Wii Game Players

Filed under: Meta

Have you checked out our interview with Nintendo Wii development scene heartthrob Johnny Chung Lee? Dude, why not? Uh, it’s not a good enough reason. The man — how he speaks, how he thinks, it just makes us swoon. So pick apart the guy’s brain a bit in our extensive interview.

After that, hit up the links below for other goodies from the house that Wii built.

Features:

• Wii Fanboy Review: Mario Kart Wii
  We toss our two cents down onto the table
• Retrospective: Our favorite Mario Karts
  Wii Fanboy takes a trip back in time to talk about some of our favorite Mario Kart tracks
• Virtually Overlooked: Kart Fighter
  This pirated game is an obscure one, but very interesting
• VC Monday Madness video wrap-up 4/28/08
  Check out the feature’s new format!
• Brawl Stage of the Week: The Web
  Keep Brawl fresh with our feature that highlight’s user-created stages
• Another Week in …
  Our weekly analysis of sales figures in Japan and Europe

Other Items of Interest:

• Friday Video: Okami Art School
  Brilliant or lame? You be the judge
• Rumor: Metroid Prime Trilogy
  Would you buy all three games bundled together and repackaged for Wii?
• Unreal Tournament meets Super Mario
  lol wut?
• A portable SNES we wouldn’t mind having
  Not too shabby, if we may say so
• Reason number #2,782 for disliking Wal-Mart: They won’t sell you a Wii
  Consumer’s story of woe
• Animals de la Muerte set for Wiiware
  Zombiefied animals? Where do we sign up!

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Originally Syndicated via RSS from Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Filed under: Fan stuff, Interviews

James Baker collects games, but probably not in the same way that any of us collect games. Baker recently coughed up $15,000 for one of the 26 gold-colored NES carts that were originally manufactured for the Nintendo World Championships in 1990 (only twelve are still accounted for) — in fact, we’re fairly certain that his is the cart we posted about recently.

Speaking to Edge about his latest acquisition, Baker confesses that spending so much on a single videogame is “pretty crazy,” but also says that he “doesn’t really see it purely as a videogame.”

Not only is the guy richer than us, he’s also a lot braver — when he received the cart, he popped it into his NES to give it a go! “I didn’t even need to blow on the end of it to get it to work,” he said, nonchalantly. You better believe that playing such a game would be the last thing on our minds. Instead, we’d be handling it very delicately, and then only after washing our hands several times over.

(Fun fact: $15,000 would cover the cost of 1.5m Wii Points, which in turn could be used to purchase the whole of the current U.S. Virtual Console line-up — more than ten times over.)

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Originally Syndicated via RSS from Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Filed under: News, Imports

Wii Fit must be easier to produce than Wii consoles. Nintendo hasn’t been able to rectify the console shortage that has stretched since the Wii launch, but they have gotten their act together in terms of Wii Fit production.

Nintendo U.K. told GamesIndustry.biz that “stock is coming in all the time on a weekly basis.” We’re surprised that Nintendo is even pretending to be able to keep up with demand, with Wii Fit as enormously popular as it is there. The true test of their production capacity will be the U.S. launch oh May 19th.

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Originally Syndicated via RSS from Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Filed under: News

Apparently the report yesterday that Ghostbusters on the Wii would allow you to use your DS as a simulated PKE meter was in error. Terminal Reality’s Mark Randel (who is kind of a strange authority on this game since Red Fly Studio is developing the Wii and DS games, but who no doubt knows more about it than us) told videogaming247 that no such feature was implemented. “It would have been really cool though.”

It has yet to be confirmed if either the Wiimote or DS will be able to interface with the Statue of Liberty. Hopefully some clever homebrewer/sorcerer/Scourge of Carpathia/Sorrow of Moldavia can come up with a slime that uses the Twilight Hack.

[Via GoNintendo]

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Originally Syndicated via RSS from Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Filed under: News, Imports

A new listing on Hudson’s website reveals a planned Japanese release of Mezase!! Tsuri Master Sekai ni Challenge!, which translates to Fishing Master World Challenge. This could mean that the sequel to Fishing Master challenges the player to hook the entire globe with his fishing line, reeling it in impossibly (and dunking himself in the process), or it could mean that you fish in a bunch of different locations.

According to the page, Fishing Master 2 will be released in Japan in July. No U.S. release has been announced yet. The first Fishing Master game got middling reviews, but did come out at $30 in the U.S., to its credit.

[Via NeoGAF]

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Originally Syndicated via RSS from Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Filed under: News

Europe, sad news: you’re getting Okami. No, no, that’s not the bad part, as the really horrible part of this news is just when you’re getting the game. That day is June 13th. It’s a tough wait, we know, but the critics seem to think it’s worth your time.

Europe, are you going to wait for the Wii version to release in June? Or, are you going to check out the PS2 version instead? It’s okay, you can be honest with us. We won’t judge you too much.

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Originally Syndicated via RSS from Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Filed under: The VC Advantage

The VC Advantage is usually geared toward nostalgia — specifically, evoking the memories of a time gone by, when we were denied resources such as GameFAQs, we had to look up codes in magazines, and we had to walk two miles uphill to school (both ways!). Help was available in other places besides magazines back then. Needed to know what to play and how to advance? You could turn to a book … and we’re not talking about glitzy Prima strategy guides packed with glossy photos, either.

Growing up, I didn’t have much access to gaming magazines, and I’m not even sure why. I’m sure I was aware that Nintendo Power existed, and I know I read a few issues, but I wasn’t a subscriber and rarely bought it (blasphemy!). I did, however, read many of Jeff Rovin’s How to Win books cover to cover.

My family never had a lot of money, so I played my NES for a long time before I upgraded to the SNES, and I didn’t buy a lot of games, but there were several rental outlets nearby — including one owned by members of the extended family, which was complete and total win — so I had access to a limited selection. The problem was that I had no idea what to play! Most of my friends weren’t very into gaming, so I couldn’t even exchange recommendations with them. I had good ol’ Jeff Rovin, though. His books were available in the grocery store and at Wal-Mart, so they were easily accessible (often in the checkout aisle). I had the whole array of neon-covered paperbacks, and often rented games just because I’d read about them in one of the How to Win books. In fact, I can thank Jeff for Deadly Towers. Thanks, dude. Thanks for that (you ass).

I knew the ins and outs of games I’d never even seen, thanks to Jeff Rovin, and a lot of my development as an obsessive gamer can be laid directly at his feet. I read anything and everything as a child, from my parents’ books to the backs of shampoo bottles to the encyclopedia (yeah, I was that kid), but Jeff Rovin’s books legitimized the minutiae of gaming for me. Because these books existed, because someone published them and they were available in stores and even at the library, video games were okay, and so was spending hours trying to find and do everything.

Now, searches for Rovin’s books return derision, and probably for good reason. They were written for sheer profit and probably not out of any genuine enthusiasm, and even bad games rarely got bad ratings (see above: Deadly Towers). Rovin, who went on to edit the Weekly World News, was probably one of the original shills. But he was a god to the kid I used to be, and those bright covers and pulpy pages still occupy a soft spot in my gamer’s heart.

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Originally Syndicated via RSS from Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Filed under: News, Peripherals

Here’s something: despite our initial skepticism, we actually really like the Wii Wheel — in fact, it’s all we use now for Mario Kart Wii. The only downside? At $15 per wheel (or £7 in the UK), buying enough for four-player matches can get kind of pricey.

So the way we see it, you have two choices:

1. Go with one of our totally awesome (and totally free) homemade Wii Wheels (the option we’d recommend) or:
2. Pick up the latest issue of NGamer, which comes with the above “free” wheel packed in. It’s not technically free, obviously, because you’ll have to pony up the £4.99 for the magazine, which optimistically suggests that the free gift is worth £7, meaning somebody in NGamer’s accounting department may well be clearing their desk later this month.

Incidentally, while NGamer is a UK publication, some of the team think they may have spotted copies in Barnes & Noble, so keep your eyes peeled and you too might save hundreds of cents.

[Via Go Nintendo]

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Originally Syndicated via RSS from Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Filed under: News, Screens, WiiWare

At a press event for Mastiff’s virtual maw-filler Major League Eating: The Game, professional eater Tim Janus (the guy with the face paint in the screenshots) broke the world record for sushi-eating, devouring 141 pieces of sushi in six minutes. Imagine being a hapless member of the gaming press, walking into a normal game demo and ending up with a ringside seat for a guy cramming sushi into his mouth. We were a little taken aback by simply reading the press release today. If, for some reason, you’d like to see video of the momentous occasion, CNet recorded it.

This is easily the most disgusting thing done to promote a game since Acclaim’s “Turok” baby-naming promotion. And it’s not even that sushi is a disgusting food — it’s just not the kind of thing we’d want to see someone eat a lot of. Speaking of seeing a lot of things, be sure to feast on our newly updated gallery!

[Via press release]

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Originally Syndicated via RSS from Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Filed under: News

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For those of you who like to collect promotional DVDs, know that GameStop is giving away free DVDs that show off Wii Fit. Our best guess is that the footage on the DVD is things you’ve already seen (here at Wii Fanboy, we hope), so if you’re intending on picking it up and catching something new to watch to hold you over until the bundle is released, then perhaps that might not be the best plan in the world.

Instead, we suggest you approach this as an opportunity to show it off to someone in your life who doesn’t know what the 411 is. Show the game off to your mom, your English teacher or simply get a bunch of the DVDs and throw them around like ninja stars. That used to be fun with those AOL 3.0 CDs back in the day.

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Originally Syndicated via RSS from Nintendo Wii Fanboy