Love playing Smash Bros. with your GameCube controller, but hate how purple and white clash? Well if you happen to live in the land of the rising sun Nintendo is coming to the rescue!

While there’s no word on a North American release, don’t be surprised if you see these pop up on your favorite online import shop in the near future. They’ll be going for ¥2,000 when they’re released later this month, or about $19.50 to you and me. While the release date is pinned down for April, no specific date has been mentioned.

Nintendo of Japan
via GoNintendo

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Still gotta catch’em all? Then you’re in luck. If you pre-order the upcoming DS titles Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time or Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness at participating retailers you’ll receive a limited edition Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorer’s Guide free of charge.

The guide contains an exclusive collection of tips, interviews and an original manga by Ken Sugimori, main art director of Pokémon video games. Not a bad haul for a Pokefanatic! While the guides are available with pre-orders now, both new Mystery Dungeon titles will be shipping to retailers on April 20th.

Full press release after the break.

JUMP INTO THE NEXT POKÉMON ADVENTURE EARLY AND GET A FREE GUIDE

March 13, 2008 – Two new Pokémon® adventures for Nintendo DS™ are on the way, and Nintendo plans to reward fans for ordering early with guides to help them navigate the games. Starting March 16, fans who place an order for either Pokémon® Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time or Pokémon® Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness will receive a free, limited-edition Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Explorers Guide*. The guide contains an exclusive collection of tips, interviews and an original manga by Ken Sugimori, main art director of Pokémon video games.

In these two new games, players journey through time and darkness as actual Pokémon as they attempt to find out why they’ve been turned into a Pokémon. Their epic quest leads them through countless, randomly generated dungeons, encountering more than 490 Pokémon. Players also have the option to send rescue alerts to their friends via e-mail or mobile text message when they are connected to Nintendo® Wi-Fi Connection. These two new Dungeon games give Pokémon fans another excuse to upgrade to Nintendo DS, which also plays all their favorite Game Boy® Advance games in single-player mode.

Pokémon games remain as popular as ever. Last year’s release of Pokémon® Diamond Version and Pokémon® Pearl Version for Nintendo DS sold a combined 4.33 million copies to date in the United States alone.

For more information about Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness, please visit Pokemon-Games.com.

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These little guys could be found in the UK last spring for 50p. Under the wrapper and chocolatey goodness you’d find a toy in a little yellow capsule that had nothing to do with Nintendo. Yep — these were pretty much just rebranded Kinder Eggs. Still — who doesn’t want to see Mario smiling back at them at the register?

The Average Gamer

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Not a lot of people are going to question Nintendo’s dedication to innovation — everything from the D-Pad to the DS smacks of originality and achievement. That’s why I was surprised when I caught wind of this: the Joyboard for the Atari 2600. The Joyboard was “a joystick platform the player stood on and controlled by shifting bodyweight and staying balanced.” The controller shipped with (and was likely only playable with) the skiing simulator Mogul Maniac.

Suggesting that Nintendo lifted the idea for a balance board form the Atari is ludicrous — that’d be like saying DDR ripped off the Power Pad or the Virtual Boy ripped off that one boat trip I had when I was 8 and had to hose off my shoes at the end of the ride (face it — the VB was made to induce nausea folks.) Still, it goes to show that with all of the ideas floating around out there, some of them are bound to overlap.

Gamasutra

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