New Super Mario Brothers Wii has been out for, oh, about 48 hours, but the Wii homebrew scene is already on the case: GBAtemp user Tanks has recreated Level 1-1 from the original Super Mario Bros using a NSMB level editor called Reggie!, developed by a user named Treeki.

I don't know much about homebrewing or modding, but I do know something cute and nostalgic when I see it. Level 1-1 is kind of played out by now—if a level editor exists for any game, it is a divine rule of the universe that Level 1-1 must be recreated—but it's an impressive, and rather hasty, effort nonetheless. The framerate is totally buggered (probably because it's running in a Wii emulator), but I'm not one to judge.

Like I said, this isn't really my area of expertise, but if you're interested in Reggie!, you can check out more details and screenshots here. So far, it features sprite, object, and block editing with more coming soon. I have to wonder if that includes Super Guide functionality, although I doubt it.

If, like me, you take a more hands-off approach to gaming and prefer watching videos and reading text, Nick's got you covered: you can check out his review and his Super Guide demonstration.

[Via GoNintendo]

Another week, another batch of downloadable games on the little console that could (and did, and continues to do).

If you jump onto the Wii Shop Channel, you'll see the usual addition of Virtual Console and WiiWare games, but the big news is that demos are coming to WiiWare. Of course, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 owners have been playing demos for years now, but who's counting? If you are, make a note that there are currently five WiiWare demos available for your perusal: Bit.Trip.Beat by Aksys Games; Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life is a Darklord  by Square Enix; World of Goo by 2D BOY; NyxQuest: Kindred Spirits by Over the Top; and Nintendo's Pokémon Rumble. You'll notice that at least three of the five available games are really good.

In any case, if you happen to find yourself really digging on Pokémon Rumble, multiplayer action-RPG-lite, the full game is also available for 1,500 Wii bucks.

It's too bad that most people are going to be distracted by the ability to play three of the best games on WiiWare for free this week, because Nintendo also released Factor 5's Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures (SNES) for 800 Spacedollars. Hearkening back from a time when licensed games didn't insult my intelligence, Indy's Greatest Adventure isn't bad at all, and a lot better than The Last Crusade game for the Genesis that I had when I was a kid. Street Fighter II':Champion Edition, a Turbogafx-16 port of the seminal fighter, is also available for 700 Wii coins, but that game sucks.

Last but not least, DSiWare for this week consists of a new Art Style game, and two games that I've never heard of. Art Style: DIGIDRIVE (500 points) is a puzzle game about traffic management is complemented by Skyworks' Arcade Bowling and Teyon's Robot Rescue, both of which will set you back 200 clams. Robot Rescue actually sounds kind of fun; you can read what it's like for yourself after the jump, where I've posted descriptions of all of Nintendo's digital offerings this week.

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A few weeks ago, indie game developer Arkedo sent me an e-mail titled "An Easy Game from Arkedo to Dtoid, with Love": "Do you think it would be possible to have your mad skillz colleague try and beat Level 1 AND 2 of our game? That would be awesome. We put some bright and friendly colours, so he does not get scared too quickly. And a cat."

I'm not too sure, but I think Anthony's getting trolled.

In any case, I rose to the challenge and did just that—I beat levels 1 and 2 of Arkedo Series - 02 SWAP! without dying. Of course, I eventually beat the whole thing, but it took a lot more tries and something almost, but not quite, entirely unlike strategy.

In case you've forgotten (or never got the memo to begin with), Arkedo is trying to make one indie game per month, ostensibly designed around one simple game mechanic. Last month they gave us a platformer titled JUMP!. This month, we're presented with SWAP!, a "dual-stick action puzzle," so they say.

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_{[Whenever possible, Destructoid critiques overlooked design aspects of games both old and recent for our "Revisited" series.]}

The end of a game, in an ideal world, is the apex of its presentation: one moment in which the narrative and gameplay come together, building on everything you've learned in the past eight-to-eighty hours in a satisfying and internally logical way. Unfortunately, given the fact that there isn't a huge stack of pancakes in front of me, I can safely deduce that this isn't an ideal world and that, ergo, games' endings have the chance of sucking eggs.

I don't want to be overly general and say that most game endings are bad (or good), but I do think that they're interesting points of departure to talk about game design or narrative structure. If an ending works, figuring how it works might provide insight into what makes each mechanic or plot device effective in its own right.

Conversely, if a game's ending falls flat on its face (like Prince of Persia's does), it usually serves as a decent lens through which to see where else the game falls short. Don't get me wrong: I really like Prince of Persia (a lot more than Anthony did, it seems), but I ain't like how it ended.

What I do like is that examining its ending—precisely what this Revisited aims to do—might lead to an insightful, or at least interesting, discussion about the game as a whole.

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_{[Art Attack Friday is your weekly look at videogame fan art created by a talented artist.]}

Back in February (which, if you'll recall, was the internet Stone Age), Hamza featured Andy Helms' Dude-A-Day project on this very column. Dude-A-Day is exactly what is sounds like: Andy wants to draw 365 Dudes in his distinctive art style. He should've wrapped up the whole project a month ago, so I figured it was time to check in with him. Unfortunately, he's a bit behind schedule: his most recent piece, characters from Fatal Fury and King of Fighters, are labeled as June 12 through 17.

"I generally only get to draw in my free time, sadly," writes Helms, adding that he's not sure when he's going to be finished. Seeing as how I had my heart set on on a dudely installment of Art Attack (and already had the header image made), I suppose it won't hurt to check out his newer stuff.

I've gone through Dude-A-Day's archives and pulled out the game-inspired Dudes, but there are examples of all levels of nerd-dom. It's times like these that I wish that Destructoid wasn't just a videogame blog. If you like Dudes, sci-fi movies, cultural ephemera, and quirky art with a three-color palette, it'd behoove you to give it a look. While Helms' Dudes are little more than sketches, I think he manages to capture something essential about each of his characters.

Anyway, if you dig on Helms' silly sense of humor and distinctive style, be sure to check out some of his other work—Fearless Griggs, Buttlord, and OMFE—on his site, Atomic Toy.

Forget Silent Hill or Fatal Frame. You know a game that's terrifying? Bay12's Slaves to Armok: God of Blood: Dwarf Fortress II, colloquially shortened to simply Dwarf Fortress. If being one of Armok's slaves wasn't bad enough (it isn't), consider that the game's visuals are totally in ASCII, that there's no user interface to speak of, and that all of commands are mapped to the keyboard.

In case you're not hip to frustratingly opaque indie games, Dwarf Fortress is a mix of city-building "God game," real-time strategy, and roguelike, all wrapped up in a procedurally generated bow. Wonderful things can happen as you build your eponymous Dwarf fortress (it can be flooded by lava, for example), but trying to figure out how it works is like trying to dig a hole to China with toothpicks. That've been jammed into your eyes.

Luckily, developers Jonask and Solifuge have addressed at least one of the barriers to entry into Dwarf Fortress: enter Stonesense, an isometric visualizer that runs alongside the game, ostensibly providing the player with some visual orientation that's easier to handle than the original ASCII. The open-source project is currently in alpha (whatever that means), and the DF community has been contributing sprites.

You can download the file here (.zip), and check out a video of Stonesense in action in the video embedded above.

Maybe I've been spoiled by modern standards for aesthetics, but the impenetrable graphics surely aren't helping Dwarf Fortress win the hearts and minds of any but the most dedicated gamer. Stonesense makes another attempt at Dwarf Fortress tempting, but I'm still not sure that, even with the facelift, I'll ever be able to wrap my brain around the deep calculus at work here: that sounds like a fool's errand to me.

[Via TIGSource]

P.S. If you're interested in Dwarf Fortress, here are some other resources cribbed from some some old comments: May Green's nice-looking tileset, and a how-to from Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

I thought it was pretty interesting that Abel started off as a girl/trap (don't we all), and while Juri's original design didn't feature any gender-bending functionality, her creation process was pretty cool in itself.

According the latest Super Street Fighter IV development blog, there were about 500 different versions of Juri at one point, including an old woman, an ice skater, and an—ahem—chubbier version of what we have now. The huskier Juri was supposed to be cute, but as she thinned out, she also became more evil. The team had a hard time deciding whether Juri should be associated with Shadaloo or S.I.N. but finally decided to associate her with Seth instead of M. Bison—the reasoning was that, as a new character, Juri would be a better fit for the Street Fighter storyline as a member of the newer organization.

Like that matters.

But anyway, this is what you guys care about: once the team had settled on a "bad and somewhat erotic" character, producer Yoshinori Ono decided that we should be able to see her (ample) sideboob which lead to the creation of her current outfit, which he likened to "a spider."

Here's where I would usually ask you what you thought about the idea of having an ice skater instead of the Juri we know and love, but what's the point? She's already the best thing about Super Street Fighter IV, and that's not even counting the lip-licking.

[Via Andriasang]

[dTunes is a community-organized blog showcasing the musical tastes of Destructoid's users. For two weeks, the editorial team is commandeering the series because, hey, we like music too. To further expand your horizons, make sure to check out the dTunes blog.]

If you were to ask people about folk music, they'd probably look at you funny. This is the 21st century, right? A few people might drop some names like Gillian Welch, Simon and Garfunkel, Nick Drake, Steve Earle, or Emmylou Harris, and maybe even Old Crow Medicine Show or Nickel Creek or the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. And that's totally cool, but there's a whole new current in music that's using a lot of the traditional instrumentation and structure of folk and bluegrass music, and, even better, most of it is pretty good.

The new wave of folk music didn't really grab my attention until I got to college at the University of the South. Nestled on top of the Cumberland Plateau, traditional music kind of hangs in the air up here, and I've been lucky enough to be exposed to a tiny bit of it's more recent offerings.

So, hit the jump for a TON of my favorite bluegrass-tinged music. As a Southerner, I kind of feel obliged to let everyone know that banjos are cool again, and that there's more going on in the Dirty South than Deliverance.

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[Editor's Note: We're not just a (rad) news site -- we also publish opinions/editorials from our community & employees like this one, though be aware it may not jive the opinions of Destructoid as a whole, or how our moms raised us. This article is part of our Monthly Musing series: this month's theme is "nothing is sacred." Want to post your own article in response? Publish it now on our community blogs.]

 

There are tons of great reasons to pay attention to Askiisoft's indie sidescrolling platformer Tower of Heaven: it's a well-designed and tightly focused game with interesting mechanics, a charming Game Boy color palette, and an absolutely killer chiptunes soundtrack. If you haven't played it yet, download it here—depending on your skill level, it won't take more than a few hours to complete.

But, then again, there are tons of well-designed games out there, and you can find chiptunes anywhere.

The real reason to check out Tower of Heaven is that, thanks to a truly inspired rules mechanic, it proves that nothing is sacred: not Shigeru Miyamoto, not your conception of a platform game, and not even God Himself.

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If I were going to be crass, I guess I could describe Capcom's Monster Hunter franchise as "Pokémon for grownups." That's not quite right, but Monster Hunter is reaching pocket monster–level popularity in Glorious Nippon (even while generally floundering in the West), so the analogy kind of fits. Like an elliptical peg in a parabolic hole, if you will.

Anyway, grind-heavy RPGs like the upcoming Monster Hunter Tri for the Wii really thrive in the multiplayer, a feature hetherto missing in Western releases. It's certainly possible to play Monster Hunter alone, but you can forget about having a chance at those god-tier loots. Luckily, North American players will soon have the opportunity to grind and monster hunt with their friends to their heart's desire: Capcom community specialist Shawn Baxter has confirmed that, like it's Japanese counterpart, the American version of Monster Hunter Tri will be ditching Nintendo's pesky friend codes.

Publisher Capcom will be running Monster Hunter Tri on its own servers, allowing American players to build and maintain Monster Hunter–specific friend lists right from the menu. What hasn't been determined, though, is how much online play will cost—Japanese users user a pay-per-play system that requires users to buy Nintendo Points.

Any game that manages to avoid using Nintendo's friend codes is a cause for celebration, as far as I'm concerned. More than that, though, it appears that Capcom is willing to invest the time, money, and infrastructure required to grow the Monster Hunter brand in America. With competent online play (and a reasonable price model), they might just pull it off.

[Via Multiplayer]

The trailer for Alientrap Software's physics-based action-shooter Capsized has been making the rounds for about a week now. I'd made a mental note to post it already, but I got distracted by something shiny. Seeing it resurface on TIGSource reminded me of how fun it looks, and since pretty 2D shooters never go out of style, I don't mind posting what some might consider to be "old news." If it's new to you, enjoy.

Capsized is the newest effort from indie developer Alientrap, previously known for Nexuiz, a freeware FPS. The transition from first to third person seems to have gone smoothly—at the end of the day, Alientrap is still just making games where you bullets in people's faces, no matter the perspective. In any case, the game looks like a lot of fun, and the trailer seems to hint at some environmental strategies at play: you can use your jetpack and grappling hook to pull down logs and boulders, for example. Programmer and co-designer Lee Vermeulen offers this little tidbit:

"The new trailer shows off the fast physics based gameplay of the platformer, along with it's stylized art and unique setting. The game will focus on fast-paced action along with physics-based puzzles, as the player attempts to exit the strange alien planet.

While, mechanically, Capsized has only the most tenuous link to Nathan Fouts' own indie shooter Grapple Buggy, I can't help but compare the two. While Capsized's palette is more subdued compared to Grapple Buggy's lush and vibrant landscapes, both games suggest that the planets on which they take place on are actually alive as you navigate through alien flora and fauna. Compared to the dark, remote isolation of games like Metroid, it's a different feel altogether.

In any case, according to Capsized's official site, the game will hit Steam and Xbox Live Arcade in 2010. For your viewing pleasure, there's also a gallery of four screenshots below.

[Via IndieGames]

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not familiar with Nigoro's action-adventure Metroidvania La-Mulana or the MSX games (like Maze of Galious) to which it pays homage. (In brief, you have to guide a whip-wielding archaeologist through an expansive tomb). I am, however, familiar with Nicalis, the publisher that specializes in HD remakes of popular indie games. They're bringing La-Mulana to WiiWare (eventually), just like they did with Cave Story and Nifflas' Night Game—La-Mulana is in good company, at the very least.

In any case, developer Nigoro is hard at work giving the game a head-to-toe touch-up while maintaining the game's original, throwback aesthetic style (as you can see by the batch of new screenshots in the gallery). From what I gather, everything in La-Mulana was designed to be a reference to the MSX—a tricky legacy to maintain as they bring the game to a mainstream audience, to be sure, and a source of contention for some fans.

Despite some technical limitations (they're trying to figure out the best way to capture the game in motion on actual Wiiware, for example), Nigoro seem to be putting plenty of thought into the project: if you can piece the blog together (Nigoro are from Japan), you'll find really interesting discussions about how to maintain the original's difficulty while making it more accessible, or what to do with all the references to a computer very few owners are familiar with. If you're interested in indie development or game design, it's worth taking some time to poke around the La-Mulana blog.

Or, if you'd rather be visually stimulated, be sure to check out the screenshots in the gallery below. Since this is my first look at the game, I find the graphics pretty charming, even if they are being touched up for the console crowd.

[Via TIGSource]

Nick found Capybara Games' PlayStation Network debut Critter Crunch, a colorful food-chaining puzzler, to be "one of the best values in puzzle gaming you'll find this year," but, so far, sales have been disappointing. I'd hate to see a good game go to waste, so I'm going to jump on the chance to plug Offworld's recent look into the game's art direction, artists, and development process.

Although the trailers for Critter Crunch have already made the rounds on the internet, Offworld's collection of concept art and early sketches are as enlightening as they are beautiful. It goes without saying that Capybara put a lot of effort into Critter Crunch's presentation (as well as its "solid gameplay mechanics," again per Nick's review), but you might be surprised to know that all the art was done by "two rad dudes": Nick "Qiqo" Stefan did the character animation and Sylvain "Sylve" Coutouly the background art. The only glaring omission from the gallery? The Mr. Destructoid–style Biggs, of course.

In an effort to boost sales and spread the word, Capybara are releasing a Critter Crunch demo that should hit the PSN later today. However, if you want a sneak peak into the development process of one of PSN's best indie titles or an excuse to have Critter Crunch placed firmly on your radar, be sure check out the gallery here.

While social networking and Web 2.0 have caused many a misanthropic headache (see Jonathon's weekly Fanboy Friday posts, for example), Twitter and Facebook can certainly be useful. On the rather heavy side of the spectrum, ther're great outlets for political dissent in (ahem) restrictive countries like Guatemala or Iran; on the lighter side, Orange Lounge Radio have harnessed Twitter in a grassroots effort to get Jorudan's Sukeban Shachou Rena Wii localized for Western markets.

Affectionately called President Cat, Sukeban Shachou Rena is an obscure Japanese title (of course) about Rena, the mascot of popular blog Nekopunch and CEO of the fictional Cat Queen, Inc. You play as an entry-level feline trying to work her way to the top, completing tasks to earn Rena's respect. Depending on how realistic the game is, those tasks might include making my entire apartment smell like catsh*t, stepping on my keyboard as my computer boots up (and entering DOS prompts that don't exist), and leaving the gallbladders of tiny creatures on my kitchen table. 

At least, that's what my cat Tristan does.

Anyway, OLR (@olr) has started Tweeting about the game with the #presidentcat hashtag, and fans are catching on. The Rena account (@renawii) has started responding in both Japanese and English although they seem a little confused about all the positive feedback from us gaijin.

On the one hand, I'd love for a tiny, quirky game like Sukeban Shachou Rena Wii to make it to the United States. On the other, talking about the game on Twitter is a lot different than paying $40 to be a cat secretary. I'd hate for developer Jorudan to go through the trouble (and money) of localizing the game, only to have it rot in American bargain bins.

P.S. The game hits Japanese shelves tomorrow. All hail President Cat!

[Via Joystiq]