Abobo's Big Adventure!

Ahh the days of childhood's past waking up early Saturday morning and turning on my original NES to play some Double Dragon when behold the muscular sub boss Abobo comes out and tries to whail on me. After beating him to death with a baseball bat I felt a since of pride. Well now he is back and this time Abobo has his own flash game. This parody game which shows homage to the 8-bit NES games of days past has been in development since 2002 and has finally been released this month for everyone to play. But wait that's not all... the game is... wait for it.... FREE!! Check out a brief description of the games story and trailer after the jump or you could just play the game for yourselves at http://www.abobosbigadventure.com/

"Abobo's son has been kidnapped and now it's up to you to help Abobo fight his way through some of the greatest NES games of all time in order to rescue him. Not only does Abobo have to fight through these classic games, but he has to adapt to their varying gameplay styles. Gameplay ranges from beatemup, to underwater platformer, to side-scroller, to top-down dungeon crawler, wrestling, run-and-gun, boxing, and MOAR"

Are you ready for the Crossover of the century?

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to play as your favorite NES 8-bit characters  such as Link,Mega-Man,Samus, Ryu and many others and have them thrown into the world of Super Mario? Fear not for the guys over at Explodingrabbit.com have just the fix for you. According to the games creator Jay Pavlina, Super Mario Bros. Crossover is a fan game that recreates the original Super Mario Bros. and allows you to play it as characters from other games. I for one have known about this for sometime but with the  edition of the trailer  for version 2.0, i've gotten even  more excited to see what new tricks of the trades the guys and girls over at Exploding Rabbit have in store for us. Check out the new trailer after the jump and get your Mega busters ready for action.

Nintendo 3DS Price Dropping to $169.99 in August

The Nintendo 3DS has had a very rocky launch, especially when you compare it to the original DS. In the day and age of smartphones where quick simple games are available at the touch of your fingers, the 3D effect Nintendo's pushing isn't enough to convince people to drop $249.99.

Nintendo is hoping though that people will pay $169.99 for their new handheld, which is going to be the price of the hardware starting August 12.

In addition to this price drop Nintendo confirmed release windows for two of the most anticipated 3DS games. Super Mario 3D Land will drop in November and Mario Kart 7 in December.

If you already have a 3DS (like me) and are getting your pitchforks and torches ready, don't worry, Nintendo has got your back with the "3DS Ambassador" program. You may know that term better as 'free games.'

For starters you'll get 10 free Virtual Console NES games, including Super Mario Bros., Balloon Fight, The Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong Jr., and Ice Climbers. The other five games included haven't been revealed yet, but all ten of them will be available for public purchase at a later date.

The free game train doesn't stop there though, Nintendo is also offering 10 free Game Boy Advanced games. Mario Kart: Super Circuit, Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3, WarioWare, Inc: Mega Microgame$, Mario vs. Donkey Kong, and Metroid Fusion. Again, the last five games haven't been announced yet, but we can expect to know what they are soon.

In a strange move, Nintendo has no plans to make the ten GBA titles available for public consumption.

"These games will be available exclusively to Ambassadors, and Nintendo currently has no plans to make these 10 games available to the general public on the Nintendo 3DS in the future," reads the press release.

More details on the program are to be announced later, and Nintendo's only requirement to be eligible is that you connect your 3DS to the eShop before 11:59 p.m. EST on August 11.

So, will knocking $80 off the price of a 3DS finally get you to buy one? If you already have one does 20 free games feel like a fair trade-off? Let us know.

Happy Birthday Nintendo

Ahh 1985, I wasn't alive back then. Because of this I can't reminisce about that year, so I'll just assume it was all drugs and hair metal. But that is the year we also got the original Nintendo Entertainment System.

While the console didn't get a widespread release until 1986 (the same year it was released in Europe) it was in late 1985 at the FAO Schwarz in Manhattan, New York (as part of an advance market test) that the first of millions of the machines would fall into the hands of eager consumers.

Now as I stated I wasn't born until the beginning of the dark ages known as the 90's but I still owned an NES, and it unarguably had one of the strongest catalogs of launch games of all time. This included classics like Excitebike, Duck Hunt, and Ice Climbers. It also gave us some of the most beloved video game characters, nay, icons we know today like Link, Samus, and of course the Mario Bros.

The NES lasted 10 years in the U.S market ceasing production in 1995, and in that decade it managed to mold a foundation for video games that has carried into 2010. So lets all give Nintendo a song and a birthday cake (this time it's not a lie).