Nintendo 3DS News

Nintendo announced that the upcoming Intelligent Designs title Codename S.T.E.A.M launching for the 3DS on March 13th will allow players to unlock playable Fire Emblem characters through certain amiibo. Marth, Ike, Robin, and Lucina will all be fully playable by simply touching their corresponding amiibo to the New 3DS XLs bottom screen, or by purchasing the upcoming add on Near-Field Communications device for the older 3DS models.

Nintendo announced the 4th wave of the toy-to-life franchise amiibo during their first Nintendo Direct of 2015. The next wave of the Smash Bros. amiibo packs some heavy hitters from the world of Nintendo as Robin and Lucina from Fire Emblem, Ness from Earthbound, Wario, Charizard and even Pac-Man will be releasing on April 24th. It’s safe to bet that these all will sell out well before they are actually launched so if you want one you better be ready to click that pre-order button whenever it becomes available.

We all now about Nintendo's struggles in 2013. At least, that's what too many people seem to want to focus on. However, if you look at what Nintendo put out on their systems this year, you realize that of the big three, they hands down had the best, most consistent line up of quality, problem free, AAA titles. When you examine November releases, the Playstation 4 and Xbox One titles were plagued with problems not present in Nintendo offerings this year.

Nintendo Day 2014 is appropriately named. For Nintendo of Canada fans, November 21st isn't just a chance to play some of the latest Nintendo games and the yet to be released Amiibo figures at multiple events across the country, but it is also the same day that Pokemon Omega Ruby, Pokemon Alpha Sapphire, and Super Smash Bros Wii U hits retail and the Nintendo eShop.

So, Amiibos are coming in at a hefty 13.99. I would argue they are comparable physically to the 9.99 Skylanders, although you could argue the technology in the Amiibo is substantially more complicated. Regardless, many Nintendo fans will want a bunch of the Amiibos that will be hitting store shelves soon, but the price could hold people back, especially since the use of some of these Amiibos is very, very limited.

Nintendo continues to do these random online streams to show off their content. Overtime, I've gone from hating these little videos to loving them. They are generally always great and packed with content, both announced and unannounced. The purpose of the most recent Nintendo Direct was to look at games coming out in 2014 and through Spring 2015.

We all know that beautiful New 3DS and New 3DS XL will be coming to the west in 2015. We just weren't sure if it was going to be region locked, a practice which most hardware makers are passing on now. Well, not surprisingly, Nintendo has no plans to ditch region locking.

If you have no idea what Amiibo is or why you should be excited about it, you probably are not alone. I was in the same boat. Sure, I had seen all the videos and images, but I wasn't 100% sure what purpose they were going to serve. Obviously, it was going to be implemented with the launch of Super Smash Bros, and would be compatible with Mario Kart. Aside from that, I didn't know much else.

Nintendo's move towards DLC has been surprisingly great. Their content is aaggressively priced, generally making it hard not to purchase it when available. I assumed the Mario Kart 8 packs would come in at 12-14$ each, but fortunately that isn't the case. What Nintendo hasn't done - until now that is - is do the number one thing gamers hate about DLC.

A few weeks ago I wrote an article about Nintendo's new download options. Most interesting was the ability (finally) to download games from a computer and push them to your Wii U. This was great, and frankly overdue. What wasn't announced at that time was a pre-download option for digital title. Apparently Nintendo is ready to deliver that as well.