Popular Mechanics grills Miyamoto

As you probably know from countless news stories and interviews this week (and last week) Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto was recently in New York doing a press tour and answering questions about his newest game - New Super Mario Bros. for the Wii. It seems like every Tom, Dick and Seth is hanging out with the man behind such hit franchises as Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong, playing games, asking questions and getting Miyamoto’s odd little autograph.

In this latest interview Popular Mechanics talks to Miyamoto the origins of Mario, the mythological nature of Zelda and why blowing into your NES cartridges actually works. Thank god we don’t have to do that anymore. Here’s an interesting exchange about:

PM: A lot of your characters started out as villainous in earlier games, such as Bowser and Donkey Kong and Wario, and in later games they became more sympathetic and almost goofy. Is there a conscience effort to “de-villainize” evil characters in later games?

SM: One thing I’m not really good at is creating truly heroic characters or truly villainous characters, with the one exception being maybe the Zelda series, where I think we did a pretty good job of defining the roles in that series. I think we never really see anything all that serious come about in the Mario series, and then we have games that fall somewhere in between the two.

Yup, next thing you know Ganon will have his own racing game on the Wii. Be that as it may, you can check out the entire interview by visiting Popular Mechanics now:

Exclusive Interview With Nintendo Gaming Mastermind Shigeru Miyamoto

Two upstate NY GameCrazy stores closing

According to a blog post on the online site of Albany New York’s top newspaper, The Times Union, GameCrazy plans to close two of its three area stores including stores at 818 Central Ave. in Albany and on Route 9 in Latham, NY. A store spokesperson confirmed that the Albany store will close after a liquidation sale that will begin on Saturday. This will leave only one GameCrazy store left in the area - in the 20 Mall in Guilderland, NY. The Latham store is slated to close Oct. 24, according to an unnamed employee at that location.

Earlier this week Movie Gallery announced that it would close nearly 200 of its stores. Thanks to our own Matt Nolin for the tip.

The Rundown: Jan. 28, 2009

Today on The Rundown a brand new Boom Blox game is revealed, Ubisoft reveals new Prince or Persia DLC, YS: Book I & II is delayed and a NY politician introduces a bill that hopes will put video games in a lock box - much like Al Gore promised to do with Social Security. Read it all after the jump.

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NY Budget Woes May Bring iPod Tax

New York State is facing the worst budget shortfall in history, like many other states in our country, and Governor Paterson is making some hard decisions that both politicians and taxpayers are not too happy about. Being from Massachusetts, I am hearing a lot of cross-border chatter about this on the local news, and considering our own state’s financial troubles, we could soon face similar taxes and cuts.

Some of Governor Paterson’s ideas include cutting the state’s school budget by $700 million and lots and lots of new taxes on so many different things that it almost seems unbearable. Some of the things being considered are taxes of on non-diet soft drinks, taxes on luxury services like spas, clothing tax increases, a rise in taxi taxes, and a tax proposal that should concern anyone that buys content from the iTunes store. Paterson is trying to find ways to pay for a $15.4 billion budget gap with 88 new fees and a number of cuts for state run organizations and services.

While all these taxes (and more we have not listed here) and cuts are overwhelming, New York taxpayers will also face taxes on iPod downloads including music and other digital content. That digital content will include movies and television shows.. and video games. If you have read The Rundown today there are lots of nifty new iPhone games being released and on the way - but if you live in NY you may have to pay a bit extra to get them.

Source: Game Politics