How would you like to be part of an elite club with only 1,000 members? I’m talking about the official “People Who Own a Limited Edition Physical Copy of the New Bad Dudes Metroid Album” club. It’s very exclusive, but we can make it happen (we know a guy).

Club benefits include having a copy of Metroid Arrange 25th Anniversary Album by the Bad Dudes (including a bonus track not available in the digital version), the ability to feast your eyeballs on a glorious, double-sided poster and four panel comic, and the satisfaction of knowing that you’re now just a bit better than everyone else out there.

All you have to do is follow the instructions below and let us know what your favorite Metroid powerup is in the comments of this post. Do you like tearing through enemies with the screw attack? Or maybe you prefer turning enemies into platforms with the ice beam. Space jump over to the comments section and let us know!

Contest Rules:

1. Leave a comment below and tell us your favorite powerup from the Metroid series
2. Limit one entry per person
3. All entries must be made by legal U.S. residents
4. Entries must be accepted by 5:00pm PST on Friday, December 30th. We will then randomly select one winner

If you thought we were done paying tribute to the 25th anniversary of Metroid, well… then you haven’t met the Bad Dudes. They don’t play by our rules. They don’t celebrate when we celebrate. But they do make music that will save the galaxy.

I’m talking about the same dudes that brought you the fantastic CHRONOTORIOUS album and fought the OverClocked ReMix community in musical combat. We are talking about some seriously bad dudes here. Dudes so bad they were commissioned by Samus herself to make the Metroid Arrange 25th Anniversary Album (if their totally rad trailer below is to be believed).

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A new Nintendo system means a new Mario Kart game. That’s just how things work. So here we are with the seventh entry in the chaotic kart racing series (not including the Namco co-developed arcade games). Aside from it being one of the very few first party games currently available on the 3DS, why should you care about yet another Mario Kart game?

The answer is simple: Mario Kart 7 is easily one of the best games in the series.

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With a site named “WingDamage” and a podcast called “Barrel Roll!” it shouldn’t come as any surprise that many here on the site grew up adoring the first couple of Star Fox games. As I’ve written about in the past, the series really hasn’t been able to find a clear direction that works after Star Fox 64. Each game after that point has been a mess of ideas that fail to satisfy the way the core, rail shooting gameplay of the originals did.

Perhaps it’s because of this lack of confidence in the future of Star Fox that I was so eager to revisit the glory days of its past. Star Fox 64 3D may be a remake of a fourteen year old game, but it’s also a remake of the best the series has to offer by a large margin, and one of the greatest gems you’ll find in a genre that barely exists anymore.

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The surprise bombshell at Nintendo’s pre-Tokyo Game Show press conference today came as quite a shock to many. Despite having just announced Monster Hunter 3G for 3DS, an expanded version of the Wii’s Monster Hunter Tri, they dropped a trailer for Monster Hunter 4.

While it’s still unclear whether or not the game will also appear on other platforms, the trailer had a lot to analyze. While running away from a Tigrex, a hunter is seen jumping (gasp!) to various rock structures before they’re smashed to bits, not just landing on top, but clinging to sides from a jump as well. And just when things get really vertical, you can see the Tigrex climb the side of the rock face in pursuit of the hunter.

Things get real interesting when a Rathalos shows up and the entire play field gets knocked over, making a steep slope out of what use to be flat land. There seems to be no wall the hunter can’t climb as he dodges fireballs while hanging on for dear life. As the Rathalos draws near, the hunter pulls out a smaller weapon independent of his great sword to attack the monster while in a climbing position.

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Most gamers were introduced to the Super Nintendo through the latest adventures of a certain portly plumber, but for me things were a little different. I was too young to have a job when the system released, and I still had only experienced a fraction of the NES library anyway. But as time went on, focus increasingly shifted to the more Super of Nintendos on the market, and eventually a cheaper package was released sans-Super Mario World. It was after this that one of my older brothers surprised me with what I still consider to be the greatest video game system ever made.

A Super Nintendo, the very same one that is hooked up behind me right now, sat on my bed and I was beside myself with excitement. The cheaper model came with a mail-in voucher for Super Mario All-Stars, but what was I to play in the meantime? It turned out the other surprise my brother had in store was a copy of Cybernator, a game I had never heard of before.

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Well good day there fellow gaming geeks and geekettes. The Applemonkey here and I’m going to chit chat with you kids about a thing I always enjoy doing: collecting accessories. Today’s hunt will be on the Super Nintendo. From the Super Gameboy controller to the Miracle Piano, hunting for SNES accessories is always a tantalizing experience. I’m going to talk about three unique items that you just might want to hunt for. Go grab yourself some animal crackers and Yoo-hoo, sit back and enjoy! (more…)

Back in the SNES era, one may remember a title Interplay and Visual Concepts developed that bears the word “Clay” in it. Probably to most, the first game that will pop in your head is the memorable Clayfighter fighting game. But there is another lesser known “Clay” gem they both produced in the same year called Claymates, a colorful platformer that hid under the shadows throughout the console’s life.

Claymates is about a boy named Clayton who one day is in a laboratory with his father, who has created a serum that can transform clay into animals. Apparently witch doctors fiend for this stuff because one magically appears out of nowhere and demands that Clayton’s father hand over the serum. He denies him and the witch doctor then strikes Clayton with lightning, transforming him into a blue ball of clay, then proceeds to steal the serum and Clayton’s father away in a flash. Clayton vows to rescue his father and the serum, even if he is just a ball of clay.

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It’s hard to believe that it has been twenty years since the launch of the Super Nintendo. It may have taken us an extra nine months to get the machine here in North America, but I’m sure we can all agree it was worth the wait. My friends and I had been drooling over the screenshots in gaming magazines for what seemed like forever, but was probably only a few months. They showed off the latest Mario, where he was riding some kind of crazy looking dinosaur.

There were screenshots of games we had no idea what they were about, like Act Raiser. There was this flying game that looked like they were pulling off actual 3D. Our minds were sufficiently blown.

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“This is twice as fun as how completely unsafe it looks.”

Minna no Rhythm Tengoku (meaning Everyone’s Rhythm Heaven) is the most recent entry and first console edition of Nintendo’s Rhythm Heaven series. Like its predecessors, the game is composed of a number of music-driven rhythm games with simple controls. I became an immediate fan after trying out the DS game released in 2009, and was downright ecstatic when Nintendo announced a follow up for the Wii.

I was also concerned, however, since being Wii software likely entitled it to have motion gestures, and big oafs like myself can be pretty uncoordinated. Could this game have been spoiled before it even came out? (Quick spoiler: no.)

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