“The Legend of Zelda” franchise turned 25 this week – another Nintendo series in recent months to hit the impressive milestone. Mario celebrated his 25th birthday last September, and two months later Nintendo threw him a party at the Nintendo World Store in New York City. (Full disclosure: I covered the event.) Most would agree he deserves such fanfare. But what about Link and Zelda? Will there be a celebration in their honor? We asked Nintendo.

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From past experience buying strategy guides for role-playing games (yes, I’m an old man) I know just how intimidating the genre can be without a little help. Some RPGs seem filled with secrets nearly impossible to uncover on your own. Though the latest entry in the Golden Sun series – Dark Dawn – was released at the end of November, I’m guessing many folks found it just last week under their Christmas trees. Yes, December is a slow month for new game releases, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to pass over the chance to amalgamate the best tips, tricks and walkthroughs for Golden Sun: Dark Dawn so you don’t have to scour the web mid-boss battle.

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Who needs a flashlight app for the iPhone when you’ve got a Nintendo DS handy? In Australia, Christopher Miszkowiec was riding in a car with his family when they hit a deer — yep, it happens over there — and rolled over several times. Christopher’s father, Wayne, freed himself and six-month-old baby Joseph, while the boy freed himself and his younger brother, Dilon. With his mother, Kathleen, was trapped unconscious in pitch darkness, Christopher got a little creative with his Nintendo DS.

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Unless you’re really impatient or enjoy spending more money than necessary, you ought to wait on buying that Nintendo DSi or DSi XL until September 12, when Nintendo will cut prices on both. Each model will receive a $20 price cut, dropping to $150 for the DSi and $170 for the DSi XL. There’s no price cut for the Nintendo DS Lite, which remains at $130, and no news on the Nintendo 3DS, whose price and release date remains unknown.

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The hype train for Nintendo’s next handheld system is having trouble keeping up with the speed of the rumor mill’s churning. Kotaku is fueling both today with a mock-up of what they believe the handheld will look like, based on a sketch and information from a Chinese blogger who may have a development kit for it. Sounds a bit fishy, but who knows? Instead of debating the possible features of the 3DS or its appearance, I’d like to start rumors on something that should probably be a bit more important to gamers than geeky technical stuff, like hardware specs. That is, what Nintendo games the handheld should launch with.

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It’s that time of year again. E3 2010 is less than two weeks away, and despite past events it looks to be one of common goals: all three hardware manufacturers will represent motion controlled gaming this year. Hooray? But it wouldn’t be E3 without some frustrating, annoying bits. Here are 5 reasons E3 will suck this year, and, to keep things balanced, 5 things that would redeem it.

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Summer gets a bad rap from gamers. Long considered a dry period for quality releases, the warmer months of the year don’t inspire much confidence. But even gamers need something to do beside hit the beach. With the official start to the new decade’s first summer right around the corner, it’s worth pointing out that – surprise, surprise – there are a bunch of games coming out in June that might just keep you out of the sun and in front of your TV. A quick glimpse at Gamestop.com’s list of June releases contains a few titles I know I’m anticipating. Here’s a bunch of them, plus their release dates.

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Nintendo wants you to know that it’s working on a new handheld gaming console, the Nintendo 3DS. Sure, the company doesn’t want you to know much of anything about it right now, but at least you can sleep soundly knowing that something greater than incremental improvements to the Nintendo DS is on the way. According to a press release (PDF) the temporarily-named Nintendo 3DS will have two screens like its predecessors, will display 3D images that don’t require special glasses and will be backwards compatible with all DS and DSi games. It’ll be released — at the very least in Japan — sometime this fiscal year, which technically ends in March 2011. Expect to hear more at the E3 expo in June.

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Get your Burger Time jokes in now, because at least in Japan, new employees at McDonald’s will train on the Nintendo DS. The program, called “eSmart,” will debut later this year, with two handheld consoles in all of the chain’s 3,700 Japan locations. Andria Sang, which relayed the news from Japanese business newspaper Nikkei, doesn’t have any details on how the training itself will work. But I’m envisioning a Cooking Mama-type game where employees learn the basics of food preparation (pickles go on top of cheese, which goes on top of meat, and so on). Sure beats those cheesy instructional videos I had to watch at Boston Market back in the day.

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