Welcome to our new web site! If you haven’t yet taken the time to read our “welcome” post, please sure to do so as that article nicely sums up some of our future plans for the website.
First off, take a look at the main menu. You will notice that front and center are drop-down menus for each of our campaign games.
- News will take you to an archive of all news, previews, trailers, and blog posts related to that game
- Official Website will take you to the official website for the game. This is your official source for all news and info about the games
- Pre-order will take you to links where you can pre-order the game directly. Making sure these games sell is going to be a huge focus of the campaign, so we want to make it as easy and hassle free as possible to get these games into people’s hands.
- Wiki Guide will take you to the official wiki guides that the Operation Rainfall campaign staff has been working incredibly hard to complete. We intend these wiki guides on IGN to be the one-stop source for wiki information for the campaign games, and you will find more details about our games in those wiki guides than any other wiki resource on the internet.
Also on the main menu there is a “Community” tab with links to chat, our old forums, and our old blogger archive (all the text survived intact, but it’s formatted a little off). You will also notice another menu up at the very top of the page featuring social media links, contact, and “about” pages.
Now turn your attention to the left sidebar. You will notice a “What’s New” section featuring a caption for all of our latest posts, followed by more social media links (we feel social media is really important to the campaign), and thumbnails of our latest YouTube videos. If you click the thumbnails, the videos will open up right there in your browser!
In the center section you will find the meat of the site (the article you are reading right now, for example), and on the home page, this is where we will display the important news that you just can’t miss out on. Most articles will have a comments section powered by Disqus. If you already have an account with IGN, Siliconera, or any of the thousands of other sites powered by Disqus, you can easily jump right into the conversation. Your Disqus ID will be used throughout the entire site to make comments on any article you wish. Our hope is that everyone who visits will want to become an active part of our vibrant community, and the comments place is where it all starts.
Now look over to the right sidebar. At the top you will notice Facebook and Twitter widgets providing easy access to see who is following us and what we are tweeting. Just below the Amazon.com links (where you can purchase Staff Picked niche games that deserve a bit more attention) you will see something that is brand-new for us, if not slightly controversial – Hot in Japan is a new feature where the staff will be discussing games that are soon to be released in Japan that you should all be keeping an eye on. While everybody’s personal tastes are different, we are going to give attention to a wide variety of games, and that section is sure to become a huge hit once we are finished promoting Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story, and Pandora’s Tower.
Now for the most controversial of all – yes, you saw it right – there are links to other, non-Nintendo consoles.
What does this mean for the campaign right now? Nothing. We have a dedicated staff that has full plans to advocate an American release of Pandora’s Tower, which launches on April 13th in Europe, with a full month of screenshots, videos, trailers, tidbits, and more! We plan to hype up the title for a bit in the days leading up to its PAL release. Also, we plan on having a huge launch party for Xenoblade Chronicles for its release in America on April 6th, along with a 10 day countdown starting on March 27th. And we haven’t forgotten about The Last Story either, with it’s upcoming estimated launch date on June 19th.
So back to that other stuff… What does it mean? First, let me make it very clear that our campaign is still 100% focused on making sure Xenoblade Chronicles and The Last Story see stellar sales figures and get the promotion they deserve. And Pandora’s Tower will be getting a lot of coverage soon as well. However, many of our followers have been asking “what’s next?”, and we’ve had requests for everything from Mother 3 to Love Plus and Captain Rainbow. The staff here have decided that the best approach for future titles may not be a retro-active “campaign”, but instead, to take titles that our fans want, hype them up to a level that publishers notice, and then “pitch” the games. It’s a lot easier to let companies know right away that there is a demand for a specific game in other regions than to watch in agony as folks in other regions enjoy the games. On the other side of that, if a game is starting to look like it’s taking some bad turns (i.e. it’s going to suck), we may decide to stop posting articles about the game.
For the time being, we will not be reviewing games, however, we are not opposed to writing them up in the future when we have the manpower to do so and a scoring system that we feel accurately describes how we feel about the games.
Hopefully this article was able to help you get a clearer picture of our intentions for the site, and also give you an idea of where the campaign is headed. This website is run by the very same staff who have been with the campaign since its inception in June 2011 (and at the moment, so are every single one of our writers).
It’s been a wild adventure so far, and we’d love for you all to stick around. Forgive me if this article is a bit informal, I’m writing this pretty late at night on the night before we are getting ready to launch the site. Our web team has been working non-stop for the past two weeks to make this a reality, and by the time you read this, it will be. We look forward to becoming your news source for upcoming niche games, and we even have a dedicated “Retro” section where we will discuss classic niche titles like Mother 3 and Terranigma. We’re excited about the possibilities and can’t wait to introduce the world to a whole new collection of undiscovered games.
Thank you to all of our fans, followers, and readers. Because of you, Operation Rainfall has become so much more than a “fan campaign”. We’re a thriving community of like-minded gamers, and this community plans to be around for a very long time. Again, thanks.
Sincerely,
Steven Boaz (aka Marko Mac) and the rest of the Operation Rainfall Staff.
