Nintendo finally increases the 3DS StreetPass limit to 100
The ability to share information via StreetPass with other players has always been a fun reason to carry your 3DS everywhere. But you can only capture up to 10 users’ Miis at a time, and going through them is a time-consuming pain. On this morning’s Nintendo Direct the company announced a new “Quick Plaza” to make the process a lot smoother, as well as a new premium feature that can increase your number of potential encounters to 100.
The Quick Plaza runs a little faster (like the normal plaza does when you hold down the right trigger), but it’s also been streamlined: Each Mii character only gives you their name and location, skipping details like their personal greeting and last game played. It’s also a lot easier to boot up the StreetPass games, with their icons moved to the bottom screen instead of living in a separate menu as they do now.
The increased StreetPass limit definitely seems aimed at people who do most of their StreetPass action at large events. At conventions like San Diego Comic-Con or PAX West (happening this weekend) it’s common for the in-game queue to fill up in minutes or even seconds due to the large number of players, instead of days (or even weeks) it would take in the rest of the US. It’s included as part of StreetPass Premium, which means you’ll have to pay for the service if you haven’t done so already.
Nintendo also announced five new games for StreetPass, promising that they’re all “bite size” so users don’t have to worry about overstuffing their 3DS’ storage. Slot Car Rivals, as the name says, lets players compete in a slot car race against the best times compiled from other players they’ve exchanged info with. Market Crashers is a stock market game where you predict stock prices based on advice from other Miis. Feed Me is a cooking game where you’re tasked with preparing dishes fit for a king. The step counter in your 3DS gets a workout with Mii Trek, an exploration game. And Ninja Launcher involves launching half-naked Miis out of a cannon, just because.
Starting today, you can download any of the five games in the eShop for $3 each. As a special deal, you can grab either Slot Car Rivals or Market Crashers for free, and then snag the rest as part of a discounted bundle for $9.
Play ‘The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword’ on Wii U today
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is available to purchase and download on the Wii U via Virtual Console today. This is the original version of Skyward Sword with no remastering or updates, Nintendo announced during its 3DS-focused livestream this morning.
The Zelda franchise celebrates its 30th anniversary this year and Nintendo is bringing the presents: Special Zelda Amiibo hit stores shelves this winter and a new art book about the series from Dark Horse Comics is available for pre-order now. The Amiibo function the same as the Super Smash Bros. Link and Zelda figurines, and they’ll unlock special functions in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which lands on Wii U and Nintendo’s new console, the NX, next year.
During today’s livestream, Nintendo revealed a handful of games heading to the 3DS, including Wii U titles Yoshi’s Woolly World and Super Mario Maker, plus new games like a 3DS-only Pikmin adventure. Nintendo is quietly phasing out the Wii U before it launches the NX, while the 3DS is still going strong. The company recently revealed the New Galaxy Style 3DS XL, a version of the handheld that’s covered in deep purple swirls and cosmic dust.
ICYMI, the New Nintendo #3DS XL now comes in a slick New Galaxy Style design! pic.twitter.com/1bRnxPC5bn
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) September 1, 2016
Qualcomm has a plan to make VR headsets a whole lot cheaper
At a quiet, barely-attended press conference on the far side of Berlin, Qualcomm revealed its plan to get the cost of VR headsets to plummet. The company has been working on a series of reference designs that encompass plenty of smart home gadgets, and now it’s added a VR headset to its ranks. Much as it did in the smartphone industry, these reference designs can then be used by white label designers to cut costs on developing sophisticated headsets. The end result is likely to be a whole new generation of fully-featured VR devices that’ll cost a whole lot less than they do now.
The VR820 itself is a headset that looks a lot like Samsung and Oculus’ GearVR, albeit with two external cameras poking out the front. Based on the Snapdragon 820, the reference platform comes with eye-tracking, six-axis motion tracking and a pair of AMOLED displays at resolutions up to 1,440 x 1,440. The headset can even do basic augmented reality, as the two forward-facing cameras are placed where your eyes go.
This doesn’t sound as if it’ll cut the costs of VR in the long term, but it’s worth comparing this to Qualcomm’s smartphone strategy. The company put out a series of reference designs for low-end smartphones that upwards of 50 manufacturers picked up on. These firms then used the pre-designed systems as the basis for their own gadgets, dramatically cutting down on research and development, as well as design.Subsequently, the market slowly began to be saturated by low-end smartphones that could be churned out for tens, rather than hundreds of dollars.
As for the VR820 itself, I tried a very brief demo of the hardware here at Qualcomm’s event and the results are impressive. All of the hardware is baked into the headset, meaning that you have the same freedom of movement as with a smartphone-based solution. But, naturally, you also get a more seamless experience. In one of the demos, I was stood in a set of dungeons not too dissimilar to the dragon dungeon from Game of Thrones. One of the winged creatures would stalk around me as I remained planted to the floor, through a combination of terror and a lack of control.
Another was designed to show off the device’s six-axis motion tracking, and saw me in an ocean with a cuddly cute octopus. I was able to walk towards the cephalopod, bend down and look up at its underside while its tentacles whirled around me. While there were some technical faults (such as the glitching when you passed through the limbs by accident) it was surprisingly immersive. If there’s one thing I will say, it’s that this system will need to work on object tracking for danger purposes. I may have bumped into at least one person pretty hard not realizing how close I was to them.
We’re live all week from Berlin, Germany, for IFA 2016. Click here to catch up on all the news from the show.
Watch Nintendo’s 3DS-focused Direct here at 10AM ET
Nintendo is giving some love to its handheld 3DS console at its IFA 2016 Nintendo Direct event this year. Expected titles include Shin Megami Tensei 4 Apocalypse, Yo-kai Watch 2, Pokemon Sun & Moon and more. We can also expect some Amiibo figurines that work with Nintendo’s New 3DS and New 3DS XL, or on the older models via a reader.
What we’re really hoping to see, however, is an appearance by Detective Pikachu, the Japan-only game that sees the Pokemon character make like Sherlock Holmes. Luckily, we won’t have to wait long to find out, as the Nintendo Direct show starts streaming on Twitch, or you can see it below at 10AM ET.
Source: Nintendo (Twitter)
‘Super Mario Maker’ heads to 3DS on December 2nd
Super Mario Maker is already a success on the Wii U, and now it’s making its way to the 3DS on December 2nd. Nintendo announced the handheld version during a 3DS-specific livestream this morning. Super Mario Maker on 3DS includes the full game plus the ability to share courses with your friends via WiFi or StreetPass. Players can even collaborate on incomplete courses to create friendship masterpieces.
Super Mario Maker landed on Wii U in 2015 and was a hit with fans and critics alike. Not only is Super Mario Maker an innovative title that’s great for livestreaming, it drives home how ridiculously hard it is to actually make video games.
#SuperMarioMaker for #3DS launches on 12/2! pic.twitter.com/zOPWhfLV0C
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) September 1, 2016
‘Yoshi’s Woolly World’ hits 3DS next year with an adorable Amiibo
Yoshi’s Woolly World is the next game in Nintendo’s Wii U library to make its way to 3DS, further proving that while the Wii U is a wonderful system, Nintendo is winding the console down to make room for the NX. The complete Yoshi’s Woolly World game lands on Nintendo’s handheld on February 3rd, and it’s bringing a friend along for the ride.
The 3DS version is technically called Poochy & Yoshi’s Woolly World. Poochy is an adorable pup that shows up in the game to complete levels on his own and help Yoshi by enlisting his secret-sniffing Poochy Pups. The 3DS version of Yoshi’s Woolly World includes new Poochy levels and, most importantly, it launches alongside the Poochy Amiibo figurine. Look at its happy little face. Let its soothe your soul.
If that didn’t work, please find solace in Poochy’s adorable booty.
The next ‘Pikmin’ game is a Nintendo 3DS side-scroller
It’s been well over a year since Shigeru Miyamoto teased us with the possibility of a Pikmin 4, and during today’s Nintendo Direct stream, the company announced… something else. The company closed out its 2017 line-up with a new, unnamed Pikmin adventure for 3DS. Okay, it’s not the full sequel we were hoping for, but it looks pretty darn cute.
Pikmin for 3DS seems to follow a familiar pattern: Olimar is wandering an alien landscape with an army of brightly colored Pikmin. Together, they collect objects, fight enemies and solve puzzles. Players control Olimar with the physical buttons and throw Pikmin by tapping on the 3DS’ touch display. This time around, however, the game is presented as a side-scroller, stretching each level’s landscape between the portable console’s dual screens. Nintendo says this game is a bit more action focused than previous titles, too.
Sounds neat! But unfortunately, we won’t know more for awhile: the game doesn’t even have a final name yet, and carries the vague release date of “sometime next year.”
Samsung brings quantum dots to its curved gaming monitors
Samsung has announced a trio of high-end curved gaming monitors that brings its quantum dot technology to the masses. There are two devices, the CFG70, which is available in 24-and-27-inch sizes, as well as a super premium CF791 that packs a 34-inch, 3,440 x 1,400 display. The devices promise to create more immersive gaming experiences that look as good as they possibly could, although we couldn’t tell that from the demo. Unfortunately, a leisurely game of FIFA Soccer is the worst way to show off a monitor that’s really designed for fast-paced games like first-person shooters
Still, while we couldn’t get a great impression of how the monitors will act in the real world, the spec list is certainly pretty tasty. Both the smaller CFG models pack a 1,920 x 1,080 panel that curves across 1800R, has a 144Hz refresh rate and just 1ms of response time. The larger of the set, meanwhile, has that 34-inch, 3,440 x 1,400 screen, curves with a radius of 1500R and has a 100Hz refresh rate with a 4ms response time.
All three models come with a DisplayPort uh, port, that sits alongside two HDMI inputs and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Only the CF comes with a pair of built-in 7W speakers and two additional USB ports. If you have an AMD graphics card, these screens are doubly worth consideration since they’re compatible with FreeSync, the company’s dynamic refresh system.
The monitors will all be available at some time before the holidays with the 24-inch model retailing for $399, the 27-incher going for $499 and the monster that is the 34-inch unit priced at $999. We noticed, as well, that Samsung mentioned how superior quantum dot displays were to OLED panels — which is a surprise, given that the company is one of the world’s largest producers of such technology.
We’re live all week from Berlin, Germany, for IFA 2016. Click here to catch up on all the news from the show.
Source: Samsung
NVIDIA is letting anyone build mods for ‘VR Funhouse’
VR Funhouse, the free carnival game NVIDIA built to show off its latest video cards, is becoming much more than a sideshow attraction. Starting today, developers will also be able to add their own touch with the VR Funhouse Mod Kit, a new tool that’ll let them edit levels and other aspects of the game. To kick things off, NVIDIA is also launching five new mods, all of which are slight twists on VR Funhouse’s existing mini-games.
Naturally, by opening up the game, NVIDIA is also hoping developers will build experiences that’ll highlight its latest GPUs. To that end, the company is also making VR Funhouse’s entire source code available on Github. That’ll allow devs to take a close look at how NVIDIA implemented its latest technology, and hopefully help them use it in their own VR experiences.
Even though it’s the company’s first game, VR Funhouse has been a successful project, according to NVIDIA’s Victoria Rege. It’s already racked up over 100,000 downloads on Steam, which is impressive since it’s only available to people with a GTX 980Ti or newer and an $800 HTC Vive.
‘Threes’ artist and friends reveal ‘TumbleSeed’
From the folks who brought you the deceptively simple indie hits Threes and Ridiculous Fishing comes TumbleSeed — another colorful game with a quirky premise, rolling onto PS4, Steam, macOS and Windows early next year. As developer Benedict Fritz describes the game, TumbleSeed is “a rolly roguelike” with a simple idea: to roll a seed to the top of a procedurally generated mountain.
Of course, the titular TumbleSeed character has “big plans” and its journey to the top of its mountain home is fraught with creatures possessed by a mysterious power. As the TumbleSeed, it’s your job to clean up the mountain by outwitting all of the obstacles in your path using a range of arboreal powerups. “We’ve been playing TumbleSeed for two years now,” Fritz wrote, “and the game still surprises us every day with the situations it throws at us.”
Although there’s no official release date set yet, you can keep up with TumbleSeed on the official site.
Via: PlayStation
Source: TumbleSeed
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