Nintendo's ever-vigilant quest against piracy continues, as Justin Success Brooks of the United Kingdom has been charged with the fraudulent sale of counterfeit Nintendo games, according to the Croydon Guardian. The 41-year-old man was caught in an investigation conducted by Nintendo and the UK Interactive Entertainment association. The two groups purchased games from suspect outlets, eventually finding their way to Brooks.

Operating between 2009 and 2011, Brooks allegedly made an estimated £600,000 (over $962,000) selling "thousands" of counterfeit Wii, DS and DSi games. All told, Brooks has been charged with seven counts of fraud, including "two counts of fraudulent trading, two counts of supplying an article to use in fraud, two counts of unauthorised possession of goods bearing a trademark and one count of unauthorised use of a trademark."

Brooks has pled guilty to all counts. He has been granted bail and awaits sentencing, which will take place on November 9. Always remember, Mario is watching.

Oh, December, with your regionally specific cold or warm nights, sugarplums and gift giving. It's also a time when the video game industry stops jamming the accelerator on so many video games. Which is good, because you have a lot of games to catch up on from both October and November.

December, however, does have a few highlights. Far Cry 3 arrives, along with the retail package of the outstanding Walking Dead adventure game series. So keep warm (or cool – we don't know where you live!) inside and spend some time with a few new video games.

Of course, there are plenty of other great games available this fall we didn't get a chance to highlight. That's why we want to hear your anticipated Fall 2012 games for a follow-up "Community Response" feature to these Cheat Sheets. Give us your list in the comments below and tell us why you're looking forward to it; we may even highlight your comment.

Continue Reading

November is traditionally the time of year our wallets attempt to flee, lest they're destroyed by the onslaught of new video games. Hundreds of games, across every conceivable platform, will arrive next month. Are you ready?

In our November "Cheat Sheet" we highlight a few likely contenders for your harvest season free time. Halo 4, Black Ops 2, Hitman: Absolution and ... an entirely new home console! The Wii U drops next month and with it comes a slew of amazing games (too many for us to include, really). Here's what you should be saving up for in November.

Continue Reading

Continue Reading

Four formerly retail-only 3DS games arrive on the eShop today. Super Mario 3D Land, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, Star Fox 64 3D, and Mario Kart 7 will all be released digitally for $39.99 apiece.

On Sunday, they'll be joined by new release Style Savvy: Trendsetters, which lets players create a boutique clothing store and stock it with the latest in men or women's apparel. There's even more on the eShop, including Sparkle Snapshots 3D (which is exactly what it sounds like) and the NES version of Gradius. Were we able to hold your attention until that last bit?

Continue Reading

Continue Reading

FIFA 13 was – and, probably still is – the top selling game in the UK. For the third week in a row the footie sportsball game, despite a 63 percent decline in sales last week, retained its premier position.

Bethesda's Dishonored actually debuted in second place. According to Chart-Track, it's the biggest new intellectual property launch of the year, besting Square Enix's Sleeping Dogs. Even combining sales of Pokemon Black (#3) and White (#5) Version 2, Dishonored would still hold its second place position.

The other major launch last week, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, premiered in seventh place behind the insidious Just Dance 4. The aliens are winning. Check out the UK top ten after the break.

Continue Reading

According to the latest report from NPD, sales of the DS, 3DS, PS3, Vita and Xbox 360 are up on an "average sales per week" basis compared with August, suggesting momentum heading into the holiday season. The Wii U "has the potential to reinvigorate retail sales of hardware" when it drops on November 18 in the US, NPD analyst Liam Callahan says.

Madden NFL 13 was the top-selling game in September, with an 11 percent increase in its debut month than Madden NFL 12 saw last year. Borderlands 2 takes second, exceeding 2009's Borderlands first-month sales by 234 percent. September software sales at retail are down 13 percent year-over-year; September 2011 saw major games such as Gears of War 3 and Dead Island. September sales are up 67 percent from August's light haul. PC sales are up 12 percent year-on-year.

Nintendo 3DS software is up 89 percent year-over-year, spurred by 3DS XL hardware sales and Super Mario Bros. 2, which sold 295,000 units in its second month. However, combined 3DS and DS software sales are down 18 percent. As Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter says, "That's not a good trend."

For Microsoft, Xbox 360 sold 270,000 units in September and remains the top-selling current-generation console, with 49 percent of the market, Major Nelson tweets.

EA has five of the top 10 games for September, all of which are listed in order below:

Continue Reading

This week's Nintendo downloads are a bit more subdued than last week. There are still some gems to be found however, most notably the Game Boy Color version of Mario Golf for the 3DS Virtual Console. The 3DS also gets platformer Crazy Kangaroo, number puzzler Nurikabe by Nikoli and a demo for LEGO The Lord of the Rings.

The Wii, meanwhile, picks up Neo Geo fighter The Last Blade 2 on Virtual Console. Finally, DSiWare nabs Robot Rescue 2.

Continue Reading

This is a column by Kat Bailey dedicated to the analysis of the once beloved Japanese RPG sub-genre. Tune in every Wednesday for thoughts on white-haired villains, giant robots, Infinity+1 swords, and everything else the wonderful world of JRPGs has to offer.
My first experience with Pokemon was on Christmas Morning 1998. I was visiting my Grandmother in Minot, North Dakota, and there was nothing to do but play as much Game Boy as humanly possible (it's true – I've never been very social, even with family).

I was rolling right along with my Charmander until I ran into Brock – the franchise's very first gym leader. For those wielding a Squirtle or a Bulbasaur, he wasn't much more than a speed bump. For a novice trainer with an under-leveled fire-type, he and his Onix were nigh invincible. I beat my head against that stone for an entire morning, only stopping when I was finally dragged out to breakfast.

I eventually defeated Brock and collected all eight badges. Then I did it again and again. If I'm not mistaken, there are 48 badges in all now. Forty-eight gym leaders! All of them different; all of them serving as the backbones of their respective games.

Gym leaders serve all sorts of different purposes. In the fiction, they are sort of like the town sheriff, serving as both a pillar of the community and a bulwark against troublesome villains like Team Plasma. Frequently, they help to advance the story in some way by helping the player solve a problem. In gameplay terms, gym leaders are convenient bottlenecks that keep players advancing through the game at the pace Game Freak prescribes.

Continue Reading

Continue Reading

There is entirely too much going on on the 3DS eShop this week. The New Super Mario Bros. 2 DLC is here, of course, and Pokemon Dream Radar shows up later on this week. Retail games Crosswords Plus and Art Academy: Lessons for Everyone launched digitally on Monday (and offer free access to Donkey Kong: Original Edition when bought on the eShop).

In addition, Cave Story is out on eShop, and it's a great port. In addition, Dr. Mario arrives on Virtual Console, there's a demo for Style Savvy: Trendsetters, and a new game called Samurai G is there as well.

Continue Reading

With Pokémon Black 2 and Pokémon White 2, developer Game Freak has finally decided to stop beating around the bush and give us a "true" sequel instead of a Pokémon Platinum-esque expansion pack. The series is better for it too, even if the much touted emphasis on storytelling remains largely superfluous.

Set two years after the events of the original Pokémon Black and White, it features a new silent protagonist, a new rival, and a handful of new gym leaders. More importantly, there are new Pokémon – or should I say, old Pokémon. Unova is now rife with Pokémon from previous generations – a welcome sight for fans of the series. It makes the world of Pokémon feel bigger and more connected than it already is, and makes the Unova Pokémon feel like they're "part of the family."

Disappointingly, the returning Pokémon aren't the only familiar component. As usual, Black 2 and White 2 rigorously follows the badge/Elite 4 formula that has long since worn out its welcome but will never go away. What a pity that Game Freak didn't use this opportunity to experiment a bit with the formula and trim down the usual rote badge quest (or make it entirely optional). As a franchise, Pokémon can be at once really smart and innovative, and annoyingly set in its ways.

Continue Reading

The Art of Video Games exhibit just concluded its run at The Smithsonian and the final number of visitors is in: 686,406. The exhibit ran for six months, from March 16 - September 30, so that's well over 100,000 people per month critiquing the art from such games as BioShock, Diablo 2, Donkey Kong, Fallout 3, Goldeneye 007, Doom 2, Minecraft, Jet Set Radio Future, Shadow of Colossus, Star Fox: Assault, Zaxxon and tons more, all chosen by fans via some smooth Smithsonian voting.

For reference, 686,406 people is slightly more than the entire country of Montenegro, more than six Grenadas, or 617,765 dollar-store items in Grenada (10 percent sales tax).

Continue Reading

The Denpa Men: They Came By Wave is a new dungeon RPG by Genius Sonority, in which you use augmented reality-type exploration to find little guys in the environment, who then form your party. It's cute, quirky, and available on the 3DS eShop today. There's a demo if you'd like to try it out.

Also out on 3DS is Konami's Quarth, a fascinating Game Boy puzzle game that never seemed to pick up a large audience in America.

Continue Reading

Continue Reading

La-Mulana has been a long time coming on WiiWare, but it's finally here. Today, the WiiWare version launches for 1,000 Wii Points, headlining this week's content dump on Nintendo platforms.

Also, time is running out to download your free Pokedex 3D – it's being pulled from the 3DS eShop on October 1 to pave way for the more expensive, improved version.

Continue Reading

Who says Pokemon never changes? Until recently, the franchise's story wasn't much more than an afterthought. Its main virtue was its consistency – you could always count on an evil organization showing up to destroy the world for no real reason at all. With Pokemon Black and White, a sliver of change was added to adjust the formula and pointed the series toward the possibility of more deft storytelling.

That trend continues in Pokemon Black and Pokemon White 2, which takes the time to examine some of the consequences of the previous game. The somewhat deeper story isn't the only new element either. The franchise's first ever numbered sequel brings with it a few other interesting trends, which are apt to continue once the Pokemon series leaps into the Nintendo 3DS market.

Continue Reading