On the Download: Mario Kart 8 DLC Impressions

Last Thursday, the second pack of DLC for Mario Kart 8 became available for download on the Nintendo eShop for eight dollars.  If you didn't pick up the previous DLC pack, both packs are available in a bundle at the discounted price of 12 dollars.  Each DLC pack offers three characters, eight tracks and four vehicles, which pulls some of its content from franchises outside of the Mario series including The Legend of Zelda, Animal Crossing, Excitebike and F-Zero.

While DLC and how game companies approach pricing and releasing it has become a hot topic in recent years, Nintendo has received a great amount of praise for their approach to these DLC packs.  The reason behind the praise comes from the critical reception for Mario Kart 8 on its own and the timing of the DLC announcement.

First, Mario Kart 8 received universal praise from fans and critics alike.  Both thought the game was packed with great amount of content to begin with and many were craving for more content for the game.  Instead of feeling like Nintendo was adding content that should have already been in Mario Kart 8, the announcement of the DLC felt like a natural extension of the game and an evolutionary step for the whole franchise.

Second, most DLC announcements come well before a game hits store shelves.  This practice can alienate consumers as it can be interpreted as game companies holding back content in order to extort money out of their loyal customers at a later date.  Nintendo waited a good three months after the release of Mario Kart 8 to announce DLC for the game.  Although Nintendo may have been working on the content at the same time as the game, the timing of the announcement, coupled with the affordable price, makes consumers feel that they are getting more bang for their buck and that the DLC content is in addition to the content already in the game.

Aside from dissecting the wide acceptance of the Mario Kart 8 DLC, the content provided in these packs are superb.  Playing through each pack gave me a greater appreciation for Mario Kart 8 as a whole.  Certain aspects that I overlooked upon my initial playthrough, such as graphics, audio and track design, are brought to the forefront in unique ways.

Seeing the rain-soaked neon landscape of Neo Bowser City hits home how wonderful it is to see Nintendo properties in full HD glory.  Hearing the unique audio cues from Animal Crossing and Legend of Zelda on their respective tracks along with the electric fences and healing pads in the F-Zero tracks shows Mario Kart 8's incredible attention to detail and the reverence Nintendo has to their properties.  Pulling together old and new Mario Kart tracks, in addition to re-imagining tracks from both F-Zero and Excitebike, spruces up the tried-and-true formula of cups having all new tracks or all old tracks and injects a ton of variety into the track designs.  Speaking of the track designs, the changing seasons of the Animal Crossing track, the randomized layout of mud spots and ramps on the Excitebike and even slightly tilting Baby Park on its side for the track to be raced entirely in anti-gravity are wonderful tweaks that make the tracks a lot more engaging and exciting to play.

Although the inclusion of Link, Villager and Isabelle open Mario Kart up to the possibility of becoming Nintendo Kart, the three other "new" characters are nothing more than new costumes for existing characters.  They don't bring anything new to the game other than a cosmetic change.  Nintendo could of easily added these new costumes by having the a separate menu pop-up when selecting either Mario, Peach or Bowser much like they did with the boy and girl Villager and the colour variants for Yoshi and Shy Guy.  Adding these unnecessary characters brings more attention to Mario Kart 8's overinflated roster problem.  Also including these variants on existing characters over brand new characters from either the Mario universe or Nintendo as a whole feels like a missed opportunity in my opinion.

At 12 dollars for both of packs, the DLC for Mario Kart 8 is must own.  The amount of content packed into it is astonishing.  You are literally getting another half-game of content for the price of movie admission.  Hopefully, the success of these DLC packs leads for more content for Mario Kart 8 in the years to come.

Amiibogeddon

Every year around the holidays, there is usually one item that everybody wants to get their hands on.  Last year, it was the PlayStation 4.  A few years ago, it was Activision's Skylanders figures.  History loves to repeat itself as this time it's Nintendo's line of Amiibo figures.  If you have not heard by now, Nintendo's Amiibo figures are selling out across the globe due to limited supplies.  Along with that news, rumors about the discontinuation of certain figures, namely Marth, Wii Fit Trainer and Villager, have sent people into a fervor over the Amiibos as a whole.  People are pre-ordering  every figure, buying multiples to cash in on the demand and relentlessly searching for hard-to-find Amiibos.  The Amiibogeddon name may sound really cheesy, but the magnitude of this ongoing craziness is being felt by Nintendo fans who want to pick up their favourite character or collectors who want to own them all.  While Nintendo is the only one that can fix this situation, they are highly notorious for being slow to restock retailers after the initial shipment of their products.

Despite Nintendo's frustrating practices of building demand for certain products, their handling of this entire situation has left a lot to be desired.  First, they completely underestimated the demand for the Amiibos especially the figures involving characters from franchises with a cult following like Fire Emblem and Animal Crossing.  Activision did the exact same thing when Skylanders initially released in 2011.  Since Amiibo is directly inspired by the Skylanders line of games and toys,  it is baffling for Nintendo to not at least learn from Skylander's growing pains.  Second, Nintendo hasn't done anything to dismiss these rumors of discontinuation.  In fact, they have added more fuel to the fire by not giving a definitive "yes" or "no" answer to the question.  All that has been clarified is more popular characters will be in regular stock while certain sold-out figures may be restocked at a later date.  No definition of what characters are deemed popular enough for regular stock, outside of Mario and Link, and no concrete timetable of when these figures will be restocked if ever.  On top of all this wonderful news, the Captain Falcon, Luigi and Pit figures from the second wave of Amiibos have been delayed until further notice.

Not everything surrounding the Amiibos is negative.  As a matter of fact, the figures are really well made and their uses in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, Mario Kart 8 and Hyrule Warriors are really cool.  They have a lot of potential that hopefully Nintendo can capitalize on.

The feelings on Nintendo's mishaps surrounding the Amiibogeddon fiasco can be boiled down to one word--frustrating.  These figures were made to capitalize on the toys to life market in order to make back the money lost on poor Wii U sales.  It is puzzling that Nintendo isn't making greater efforts to meet the demand, even with "niche" characters like Marth, Wii Fit Trainer and Villager.  If these figures are making a profit, there should be absolutely no reason to consider discontinuing or limiting the stock for any of them.  While I personally don't believe Nintendo will fix this fiasco before the new year, the longer they wait to actually address the issue, the more they will alienate the Amiibo's target audience.

E3 2013: Nintendo E3 Direct Impressions

2013 has been the year where the Nintendo Direct format has come into true form.  While there are still a few areas where Nintendo needs to work on to improve the Directs as a whole, each Nintendo Direct this year has been like a mini-E3 full of surprises and exciting game news.  With this current success, many gamers hoped Nintendo would bring some big announcements for E3 since they opted out of having an actual press conference this year.  What Nintendo actually delivered was very interesting.

It has taken a couple days to fully process what Nintendo did Tuesday morning with their Nintendo Direct.  All the games showed off at this Direct looked phenomenal, but we all were expecting more.  Yes, Nintendo delivered on Super Mario 3D World, Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. along with the reveal of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze.  It just felt too safe.  They kept to their regular line-up of popular Nintendo franchises like Mario, Zelda , Pokemon, Smash Bros. and Donkey Kong.  Gamers wanted to see franchises that have laid dormant for awhile now such as Metroid, Star Fox and F-Zero or new intellectual properties.  Personally, I believe mentioning a new 3D Mario, Mario Kart and Smash Bros. would all be at E3 severely hurt this Direct.  If Nintendo just kept their mouth shut, these three announcements could have easily made this Direct an instant classic.  By revealing their hand back in January, it caused speculation to spin out of control to the point where expectations were too high.  The fault of those unrealistic expectations is solely on Nintendo.  Another situation that is entirely Nintendo's fault was the unbearable buffering issues the Nintendo Direct livestream suffered from.  The livestream kept buffering every 20 seconds or so until at least halfway through the Direct.  Maybe Nintendo did not anticipate the volume of people that would tune into the stream, but that does not excuse them from not preparing for these technical problems.  While Nintendo wants to control the message, they need to open up the Directs for other media outlets such as IGN or Gametrailers to broadcast in order to avoid these buffering problems in the future.

Like I metioned before, all the games showed off at this Nintendo Direct were phenomenal.  Super Mario 3D World looks to be an excellent follow-up to Super Mario 3D Land.  While many were hoping for a 3D Mario game more in the vein of Super Mario Galaxy, I believe the more Nintendo shows off of 3D World the more people will be impressed as it looks to blend the best aspects of the New Super Mario series with the features and gamplay of Mario Galaxy and 3D Land series.  Much like 3D Land before it, you will most likely have to actually play 3D World to get the full affect of its greatness. 

Mario Kart 8 could be the Wii U's killer app in my opinion.  The new anti-gravity feature applied to all of the tracks in Mario Kart 8 looks to add new ways to approach your tradition game of Mario Kart.  This grand new feature along with superb online multiplayer could move a lot of Wii U's to the casual Nintendo audience. 

While it was a little bit of a bummer to hear about Retro working on another Donkey Kong game, Tropical Freeze looks just as good or even better than Donkey Kong Country Returns.  The new full 3D camera adds a lot of interesting visuals to a game that was formerly restricted to just a two dimensional side view of the action.  Also the inclusion of new characters (Dixie Kong and a still unnamed third companion) and over five islands to explore (how many levels per island is still unknown) will provide lots of bang for your buck this November. 

Nintendo only showed Monlith Soft's X in trailer form.  Still the more Nintendo shows of this game, the more psyched I get.  After playing Xenoblade, everybody wanted to see these worlds brought to life in high definition.  X looks to answer those prayers and I personally cannot wait until Nintendo starts giving people hand-ons with this possible console defining open world RPG. 

There were a few other games I would love to get to from this Nintendo Direct like Pokemon X and Y, Wind Waker HD, The Wonderful 101 and Bayonetta 2, but that could take far too long to read and there is one more thing I want to talk about.  That one more thing is Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS.  While everybody knew it was coming, that trailer lived up to our expectations and then some.  The introduction of the Villager from Animal Crossing was classic especially the sinister twinkle in his eye.  I personally love the addition of such a quirky character to roster of Nintendo fighters.  The greatest part of the trailer was the reveal that Mega Man will be in Super Smash Bros.  Let me repeat, MEGA MAN IS IN SMASH BROS.!!!  I have dreamed of the Blue Bomber being in the next Smash Bros., but never thought it would actually become reality.  It was such an excellent reveal that I cannot wait to see any sort of information about the 3DS and Wii U entires of the Super Smash Bros. series.

This Nintendo Direct from E3 failed to convince gamers that the hard times this system is currently in will end anytime soon.  The third party support just is not there to really convince people to go out of their way to buy a Wii U over the PS4 or Xbox One.  A lot of games shown off at E3 like Watch Dogs and Battlefield 4 had those second screen experiences that would be at home on the Wii U Gamepad.  Nintendo needs to find a way to court the publishers that are making these games to port them to the Wii U.  There is a solid line-up of first party support from August on and 2014 looks to be a killer year for Wii U, but there are still some problems Nintendo needs to work out before they get out of their current predicament.  I believe a price cut will definitely help, but it cannot be the only solution.  Overall, this Nintendo Direct may have been lacking in surprises, but it was still a solid show.  While the unacceptable technical difficulties did lower the grade significantly, this Nintendo Direct was one of the better showings at this year's E3.

Grade: C+