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Wii News Channel, Mario Kart 64 Launch Soon
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Electronic Arts, Nintendo, Retro, SEGA, Wii,
Nintendo outlined their upcoming releases for the first quarter via press release today. While the first-party Wii-original list is spare, consisting only of Wii Play with a bundled remote launching February 14th, next week will see the release of Mario Kart 64 for the Virtual Console, bringing one of the best entries in that franchise to the Wii. In addition, Nintendo will finally be making the Wii News Channel available on January 27th; hopefully the News Channel will be more fully realized than the Weather Channel. Third-party releases will see SSX Blur coming, which has been getting some decent early buzz. Others include The Godfather: Blackhand Edition and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07; it will be interesting to see how EA handles the Wii remote in its upcoming titles.
The full press release continues after the jump.
Click to continue reading Wii News Channel, Mario Kart 64 Launch Soon
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Zelda: A Link To The Past Hits Virtual Console
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Nintendo, Retro, Role Playing Games, Wii,
Wii owners in North America should now be able to download the classic Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past via Nintendo’s online store for the virtual console. The title sells for the standard 800 point level set for Super Nintendo games on the service. Link To The Past is one of the high points of the franchise and the gameplay holds up well after all these years; 800 points for this is a bargain.
Read More 
| Nintendo Gal
What’s Wii’s Online Strategy For This Coming Year?
Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Accessories, Editorial, Internet, Nintendo, Wii,
One way in which the Wii has definitely been lagging behind its next-gen competitors is the online arena. As it currently stands, the WiiConnect-24 service doesn’t REALLY seem to be connected 24-hours a day, and your online activities are pretty much limited to 1) visiting the Mii Parade (woo hoo) 2) checking a weather “forecast” that’s often a few hours behind 3) surfing the net with the beta Opera browser and 4) paying for old games via the Virtual Console service.
Now granted, Nintendo has a lot on its plate these days. In addition to just producing enough Wii’s to meet demand, they’re also working on a few blockbuster titles (Mario Galaxy and Pokemon Battle Revolution among them) and probably spending a fair chunk of time porting old games to the VC library. But still, Nintendo, we’re going to need something to keep us interested in Wii’s online service.
Matt over at IGN points to some previous discussions he’s had with NOA’s George Harrison, to give us a glimpse at what we can expect from the big N in 2007:
I interviewed Nintendo of America’s George Harrison a couple months back and he said that the company would eventually offer a variety of content on the Wii Shopping Channel, including add-ons and demos. I think Nintendo also wants to nurture a homebrew development scene of some kind. I’d be surprised if we didn’t hear more about all of the above at the Game Developers Conference in March. In the meantime, all I can tell you is that Nintendo’s online network is in its infancy and can only improve over time. Eventually, I’m positive there will be demos for everyone to download and try.
That sounds great and all, but honestly I think it’s time for some firm announcements and some much-needed changes.
Here’s our own list of what needs to change and what needs to be improved (after the jump!)
Click to continue reading What’s Wii’s Online Strategy For This Coming Year?
Read More | Wii.ign.com
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Retail Channel Has PS3 Availabilty, No Wii
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Nintendo, PlayStation 3, Wii,
American Technology Research’s recent stock check of the retail channel is showing PS3 availability but no Wii availability, according to a Reuters report. Analyst Paul-Jon McNealy found 28 of 52 stores had Playstation 3 consoles for sale; none of the 52 stores had any Wii consoles at all. Apparently most stores had single-digit availability, with one store having more than 60 machines in stock. Without further data, it is hard to judge what the stock situations actually mean. Nintendo could be trickling in Wii consoles as they try and sate demand for the game system worldwide. Sony claims that the recent pockets of availability are due to their continued efforts to fill their shipping channel. Future sales numbers will be the only way to determine whether Sony’s claims are correct or if demand is really softening.
Read More | Reuters
A report a Wii Newz indicates that an experimental rip tool has been released for the Nintendo Wii. The tool is pretty limited at this point; according to Wii Newz, the tool requires one of three specific LG DVD-ROM drive models and takes approximately 50 hours to rip a single disc. While not really practical, one should never underestimate the ability of the Internet to find people with massive amounts of free time. Still, the tool is an interesting step towards getting Wii backups onto the Internet, and of course, some kind of hack on the Wii will be required to play these backups.
Read More | Wii Scene Newz
Nintendo DS Sells 1.7 Million In Europe
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Nintendo, Nintendo DS, Wii,
Nintendo of America celebrated the success of the Wii and the DS in North America, now Nintendo of Europe is doing the same in their territory. Sales monitoring company Chart Track has released their sales numbers for the month of December, and in the UK Nintendo sold nearly 200,000 Wii consoles and 500,000 DS handhelds.
In Europe, Nintendo moved more than 700,000 Wii consoles and an amazing 1.7 million DS handhelds. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess nearly matched the attach rate in the US, selling 500,000 copies to 70% of Wii purchasers during December. With huge sales in Europe, Nintendo has basically stormed across the globe this holiday season.
Read More | Nintendo Europe
WarioWare Smooth Moves: Yep, It’s Pretty Darn Fun
Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Action, Nintendo, Reviews, Wii,
Those major, corporate-sponsored gaming news sites out there have posted their reviews of the highly-anticipated WarioWare: Smooth Moves for the Wii. The overall impression? Heckuva fun… with some reservations. IGN.com notes the similarity (in release date at least) to the WarioWare: Touched game for the DS. Both games are meant to introduce gamers to a new way of controlling a system, and in that respect, IGN gives Smooth Moves the upper hand - overall they found the design of the game to be much tighter, with a better-thought-out game progression and a much wider variety of tasks. 1up.com posted similar impressions, noting that controller issues may pop up for the novice gamer especially in those challenges where the Wiimote has to be pointed at the screen and be able to “see” the IR bar. Finally, Gamespot.com gives Smooth Moves the superb score of 9.1, giving the game lots of nostalgia points for its incorporation of minigames that resemble Nintendo classics, from the NES through Gamecube. Regardless of the scores though (8.2, 8.0, and 9.0, respectively), all the sites agree that WarioWare has a severely high fun quotient, and is likely to become one of the best games for introducing folks to the control possibilities of the Wii.
We’ll be getting our hands on this game shortly, picking up our pre-order first thing tomorrow when it ships. We’ll have our own impressions posted soon after - personally, I can’t wait to watch my non-gaming friends try out this one.
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| IGN
Read More | 1Up
Read More | Gamespot
This “Virtual Console” Monday brings three new classic titles online for the Wii. This week, gamers get two shooters, Xevious for the NES at 500 points, R-Type III: The Third Lightning for the Super NES at 800 points, and a racing game, Moto Roader for the TurboGrafx-16 at 600 points. Gamers will probably be most familiar with Namco’s Xevious and Irem’s R-Type series, but Hudsonsoft’s Moto Roader may be worth a look for the 5 player multiplayer racing.
Read More | Nintendo
Japanese Hardware, Software Markets Show Massive Growth
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Hardware, Nintendo, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 3, PSP, Wii, Xbox 360,
Japanese publisher Enterbrain has released the software and hardware sales totals for 2006. According to a report from Gamasutra, the publisher is claiming that Japanese video game hardware grew year over year 160%, while software sales grew 125%. The best selling hardware for the year was, of course, the Nintendo DS, moving over 7.5 million handhelds. Software sales charts were also dominated by the DS, which represented 8 of the top 10 titles of the year. Leading the list was Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. The top non-DS title was Square’s Final Fantasy XII for the PS2. Wii Sports made the top 100 in the 21st position, but no title for the Xbox 360 or the Playstation 3 were represented on the list. Nintendo managed to completely dominate Japan this year, and so far there are no signs of this changing any time soon.
Read More | Gamasutra
The Zelda: Twilight Princess Completion Calculator
Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Action, Activision, Mods/Hacks, Nintendo, Wii,
We’ve all heard about just how big the latest Zelda installment is - Nintendo earlier reported that the land of Hyrule takes about 45 minutes to get across on horseback, and the company also estimated that the game would end up with about 70 hours of play time for most gamers. So you’re probably feeling pretty high-and-mighty, having completed the game in only 35 hours, right? Well, here’s something to cut you down to size - the Zelda: Twilight Princess completion calculator. Simply enter the dungeons you’ve made it through, the number of hearts you have, and some other vital stats, and it’ll spit out a number telling you exactly how close you are to truly doing everything that can be done in the land of Hyrule.
Having not had a lot of time to play recently, I’m still only at about 25% after 16 hours of play time, so the 70 hour mark is looking pretty accurate for me. Anyone else have some especially good (or especially bad) numbers?
Read More | Zelda Completion Calculator via digg
