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Nintendo’s Super Paper Mario ships today, and so far the game is tacking up a 90% overall rating on Gamerankings.com. From some of the major game sites, 1up rated the release an 8.0, citing the title’s relative lack of depth compared to its Paper Mario siblings, tacked-on Wiimote controls, and some slowdown evidenced in gameplay. IGN rated slightly higher at 8.9, feeling that the platformer and RPG merger was more successful and that the Wiimote controls felt appropriate for the game, but they felt the amount of writing in the game disrupted the flow, and the 3D elements seemed barren compared to the lushness of the 2D world. Nintendo has also kicked off marketing the game with a “Wii Would Like To Play” TV commercial, shown above.
Read More | 1up

Read More | IGN

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Wii Box First free DS Lites, and now a free Wii? Has Gamefly been stockpiling Wii’s all this time? Are THEY the reason no one can find the new Ninty console anywhere?

Anyways, Gamefly.com is currently offering a promotion that could get you a Wii for free (or about $60, if you want to enlist some imaginary friends’ help). All you have to do is get 5 of your friends to sign up for the service (which is the Netflix equivalent of videogames), and once they’ve been paying members for a month - with plans starting at $14.99 - you get a free copy of Nintendo’s elusive console.

If you have five real gamer friends, then perhaps you can convince them to sign up as a donation to your “I really want a Wii” fund.

Read More | Gamefly.com

Mercury Meltdown Wii CoverartExcuse the bad pun at the top, but if Amazon’s price listing is correct, Mercury Meltdown Revolution for the Wii may be a bargain… as the good folks over at GoNintendo noted, the currently listed price for the Wii game (which garnered an 8.5 for the PSP version at IGN) is $19.99. Add to that the fact that most hands-on reports of the game love the addition of tilt-controls, and it’s looking like you’ve got a new no-brainer buy for the Wii.

Mercury Meltdown Revolution is slated to launch around May 1st, and will feature some graphical and gameplay upgrades to the PS2/PSP version, including 480p/widescreen support and added levels.

Read More | Amazon.com via GoNintendo.com


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Wii Sharpshooter by JoytechWe’ve been hearing quite a few rumors about the imminent release of the zapper-style Wiimote attachment as shown off by Nintendo at what is now known as The Last E3. So we’ll understand if this picture of a new hunk o’ plastic by Joytech doesn’t have you jumping up and down with excitement.

There are some design flaws with this thing that should be noted too… for one, note the ugly wire sticking out the bottom of the nunchuk, and for two, it looks like you’ll be stuck playing games that use the Nunchuk’s Z-buttons as their firing button. Let’s see… what game uses that again? Oh yeah, that’s right, none of them. That’s why there’s a convenient, B-button triggery-thing at the bottom of the Wiimote itself.

No price or release date has been listed yet for the Wii Sharpshooter, but with the true Wii Zapper attachment rumored to release shortly and for only about $19.99, we’re hoping that the Sharpshooter makes it out quickly and in the price range of “cheap”.

Read More | Joytech via GoNintendo.com


Wii Cubed3 is reporting on a new press release issued by eSol Co., Ltd., indicating that Nintendo has entered into an agreement with the company to license their FAT file system and USB host support for embedded systems, to be used in Nintendo’s Wii console. Cube3 believes that this may be pointing to an external USB storage system coming for the Wii some time soon. However, the press release seems worded oddly for a new addition to the Wii. For instance, eSol’s Executive Vice President, Embedded Products says this:

I am very happy that we could take part in the development for Wii, a new game console from Nintendo. I believe that our products were selected because Nintendo highly-valued our long, successful history with many digital consumer products and high-reliability and functionality based on that. We will continue to provide superior products and technical services to strongly support developers in embedded software development.

This statement seems to indicate that eSol was involved during the console development process, and this licensing is not a new thing. Why the company is issuing a press release now about this seems somewhat odd, though. Still, even if this is not new functionality in the Wii, this announcement would indicate that Nintendo could potentially enable the feature in the Wii to allow USB-based storage in the future.

Read More | Cubed3

Resident Evil 4IGN reports on the latest issue of Famitsu, which has a new spread on Biohazard 4: Wii Edition. The US version was previously hinted at via an accidental leak on the Gamestop website for June; these new details assure gamers that the title is real. The Famitsu article details the new Wiimote functionality in the game. Gamers will use the Wiimote for cursor aiming, the B trigger and a shake of the Wiimote allows the user to reload, and motion-sensitive actions are used for close up attacking. Other features in the Wii version include new beginner-friendly difficulty settings and the additional content from the PS2 release. Finally, for those looking for insight into the upcoming Umbrella Chronicles Wii release, there will be a game trailer included on the disc.

Read More | IGN

NiGHTS Journey Of DreamsSega of Europe offered some tantalizing new details about the upcoming NiGHTS: Journey Of Dreams earlier; the updates seem to have gone missing from Sega’s site, but Sega Nerds has a summary of the new features, including “Persona” masks that allow NiGHTS to morph into a dragon, dolphin or rocket, seven dream worlds, and utilization of the Wii Connect 24 service to exchange items and adjust the environment based on the Forecast channel. It definitely sounds like Sega is focusing on using the Wii featureset to the fullest; hopefully the game can live up to the nostalgic memories gamers have of the original.

Read More | Sega Nerds

Samus from MetroidBad news for all you Nintendo fans out there - it looks like we may still be waiting a while longer for the Metroid Prime trilogy to be complete. Newsweek talked to company figurehead Reggie Fils-Aime, who had this to say:

Where is Metroid? Metroid is not going to ship by June. We’ve announced all of our games through the end of June. And the fact with Metroid is we want to make sure that that game is perfect. Unfortunately, Metroid Prime 2 didn’t live up to our expectations, it didn’t live up to Retro’s expectations

Evidently, Nintendo’s looking to put out a lot of marketing for this product, and they want it to be the best that it can be when it releases. (And if it sells more copies than Echoes, they’d prefer that too. Given that this is one of the first FPS titles to have a chance of not sucking on Nintendo’s new console (i.e. not Red Steel or Medal of Honor, I think it’s safe to say that this game will sell pretty well. Here’s hoping that the game’s as close to “perfect” as they can make it too.

Read More | Newsweek

Mario StrikersWith the European release of Mario Strikers for the Wii a little under two months away, Nintendo of Europe has dropped a press release documenting a few of the new features games will find when the game ships May 25th in that territory. The gameplay will still feature 5-on-5 teams as in the Gamecube release, but with added support for the motion controls of the Wii remote. One of the more interesting new features, though, has to be the addition of a multiplayer online mode; Nintendo claims the game will support up to four players online, split across two teams. It is unclear what the division between local and online players will have to be, but one can probably assume that friend codes will be involved for online play. Nintendo also promises ranked leaderboards and unranked matches for the title. Mario Strikers joins Pokemon Battle Revolution as online-enabled titles for the Wii.

Read More | Nintendo Europe

Star Fox 64After last week’s weak release on the Virtual Console, Nintendo has followed up with three new titles, each with at least some good points. First, Star Fox 64, is a classic game in the Star Fox franchise, and the last of the series to be fully developed in-house by Nintendo; there aren’t a ton of items to collect, the game isn’t co-developed by Namco, and the title doesn’t mix in some turn-based strategy segments. For 1,000 Wii points, gamers get classic Star Fox style gameplay. Other releases are platform-based games, including the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the NES, which was a decent game for a licensed title, and Dragon’s Curse for the Turbografx-16. Dragon’s Curse, a conversion of a previous Sega Master System game also offers some unique gameplay for a platformer of that era.

The full press release continues below.

Click to continue reading Star Fox Launches On Virtual Console


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