Hey all! As I am sure some of the regular readers of The Flickcast have noticed, my favorite part of the Con season is taking pics at them. Unfortunately, due to some professional responsibilities, I was only able to get down to one day of WonderCon this year.

But because my time was limited, I didn’t waste it on panels and the like. Instead I hit the floor with camera in hand and got as many pics of the Wondercon sights as I could.

While WonderCon doesn’t have the size of San Diego or New York Comic Con, the fans there weren’t any less fervent with their cosplay love. This year I saw a lot of new and original costumes I had not seen before. While a pimped out Boba Fett was present, I also saw for the first time Paper Mario as well as a group of female X-Man villains. Alongside the working R2 units, there was a life sized Wall-E that sadly the picture doesn’t do justice as it captured all of the personality of the movie and brought it to life in front of us all.

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Like all good things done by Nintendo, it’s time for special edition hardware. With the Pokemon franchise being possibly the most recognizable mobile game in the world with its original GameBoy roots, Nintendo is bringing the pocket monster flair to their behemoth (only in terms of importance, not size) pocket based console.

Retailing for a cool $199.99, the Pikachu themed 3DS XL will come with a 4 GB SD memory card and be available in limited qualities. From the look of the above image though, it may only be the top of the 3DS XL that features the Pikachu treatment as the hinge appears white, meaning the actual body of the system may be white as well.

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In a story broken by Ben Fritz of the L.A. Times, it was reported late last night that legendary game developer Atari Inc. has filed for bankruptcy.

The initial report suggests that U.S. operations will cease while the company attempts to separate from their parent company, the France-based Atari SA. Fritz’s report also indicates that Atari Inc. is looking for a private buyer.

This is another blow to the once-great developer, who rose to prominence with their Atari 2600 console. The 2600 spend six years on top of the console world until market saturation sunk in. Atari is widely considered to have been the catalyst behind the Video Game Crash of 1983, producing historically notable bombs such as E.T. and their notoriously bad port of Pac Man.

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At a minimum of $300 a pop, hitting sales of 400,000 units is nothing to sneeze at. That means that in the first week Nintendo was able to earn a MINIMUM of $120,000,000 in sales off the newly launched Wii U. Factor in that some percentage of these consoles sold were the $350 Deluxe Edition means they the number may be actually be closer to $130,000,000. But how does that compare to console launches in the past?

Back in 2006, the original Wii clocked in sales of 600,000 units in its first week on shelves. That’s a 200,000 unit differential. The Wii U’s launch was more in line with the PlayStation 3’s launch which was also in the 400,000 range that same year showing that the Wii U may be more of a core gamer system as opposed to the mass appeal that the Wii had to non-gamers.

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Because of the time it takes to really get to know a system and being limited by only those few games at launch, it wouldn’t be fair to give a full and formal review of the Wii U console just yet. Instead, I’m just going to give my first impressions of it with a full review possibly coming later.

When getting the Wii U, the first thing I noticed and was unfortunately disappointed by is its setup time. If you plan on using the Wii U to its fullest potential, you are going to need to do an update to the system right off the bat. While this is automatic when doing your network setup, it is required to use the Wii U’s full functionality including things like the YouTube app. Nintendo has never been known for their online features and like Sony doesn’t have fast download speeds for consoles.

As a result, it took almost an hour of setup and download time before my Wii U was ready to go. Tip for parents, if you are giving your kid a Wii U for Christmas, open up the box and do this before you give it as a gift. Nothing is going to disappoint little Jimmy Xmas morning than having to wait an hour before he can actually start playing his Wii U.

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There are two known facts about The Flickcast’s gaming division (a.k.a. the Bitcast):

1. WallE and I love video games.

2. WallE and I cannot wait until Wreck-It Ralph hits theaters.

So it only makes sense that we would be following the news on the Wreck-It Ralph tie-in video game. Now while we all know that movie tie-in games run a high risk of not living up to expectations for the film, or for games in general, there is a shed of hope for Wreck-It Ralph. After all, it is a game… based off a movie… that is based off of gaming. What could possibly go wrong? Well, don’t answer that as we have seen many a project that should have been a layup go wrong.

In the new teaser trailer, we take a quick look at Wreck-It Ralph but don’t get the opportunity to see his gameplay so that is what leads us to speculate. What is Wreck-It Ralph going to be like? Players have already been given the opportunity to play browser based versions of Hero’s Duty and Sugar Rush on the Wreck-It Ralph movie site as well as a Fix-It Felix iOS game.

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Now it’s no secret that the Flickcast team are fans of the original G1 Transformers as well as Highmoon Studios’ work on the franchise with Transformers: War for Cybertron and Transformers: Fall of Cybertron. And when we have all seen the blockbuster abomination from Michael Bay, that doesn’t mean we are closed off to a reimagining of the robots in disguise. Most recently, this has come from Transformers Prime on the Hub network. And with all toy franchises, it was only a matter of time before a new game would be launched for it coming from NowPro.

The Flickcast has shown both the reveal of the game as well as the first gameplay foodtage for Transformers Prime: The Game. Now following the announcement that Transformers Prime: The Game will be a launch window title for the Wii U, we get to take a peek at some of the story for what Optimus and the rest of Team Prime are going to encounter. In the trailer after the jump, a new weapon is revealed that Megatron is intent on powering up to unleash devastation upon the Autobots and the rest of the world.

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At the Nintendo press conference two weeks ago, tons of new details were given about the Wii U including the bundles the system would be packaged in and the games being put into the launch window. Yesterday, even more details were given to the launch lineup with 23 titles being confirmed for day one. This looks to be one of the largest launch lineups of any system in recent memory with lots of big name games in it.

Aside from bundling the Deluxe system with Nintendo Land to show off the Wii U’s unique capabilities, Nintendo made sure to back the system with the support of major well known franchises for both the casual and hardcore gamer.

For the Nintendo gamer, the system will launch with New Super Mario Bros. U which is the first time since the Nintendo 64 where a Mario game was made available day one for a home console.

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Thursday morning, Nintendo had a press conference in New York City where they revealed the important details that everyone has been waiting for about the Wii U. Let’s cut to the chase and talk about the most important details.

The Wii U will launch in the US on November 18th.

There will be two SKU’s on launch.

The Wii U Basic Set will launch at $299.99 and contain a white Wii U, 8 GB of internal storage, one white GamePad controller, AC adapters for both the console and controller, a sensor bar and an HDMI cable.

The Wii U Deluxe Set will retail for $349.99 and contain a black Wii U, all the components of the Basic Set, a copy of Nintendo Land, an increased 32 GB of internal storage, a console stand, GamePad charging cradle and a vertical GamePad stand. They will also be enrolled in the Deluxe Digital Promotion.

The online community will be called the Miiverse.

Using the Nintendo TVii application, players can use the GamePad controller to control subscription services like cable and satellite channels, Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, YouTube and their recorded TiVo files.

The launch window which goes from November 18th, 2012 to March 31st, 2013 will the 51 games listed below (sorted by developer).

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Black Friday, the biggest shopping bonanza of the year. Virtually everyone has the day off and with retail stores doing sales on top of sales, going out to the store can be a mad house, especially if rumors are to be believed.

Go Nintendo has it from GameStop sources that the console will be launching the week of Black Friday. Based on Nintendo’s release pattern, that should put the Wii U in stores Sunday the 18th of November. Which gives Nintendo almost a full week and a half of mad house sales for their new console.

This release schedule makes sense both in Nintendo’s historical context, as well as in relation to third-party rumors that have been cropping up since E3. The major question that needs to be answered now is how well will the new system do, can the Wii U match the hysteria created by the original Wii?

It is had to guess with out the price point information just yet, but it is a safe bet to assume that the Wii U will sell out of its first shipment pretty quickly. What made the Wii such a phenomenon was that it couldn’t stay in stock for months. In January it was still hard to get a Wii, which was due in large part to a pretty genius strategy by Nintendo. Most stores would only get shipments of three or four systems, perpetually keeping shelves bare.

To recreate that Nintendo had better hope they can keep the Wii U price point low, and the demand high.

Stay connected to The Flickcast for any new updates on the launch of the Wii U.

So while the Wii U most likely isn’t going to be the most epic or groundbreaking piece of hardware ever released, one thing you can almost certainly count on is it being sold out in stores day one. Especially after the massive shortages of the Wii, gamers and non-gamers alike are going to be ready to go and get the Wii U either for themselves or as that early Christmas purchase that is going to be so coveted come December 25th. But how do you make sure you get one of these on the very first day? The answer my fellow geeks is the midnight launch.

Now for those of you who have never attempted a midnight launch or overnight sale, here are some important pieces of advice that will help you survive (and hopefully enjoy) this risky endeavor. First is to figure out where you are going to get your system. Some stores like Gamestop will most likely be opening doors at midnight but they also do a preorder system. Make sure as soon as the Wii U goes up on preorder, you get one otherwise nothing else will matter if you show up to Gamestop and every one of their fifty systems already has a claim on it.

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At Comic Con, The Flickcast team got to finally get our hands on the Wii U and Nintendo’s minigame packed NintendoLand. Like we talked about in our E3 coverage, NintendoLand will feature a collection of mini games inspired by Nintendo franchises, past and present. In total, NintendoLand will contain 12 mini games with half of them already announced and five were playable for us in the Nintendo lounge at SDCC.

First we got to try out Animal Crossing: Sweet Day. Inspired by the stuffed animal-like art design of Animal Crossing, this mini game puts three players on a map where they must collect candies that are placed in various locations, sometimes requiring multiple players to stand on a location together to release the candies. The more candies the players collect, the fatter their heads get and the slower they move. At the same time, they are being pursued by a fourth player who is controlling two guards using the Wii U controller, independently controlling each guard with the different analog sticks and using the controller’s screen.

Communication is key between the players in their hunt for the candy as they need to warn each other about oncoming threats and gather at certain locations to unleash the larger stashes of candy. The player using the Wii U controller gets to really have the most fun though as they get to chase and troll the other players by using pincher style attacks to corner them.

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If there was ever a movie to not surprise us with a tie-in video game announcement, Wreck-It Ralph would be it. What is surprising though is that the video game adaptation of Wreck-It Ralph, the Disney animated flick that revolves around a video game villain who wants to become the hero, is being limited to only the Nintendo platforms.

In the film Wreck-It Ralph, characters from all over gaming’s past and present make cameos from those we have seen to what is sure to be a bunch of star studded surprises as well. Whether that happens in the game remains to be seen.

Here’s the official word from Activision:

Get ready for classic arcade video game action with a whole new modern look and feel as Activision Publishing Inc. and Disney Interactive today announced a collaboration to produce and distribute a Wreck-It Ralph video game. As a story extension to the highly anticipated upcoming blockbuster film of the same name from Walt Disney Animation Studios, the Wreck-It Ralph video game is set to inspire a whole new generation of young gamers as a classic, arcade-style side scroller featuring Ralph – the misunderstood villain of his own arcade game who sets out to prove he can be a hero too.

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Nintendo doesn’t sit on their laurels when it comes to their handhelds. Ever since the release Game Boy Pocket back in ’96, Nintendo can’t seem to go very long with out re-releasing and improving on their portable devices. Perhaps this ever evolving strategy is why, despite strong competition from Sony and smart phones, Nintendo has never fallen from the top of the portable gaming mountain.

It was reported that Nintendo was going to announce North American plans for the upcoming 3DS XL, but when nothing was said at their conference rumors began to spread that we might not see it officially in the states. In retrospect it was probably pretty dumb to think Nintendo wouldn’t release a new 3DS in the wake of the successful Vita launch last year.

This is an important time for Nintendo’s portable gaming division. The initial launch of the 3DS was underwhelming, and Sony’s Vita is the most impressive direct competition Nintendo has ever faced. In fact, for the first time since the SEGA Game Gear another company actually owns a respectable share of the market. A market that is shrinking in the age of smart phones and app store games providing much better value for gamers on the go.

For now Nintendo is still the king, and the launch of the 3DS XL should only solidify that. You can expect the newer, larger 3DS to hit shelves in North America August 19th, a few weeks after our Japanese and European brothers get their hands on it, July 28th.

This is a question posed by the guys over at Blumasters.  The team there didn’t look to reinvent the wheel by introducing new gameplay mechanics but instead took the base premise of the original Super Mario Bros. and just updated the visuals of it. Every now and then, a fan made film or tech demo comes along that recaptures the magic and intrigue of the original title it was based on and this is one of them.

In this modern take of Super Mario Bros., there are updated sound effects and visual that reflect the state of gaming today. Sound effects are as realistic as possible while the imagery goes over the top when possible. Blocks explode when Mario smashes his head into them and the fires burn realistically once Mario grabs his favorite power up. And there is even an awesome ending to cap off the infamous world 1-1, probably the most played stage in all of gaming history.

Take a peek after the jump and stick to The Flickcast for all your gaming related news.

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