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Wii Modchips Materialize
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Hardware, Mods/Hacks, Nintendo, Wii,
A couple of modchips for the Nintendo Wii have surfaced on the web lately; the first would be the Wiinja chip, a bare chip mod. The second is a little more interesting, promising more in its featureset. Maxconsole reports that the CycloWiz mod solution for the Wii may be arriving as early as this week. The developers at Teamcyclops promise support for Wii backups, Gamecube Backups, and Gamecube homebrew games in an easy to install quicksolder package. The chip itself doesn’t seem to have a method to update it, and it doesn’t currently support Wii import gaming. Overall, though, the chip is an interesting start if hack does what it promises.
Read More 
| Maxconsole
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Mario Kart Leads Virtual Console Monday
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Nintendo, Retro, SEGA, Wii,
This Monday’s Virtual Console releases are lead by Nintendo’s classic cart racer, Mario Kart 64 for 1,000 Wii Points, but three other titles have hit was well, including Contra III: The Alien Wars for the Super Nintendo and two Genesis titles, Bonanza Bros. and Comix Zone at 800 points each. Comix Zone has hit a ton of platform in various Sega Genesis collections; Bonanza Bros. has only been in a few. Mario Kart is probably the shining gem in this round of releases, though.
Nintendo’s full press release continues after the jump.
Click to continue reading Mario Kart Leads Virtual Console Monday
Telltale Hiring for Wii Game Programmers
Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Adventure, Nintendo, Rumors, Wii,
A while back, bloggers at some of the bigger Nintendo blogs (including GoNintendo and NintendoWiiFanboy) heard that Telltale Games was interested in creating or porting an adventure game for the Wii, and they made sure that Nintendo knew about this via a hearty internet buzz campaign.
After all the submissions, Nintendo took the hint, leading to a very excited post from the Telltale bloggers: “News flash, Friday afternoon: They took notice! We got a phone call from Nintendo this afternoon. We’ll take it from here - please don’t email them anymore!”
Well, it appears that Telltale and Nintendo must have worked something out, because Telltale is now posting a full-time job opening for a Wii game programmer to bring their 3D engine over to the Wii’s architecture. I can’t ever imagine what that could mean… I’m sure it has NOTHING to do with porting Sam and Max to the Wii.
See the full job posting, after the jump…
Click to continue reading Telltale Hiring for Wii Game Programmers
Read More | TelltaleGames.com
Latest Gear Live Videos
Early this morning, Nintendo updated North American Wii systems with the Wii News Channel. The News Channel, as previously announced, features content from the Associated Press and will download news while the Wii is in standby, or the user is browsing the News Channel. Users can get the News Channel through a System Update. The update also adds the News Channel to the Parental Controls of the system. The update was fairly quick, but the initial loading of articles was somewhat slow. Future updates were speedier, though.
Users can browse the News Channel by category. Current categories include National, International, Business, Sports, Technology, Arts/Entertainment, and Science/Health. The News Channel offers a standard column format of articles to browse, as well as a slide show that moves users across a virtual globe as news in varying regions is displayed. Users can also use globe navigation to browse news by region, similarly to the Weather Channel.
The UI for the channel is mostly well done. All of the articles can be set at varying levels of zoom for enhanced readability, including the article listings, the actual news articles, and the slideshow and globe views. However, it still feels like there is room for improvement. It would be nice to be able to subscribe to specific keywords to get those news articles downloaded for browsing. It would also be nice if the region settings carried over from the Weather Channel to offer a customized regional news channel, and the globe UI isn’t as easy to access as it should be. Overall, though, this seems like a good start, and seems much more informative than the counterpart weather channel.
It looks like someone has found yet another use for Nintendo’s Wiimote: controlling an industrial robot. A couple of engineers at USMechatronics put together a software control program that let them control a Kuka KR16 industrial robot. Unfortunately, time limitations didn’t let them implement a real-time control scheme, but what they came up with is still pretty cool. Using existing PC driver software for the Wiimote and some custom VB.Net code, USM built a simple pattern recognition engine that would let the robot play back pre-recorded movements based on their similarity to the motions that the user would attempt with the Wiimote. The video shows off some of the results, some with a tennis racket mounted, and others with a sword. Handing a weapon to an industrial robot might just be how the robot revolution begins, but given the fact that other projects at the company include robotic sentry guns, it would appear that the company has ample methods to defend itself.
Read More | USMechatronics
Nintendo Flys High On Wii, DS Sales
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Corporate News, Hardware, Nintendo, Nintendo DS, Wii,
Nintendo today reported its nine-month financials for the fiscal year; sales for the nine month period are up 73%, with a profit increase of 43%, according to an Associated Press report. Gross sales grew from 412 billion yen to 713 billion yen ($5.9 billion) for this year; profit grew to 132 billion yen ($1.1 billion) from 92.2 billion the previous year. Nintendo sold 3.19 million Wii consoles worldwide, and said that they shipped 4 million, leaving roughly 800,000 units in distribution channels. The company’s decision to avoid costly air freight probably hindered their distribution efforts. Nintendo also estimated that the Wii strap recall would cost the company approximately 1 billion yen, about $8 million. Nintendo also announced that they had sold 18.9 million DS handhelds worldwide, and in a related press release Nintendo of America announced that they have shipped 10 million handhelds in “the Americas.”
Read More | BusinessWeek
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
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
Guitar Hero PC Clone Works With Wiimote?
Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Internet, Mods/Hacks, Music, Party Games, PC, Rumors, Trailers, Wii,
As the only next-gen console that isn’t getting some Guitar Hero, it’s good to see the user community hacking away at the possibility of playing Hero-like games with the Wiimote. “Tiger” over at the RhythmGamer has posted some videos of himself playing Frets on Fire (a freeware Guitar Hero clone for the PC) using a combination of the GlovePIE Wiimote drivers and some scripts he wrote specifically for the program.
We’re not going to vouch for the authenticity of this necessarily, but these videos look pretty good. Put the Wiimote in a shell that would make it easier to reach the 1 and 2 buttons, and you may have a fully functional solution. Is anyone from Harmonix or RedOctane out there watching this?
Rest of the videos included after the jump…
Click to continue reading Guitar Hero PC Clone Works With Wiimote?
Read More | Rhythmgamer.com
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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