Nintendo Switch
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The Nintendo Switch wants to be your new, favorite stalker

Cue the establishing shot: a suburban home at night. Its window drapes are open. In the distance, a skyline looms over the horizon like a mountain peak. Inside, a man sits in the dim glow of a television. He’s slouched low, pushed back by the emanations. The marketing rhetoric leans into classic entertainment images: The first 10 seconds of your favorite syndicated situation comedy; The Maxell TV ad of a man getting blown backwards by the cassette tape’s hi-fidelity sound. He’s playing a game. Light strains of composer Koji Kondo’s classic Overworld Theme from The Legend of Zelda (1986) mix…

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Miyamoto: Virtual reality is "in direct contrast with what it is we’re trying to achieve"

When it comes to the console space, Nintendo’s mantra is making games that bring people together face-to-face. We’ve seen that with the Wii U and its Gamepad, the Wii in general, and the 4-player docks of Nintendo 64 and Gamecube. So virtual reality presents a quandary for the quality face time sought by the amicable Japanese software and hardware house, since it requires a player to submerge herself in an isolating pair of black goggles.  Here’s what Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto told Time about the prospect of VR Nintendo games: When you think about what virtual reality is, which is…

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Oculus Rift + Kinect + Wii Balance Board = hoverboard ride of your dreams

Just when you thought your childhood dream of hoverboarding would never materialize … Enter: project Hoverboard VR, a virtual reality setup that simulates those bodacious fictional levitating skateboards of the ’90s. Jiggered together from gaming peripherals that don’t get out much these days, the setup uses a Wii Fit Balance Board and Kinect 1.0 to make you feel like Marty McFly. Well, not quite. The virtual environment is not quite up to snuff, with a rudimentary pre-PS1 poly-count and wireframe, but as a proof of concept this is amazing stuff. And you thought you’d never have reason to pull your…

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Nintendo’s Iwata talks making fun, non-videogame-related appliances

Remarks by Nintendo’s president Satoru Iwata have again made us wonder what kind of bat-shit crazy mystery device the Japanese gaming giant is working on. Interviewing with a Japanese outlet, he strongly suggested that their secretive “quality of life” project, which they announced back in January, is not a videogame nor gaming system. That’s a little weird considering making beloved games is what Nintendo does. Just don’t tell Iwata that. “Nintendo is a company that can do whatever it wants,” he says, going on to explain that while they will remain an entertainment company, entertainment doesn’t necessarily equate to videogames.…

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SXPD is part digital comic, part racing game, all very pretty

The trouble with reading digital comics if you also play games is that you’re always choosing between, say, playing Hearthstone or reading Fables on your tablet. SXPD, as we see in this 30 seconds of footage, asks, “Why limit yourself to one or the other when you can do both?” The offering is not so much a fully mixed breed as it is two like things welded together, with distinct segments where you play and other segments where you flip pages. The best part looks to be how the art of the game (which features space troopers who drive hovering jet skis)…