Nintendo has announced that a limited-edition Flame Red 3DS bundle (with Super Mario 3D Land as pre-installed software) is coming to North America on November 23rd for $169.99. If you still haven’t picked up a 3DS, this might make for a good option as we arrive in the holiday season.
Last week, Zynga ripped-off Pokémon, and now another such game has hit the App Store. 3D Cartoon Land: Safari is a Super Mario 3D Land rip-off that doesn’t even try to hide how much it has stolen from the original game. The game has you playing as a blue overall-wearing man as he runs and jumps over obstacles, while avoiding deadly turtles and living mushrooms.
Based on a scan of Nintendo’s servers, it seems like Mario Kart 7 and Super Mario 3D Land are both destined to be released as digital titles via the eShop. Considering Nintendo has become quite bullish in the digital space, this is very unsurprising, and therefore extremely likely. I wonder when they’ll announce it.
(via gonintendo.com)
Koichi Hayashida, the director of Super Mario 3D Land, will be speaking at a GDC session, “Thinking in 3D: The Development of Super Mario 3D Land”. Don’t expect any big reveals, but if you’re interested in behind-the-scenes sort of stuff, Nintendo will be tweeting about the panel, so you may like to follow along. You can click here to find Nintendo on Twitter. It starts at 3:30 PM PT, which I believe is in less than 30 minutes.
Update: It has just been tweeted that, “We’re about to kick off our #SuperMario3D presentation at #GDC. Stay tuned for our live tweets!”
Nintendo of America has shared that Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7 are the first 3DS games to sell one million units each in North America alone. There’s also the confirmation that the 3DS itself has crossed the four million units sold mark.
Super Mario 3D Land has become the fastest-selling portable Mario game. Ever. It has sold over 500,000 units since its launch and boosted sales of the 3DS by 49% during the week of its launch. And just last week, 3DS sales saw a boost of 325%. Plus, with Mario Kart 7 launching soon, we can surely expect to see the sales of the 3DS rise even more.
