Nintendo Channel: Now Showing

Thank god Most Painful Moments in Gaming is over. Not only did the frustration of my individual pains come flooding back but the pain of my right honorouble friends made me cringe anew. However all this frustration will be offset with next week's feature-creeping best moments.

In the meantime, I'm going to take a quick butcher's at some of the stuff currently up on the Ninty Channel at the moment. I'm a big fan of the Nintendo Channel, I know not everybody is, but if I have some spare time I try to check it out once or twice a week to see what's new.

This week:

• Monster Hunter Tri still dominates the channel with a massive 19 videos currently up. The latest video, bizarrely titled Hunting Jhen Moran Online is actually just a cutscene from the game (a fucking cool one nonetheless) advertising the now closed(?) event quest. The World of Monster Hunter Tri parts 1 to 6 and the World of Monster Hunter Tri Hunting Grounds set the scene for MHnewcomers but also strike me as a little bit spoilerific? Andy's Quest is a bit cringe-worthy but it shows some effort by Ninty to try to demistify the game that some newbs seem to be struggling with the fundamental ideas behind.
• The Super Mario Galaxy 2 Trailer doesn' exactly make me want to run out and get that game but mostly because a lot of the clips in the trailer seem to be subtly emphasizing how SMG2 is not going to be a cake walk like the predecessor was and just thinking about beating some of those levels MAKES ME TIRED.
• Sin and Punishment: Successor of the Skies has a trailer as well as a Behind the Scenes with TREASURE vid up. Both are worth a watch. The behind the scenes reveals how the game could have shipped at sub 60fps and how the whole game had to be made significantly harder after failing the first Super Mario Club Test..... I will pitch in and say it is such a shame that there aren't playable demos because videos of S&P really can't communicate the insanity of playing it.
• There are three excellent Warioware: Do It Yourself videos up showing Masahiro Sakurai, Yoshio Sakamoto and Edmund McMillen making micro games on the spot for the Big Name Games download service. Seeing Sakurai draw a watermelon and McMillen put together a Super Meat Boy micro and then being able to go and download those games really is something special. I hope these aren't the last of these videos.
• Rage of The Gladiator looks fun if you have Wii Motion Plus and some Wii points spare, in particular smacking Lord Vensor the 3rd repeatedly round the chops with a hammer looks like an excellent way to vent some pent up frustrations.
• Metroid: Other M is looking pretty fucking sweet. The new gameplay trailer goes some way to help visualise how the game will play with those 'internet' controversial controls.
• Surviving High School reminds us why we don't trust trailers that don't show gameplay and true FPS System Flaw: Recruit which uses the camera to superimpose bad guys onto the real world, looks simple but fun as long as you don't mind spinning around looking at your DS in public.
• To be frank, we weren't ones who were holding our breath for Red Steel 2 but the enemies presentation on the Nintendo channel really does make us want to go and play XIII again so it isn't a total Ubi loss I guess....
• And finally, 3 Minutes with the voice of Mario is annoyingly lovable or is it lovably annoying? One of those.