PixlBit

Congratulations on 3 years!

I don't know if you'd be willing to share any of this information, but I'd be interested in reading an article--or series of articles?--about the growth of the website.  Challenges with design, direction, finding a unique voice in the gaming media, etc.  Any mistakes you made when starting out that you wish you could have avoided?  Anything you did 3 years ago that you can point to today and say "we wouldn't be here right now if we didn't do this ..."?

You mention that the site's received over 250K unique visitors.  Can you share anything about how that's grown/contracted over time?  Have there been any particular articles that went viral and caused a short-term, massive increase in readership?

I remember that when you left NWR one of your goals was to make money from this site.  Do you?  Can you talk at all about what happened with Neal?  :)

Not sure if you have any desire to discuss these things on the site--after all, they're not directly related to video games--but I think it could be a facinating retrospective at a start-up website that has grown over the past 3 years.

Also, I want to state that it's a complete sham that there's only been 52 entries in the Tour de 64.  Moppy needs to step up her game!  I'm never going to get to read her thoughts on War Gods at this rate.

"Also, Super Mario 64 DS's "touchscreen analogue stick" was meant for the thumb pad which came with the original DS model but not the Lite or DSi. Unless you had one, the touchscreen option was worthless."

Let's not kid ourselves--the touchscreen option was worthless even with the thumb pad.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the circle pad won't add analog controls to DS games. Mario 64 DS won't play the same as on the N64 or Wii.

Does anyone who comment here NOT work at PixlBit? (Besides me.)

I bought this game last year--Karlie at NWR bought it from Amazon UK and shipped it to me here in the USA. Total cost was $25 so you didn't pay too much for it.

The game definitely has its quirks but it's a lot of fun overall. It seems very familiar but completely different at the same time. The closest Zelda game it resembles is probably Minish Cap.

Unfortunately, there are certain aspects of the game that make it practically unplayable without some outside assistance. As you pointed out, Rupees play a huge part of the game--they act as Tingle's life, you need them to open up new levels and progress through the game, buy items (a lot of items) and most NPCs won't even talk to you if you don't folk over some cash. The infuriating part is prices are never marked and you're expected to negotiate the price of everything. You don't know if you need to give an NPC 100 Rupees or 10,000 Rupees to get him to speak with you. If you pay too much, you wasted your Rupees. If you offer too little--even if it's just by a single Rupee--you wasted your Rupees since the NPC will take your money but not give you anything in return and you'll still need to give him the full amount next attempt. The's a fair bit of grinding for money in the game and if you're not careful you can increase that tenfold by not spending your money wisely.

You're going to want to use a walkthrough to alleviate these problems. I recommend one (or both) of these:

http://www.importgamers.com/tingle/

http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Freshly-Picked_Tingle's_Rosy_Rupeeland

As long as you skip the walkthrough section and just stick with the ancillary topics you'll be in good shape.

Congratulations!

Maybe I just don't know enough about babies, but you waited 2 weeks to give him a bath? Wasn't the after-birth starting to funk up the place?

There is no letter U in the word COLOR. You are not British.

Oh great--let's rehash the same discussion we had when Majora's Mask almost won NWR's game of the decade poll. :p

Oh bullshit. Nick changed his "Our Take" blurb to make me look like an idiot instead of an asshole. It used to say "seems like a really good fit for a downloadable title".

The game's downloadable on WiiWare, too, chief. ;)