Showing posts with label club nintendo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label club nintendo. Show all posts

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Operation Rainfall: The Nintendo of America Localization Persuasion Initiative

I just caught wind of this from NeoGAF.

Basically, Japan's been getting no shortage of noteworthy Wii releases, foremost among them-


Xenoblade


Gorgeous looking action RPG made by members of the Xenosaga team.

Amazing music.

Pandora's Tower: Until I Return To Your Side

Interesting looking action RPG. Beautiful art design.

The Last Story

Probably the least remarkable of the bunch, relatively speaking. Another endeavor from Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobuo Uematsu. So you know the music's going to be good.

The big deal? These are supposedly getting European releases. Xenoblade was already confirmed. Nintendo of America has not made any plans to localize these games, even going so far as to deny NoE a spot to market them because they're not 'planned for the western market'.

So how can we change NoA's tune? Glad you asked!

From NeoGAF, c/o Mockingbird:

There is an increasingly growing campaign, spanning multiple forums and gaming sites (NeoGaf, IGN, Kotaku, Destructoid, Nintendoeverything, and more), trying to get Nintendo to listen up and release Xenoblade (also known as Monado: Beginning of the World), The Last Story, and Pandora's Tower in the U.S.

The campaign includes snail mail writing, e-mail, phone calls, facebook, and twitter and the turn-out has been beyond all expectations thus far. Comments on Nintendo's Facebook had passed 1,300 in just 24 hours. (see below on how to contribute to this.)

But actions speak louder than words, so to convey that Nintendo fans really want this, people have decided to show for it by pre-ordering on amazon -- hoping to get it to the #1 sales rank in video games from #12,000+

Results:

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #30 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
#1 in Video Games > Wii > Action
#5 in Video Games > Wii > All Games

See this too: http://666kb.com/i/bunsqwbujfsk3nuqf.gif

So the deal is this, please pre-order it to help get it released in the U.S. Remember: actions speak louder than words.

Pre-Order at Amazon

It costs nothing to pre-order! also, if the game does come out, the MSRP will surely drop to $49.99.

If you don't intend to buy the game, don't pre-order just to cancel, and you absolutely should not order more than one copy just to inflate the numbers. It'll cause the campaign to backfire.

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Let them know on Facebook/Twitter:

http://www.facebook.com/Nintendo/pos...1?notif_t=like

http://twitter.com/NintendoAmerica

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How it the campaign came about:

2008: Nintendo of America stops localizing select games from Japan. Fans found this questionable, but decided to wait it out a bit.

June 2009: Nintendo of America announced Monado: Beginning of the World for release in North america. Monolithsoft fans rejoiced and gave out a small amount of forgiveness over their trespasses in 2008.

May 2010: Monado: Beginning of the World is released as Xenoblade in Japan to completely outstanding reviews and overwhelmingly positive impressions on Gaf and 2-ch. Word of mouth of the high quality of the game spread and gave the game some decent legs. North american fans eagerly anticipate the release date reveal during E3 2010.

June 2010: During E3 2010, Nintendo had no news / announcements regarding Xenoblade in the U.S. a whole year had passed since E3 2009 -- where Xenoblade was announced for a US release. Nintendo fans grow slightly worried but still very hopeful for an announcement later in the year. Meanwhile, many other games, such as The Last Story and Reginleiv, were left unannounced as well.

June 8, 2011: at the end of Nintendo's E3 2011 press conference, Xenoblade, The Last Story, and Pandora's Tower were still left out of the upcoming release list. With the end of the Wii's life-span fast approaching, Nintendo fans lost almost all hope for a release of the three J-RPGS.

June 22, 2011: IGN user themightyme, proposes "Operation: Rainfall," a campaign to get Nintendo's attention and inform them that Nintendo fans are fed up and want Xenoblade, The Last Story and Pandora's Tower.

June 23, 2011: Mathieu Minel, marketing manager of Nintendo France revealed that "Nintendo of Europe wanted to show Xenoblade Chronicles at E3 2011, but Nintendo of America wouldn't let them because they didn't want to show products they aren't planning to sell." (http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/26928). Nintendo fans start to remove the knives from their backs.

June 24, 2011: Clinging to the last bastion of hope, many Nintendo fans started to gather and lend their voice for operation: rainfall.

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Links

Operation: Rainfall (where it started) http://boards.ign.com/nintendo_wii_l...0/203345328/p1

Coverage of Operation Rainfall:

http://kotaku.com/5815447/how-badly-...oblade-for-wii
http://www.destructoid.com/letter-wr...r-204505.phtml

I'll be honest: I highly doubt this will make a difference. But it's definitely worth a shot.
Posted by cj_iwakura at 2:08 PM 9 comments
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Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Club Nintendo advocates drugs

It’s true, the proof is in the photograph...
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Taken from the Rad Racer section in Club Nintendo magazine, the “Classic” issue circa sometime around 1990? Right there in print, it says: rush, as in high on drugs.

There is technically an explanation for this, but I thought I’d let this stew for a while before giving the explanation in the comments section. Full images of the DPS is below.

I will say this: the image is not a hoax. I have said issue of the magazine, and it does indeed say that, and it was officially printed on behalf of Nintendo in its Club Nintendo magazine.

EDIT:
The simple answer for this that I can work out is: it's actually the South African edition of Club Nintendo and, due to geographical isolation at a time when the internet didn't exist, a physical copy was never checked by the London/European head office.

In the credits on the inside cover, while it says Published by Nintendo Europe, the editorial office was in Doornfontein, South Africa. Now it has to be said, the NES never really sold in SA. I've heard reports from people who swear they saw official PAL units being sold in some places, but I never saw them my entire childhood over there. The Famicom Clone reigned supreme since it would have been considerably cheaper.

Which means this magazine is probably their only real attempt at generating publicity in South Africa. At least that I saw. It was a free supplement in the first issue of a magazine called KIDZ, which was sold through schools. It featured puzzles, comics, film reviews, short stories, game coverage, and other cool stuff that 7-12 year-year-olds would like. Which makes the drug reference all the more strange.

If you check out this link:
http://www.nes-bit.com/?page_id=2818

You'll find a PDF download of what I presume is the UK edition. Notice how the design and colouring is different, though the content, assets and cover are similar. There were obviously editions made for each region, since googling Club Nintendo brings up a German version of the cover. There is no equivalent Rad Racer page that I could find in the above linked version.

My educated guess is that South Africa wasn't high on the priorities of Nintendo, they set up some kind of tiny editorial office which knew the NES was never going to make it even before it came out, and so when redesigning the magazine took liberties with it which were never checked. They would have either have had to send physical copies to Europe for verifying, or faxed them. Assuming they were printed in South Africa. Whatever the case, it's obviously an example of someone given free reign with captions and not being supervised.

Still, it was officially endorsed by Nintendo, so is a fun historical anomaly especially given Nintendo's early sanitised image.


Posted by Sketcz at 4:37 AM 15 comments
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