Today is a good day to be a Nintendo fan in Europe in fact I have never been quite so happy with Nintendo ever. In fact I’ve never felt as sure that Nintendo will do well in Europe as I do now. This week we have been told that the GC will launch on May 3rd at �150 or 249Euros. Also today we learn that from Friday the fantastic GBA will be priced at 99Euros or �60 for us Brits and the Games will cost �30. Man this is like the best. Does it stop here, nope; on launch day we will get Sonic, Luigi and Star Wars. Closely followed by Smash Bros and Pikimin and even better we only have to wait to the 23rd to get Resident Evil. Eternal Darkness and Star Fox will follow soon after (to be fair I suspect Star fox will be quite late). I had an email from a guy asking for reassurance about Nintendo. My answer is to think along these lines, you can get an Xbox with no games for �300. You would want a game with that to, �340. Now with �340 you could get a Cube, Star Wars, Sonic an extra control pack and a memory pack and have just about enough left over for Resident Evil. Now no one needs me to tell them that there is only one choice worth going for. Does the good news stop there, Nope, we in Europe can look forward to full screen, full speed games (excuse me while I get a bit emotional)

-Brand new shots from WWF Wrestlemania up this week. Looks like we will miss out on the N.W.O being in there. One thing worries me for sure it appears that the team responsible for Smackdown are making this game and they promise a new games engine. Great except No Mercy on the N64 was great and the Wrestling engine was great, Smackdown looked the bomb but the engine kind of sucked.

-Yet another Game to make use of the GC/GBA connection thing and joy of joys it’s an RPG (Dragon Ball Z.)

-It’s been a hell of a week for Cube-Europe, we are talked about on many a forum. Congratulations to all the news team for the fantastic work.

-GTA3 looks like being a no go for the GC, oh well just play it on your PC instead.

FORUM ROUNDUP

There was an outcry against Nintendo when it leaked that the launch would be May 3rd. I was overjoyed because the price was so cool and sure enough the more time that went by the more people started to figure out how they were going to spend there money. This is a fantastic example in my opinion of why Nintendo will do so well. Let’s face it when it’s all said and done and the dust has cleared a decision about choosing a console for many people will in all likely hood come down to money.

-It Strikes me that many in the forum are doing exams around Cube Launch; Good luck to you all and be careful. Civ 2 made me almost flunk my A Levels. (Don’t worry I’m in Uni now.

N64/RPG GAME OF THE WEEK

It seemed only fair that this week I should review one of Nintendo’s best games to date. I have only one complaint about this one. Hands up those who have heard of Paper Mario. It makes me mighty angry when a game of such quality goes unnoticed because Nintendo never seems to hype it.

This sequel to the RPG that most Europeans never saw (Mario RPG) was released over here a year after it was released in Japan (Sigh). It is also important to note that this game was not created by Square, which Mario RPG of course was. The game starts with Bowser stealing a really powerful Star Rod and imprisoning 7 Stars (Guardians). This will sound very familiar to those that played Mario RPG. Then the next part should sound familiar to those over the age of 6; yep Bowser yet again kidnaps Peach.

If you are wondering why it’s called Paper Mario then the answer is pretty obvious. Mario is a piece of paper. In fact all the characters in this game are true 2D. If you turn Mario around you can see how this works. Frankly at first I was very unsure about this but it all adds to the quirkiness. The games graphics in general are stunning. The 3D world (and yes it is true 3D) rivals much on the PS2. I was amazed by how powerful the N64 was.

In terms of Gameplay it is half RPG, half Platformer, while fair to say that it is the only true RPG on the N64, it’s also fair to say that it’s not quite Final Fantasy. However this is no bad thing. The plot is rather unoriginal and not as good as Mario RPG. While your Party gets to have quite a few members in it you are only allowed to control 2 at any time. Rather than having huge HP you start off with 10. No matter who your partner is in Battle the only person the bad guys will attack is Mario. Have I put you off yet? If yes then shame on you, because while all these points serve to conspire against Mario I myself feel that this was the 3rd best game on the N64, and do you know why? Because it’s Fun and in today’s gaming world that is a rare thing indeed.

TIME TO COMPLETE- 25-30 Hours
Rating 9/10