Headed straight to Nintendo.com, signed in, purchased, and redeemed to remotely download on my Wii U at home. A seamless experience, assuming I have enough space on my Wii U.

I’ve only played through Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, but I enjoyed every bit of the experience. Gorgeous worlds, beautiful score, and a stellar if not the best use of the Wii Remote + Nunchuck.

As a reminder, current Wii Games on Wii U do not support the GamePad. Like This caveat is a problem.

[Via Polygon]

Update: Apparently, I didn’t have enough free space. I returned home and turned on my Wii U expecting to see a Metroid Prime Trilogy icon, but there was none to be found. Nor a confirmation or error message present. Confused, Iollowed the instructions here, deleted Super Smash Bros. (sacrilegious, I know), and completed the download.

If Wii U can receive remote instruction to download, it should be able to fire back status updates. It’s not that I would be able to do anything about it, but at the very least I would know what to expect when I arrived home. This is especially alarming for large games. Instead of side-stepping hours of download and install time while at away or sleeping, customers will be disappointed to find that the download never even started. While I’m all for patience in the name of entertainment, I am passionately opposed to misguiding expectations. Under promise and over deliver. Not the other way around.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGTddc62fXc#t=528

Speaking of silly dreamers, how about this gem. I like the idea of Donkey Kong leading to Mario Bros. I especially love the part where Bowser throws in the towel and Mario becomes a sports tycoon.

[Via Polygon]

Smooth McGroove on the Upvoted Podcast, timestamp 17:45:

It’s such a niche thing that I had going, and still do. Not a lot of people played these video games, especially in Oklahoma. Most people that I’d encountered had heard of Zelda and maybe played a Mario game or something like that. Whenever it came to the people that I encountered day-to-day, most people would have never been supportive of this. They would have just said, “Oh, that’s a fun thing but keep your day job.” It was really the feedback that I got back from the Internet that gave me enough confidence and willpower to reinforce my own drive to do this.

It was April of 2013. I quit giving [drum] lessons, I finished up my last semester at college, and from then on it was a good year-and-a-half straight of just singing, recording, mixing.

On fans:

The fact that they were willing to not only watch a video or listen to a song but make a comment under the YouTube video or buy a song from one of the places I license with. It was when I started a Patreon that they were willing to donate a dollar for every video I put out.

All of these things coming together was huge for me. It felt so big. It felt like… I can’t even describe it really. It was that feeling that allowed me and gave me the confidence to squash not only the doubts, but to push forward the stuff that I really wanted to do, which was make music in some form, some way. It just happened to be through this video game music platform with me singing all the instruments.

Upvoted is the newly debuted podcast from Reddit. Every episode is hopeful and inspiring, especially for silly dreamers.

My personal favorite McGroove jam here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW_Ct49H1ng

Find all of Smooth McGroove’s albums on iTunes.

Adi Robertson, The Verge:

How much of it is just an act? How much does it actually matter? How much empathy should we feel when we read something that genuinely seems like a cry for help, when the entire premise of modern-day trolling is that the internet is just a giant game of make-believe, and you’re a fool to do more than point and laugh?

None of this is encouraging, especially when you know that just mentioning it puts you in the crosshairs, too. It doesn’t prove that there’s some hidden decency to reach or some way to impose offline consequences (I haven’t looked up anything about these people’s real identities, and I don’t plan to.) It doesn’t prove anything about what kind of person does this, because someone’s web presence doesn’t necessarily indicate much about their everyday lives. All it proves is that this isn’t some barrage of throwaway insults in a vacuum. Given enough time, whether it’s created out of deep resentment or teenage thoughtlessness or deliberate, sociopathic calculation, even the most one-dimensional troll mask can start to come alive.<

Great read.

Matt Leone, Polygon:

When we launched Polygon’s cover stories last year, I wrote that one of our goals was to do something different each month. One month could be a behind-the-scenes story on a AAA game, like we did with Call of Duty. Another could be a feature about the fall of a company, like we did with THQ. And this month, we’re trying something else — instead of posting one feature, we put together an online magazine about Japan’s game industry.

I’m just now dipping into this collection. 17 stories, gorgeous cover art, and a jukebox; a brilliant take on the digital magazine. The effort and resources Vox Media puts behind their editorial continues to amaze and inspire. Really looking forward to experiencing all this has to offer.