PixlBit

Mario’s 16-bit debut serves as an introduction to Nintendo’s most legendary console and fleeting farewell to 2-D Mario platforming. And Yoshi.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 90s. In this era we saw many things; we saw the true start of the (in)famous 16-bit console wars, the slow decline of arcades, the invention of CD-ROM media and the start of a tradition with mainline Mario titles. Thought it was nice the NES had three great Mario games? You are not going to see that again for a very long time. Make that nineteen years to be exact. Take a good long look over this fourth Mario Mania entry, because the 2-D Mario platforming ship is sailing and it feels like a bittersweet moment.

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Two games in one part! Can you guess which one I like better?

Different things usually happened with Nintendo in two completely different continents. While the NES arrived in 1986 in North America, Japan was already in its third year of Famicom glory. Nintendo’s then-released Famicom Disk System introduced the battery back-up save feature, eliminating the need for long over-drawn password saves. Games like Metroid and The Legend of Zelda greatly benefited from this innovation. It was also this year that Nintendo saw fit to release a sequel to Super Mario Bros, appropriately titled Super Mario Bros. 2. This was a completely different Super Mario Bros. 2 than the one North Americans got in 1988. So what in the world happened?

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An organized list of every Nintendo related article PixlBit has posted.

E3 is a busy time, and 2011's conference is no exception. With new information constantly being released, it can be easy to miss big announcements or overlook certain articles. Because of this, PixlBit has compiled all of our E3 articles into separate sections (Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Wii U, and Vita) for easy viewing, so that none of you miss out on any of our coverage.

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Also, what does the future hold for the 3DS portable Virtual Console?

The Virtual Console we all know and love hit the scene a little over four years ago, and since its inception has paved the way for release of 379 titles in North America. Over the past year, however, only 28 titles were published on the service spanning the 10 systems it represents. Compare this to its first full year and you’ll see a striking difference. In the calendar year of 2007, 157 titles of the available 379 were released. If anything is clear, it’s that the Virtual Console has been a bit of disappointment over the past couple of years, providing a small helping of games, with only a few gems littered in. But what does this mean in the grand scheme of the service itself?

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