the-legend-of-zelda-spirit-tracks
December 14th, 2009 at 11:00am
Under DS
War. What is it good for? Super successful games!
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 may be undergoing a gradual sales slide, dropping another 11 percent this past week, but since the title has maintained the top position on the
UK sales chart for a fifth week, it must be sliding down on a pretty fluffy cushion.
Call of Duty: World at War held the high ground for five weeks last year before
FIFA took it during Christmas week. Speaking of
FIFA, the latest installment dropped from second to fifth this week.
Assassin’s Creed 2 couldn’t find the next grip location and holds its position in third. Nintendo has Wii Sports Resort, Wii Fit Plus and New Super Mario Bros. Wii at spots two, four and six, respectively. As for premieres, The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks rolled in at 12th place and James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game entered at number 29. Now let’s see how Avatar: The Movie That Inspired The Game does. If it’s a hit, that should help sales of the game.
Source — Modern Warfare 2 Claims 5th Week at No1 [Chart Track]
Source — All formats chart [Chart Track]
Modern Warfare 2 spends fifth week atop UK sales charts originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tags: assassins-creed-2, avatar, britain, call-of-duty-modern-warfare-2, chart-track, fifa-10, modern-warfare-2, spirit-tracks, the-legend-of-zelda-spirit-tracks, uk
By Mister-X
Continue Reading Modern Warfare 2 spends fifth week atop UK sales charts
December 11th, 2009 at 08:15pm
Under Xbox 360
Target’s circular for the week of December 13 includes some near-Black Friday discounts on brand new items. With a promotional price of $24.99, Target has the best deal yet on the just-released The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (along with other recent DS releases like Style Savvy and Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days).
While you’re buying a $25 game, you can also impulse-buy a Wii, which includes a bonus $30 gift card, or a DSi with a $10 gift card. Or a copy of Tony Hawk: Ride for $88 (not the only time we’ll see discounts on this one, we’re guessing).
Savings on Wii, Spirit Tracks, music games at Target next week originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 19:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tags: discounts, dj-hero, rock-band-2, sale, target, the-legend-of-zelda-spirit-tracks, tony-hawk-ride
By Mister-X
Continue Reading Savings on Wii, Spirit Tracks, music games at Target next week
December 7th, 2009 at 01:00pm
Under DS
Nintendo is creating a deep rut for the Zelda games by turning every new development since Ocarina of Time into a compilation of overused tropes. The fact that people liked the first N64 outing, for example, is no reason to include a magical instrument in every subsequent game. The same goes for the chatty sidekick, and (especially) the tradition of forcing Link to walk around and meet everyone in town before someone finally hands him a sword. Even the train in The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, which seemed out of place when the game debuted, is a variant on the oft-repeated vehicle gimmick, including conveyances like Epona, the King of Red Lions, and the S.S. Linebeck.
As a result, I groaned a little when I started playing Spirit Tracks, seeing all these common Zelda elements played out for the umpteenth time. But as I played the game, I forgot all about my gripes, won completely over by its charm and by its excellently designed challenges. The great game shines through all the cruft Nintendo has thrown on top of it.
Continue reading Review: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
Review: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tags: the-legend-of-zelda, the-legend-of-zelda-spirit-tracks, zelda
By Mister-X
Continue Reading Review: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
December 5th, 2009 at 06:30pm
Under DS
Eiji Aonuma has spent a lot of time developing Legend of Zelda games. In fact, he’s been in a managerial role on the franchise ever since the series’ arguably most popular installment, The Ocarina of Time. So when Mario creator (and his boss) Shigeru Miyamoto asked Aonuma and his team to develop an “Ura Zelda” (a flipped version of Ocarina of Time — what would eventually become the Master Quest), Aonuma protested. Miyamoto’s compromise, though, instead turned out to be a much greater challenge — produce a sequel to OoT within one year.
“We were supposed to make its sequel in a year … at first, we had absolutely no idea what sort of thing we were supposed to make, and we just kept expanding our plans,” Aonuma told Nintendo prez Satoru Iwata during a recent Iwata Asks column.”in the beginning, it was all trial and error … ultimately, we adopted the ‘three-day system,’ and made it so that, if you couldn’t clear the game inside of three days, the world was destroyed.” Aonuma claims this concept was what allowed Majora’s Mask to be created and released just 18 months after OoT came out. He also adds that lessons he learned from the development of Majora’s Mask — from having to remember a sequence of events in order to proceed, to “deep, compact play” — helped to shape the development of the most recent Zelda release, The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks.
We’d like to say that Aonuma will have a break from the series after serving as producer on Spirit Tracks, but he’s the man in charge of the upcoming LoZ game for the Wii. We’re sorry, Mr. Aonuma! Keep on truckin’!
[Via Gamasutra]
Nintendo’s Aonuma: Majora’s Mask the result of Miyamoto challenge originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 05 Dec 2009 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tags: Eiji-Aonuma, legend-of-zelda, majoras-mask, ocarina-of-time, shigeru-miyamoto, spirit-tracks, the-legend-of-zelda, the-legend-of-zelda-spirit-tracks, zelda
By Mister-X
Continue Reading Nintendo’s Aonuma: Majora’s Mask the result of Miyamoto challenge
December 1st, 2009 at 08:15pm
Under DS
Nintendo must have found a really cheap wholesaler for wooden boxes, because, much like it did for Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, the publisher shipped out press copies of The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks in handsome wooden cases. No puzzles were required to get into this treasure chest, however.
Along with the treasure chest, Nintendo sent a Link t-shirt. In a separate mailing, the company sent another wooden gewgaw: a train whistle, just like the one you got from any museum gift shop ever. In a truly superhuman display of discipline, we’ve managed to leave the whistle untooted so future Joyswag winners won’t be subject to blogger cooties.
The real-life treasure of Zelda: Spirit Tracks originally appeared on Joystiq Nintendo on Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tags: shirt, swag, the-legend-of-zelda-spirit-tracks, train-whistle, treasure-chest, zelda
By Mister-X
Continue Reading The real-life treasure of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
December 1st, 2009 at 04:15pm
Under Wii / Nintendo
Actually, the titular tracks from The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, don’t feature very prominently in a recent batch of ads for the game from the UK. Instead, the ads task a young woman with solving some of the game’s puzzles (presumably under the stipulation that she be adorable while doing so). All three of the commercials highlight the game’s use of the unique features of the DS, namely the microphone and touch screen. We’re not sure how entertaining it will be to blow into the mic to play the pan flute for the thousandth time, but the first glance seems novel enough.
Check out the ads after the break.
[Via GoNintendo]
Continue reading Spirit Tracks ads choo up some UK airtime
Spirit Tracks ads choo up some UK airtime originally appeared on Joystiq Nintendo on Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tags: nintendo, spirit-tracks, the-legend-of-zelda, the-legend-of-zelda-spirit-tracks, Wii / Nintendo
By Mister-X
Continue Reading Spirit Tracks ads choo up some UK airtime
November 23rd, 2009 at 05:00pm
Under DS
With the game pulling into the station on December 7, we visited Nintendo of America to get one last pre-launch look at The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. The latest trailer for the game revealed the Spirit Tower, a central hub of mini-dungeons that must be cleared in order to restore the train tracks that lead to the world’s main temple dungeons. What we saw was the latter — more specifically, the second of the game’s dungeons, the Snow Temple.
This dungeon made heavy use of Link’s ability to create whirlwinds — the actual mechanic behind them is blowing into the DS microphone, but, thankfully, it doesn’t require you to lean in incredibly close to the system or blow especially hard for it to work. Once the ability is selected by tapping it on-screen, it stays active, and dragging the stylus around Link makes him rotate, a yellow line indicating which direction the whirlwind will go. This mainly came into play when we needed to cross pools of water atop floating blocks. Like fanning a leaf in Wind Waker, firing off a whirlwind in Spirit Tracks sends Link sailing in the opposite direction.
Continue reading Hands-on: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
Hands-on: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tags: nintendo, the-legend-of-zelda, the-legend-of-zelda-spirit-tracks, zelda
By Mister-X
Continue Reading Hands-on: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
November 20th, 2009 at 03:00pm
Under Wii / Nintendo
Filed under: Arcade
The latest trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, featuring what appears to be the game’s introduction, highlights what is certain to be one of the most bemoaned features of the new game: the Tower of Spirits. Yes, like Phantom Hourglass, this game has a central dungeon area to which you’ll return throughout the game, though players will be able to skip areas they have already completed this time.
The trailer also seems to suggest that all the train tracks are magical shackles placed on the ground to imprison an evil presence. So that’s why there are train tracks around! We would have guessed “interstate commerce.”
Introducing the Spirit Tower in The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tags: spirit-tracks, the-legend-of-zelda-spirit-tracks, Wii / Nintendo, zelda
By Mister-X
Continue Reading Introducing the Spirit Tower in The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
November 18th, 2009 at 05:45pm
Under DS
Nintendo must’ve had some luck with its Great Lakes and Wii Sports Resort tours recently, as the company has announced the Nintendo Mall Experience tour. Starting next week through December 20, The Big N will be stopping at shopping centers across the country to get some of its Wii and DS titles in the faces of holiday shoppers.
On the Wii side, Nintendo will show off its top three games for the holiday season: Wii Sports Resort, New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Wii Fit Plus. For the handheld crowd, Nintendo will be pushing the new Style Savvy, Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box and The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. Head past the break for the full list of stops on Nintendo’s Mall Experience tour.
Continue reading Nintendo Mall Experience tour heads cross-country next week
Nintendo Mall Experience tour heads cross-country next week originally appeared on Joystiq Nintendo on Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tags: new-super-mario-bros, new-super-mario-bros-wii, nintendo-mall-experience, professor-layton, professor-layton-and-the-diabolical-box, spirit-tracks, style-savvy, the-legend-of-zelda, the-legend-of-zelda-spirit-tracks, wii-sports, wii-sports-resort
By Mister-X
Continue Reading Nintendo Mall Experience tour heads cross-country next week
November 6th, 2009 at 11:59am
Under DS
Nintendo’s new The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks trailer (after the break) reveals a more exciting innovation than the whole train thing: You’re not exactly rescuing Zelda in this game. In fact, she travels with you the whole time … in spirit!
In one of the craziest Zelda trailers we’ve ever seen, some wizard shows up and turns Zelda into a ghost, and then she sort of mopes around as an apparition until some guy with wheels suggests that she go on a road trip with Link. If you were wondering how Link could gain control of the Phantoms in this upcoming DS game, it’s not through a musical instrument he finds in a treasure chest (the usual Zelda route), but rather it’s because Princess Zelda possesses them.
Continue reading Zelda: Spirit Tracks trailer, now with more Zelda
Zelda: Spirit Tracks trailer, now with more Zelda originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tags: action-rpg, legend-of-zelda, spirit-tracks, the-legend-of-zelda-spirit-tracks, zelda
By Mister-X
Continue Reading Zelda: Spirit Tracks trailer, now with more Zelda
