I'll show you mine if you show me yours

I sadly can't remember exactly who it was, but someone on Twitter last week prompted me to take a look at the amount of time I've spent with my most-played 3DS titles.

I was a bit surprised by what I found. So surprised, in fact, that I decided to snap and share a photo (or two) of it. Here are the first three results:

And here are the next three:

In case you can't make out the game titles and play times showcased in the admittedly crappy photos above, here they are: Animal Crossing: New Leaf (488.26 hours--uh, yikes!), THE "DENPA" MEN (42:51), Theatrhythm Final Fantasy (33:38), Mario Kart 7 (32:32), Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime (22:22) and THE "DENPA" MEN 2 (17:30).

What are all of your most-played 3DS titles at the moment, if you're willing to share?

So, Keita Takahashi's Tenya Wanya Teens is never coming out, is it?

Don't you just hate it when an interesting looking game completely avoids your radar? I sure do.

Which is why I was really annoyed with myself this past weekend when I came across Keita Takahashi's weirdo (I mean that in a good way) Tenya Wanya Teens for the first time.

For the similarly uninformed: Tenya Wanya Teens is a two-player experience that puts gamers into the shoes of one of a handful of very Keita Takahashi-esque boy characters and then tasks them with brushing their teeth, taking showers, peeing--you know, the sorts of actions that appear in pretty much every video game under the sun (or not)--all on command and all while avoiding humiliating themselves in front of their girlfriends by undertaking the wrong actions.

Oh, and each of the aforementioned actions are input using a mammoth 16-button controller--or at least they were during all of the game's demo sessions held to date.



Given the above, along with the fact that the game hasn't been seen in public for some time now, I'm not feeling very confident at the moment that Tenya Wanya Teens will ever see the light of day.

One possible solution that's been mentioned elsewhere but is unlikely to be put to use would be to bring the game to the Wii U (via the eShop, I suppose) and in the process map the inputs to virtual buttons that appear on the system's GamePad.

That said, I'd also love to own one of those crazy 16-button controllers, so I wouldn't complain if the game's backers, The Wild Rumpus and Venus Patrol, go some other route instead (or as well).

An artistic mash-up I'd never considered before now: Kirby x Zelda

Before today, I could've envisioned a couple of game series being successfully combined artistically with Kirby--Mario and Pokémon among them--but The Legend of Zelda? Not even a consideration for me--until I came across the example below, of course.

The Zelda elements all can be found within the giant Kirby, by the way. Some are images while others are text.



This painting--made using posca, which is supposed to be some sort of water-based marker--is yet another product of artist and blogger Oskunk, by the way. To see more samples of his work, check out custom-art.blogspot.com.

King Boo's balls and Birdo's bits

What would King Boo, Birdo and all sorts of other Nintendo characters--yes, including Mario, Luigi, Link, Peach and Zelda--look like in the buff?

Brooklyn-based artist Aedan Roberts answers that question in a most amusing way via his recent "Nüdtendo" portrait series--two pieces of which can be seen below.

Here, for instance, is King Boo--and, er, his "bits":

Unsurprisingly--given the above, at least--Birdo's bits also are on display in Roberts' humorous portrait of the much-loved Super Mario Bros. 2 baddie.

To see the rest of Roberts' Nüdtendo series--my current favorites are Wario, Tingle, Peach and Link--check out his site, aedanroberts.com.

If you're interested in either of the pieces shown above, by the way, the King Boo one can be bought here (for $275), while the Birdo one can be bought here for the same price. (A few others also are for sale via Roberts' etsy shop.)

(Via boyculture.com)

These Japanese Super Mario 3D World commercials make me feel all tingly

I know there are a lot of gamers in the world who no longer care about Mario or his pixelated or polygonal exploits--if they ever cared about them in the first place.

I am not one of those people.

Now, I'm also not one of those people who snap up each and every game that features Nintendo's iconic protagonist.



For the most part, I stick to the company's Paper Mario series (although that'll no longer be the case if its next entry is as disappointing as the last two), some of its two-dimensional Mario Bros. releases and its three-dimensional Mario games.

That last group is the one that interests me most these days--mainly because, with the possible exception of Super Mario Sunshine (which I like in theory, but not in practice), Nintendo has yet to produce a 3D Mario game that fails to at least compete with (if not top) the ones that came before it.

When it was first announced, I actually thought Super Mario 3D World might join its GameCube counterpart at the bottom of Nintendo's Mario-branded barrel. I mean, that first trailer the company showed to the world during this year's E3 event was the definition of "ho hum," wasn't it?

Thankfully, subsequent trailers have washed that taste from my mouth. Not only that, but they've transformed the game from something I consider only mildly intriguing (if that) to something I now view as a must-purchase release.



Although the commercials included above aren't exactly trailers, they still provide a smile-inducing glimpse at why this game has caught the attention of a lot of folks in the few weeks and months.

Before you watch either of them, though, I have to warn you that they likely include spoilers.

Anyway, are any of you finding yourselves similarly attracted to Super Mario 3D World? If so, what aspects appeal to you most right now?