Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from one waffle to the hearts of many.
Stay in touch with friends near and far. Create messages, share jokes, pictures, secrets and more with SwapNote, a new remedy for Nintendo's previous lack of Pictochat support for 3DS. This free application lets you share messages not only with one "room" full of participants, but with anyone on your friends list via SpotPass or Streetpass.
The best part is that you choose with whom you share what, with a solid set of privacy features and enough tutorials to teach you everything from the basics to additional features. The more you play with SwapNote and create messages to share with others, the more features you will unlock. Pictures, audio clips, and 3D text and imaging let you create eye-popping content that can wow or amuse your recipients, so get started by downloading this free application from the Nintendo eShop.
And don't forget to check out the latest eShop games, like Mighty Switch Force while you're at it.
You need to click "Like", you need to retweet. And if you join us, then that would be neat! There's a waffle wearing...a HAAAAAATTT!!! ↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑
Mario Kart 7 comes out on December 4th! That's only four days away, so to celebrate N+ is wearing a Mario Kart visual style this month. My design is obviously a play on the Speed Racer artwork, or マッハ Go Go Go, whichever title you prefer.
I guess there really isn't much left to explain here, oher than I tried to match this drawing up as closely to the original artwork as possible. My favorite addition to the design was also the last thing added, and was almost left out - The banana peel. In the original artwork you can clearly see Speeds' scarf flowing from his neck, and that's just something Mario doesn't have. I did the artwork without replacing this piece, and while it looked good without it, the image still felt empty. After getting everything prepared for the site, the banana peel idea hit me like a thunderbolt from Zeus! Now the work is complete!
If you want, you can check the N+ Design gallery for a wallpaper sized version of this months styling, GO MARIO GO!
Hurray, it's October, and that means Halloween! and this year it also means that Professor Layton and the Last Specter is coming out in North America! So this year to celebrate both I decided to feature Professor Layton and the rest of the crew dressed in their favorite video game character costumes! It's pretty hard for me to pick a favorite costume here. I think it's great that Don Paulo is gong as Robotnik, but the fact that Grosky picked Travis Touchdown as his favorite video game character, it just makes me happy.
Also if you haven't noticed they are retro style stickers! here on the website they are displayed on the back of a notebook, the brown cardboard side, complete with a ripped Don Paulo and a peeling Barton. On the super neat wallpaper version they are all displayed on the front of the notebook, a notebook that is obviously used in the coolest class in school: Nintendo Studies. So don't forget to download the wallpaper while your here.
If you are feeling envious of our fresh website having Layton Stickers and you having none, don't be! As a special treat for Halloween this year I prepared this printable version of all the characters separated, not ripped or peeling, with an added Composition Book square, so you can print it on sticker paper to cut out and use on your real notebooks! Sticker paper can be found at any office supply store with different textures and page counts for different prices. All you need to do is save this picture to your computer, open it so it's full sized, print it out, and then cut the characters out. I made the background gray so you can see where the characters white boarders end.
So, if there were a contest this year who would you vote as having the best costume? vote in our members poll on the right side of the blog page!
This month we celebrate... a really old Pokemon trading card! Ancient Mew was a promo card given away at Toys'R'Us locations in the United States (not sure how the other regions got it or if they did), and was super special in many different ways: It was the first completely holofoil card, front & back were both holo-foil, included no sign to show it was promo or from any set, had a unique language that had to be decrypted to be able to tell what his move was. Of course my favorite part was simply that it looked all ancient style.
One thing to note is that the glyphs on the card are not Unown, what are now usually associated as the ancient writing in the Pokemon universe. The Unown were not yet created as this card came out well before Gold and Silver were introduced, and the glyphs really are a mystery. To help with the site design I used the Wind Waker Hylian language, and if any of you nerd are good enough, can actually decipher a hidden message running through the background of the page! Of course Hylian was designed to be translated into Japanese and the English translation is not official, so maybe it's pretty hard to do.
Anyway there IS a wallpaper version of the artwork, and it's not the card you see pictured here. Don't forget to visit the N+ Design Gallery for the Ancient Mew wallpaper, as well as many other past wallpapers and screen shots of N+ through the ages!
The AR feature of the 3DS surprised me. I never would have thought it would've been that cool, and it's the main feature that has gotten all my 3DS-less friends jealous (other than my Street Fighter IV skills). It's also fun to compare your 3D photo taking skills. Anyhoo, after snooping around on Nintendo's site to see how much they're charging for 3DS parts, I found a handy little link:
You can download and print as many AR cards as you want! Or, if you're savvy, put'em on your phone like I did. The cards are great and all but they're a pain in the pocket to carry around. However, now that I currently have two of each AR card, I figured it's time to get a little... experimental.
Check after the break to see SAMUS-ON-SAMUS ACTION!
This month the artistic visual theme for N+ is 3DS and Friends (some of the moderators being the friends), because by the end of this month, anyone with enough cash and a decent video game shop nearby should be able to get one almost anywhere in the world.
The theme for N+ reflects us as our video game counterparts - as the artist Justin Vigil sees us anyway. He drew himself as Snake, .Ed as Travis Touchdown, myself as a Red Pikmin, and Dustin Wilson as... Tingle. You can also find in this wacky rendition our love of Opera, Tacos, and the necessary "paper work" needed for saving games, after enjoying tacos of course.
If you would like a desktop wallpaper version of this, or any other months artistic styling please visit the N+ Design gallery. Its also filled with screenshots of how the site looked at each of it's designed stages. And as a shameless plug for myself, I drew the 3DS system in this piece as well as the taco, Opera flag, and roll of TP. And because we know how much you all LOVED the Cho Aniki artwork of last month, we decided to force let you all enjoy it for another month by placing it in the bottom screen of the 3DS. Just watch out for the combined Mens Beam four of us mods can create... scary stuff!
I want to share a quick note to loyal and new enplussers. Opera has long had an affiliate program that calculates how many times Opera has been downloaded from the advertisement in your MyOpera sidebar (should you choose to enable it). It's a nice way to give credit to those that help them spread the word casually. I've been around MyOpera for about 5 years, I'm ranked #393 in the world, give or take. I'm pretty proud of that.
There are ways to get more points, like sharing the link the ad uses with friends and family.
Is is the custom ads? The staggering page views? The sexy reporting? A combination (also sexy)? We don't really know, but several thousand people have come across N+ using another web browser and made the switch right here.
I'm not really good at playing, but you can skip through the video to check out all the neat features. The first hour is me playing on Super Easy mode, and doing pretty well. The other 2½ hours is me playing on Normalfriggin' hard mode
Visit the forums to discuss this, or any future streams.
You might have noticed that for a while now N+ has gotten a bit dusty in places, some things haven't looked quite in order. It's mainly my fault, and I think I have the solution for this today.
This new N+ redesign was originally slated to go live on the 1st to start off a new year on solid footing, but our fearless leader suggested to me to make this live in time for Christmas as a sort of Christmas present to our loyal members. I realize that our membership covers a multitude of cultures, and probably quite a few of our readers don't celebrate Christmas. In any case this is simply a gift of gratitude to our loyal readers. There's nothing wrong with a big gift!
This new design takes quite a different approach to what we've normally gone for here where the entire background color scheme will change from month to month, not just the header image. For our inaugural design it's one by myself, predominantly orange in hue with one glaring exception. This month's header image has quite a funny story behind it. Back when Pokémon White and Pokémon Black were released in Japan a few of the mods decided to import the game here. Jayvee was one of them, and like many times before his game didn't arrive on time. As a result he became quite choleric toward the United States Postal Service. The Captain's copy most certainly did arrive. This only added fuel to the fire, and I jokingly drew a connection between his state of mind and the Incredible Hulk. This header is a representation of his mood during that contentious period of time when he was bereft of his crack pokémon. The man to whom he's causing excruciating pain to is the Captain himself, dressed in a United States postman's uniform!
Feel free to look around, everything should be fresh in appearance. There might be some bugs here and there despite our efforts to destroy them prior to release, but we're working on it. One of the biggest complaints we've had for some time now was over the difficulties some people were having joining the group; it should be easily recognizable now where to join as it's in the sidebar now as a sign reminiscent of Animal Crossing.
As usual a desktop background image of this month's header can be downloaded in our photos section.
Goldeneye for Wii comes out this month in North America. It's a remake of the Nintendo 64 classic shooter that many would argue is the best shooter ever made, or at least the most influential. Some may argue otherwise, either way please argue about it in the comments!
In the remake, they decided to do more than just up the graphics, they will add new characters, expand the story, more weapons, redesigned stages and all kinds of stuff that looks fun! We don't know everything that has been added and that's the fun part, discovering what is new in our old favorite. Here I decided to venture a prediction on seeing .Ed, N+'s founding father make an appearance as a scientist, but then I thought, wouldn't it be better to see him in the OLD version? so here he is, in all of his fuzzy polygonal N64 glory, Goldeney.ed. Looks like he won't be able to "save his game" any more huh?
First, a lesson: "Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints (or woodcuts) and paintings produced between the 17th and the 20th centuries, featuring motifs of landscapes, tales from history, the theatre, and pleasure quarters. - Wikipedia" This Ukiyo-e painting obviously is reflecting a tale from Santa Destroys' history, that of Travis the Great. What happened in the time between No More Heroes and Desperate Struggle? I'm glad you asked, see Travis walks away from his rank as number one assassin and decides to fight for the spot again when he is overcome by a revengeful rage, but he must climb fifty places up this time. Enough time has passed so that many people, even current ranked assassins believe that Travis was only a myth or a legend.
This portrait is of the No More Hero: Travis Touchdown. (the "unclarity" of the image is intentional, it's a very old painting...) You want a wallpaper? OKAY! Then get one here!
When you close it with a page open, then open it that page automagically opens? On the program toolbar go through: Opera > Settings > Preferences. In the "General" tab, you will see "Startup". Select how you want that to operate ;)
My Opera
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