Proving that us videogamers really are just big kids, a lot of videogame related toys have sold for stunning amounts on eBay this month.

The most noteworthy of these is a golden vinyl Uncharted 3 toy said to be one of only 11 in the world. “For ages 15 and up” pointed out the seller but we don’t think anybody under the age of 15 would have had the money to buy it – it ended at £627.

A set of Battletoads figures from 1992 also fetched $71 (8 bids). We like the way that the seller included a photo of the reverse of the figures just so we could check out the toads’ tight buns.

A set of ceramic Donkey Kong figures from 1998 – including Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong and the hateable Funky Kong – didn’t sell for quite as much as the above, but $23.50 (4 bids) seems pretty good seeing that don’t appear to be that well made. Hard to believe they’re official merchandise, actually.

This Super Mario ‘crash action police car’ from the dire Mario Bros. Movie sold for a whole lot more – £57.99 (7 bids). We wonder if Bob Hoskins has a few of these up in his loft?

Sticking with merchandise for a little longer, this Mass Effect lithograph – one of only 75 sold – didn’t have a bad ending. It sold for $760.00 attracting only 6 bidders. An animation cel from the DiC Sonic cartoon didn’t fetch anywhere near as much ending at just $10.45. We wouldn’t advise clicking on this link to see it – it was an image of Dr. Robotnik in the shower. Nude, obviously.

How about some other stuff that was never available in shops? We’re quite surprised how cheaply this GameCube development kit sold for. It went for only £275 even though the seller was confident that it has never been used. This DS download station demo pod cart didn’t sell for a lot either, ending at only £22.99. Perhaps it would have sold for more if he’d bothered to mention what was on it.

A couple of Jaguar games have gone for a small packet. Both of these were released very late in the Jaguar’s life. So much so that it didn’t even have a pulse at the time. Battlesphere blasted $710 (2 bids) out of somebody’s PayPal account while Gorf for the Jaguar CD sold for the same amount but attracted 17 bidders. “Game has been played once by me,” said the seller. That bad, eh?

We’ve also discovered this month that there are more N-Gage collectors out there than we previously though. A rare copy of Sega Rally, which was released only in Australia, went for $455.00 after 19 bids. Hardest game to find on the system, apparently.

That’s nothing compared to what this Korean 3DO beat’em up sold for though. A colossal $1,725.00 (16 bids). We’re quite amused that the back of the box for The Eye of Typhoon features the same three screenshots.

Finishing off this month’s round-up are a couple of limited edition box sets. An incredibly rare factory sealed ‘Treasure Box Edition’ of Dead Island sold for £423 (27 bids). It was only available in Australia and came with a polo shirt, poster, comic book and some other stuff all enclosed in a wooden box. A Zelda: Ocarina of Time special edition managed to clear that figure though, ending at £789.99 (14 bids). What’s in the box? Not much – just the game, a badge and a T-shirt. The t-shirt was unworn though. It’s always nice to know that your expensive purchase isn’t going to stink of BO, isn’t it?

It has been said that during the winter, sales of retro games boom as a lot of people spend their evenings staying in the warm and thus need entertaining. We wouldn’t be surprised if a few people hope to recreate the magic of a Christmas long gone by purchasing a vintage console off eBay too.

This month’s eBay round-up backs this up with lots of things selling for silly prices. Money is hard to come by in January? Not if you’re a retro gamer it would seem.

Quite a few Sega Master System items have caught our attention. An Action Replay cheat cartridge sold for £109 on Buy It Now, a copy of Power Strike II went for £91 and a TecToy version of Road Rash shifted for £34.

A French seller has also been listing some reproduction carts containing the Game Gear versions of Sonic Triple Trouble and Sonic Drift Racing complete with authentic looking cases but only the former found a buyer.

On Game Gear meanwhile a factory sealed system sold for £225 on a US auction, a copy of The Itchy & Scratchy Game in its fetching bright yellow box went for £79.99 while a copy of the European-exclusive James Pond: Operation Starfi5h went for £50.

From Sega to Sony. A brand new PSone “bumdle” sold for £74 after 13 bids, containing a new joypad, memory card and a factory sealed copy of Spyro. A fully working PS2 development kit with manuals and software also went for £280. The seller wanted £50 postage. Is it made out of lead?

Onto Nintendo. The highest grossing auction this month was for a factory sealed copy of 10 Yard Fight on NES, which still had the plastic shelf hanger on it. It ended at $2,125 (£1,368) after 14 bids. Selling for a similar amount was this copy of Zelda II on Famicom, sealed and marked “Not for Resale”. It really is a curious looking little thing. A factory sealed Captain Commando on SNES also ended at $1,332.98 (£858.49) from 12 bids while a sealed copy of Konami’s Metal Warriors sold for slightly more – $1,350.00 (£869.45).

The seller of this Atari Lynx bundle undersold it a bit. Well, it sold at a decent price (£154) but you would have thought he would have made a bigger deal out of it including 47 games. That’s got to be half the entire Lynx catalogue.

In last month’s round-up we covered the fact that the Sonic Generations collector’s edition has been selling for large amounts. The prices have dropped at little – this one went for £86 (8 bids) and this one for £84 (27 bids) – but a few auctions have reached almost £200, like this one.

Last week’s chart was the busiest for a while. This week? Not so much, although a few of the titles that entered highly last week are on the fall already.

Halo: Anniversary is one of these, which is surprising. It entered at #6 last week but has dropped to #21. Zelda: Skyward Sword is doing the opposite of going skyward too, down from #7 to #16.

Super Mario 3D Land has managed to stay in the top 10 though – the portly plumber clings in at #10, even with two new arrivals – WWE ’12 at #6 and Professor Layton and the Spectre’s Call at #7. You can probably guess what game remains at #1.

Lord of the Rings: War in the North makes #38 while Rayman Origins fails to make the top 40. Seeing GAME, HMV and Blockbuster were all asking £42.99 for it, it’s not surprising. This does mean though that nobody can use the phrase “Bored of the Rings” ever again.

Kirby’s Adventure Wii hasn’t got off to a very good start either – it’s in at a lowly #25 in the Wii chart, beaten by the likes of ABBA: You Can Dance.

It’s another good week for gamers. That’s providing you have healthy bank balance, at least – there are half a dozen big name titles out this week.

The old-age question if whether Mario can blow stripy balloons up with his arse has finally been answered. As the image to the right shows, he can indeed. We can also tell you that Super Mario 3D Land has been worth the wait. Scores so far include an 8 from EDGE and a 9 from Eurogamer. NGamer said it’s trying a little too hard to be “all things to all people” – “too throwaway for the Galaxy crowd and too soft for the New Super Mario Bros. Wii lot”. They still gave it 90% though.

And what’s this? Another big game from Nintendo? Amazingly, yes. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword reinvents the franchise and then some. It doesn’t even feature Gannon as the last boss. We hope that doesn’t count as a spoiler. Praise has been universal, with a few even calling it the best Zelda yet. EDGE has given it a 10; NGamer handed out 98%.

Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games is another that NGamer reviewed this month. They gave the Wii version 84% – “As far as party games go, this is gold standard”. The 3DS version isn’t due out until next year.

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary is one that we’ve reviewed ourselves and very much enjoyed. Amazon are selling it for £27, as are Tesco.

The last Need for Speed was heavily hyped as the developers behind Burnout were at the helm. Need for Speed: The Run hasn’t had the same attention from the press. Games Radar gave it an 8 even though they found it a little short and to have some unfair difficulty spikes. On the flipside Eurogamer really didn’t like it very much, giving it a 5. The PlayStation 3 version contains vehicles not found in the Xbox 360 version, while the 3DS version should be worth a look – it’s from the guys behind Trackmania on Wii and DS, which were well received.

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations doesn’t quite live up to its name it would seem. That’s to say, it isn’t a revelation. EDGE has given it a 7, as has Eurogamer, but there has been a few 8/10 scores. If you aren’t expecting anything more than more of the same, then you won’t be disappointed.

Medieval Moves and Carnival Island are Sony’s newest PlayStation Move offerings. Carnival Island is a mini-game collection while Medieval Moves is by the Sports Champions developers and is a first person adventure. Both are £14.99 on Play.

The big names keep coming. Saints Row: The Third has had some heavy promotion which has already paid off – pre-orders are four times higher than Saints Row 2. Games Radar handed out a perfect 10 but CVG wasn’t quite so positive, giving it a 7. “Some amazing moments… and some truly abysmal ones. Saints Row: The Third is wildly imaginative and frequently entertaining, but a lack of technical polish and weak combat overshadow its achievements.”

Activision are unleashing four games onto the public as well – the Xbox 360-exclusive Rapala Kinect Fishing, Cabela’s Adventure Camp (for the kids), Cabela’s Survival: Shadows of Katmai (for the adults) and DreamWorks Super Star Kartz (for people who really can’t wait until Mario Kart 7). All of these are budget games – the two Cabela titles can be found for £25 online while Super Star Kartz is a mere £14.99 on Play. Play says that Rapala Kinect Fishing comes with a rod, but Amazon doesn’t mention this. There’s a chance Play are mistaken.

While those games above may be of questionable quality we least we can count on LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7 being good. It’s out on just about everything – PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PSP, Wii, DS, 3DS and PC.

Lastly, THQ are releasing their uDraw tablet on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It comes with Instant Artist and two other games are being launched alongside it – Marvel Super Hero Squad Comic Combat and Pictionary Ultimate Edition. Marvel Super Hero Squad Comic Combat is also out on Wii this week, as is the uDraw compatible Disney Princess Enchanting Storybooks, much to the delight of pre-teen girls everywhere.

Next week: Rayman Origins (360, PS3, Wii), Winter Stars (PS3, 360, Wii), WWE ‘12 (PS3, 360, Wii), Zumba Fitness 2 (Wii), The Lord of the Rings: War in the North (PS3, 360, PC), F1 2011 (3DS), King of Fighters XIII (PS3, 360), Professor Layton and the Spectre’s Call (DS), Move Fitness (PS3), ABBA: You Can Dance (Wii), Ben 10 Galactic Racing (PS3, 360, Wii, DS), Cooking Mama 4 (3DS), Cooking Mama World: Outdoor Adventures (DS), Dino Strike (Wii), Happy Feet Two (PS3, 360, Wii, DS, 3DS), Horrid Henry: The Good, The Bad and The Bugly (3DS), Imagine Fashion Designer (3DS), James Noir’s Hollywood Crimes (3DS), Mahjong 3DS: Warriors of the Emperor (3DS), Now! That’s What I Call Music: Dance and Sing (Wii), Sonic Generations (3DS) and Tales of the Abyss (3DS).

Get your rupees at the ready – in celebration of Link’s 25th anniversary Nintendo are going to be transforming Nottingham Market into a ‘Hyrulean Market Village’ next month.

The event ties in with GameCity6 on Saturday 29th October and gives the chance for attendees to track down pieces of the Triforce, make their own swords and shields and learn to play the ocarina.

Six gamers will also aim to beat a world record by finishing 15 Zelda games in order, back to back. Hopefully the awful CDi Zelda games aren’t being included.

If you’re not near Nottingham you can see get involved with the celebrations – Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Anniversary Edition is available as a free DSiWare download from today.

Zumba Fitness is #1 for the 9th week in a row, but let’s ignore that shall we? Thanks.

LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean is up from #5 to #2, Cars 2 holds onto #3, DiRT 3 slides from #2 to #4 and FIFA 11 goes up one place from #6 to #5.

FIFA 11 has been in the chart now for 46 weeks and with FIFA 12 not out until 30th September chances are it’ll make it for 50 weeks. And then vanish. Such is the life of EA’s yearly sports updates.

Outside the top ten, the 3DS price drop has helped Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D hookshot back up from #39 to #13. No other 3DS games have made a chart appearance though.

You can’t get any rarer than something that’s one of a kind. With this in mind, I’m surprised that there aren’t more people out there customising their consoles. There’s certainly a demand for them on eBay – a NES-style custom GBA SP went for £51 (14 bids) earlier this month. You have to wonder though why they didn’t just buy the official Nintendo NES edition GBA SP.

Not every unique console is desirable though – if you don’t do a very good job on it then it’ll end up selling for peanuts, like this horrifically butchered GameGear which sold for £3.20. That’s less than what normal GameGears usually sell for. Then there’s this Xbox 360 fitted with blue LEDs and plexiglass that sold for a mere £41 (7 bids).

Coloured GameGears are pretty uncommon full stop. The UK never received any other colour other than black while the US only received black and blue ‘Gears. Japan was another story with Sega’s 8-bit semi-hit available in half the rainbow. The white GameGear and Cola-Cola branded red GameGear are the most desirable. I’d say that after those two comes the yellow GameGear, one of which bagged a German seller 112 Euros (£98.86). As mentioned several times on Games Asylum, there are more than a few GameGear games worth a pretty penny about, like the uber rare Tarzan: Lord of the Jungle. A loose copy went for £48.99 (13 bids). This is one of the first games Eurocom (of GoldenEye on Wii fame) ever developed and, well, it certainly looks and plays like somebody’s first attempt at making a game.

Last month we reported that the Zelda edition GBA SP had shot up in value. There’s no sign of that price dropping just yet – one sold for £190 via best offer. Another went for £77 (8 bids). I assume that when the seller describes it as being in “good condition” he was talking about the handheld rather than the box it comes in. Also of note is this GBA SP bundle that ended at an incredibly high £82.80 (10 bids). It was unboxed and half the games were trashy kid’s titles. It did though come with a fair few Pokemon games. Or perhaps somebody was desperately after the Mega Man game?

Speaking of the blue hued bloke, a copy of Mega Man – The Wily Wars on Mega Drive ended at £210 (20 bids). It may not please the fashion police but a Sonic 2 jacket – supposedly only given away to Sega employees – broke the £200 barrier too attracting 15 bids.

On the flipside, here’s a bargain – a bundle of 98 new and sealed Japanese Dreamcast games that sold for only $309 (£189). Who can spot Pen Pen Triceleon in that photo? I’m still amazed it kept that name when it was released in the west. You would have thought that the publisher would have changed the name to Crazy Animal Racing or something similar.

The seller of this PS1 three game bundle must have known that Konami’s Azure Dreams is rare as he started the auction off at £70. Only one person bid. A Crash Bandicoot soft toy fetched a fair old whack too – £55 via best offer. I’m pretty sure I saw those as prizes on Brighton pier once.

I’m not sure why the following always sells for a bit on both PS1 and Sega Saturn, but a copy of Mortal Kombat Trilogy on the latter punched £46 out of somebody after 17 bids. And what better way to play it than on a proper arcade joystick, like this Namco branded one which sold for £41 (8 bids).

• Sonic once had an affair with Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle. Amy found out but never let on for the want of living a quiet life.

• Conker’s Bad Fur Day was Luigi in a squirrel costume. It was the only job he could find at the time and he didn’t want to ruin his clean image.

• Hitman’s Agent 47 shaves his head because he’s a ginger.

• Mario and Luigi only see each other when starring in a game together. Luigi never texts Mario back; his phone is always left to ring until the answerphone kicks in.

• Bubsy the Bobcat is on the last of his nine lives. He now spends his days as a recluse; a quivering wreck in house where everything with sharp corners has been coated in bubble wrap.

• Alex Kidd and Wonder Boy are the same person. Alex enjoyed the breeze a loin-cloth brings so much that he continues to wear it until this day. He let the hair dye grow out naturally.

• Princess Peach may look good with her make-up on but without she has got a face that would make an onion cry.

• Link has been arrested for burglary 37 times but when appearing in court he always turns up as child Link so the judge goes easy on him. He later parties hard as adult Link.

• Bowser once dangled Bowser Jnr over a balcony. “He wanted to see the crowd,” he said. The tabloids had a field day.

• Dennis the Menace’s dog was stolen by a homeless man while he popped into Greggs for a steak-bake.

Fore! With tennis on the television this weekend both Virtua Tennis 4 and Top Spin 4 re-enter the top ten at #5 and #8 respectively. Oddly though, Fight Night Champion dropped down the chart despite boxing being on the picture box as well.

As predicted last week, with Transformers: Dark of the Moon now out in cinemas, it too makes the top ten rising like the fallen up from #17 to #6. Zumba Fitness is still #1. Is it any good, or is it just selling on name alone?

The new arrivals in the top ten have forced both The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D and Duke Nukem Forever down, to #11 and #12.

Resident Evil: Mercenaries 3D is the next highest entry at #21, followed by UFC: Personal Trainer at #22.

Remember – if you buy a copy of Resident Evil: Mercenaries 3D pre-owned, somebody from Capcom comes over your house and does a dirty on your doorstep. Either that or you won’t be able to make new save files. I forget.

Loose copies of Taito’s Little Samson on NES can fetch up to £100 due to its rarity. You’d think that a complete copy would only fetch a little more, but not so – this new and sealed copy netted a US seller $5,500.00 (£3,444.39) after 29 bids. What is it with Americans paying stupid amounts of money for NES games? Still, $5,500 is nothing compared to what that infamous copy of Stadium Events sold for.

One lucky seller is also ending this month a whole lot richer after selling two new and sealed Nintendo Game & Watch LCD handhelds. Octopus sold for £2,999 on Buy it Now while a panorama view Mickey Mouse went for £2,000 on a Best Offer. I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks he’s a taking the Mickey to charge £10 postage on top of those prices. Just to confirm its actual worth, another complete Mickey Mouse recently sold at $999.00 (£625.63) with one bid.

Because Sega released Sonic & Knuckles in a cardboard case it can be hard to find a boxed copy. And when they do turn up boxed it’s usually in bad condition. Not this French copy that sold for €511.56 though (£453.80) – it’s new and sealed in a blister pack. He also got €121.00 (£107.34) for a copy of Sonic 3 in similar packaging. Blister packed games are common in France. They were often used as it allowed toy shops, supermarkets and the like to display and sell games without fear of the contents being stolen or damaged.

Seeing as it’s Sonic’s 20th this month, here are a few other hedgehog related items. A Brazilian TecToy release of Sonic Spinball on Master System spun £49.99 out of somebody on Buy It Now, this Tomy Sonic Pinball game went for £29.99 while somebody thought £41.37 was a fair price to pay for a Sonic costume. Gosh!

With The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D riding high in the charts now is as good as time as any to give Link some loving too. A signed copy of Ocarina of Time on N64 went for £155 (13 bids). Obviously it was signed by Shigeru Miyamoto, and not the seller’s mum. A Zelda Game & Watch also netted £205 (8 bids), and proving that there are a lot of mugs out there a Zelda edition Game Boy Advance SP sold for £200 on Buy It Now. That said, another went for £109.99.

There hasn’t been much of note going on in the world of PlayStation collecting – apart from a sealed fishing game selling for an absurd $90.00 (£56.36) – so we’re going to have to turn to the obscure stuff.

How’s about this? A development copy of Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy on Atari Jaguar which ended at $75.00 (£46.97). The seller was unable to find buyers for his 8 other development cartridges though. Random fact: Trevor McFur made up 50% of the Atari Jaguar’s US launch line-up. The other 50% was the pack-in game Cybermorph.

Then on NEOGEO copies of Super Sidekicks 4, World Heroes Perfect and the brilliantly named Bang Bang Busters sold for £887.08, £637.90 and £520.00 respectably.

The NEOGEO – the only console that you have to sell a kidney to be able to buy new games for.

The good news is that the highest new entry in this week’s chart isn’t the new Transformers tie-in but rather F.E.A.R 3 which makes a chart debut at #3. Optimus and the others have to make do with #17. No doubt it’ll be in the top 10 next week once the movie is released.

Speaking of the top 10, Zumba Fitness is still #1. L.A Noire is up from #4 to #2, DiRT 3 rises from #7 to #3 and thanks to Wimbledon Top Spin 4 bounces back from #28 to #10. Both Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D and Duke Nukem Forever are on the fall though – Link is down to #6 and Duke is now at #8.

Shadows of the Damned hasn’t got off to a very good start at all – it enters at #31. That’s still better than Child of Eden, which has dropped to #35. THQ has also had a bad week – Red Faction: Armageddon has gone from #12 to #32 while Homefront has drops from #18 to #37.

There’s still no sign of the Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters in the top 40 despite the film now being shown in cinemas. The best the green guy can do is #20 in the Wii chart.

It’s scary to think that those who were born when Zelda: The Ocarina of Time was released will now be 13 years old. As such, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people buying it on 3DS this weekend will have never played it before. Probably not the majority, but I’d wager more than most expect. Reviews suggest that time has been incredibly kind to it, no pun intended, with a few 10/10s popping up on the ‘net. And if you have played it before then worry not – it also contains the much tougher Master Quest.

Not only does the 3DS get its first essential purchase this week, but the Kinect too in the form of Child of Eden. Trying to explain what it entails will cause brain leakage via the earlobes, so let’s just say if you liked Rez you’ll like this.

Reviews of EA’s Alice: Madness Returns have been mixed but general opinion seems to be that it’s good but not very original. One to possibly avoid though is Square-Enix’s Dungeon Siege III which is being slipped into stores on the sly. Somebody on our Twitter feed posted their first impressions about it, most of which were vulgar swear words.

Flippin’ ‘eck – there’s also a new pinball game out this week. Williams Pinball Classics features 10 tables and is available on Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PSP. There’s also 3DS version due out in the not too distant future. Zavvi looks like the best place to bag some balls of steel – £17.85 for the console versions and £12.85 on PSP. The PSP version sounds like it has had some love put into it with a vertical screen mode and game sharing.

Next week: Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Shadows of the Damned, FEAR 3, Ape Escape, Cubic Ninja, Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition, Wii Play: Motion, Tour De France 2011, Michael Phelps: Push the Limit, National Geographic Challenge and Squinkies.

Whoever said you can’t keep a secret these days was wrong. The new Nintendo console is not called Café, Beem, Stream or even Wii 2 or Wii HD but rather Wii U. Simply because it’s a console with something for everybody. You, specifically. There’s enough tech behind it to power visually demanding games and it’s also backwards compatible with the original Wii controllers and software.

Predictably there are a lot of conversions on the way but they’re not of older titles but rather games that are still to be released including Batman: Arkham City, Aliens: Colonial Marines, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Online, Tekken, Darksiders 2, Metro Last Light, Assassin’s Creed and DiRT. EA also hinted that Battlefield 3 is on it’s way. How Nintendo managed to stop developers leaking info is a mystery. Maybe Reggie threatened to crush their testicles with unsold copies of Wii Music?

There isn’t much to talk about in regards to the design of the console – it’s merely a Wii with rounded corners and a bigger power button. IBM are supplying the processor, it uses Nintendo’s own 12-centimeter proprietary high-density optical discs and supports 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 480p and 480i. Yep – you can stick a HDMI cable into the back of it. There are also four USB ports because you can never have enough.

The controller itself is the real head turner. A combination of an iPad and a traditional analogue controller, it has a 6.2 inch 16:9 touch screen, two analogue sticks, four trigger buttons, a built-in accelerometer and gyroscope, rumble feedback, camera, a microphone, stereo speakers, a sensor strip and a stylus. It truly is the Swiss Army Knife of the videogame controller world. T3 magazine reports that it is very light to hold and the screen is both clear and bright. Nintendo wouldn’t tell them how long the battery life is though. Likewise, price and release date are still a mystery.

Tech demos shown so far include HD Zelda, New Super Mario Bros. Mii and Battle Mii – a Metroid themed deathmatch. It’s still early days for the console yet, although the Zelda-alike Darksiders 2 was confirmed to be a launch title.

Speaking of Zelda, Nintendo’s conference kicked off with a tribute to the hero of Hyrule. It was revealed that Legend of Zelda: Four Swords for DSi is going to be a free download on DSiWare from September while a golden Wii remote will be released to tie-in with Zelda: Skyward Sword on Wii. And to celebrate Link’s 25th, symphony concerts are going to be held across the globe and two Zelda CDs will be available for the first to register Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D with Club Nintendo.

New details for a host of 3DS games were then revealed. In Mario Kart – which is being co-developed by Retro Studios – vehicles can be customised and there are also underwater sections and hang-glider power-ups. Starfox takes photos of your face for multiplayer purposes and Super Mario 3DS (as it’s now called) mixes bits of pieces from Super Mario 64, Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Bros. 3. It’s going to have a Zelda-themed world too, viewed from a top-down perspective. Kid Icarus makes his E3 appearance for a second year running but now multiplayer has been confirmed

As for new games, how about Luigi’s Mansion 2 for size? It’s being developed by Next Level Games (who did Punch Out on Wii) and is very exciting prospect being the type of thing that’ll genuinely benefit from the 3DS’s illusion of depth. Several mansions will be on offer for Luigi to explore suggesting it won’t be as short as its predecessor. Kirby Mass Attack was also announced for 3DS, as well as Super Fossil Fighters and the very barren and bizarre looking The Rolling Western.

Namco are bringing Ace Combat and Tekken to 3DS. It’ll be the first Tekken game on a Nintendo format since Tekken Advance on GBA. Oh, and there’s going to be a Tetris game on three dimentional handheld. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

Nintendo are going to be publishing Lego City Stories (referred to as LEGO: GTA by people on Twitter) in partnership with TT Games on both 3DS and Wii U. A new Super Smash Bros was also teased for both formats.

The Wii and DS still got a look in. Kirby Wii isn’t a sequel to the lovely Kirby’s Epic Yarn but rather a 2.5 platformer much like New Super Mario Bros. complete with a four-player mode. Fortune Street from Square-Enix and Mario Party 9 should please fans of virtual board games (if any exist), the lush looking Rayman Origins is Wii-bound and Professor Layton And The Devil’s Flute is now known as Professor Layton And The Last Specter.

Finally, the award for the most unintentionally hilarious game goes to Ubisoft’s TinTin: Secret of the Unicorn which shows TinTin – who’s only a young boy, lest you forget – punching seven bells out of fully grown men and grappling them to the ground. Rah!

How did Nintendo celebrate Mario’s 25th birthday? They put a crusty old SNES game on a Wii disk and bundled it with a music CD that wasn’t even worth taking out of the box. Unbelievable, really.

Rumour has it that Nintendo plans a similar package for Link’s 25th birthday. Could a press release like the one below be imminent? We bloody hope not, but at least we’ve managed to have a bit of fun with the prospect:

Link’s finest moments to be re-re-re-released on Nintendo Wii

Bognor Regis – April 14, 2011 – In 2003 Nintendo generously gave away copies of The Legend of Zelda™: Collector’s Edition on GameCube™ as a free promotional item. Today Nintendo is pleased to announce that this legendary collection will be gloriously preserved in The Legend of Zelda – 25th Anniversary Collection for Nintendo Wii™.

This collection contains four classics that gamers have already purchased many times before, including The Legend of Zelda; Link™’s second quest The Adventure of Link (which isn’t as bad as you remember, because we say so); and Link’s two Nintendo 64™ adventures Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask. You know, the one that’s brilliant but we act like we’re ashamed of it? That one.

This is a collection that Zelda fans are bound to love and cherish, at least until copies start selling for fifty quid on eBay.

In addition to this stunning compilation disk, an art book featuring art we found on Google Image Search, and a music CD including Navi™’s fantastically annoying speech samples – such as “Hey!”, “Watch Out!” and “Listen!” – will also be included.

In a revolutionary move The Legend of Zelda – 25th Anniversary Collection will have no fixed RRP, allowing retailers to charge whatever they please. Nobody seemed to mind with Super Mario All-Stars 25th Anniversary Collection, and we found that quite funny, so we’ll let them do it again.

The Legend of Zelda 25th Anniversary Collection will be released either to coincide with Link’s 25th birthday or when there’s a gap in the Wii release schedule. Whichever comes first, to be honest; probably the latter.

In 2012 Nintendo will be honouring Kirby™’s 20th birthday by re-releasing the SNES mini-game collection Kirby Super Star on Wii, which will come with a free pack of strawberry Hubba Bubba.

–Ends–

Usually when a console starts getting long in the processor the software released for it tends to be either kid’s licensed games or cheaply produced budget games. Although this will no doubt be the trend once the 3DS is out and DS sales start to slide, Nintendo has a plan to keep the DS hardcore pleased.

According to what CEO Satoru Iwata has told investors, this plan involves localising numerous Japan-only games and releasing them on our shores:

“If we should use too many of our development resources in order to maintain the Nintendo DS market, we would not be able to realise a sound launch for Nintendo 3DS. Nintendo’s software is often made in Japan and launched first in Japan, and then localised for the overseas markets after confirming its marketability in Japan.

Some Nintendo titles, such as the ones developed by Mr. Miyamoto and his team, have been made with the global market launches in view from the start of the development because people inside Nintendo believed in their global appeal.

However, even some of the titles that Mr. Miyamoto was involved with, such as the original Animal Crossing, were first launched only in Japan, and only after the localisation teams outside Japan were able to appreciate the appeal of the software, our overseas subsidiaries requested us to launch the same titles in their countries.

As a result, some software has already proved its marketability in Japan but is still not available in the overseas markets, and for some software titles, our localisation teams are currently spending time to localise them. Taking advantage of such software may be one of the ways to deal with your question about the transitional period from Nintendo DS to Nintendo 3DS”

What can we expect? Just about anything from the sound of things, although Tomodachi Collection, Chibi-Robo, Soma Bringer, Super Control Robot MG and the brilliantly titled Color Changing Tingle’s Balloon Trip of Love are worthy bets.