Animal Crossing Brings More Amiibos to the Party!

Take note Animal Crossing fans and amiibo collectors: Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival for the Wii U launches Nov. 13!

With that game, Nintendo will be releasing it's next big wave of the collectible obsession known as Amiibos! Included in the $59.99 package is the game and two figures: Brother-sister pair Isabelle and Digby. Also in the box are three amiibo cards featuring popular villagers.

On launch day, Nintendo will also make available a set of K.K. Slider, Reese and Cyrus amiibo for $34.99. Individually packaged figures will be priced at $12.99 and will initially feature Mabel and the infamous Tom Nook. Lottie, who just debuted in Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer for the 3DS, gets her own amiibo on Nov. 22.

As suggested by the title, Amiibo Festival utilizes these figures as a major gameplay mechanic. Amiibo sync up with the Wii U to become the player characters for the series' take on Mario Party. Amiibo cards can be used during minigames.

I know this is probably huge news for Animal Crossing lovers, however Micah and I have never stepped too inside the franchise.

Though, we have, however amassed a pretty good collection of Amiibo figures. Hopefully with the addition of Animal Crossing into the Amiibo universe, stores will have more variety on their shelves. 

Fingers crossed.

Star Fox Zero on Wii U Delayed for Polish

Star Fox Zero was announced last week as being delayed until Spring of 2016, which is a major bummer. However, one of the co-directors of the game on the team at Nintendo said the game is already running at 60 frames per second on both the television screen and the Wii U GamePad.

That means it is running REALLY smooth on both screens.

"Those two screens, you can't find that anywhere else," Hashimoto told GameSpot during a recent interview. "When we were doing Bayonetta 2, we just used that screen as a touch pad. With Star Fox, Miyamoto originally had the idea that he wanted to create a shooting game that used both of these screens, and then we said, okay, how can we combine this with Star Fox? Just having to use those two screens makes things interesting.

"We've got them both moving at 60 fps, which is big for a lot of people, I think," he continued. "But I think that it's kind of a milestone in gaming, in a way. It's not something that we have done ourselves before at Platinum, and it's just not even something that has been done in gaming before. So it's a lot of new challenges."

Hashimoto added that the biggest challenge with Star Fox Zero has been making sure using both screens feels natural and interesting--and more importantly, fun. For Miyamoto's team as well as Hashimoto and his collaborators, creating a shooter using the GamePad controls is a new experience.

"We've been working with action games long enough," Hashimoto said. "We understand how the players play an action game, how they respond to an action game, how they'll move, what they'll do in the situational stuff. What we're making here now, it's totally a new learning experience for us, which is kind of fun to find out."

In mid-September, Miyamoto posted a heartfelt note to Facebook stating that Star Fox Zero had been delayed into 2016. He reiterated that quality is the reason for the delay, and added that his studio's task in the matter is to give the game more of that "Platinum feel."

"We want to make it feel as great as possible," Miyamoto said. "It's easy to say [it was delayed] to increase its quality, or whatever, but that entails a lot, whether it be visuals, or controls."

Though the delay kinda stinks, the reasons for it are acceptable. Nintendo always does a really good job at putting out great quality content on its release date. Star Fox Zero is currently slated to launch in 2016. So, get your gamepads ready to launch!

Splatoon and Transformers Combine for Splatfest Event!

Nintendo and Hasbro have combined forces for a special event in Splatoon themed around the iconic Transformers franchise. The latest "Splatfest" in-game event will be focused on Autobots and Decepticons, letting players choose their robot allegiance. Man, this is going to be a tough choice, I love robots on both sides of the war!

"While the Splatfest is ongoing, in-game characters get to wear a special T-shirt that shows which Transformers team has their allegiance," Nintendo said. "The ink that each team shoots will also be customized to match the color scheme of the chosen side."

Splatfests last for 24 hours. During these events, players battle it out in an attempt to build up as many Turf War wins for their team as possible in the allotted time. The winning side will earn a purse of Super Sea Snails, which they can use to upgrade their in-game gear.

Splatfest begins Aug. 29 at midnight EST and runs for 24 hours.

Released at the end of May, Splatoon has now sold more than 1.6 million copies. This partnership with Hasbro is just the latest example of Nintendo continuing to support the game after launch. The company has regularly released new content for the game in the form of new maps, modes, characters, and more.

Please keep your eyes peeled for a video review by MNM very soon!

New Heroes of the Storm Patch Adds Monk and Freebies for Diablo 3 Players!

The latest Heroes of the Storm patch is now available, and it adds a number of new things including the Monk character from Diablo III, Kharazim. Khar is the first support-class character in HotS from the Diablo series. He's setup to do the healing for your team, but, you're free to pick some traits that allows for him to kick some tail!

Depending on your choice, every third basic attack will either heal a nearby teammate with the lowest health, deal twice as much damage, or restore some of his mana. His heroic abilities include one that makes him invulnerable and deals a large amount of damage, and another that protects a teammate from death for three seconds.

If you play Diablo III and log in to Heroes of the Storm anytime in the three weeks following the launch of the patch, you will get the Diablo character free in HotS. Also, a free mount is available if you reach level 70 with a season 4 character in the upcoming season of Diablo III.

And lastly, there's a portrait border and pennant in Diablo III that will now unlock for anyone who has reached level 12 in HotS.

Other changes in today's patch include alterations to ranked modes, the introduction of dynamic bundles (which discount their price if you own some of their contents), balance tweaks, and new AI difficulty settings.

You can check out the full patch notes on Blizzard's website.

And keep your eyes open for some other new characters in HotS including StarCraft's medic and Artanis, and Warcraft's Rexxar.

Disney Infinity 3.0 Release Date

Today Disney announced an August 30 release date for the Star Wars-themed Infinity 3.0 starter pack!

The starter pack will be $64.99, which includes the “Twilight of the Republic Play Set” with Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano figures. That is actually a pretty solid price for one of these interactive toy games. Usually they debut at around $75. I'm assuming this may be some sort of deal for Infinity players that may already have a portal from previous games.

PlayStation 4 owners can also opt for the Star Wars Saga bundle, which includes the chance to play the “Rise Against the Empire” playset earlier than most with Anakin, Ahsoka, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Boba Fett for $114 or so. This playset follows the storyarc of the original trilogy (something I'm way more interested in playing.

They've also announced several other things related to the game, other than the starter kit! Standalone figures available on launch day include the cast from Star Wars: Rebels, young Jedi Ezra Bridger, hipster Jedi Kanan Jarrus, Lasat warrior Garazeb Orrelios and Mandalorian grafitti artist Sabine Wren.

Disney originals will be represented by Mickey, Minnie, Mulan, Olaf, and the physical release of Sam Flynn and Quorra from Tr0n Probably Should Have Stayed Dead.

Also, Disney-Pixar’s Inside-Out will have some emotions entering into the fray! We will get a special playset pack featuring Joy and Anger, with Sadness, Disgust and Fear sold separately.

That is a ton of availability at launch! If you want to get the entire release, using the current pricing models, that would total about $300. Time to bring out the sales papers, coupons and maps and plan out your attack on the local Toys' R Us.

Where Have You Been Hiding?

Yeah! YOU!

Where did you run off to? We've been here the whole time!

........................................

No we haven't...you caught me.

So, spring time gets a little hectic around our household. Lots of stuff going on! We want to get outside and play, yard maintenance becomes a weekly thing, soccer practice, softball practice, blah blah blah. All kinds of excuses for what I'm about to say.

I'm sorry we haven't posted anything up in the past month to month and a half. Like, literally NOTHING. No twitter activity, no blog posts, no video episodes. NOTHING!

My bad.

But guess what?

Soccer season is done. Softball season is almost done. Micah is out of school for the summer. And I'm starting to think about ways to streamline the process of getting new videos up! WOOOOO!

This weekend is Memorial day weekend. First off, just wanted to give a shout out to all the veterans in the armed forces. Without you, there would be no freedoms of our country. I love you.

Secondly, that means I have a couple extra days off of work. SOOOOooooOOOoooOOO, that means we may have some time to record a new episode! YEAH! Or maybe even some streamin' time on Twitch...I DUNNO...but something will happen over the weekend. Oh yeah...it will happen...I know what will definitely happen, I'm cleaning out my garage to start the transition to a mancave and I'm definitely planning on leaving room for a little MnM Gaming studio in the blueprints!

Hope you guys are excited - I'm excited, are you excited?!

We decided to come back at a pretty big time too...E3 is right around the corner.

What is E3 you may ask? Well, only the biggest Video Game Conference in the UNIVERSE! Well, that we know of on Earth anyway. We will be keeping up with all the goodies from that conference and tweeting it out as best that we can.

Get ready for another round of MnM Gaming baby!

MnM Gaming: Shortii - News Break!

Join Mike "Burgandy," Micah "FanDana" and Noah "Bluetton" as they bring you some breaking news from the video game industry! The crew is joined by a very special guest who has a video game coming out later this summer and was very kind to take time out of his busy crime-fighting schedule. 

Topics covered include: Amiibos, Batman: Arkham Knight, Final Fantasy, Fable Legends, World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Free games with Games with Gold on Xbox for March.