Gallery: Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars
Retail and download releases for the week of December 1st
Continue reading Retail and download releases for the week of December 1st
Cave Story videos are almost great
It's really distressing to have the usually delightful Grasstown stage marred by weird sound effects -- not to mention the occasional escape of text from the confines of the text box. We're giving Nicalis the benefit of the doubt, mostly because we want to make sure to continue sending good, happy thoughts their way. Cave Story requires your happy thoughts to live!
Space Invaders Get Even (with North America) Dec 1st
So, who's going to download this come December 1st? Have you read our review yet?
Gallery: Space Invaders Get Even!
Cave Story's robot less blocky, but still blocky
According to the blog entry accompanying this sprite, IGN will have new direct-feed videos of Cave Story tomorrow. Presumably, this will be our first look at the new artwork in motion!
VC Tuesday: Pop-up Ping-pong
The Virtual Console releases are pretty slim this week in Japan, but still just unlikely enough to show up outside of Japan to make them super interesting. First, Smash Ping Pong, a Nintendo-published Famicom Disk System version of the arcade Konami's Ping Pong. There's something hilarious about playing retro sports games, with their archaic button controls, on the Wii. Maybe it's just us.The other game is one of the many entries in Falcom's Dragon Slayer series, Legend of Xanadu. It's a "ram into enemies" action-RPG like Ys -- and a side-scrolling RPG like Ys III.
- Smash Ping Pong (Famicom Disk System, 1-2 players, 500 Wii Points)
- Kaze no Densetsu Xanadu (PC Engine CD-ROM, 1 player, 800 Wii Points)
- @Simple Series Vol. 2 THE Number Place Neo (1 player, 500 Wii Points)
- Kurohige Kiki Ippatsu Wii (1-4 players, 500 Wii Points)
- Pokers Wii (1-2 players, 500 Wii Points)
Gallery: Pop-up Pirate Wii
Dilapidated trains, castles inspire Pit Crew Panic
In the bizarre WiiWare title, you'll be cleaning and repairing not just cars and motorcycles, but newly-revealed things like train cars, satellites (how do satellites get so muddy?), castles, and battleships. We can't forget about the ones we'd seen before, like flowers and giant toilets, either.
Gallery: Pit Crew Panic
Retail and download releases for the week of November 24th
Gallery: Ultimate Band
Continue reading Retail and download releases for the week of November 24th
Beloved toy of our youths coming to WiiWare
Warning: you are now entering a Wii Fanboy nostalgia zone; if we get wrapped up in jabbering about our wholesome childhoods over the next 200 words, you've been warned. The cause of this trip down memory lane? The announcement that Tomy would be bringing a Pop-Up Pirate game to WiiWare. Yay!Pop-Up Pirate Wii will emulate the pop-ular children's board/party game, in which players would hold their breath (that bit is optional, but helps) while inserting plastic swords into a plastic barrel containing a pirate. If you chose the wrong slot, the pirate would spring out, startling everybody. As dull as it sounds now we've written it down, it was all the rage back in the '80s, before those damn computer videogame whatchoomacallits came along and ruined everything.
Like other board games of our childhood that relied on a steady hand (such as Buckaroo and Operation), we're not yet certain that a videogame version will capture the same ridiculous levels of tension, but still, three cheers for Tomy for at least trying! The chunky, colorful visuals are a great start, in our opinion.
Also on Nintendo of Japan's WiiWare page: Simple Series Vol. 2 The Number Puzzle Neo. If ever a series was designed especially for WiiWare, the cheap-but-cheerful Simple series would be it. Both of these will launch next Tuesday in Japan for 500 Wii Points each.
Gallery: Pop-up Pirate Wii
[Via Siliconera]
VC Friday: Strong Bad, Cubello, cooking, billiards
Four new WiiWare titles came down the tubes in Europe and Australia today, and the selection couldn't be more diverse. Art Style: Cubello and Strong Bad Episode 3: Baddest of the Bands you'll already know about, but CueSports and Yummy Yummy Cooking Jam are more mysterious beasts. The former looks promising, the latter, er, not particularly great, according to the few reviews that are about.
Art Style: Cubello -- WiiWare -- 600 Wii Points
CueSports -- Snooker vs. Billiards -- WiiWare -- 800 Wii Points
Strong Bad Episode 3: Baddest of the Bands -- WiiWare -- 1000 Wii Points
Yummy Yummy Cooking Jam -- WiiWare -- 1000 Wii Points
Footage of all these is past! The! Break!
Gallery: Strong Bad Episode 3
Continue reading VC Friday: Strong Bad, Cubello, cooking, billiards
New Square Enix studio means more WiiWare
Fans of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King and the of the idea of quicker, leaner, Square Enix games (the kind that don't get delayed for two years) may be happy to learn this: Square Enix's new California studio is focusing for now on original downloadable games."All formats – Xbox Live, WiiWare, PlayStation Network – are all viable formats for us," Square Enix US president John Yamamoto specified. As the team -- currently comprising three people -- grows, the focus will expand to middleware and to a wider variety of original games on all formats. The middleware research, as well as the connections with Western studios, should ensure that future Square Enix titles can be developed in a timely manner. For now, at least, we can hope for a second WiiWare game!
Wii Points up for grabs in Tetris Party tournaments
Those online Tetris Party tournaments won't just enhance your fearsome internet reputation -- they'll also offer Wii Points as prizes, a pretty awesome way of keeping player interest high. The first tournament kicks off December 1st, and contains four rounds, each featuring one of Tetris Party's eighteen variations. After you complete a round, the game will give you a rank and confirmation code, which you can register at the official Tetris Party tournament site. Perform strongly over all four rounds, and you could win!
Five hundred prizes are up for grabs (though how many points will be given away isn't known), and we're fairly sure this is a global contest -- there's no mention of regional restrictions in the press release. Skip past the break for start dates, end dates, and other details of the first tournament, then get practicing!
Gallery: Tetris Party
Continue reading Wii Points up for grabs in Tetris Party tournaments
One very worthwhile Cave Story screen
We have feared that the increased definition in the sprites and environments would change too much of Cave Story's unique look, but Pixel knows what he is doing. The new look is more detailed, but still retro -- it just looks like somebody sharpened the focus.
If you haven't tried Cave Story yet, don't worry about waiting for the WiiWare version. Play the freeware game now. You'll be ready to start again when the Wii game comes out.
We're not going to stop talking about Cave Story any time soon. You may as well read up on it and join the discussion!Bruiser and Scratch finally hits WiiWare in December
Bruiser & Scratch is a matching puzzle game in which players shove items around on a chessboard in order to match pairs of identical items, which then form a single piece. And that's about all we know. The developers talk about the game a bit in their interview with WiiWare World, but even now we barely know anything about even the basics of the game. Which is kind of exciting.
RealNetworks thinks December is the perfect time for a tiki-themed game
Sort of like a tropical World of Goo, Towers charges players with defeating the tribes antagonizing your island. You fight, obviously, by directing monkeys to build towers out of bamboo and other tropical-style materials. Your monkeys can counter evil spells with their own spells, which require BananaMana generated from monkey chants.
Tiki Towers is scheduled for a December 8 release. In a bold move, RealNetworks has planned a simultaneous release on WiiWare, iPhone, and other mobile platforms. Which means that it would really sting if Nintendo randomly changed the release date.
Wii Fanboy Review: Dangeresque 3
Gallery: Strong Bad Episode 4 - Dangeresque 3
