mario

It seems as if Nintendo has been around since Pac-Man and Scrabble were invented.

And yet the company continues to encourage people to spend hours and days in beautifully mindless pursuits. The pursuit of coins, for example, as in Super Mario Bros. 2. I wonder if they enjoy it on Wall Street.

To stimulate your feelings about the Nintendo 3DS and the new 3DS XL (90 percent bigger screen!), the company has hired Penelope Cruz and her sister Monica.

Can you imagine these two sitting by some Italian pool and whipping out their little play machines?

You don't have … Read more

Jeff: The 3DS needs all the help it can get, so a new Mario Bros. game has worked in the past, why not again now? The problem with that mentality is that after a while, even the great Mario isn't invulnerable to becoming stale. And in the case of New Super Mario Bros. 2, I'm afraid it has finally happened.

Now before you gather up the pitchforks and start heading my way, you'll be happy to hear that I still think the game is fun to play. If you own a 3DS odds are you haven't bought a game in a while, so this will most likely find its way into your portable system. That said, you may fall into the same deja-vu trance that I did while playing and begin muttering, "Haven't I done this before?"… Read more

Etsy has turned into quite the geek-craft haven. Case in point: you can pick up a pair of custom hand-painted Super Mario high-heel shoes.

The $115 paint job from Etsy seller magicbeanbuyer doesn't actually include the shoes. You'll have to send along a pair of your choosing to have the design applied. There is one pair of ready-to-go peep-toe heels available in size 8.5 for $142 if you can't wait.… Read more

The world is annoyed with Facebook, but I'm stressed out over zombies:

Last week, Facebook automaticly changed the email address displayed in profiles to be the Facebook email that no one uses. Well the drama doesn't end there. Some smartphones that sync contacts with Facebook have auto-updated address book info with Facebook emails. Do yourself (and your friends) a favor and make sure the right email is listed in your profile. If you think you're missing emails because of this change-up, click on Messages in the left-hand column, then click on Other. That's where Facebook hides … Read more

LOS ANGELES--Nintendo had already unveiled the Wii U well before E3 started, but there were a lot of things going into this show that we didn't know. Nintendo's keynote spent a great deal of time detailing what the Wii U can do, what its online and app services are, and what games we can expect to see. A small amount of time was also spent on the Nintendo 3DS, but today's event was clearly dedicated to the Wii U.

What we didn't get, however, was a date and price. Not surprising, but anticlimactic all the same.… Read more

Surprise, surprise: Nintendo will be launching a Super Mario title for Wii U.

Dubbed New Super Mario Bros. U, the game is designed to take advantage of Nintendo's social platform, Miiverse. In fact, the company says that the title will have a "real-time social window" in-game as the person is playing, and will connect with others.

Aside from that, the title appears to be the typical Mario experience, complete with users being able to jump and fly around levels. Nintendo only showed off a trailer for the title, and did not spend any time actually playing the … Read more

We expect Nintendo to put its new Wii U console/handheld hybrid device front and center at E3 this year. Super Mario Brothers, Pikmin, and other games are sure to come along. Will Nintendo expand the library of third-party games it showcased last year? What about a 3DS Slim?

For those answers and more, check in with our live blog coverage here, beginning at 8:45 a.m. PT/11:45 a.m. ET today.

Between now and then, our ongoing E3 coverage will keep you up to date on the latest from the show. Check it out here.

Editors' … Read more

If you're old enough to remember the 1984 Democratic National Convention and you were among those who didn't buy into Ronald Reagan's supply-side economics, then Mario Cuomo likely made an impression on you.

The then governor of New York made a splashy entrance into national politics during the convention when he gave the keynote speech and displayed dazzling oratory skills. He compared the United States of back then to two cities, one where the rich and privileged thrived and the other where the poor were marginalized.

For years after that, his name was continuously mentioned as a … Read more

Heading into E3 2012, Nintendo is either the easiest of the Big Three gaming companies to handicap, or the hardest, depending on your perspective.

We know, absolutely, that Nintendo's next-gen Wii U gaming console will reappear at this year's show. We know that games will finally be unveiled for this system. Yet, we largely have no idea what those games are. Nintendo's veil of secrecy on its software lineup is a little more opaque than it is for Sony and Microsoft...or so it seems. Here's what we think will happen.… Read more