear the company had a hit on its hands as soon as it attached the magic Z word. Naturally, we had to give it a shot as well.
Call Of Duty 4 Big Golden Joystick Winner
The people at Activision, the publishers of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, were very happy on Thursday night. At the annual British Golden Joystick Awards, CoD4 scooped the Nuts All-Nighter Award, ESA PC Game of the Year, GamesRadar.com Online Game of the Year and Virgin Media Ultimate Game of the Year.
Unlike the other big British game awards, the Baftas, the Golden Joysticks winners are chosen by the public, not experts, and this year 850,000 people voted, according to the BBC.
David Tyler, marketing director at Activision, said:
Nintendo Rocks Out with Wii Music
Drum roll, please! Nintendo has debuted Wii Music, a new game for its popular Wii gaming console that lets players mimic the motions of more than 60 real-life instruments using the motion-sensitive Wii Remote and Nunchuck controllers to learn to play along with more than 50 songs—and the game encouraged players to improvise, making their own music, mixes, and arrangements.
“Music is a universal language that inspires and moves people,” said Nintendo executive VP of sales and marketing Cammie Dunaway, in a statement. “Wii Music provides a fun way for people to play together and be entertained while building a fundamental understanding of musical themes and rhythms. Wii Music can motivate people to learn real instruments or enhance their appreciation of musical performances.”
Brawl Sets Nintendo Sales Record
It takes a lot of clanging cash registers to set sales records with the company that brought out legendary games like Super Marios Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, but Super Smash Bros. Brawl has apparently done it. Nintendo of America announced on Monday that the title had sold a whopping 1.4 million units in the week following its launch on March 9 – a rate of two copies every second.
“Super Smash Bros. Brawl has made the leap from video game to cultural phenomenon,” said NoA executive VP of sales and marketing Cammie Dunaway, choosing the same hyperbolic words Bill Gates used to describe Halo 3. “Game reviewers and the public alike praise its fun game play and extensive, inventive content.”
Super Smash Bros. Brawl Smacks the Wii
Some folks like cerebral video games with stories, puzzles, cyphers, and complicated scenarios to decypher…and some prefer the “Itchy and Scratchy” school of video games: they fight and fight, fight fight fight!
The new Super Smash Bros. Brawl for Nintendo Wii definitely aims at the latter group, bringing together diverse characters from the Nintendo gaming universe into one giant, action-filled free-for-all. Ever wonder what would happen if Zelda took on Pokémon’s Pikachu? Or how ‘about Donkey Kong going head to head with Metal Gear Solid’s Solid Snake? Super Smash Bros. Brawl is your chance to find out.
Portal Takes GDC’s Top Game Honor
Valve’s “Portal” game—shipped as a component of Orange Box—has won the Game of the Year award at this week’s Game Developers’ Conference in San Francisco. “Portal” also picked up awards for innovation and best game design; the game won game design, engineering, and character performance honors earlier this month at the Interactive Achievement Awards.
2K Games’ Bioshock also won multiple awards for audio, visual art, and writing, while the first-person shooter Crysis from Electronic Arts took the best technology award. Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass was named best handheld game, while Sony’s life simulation game Flow won best downloadable game honors.
Halo 3 Leads September Game Sales
Market research firm NPD Group has released new video game sales figures for the month of September. It may not come as any surprise that Microsoft’s Halo 3 led the month by a wide margin, selling 3.3 million copies during the five-week retail period—a total more than double the sales fives of the rest of the top-ten sellers combined. And the popularity of Halo 3 also translated to Xbox 360 sales, with Microsoft moving 528,000 of its video game consoles, almost double its sales for the month of August and, for the first time, beating out the Nintendo Wii for the top console sales slot.
Wii Zapper to Hit Stores November 19
The Nintendo Wii has made its mark not so much for its technology, but for its innovative wireless controllers, fun games, and its consumer-friendly price. But fans of traditional shoot-em-up games have been frustrated by the Wiimote and its companion Nunchuck controller: they want to point something at the screen to shoot bad guys. Now, Nintendo has announced when its Wii Zapper accessory will land at retailers: November 19, for a suggested price of $19.99.
The Best Video Game Ever!
Have you ever wondered what’s the best video game ever made? Now you can find out, and the surprise it’s not one of the new generation of graphic-rich games. According to a poll ofexperts and readers in Edge magazine, it’s…The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The game appeared a decade ago specifically for the NintendoN64 (remember that?). Even then, it was a hit among experts, being one of one five games ever to receive a coveted five stars from Edge – the others have been Gran Turismo, Half-Life 2, Haloand Super Mario 64. Zelda’s title comes as Edge has produced a new issue of the 100 best video games. Tom Mott, Edge’s editor-in-chief, explained the game’s success:“Ocarina of Time is nearly 10 years old, but its position at the top slot in Edge’s 100 Best Videogames shows that great game design does not age. In visual terms, it obviously cannot competewith today’s Xbox 360 and PS3 productions, but, as with many classics, its appeal is about so much more than its appearance.” The list makes for interesting reading, with only one PCgame, Half Life 2, cracking the top 10, and Xbox also only manages one title in the highest rank – Halo: Combat Evolved. Indeed, many of the favorites are older, with only five next generationconsole games in the 100. Votes came from magazine readers, industry expert opinion, and from Edge’s staff. The Top 10, according to Edge, is: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarinaof Time Resident Evil 4 Super Mario 64 Half Life 2 Super Mario World Zelda: A Link to the Past Halo: Combat Evolved Final Fantasy XII Tetris Super Metroid
