New Super Mario Galaxy 2 Trailer

Well here it is enjoy

Industry choosing iphone, abandoning wii?

I think the iPhone makes a difference in the videogame space in a sense where it allows the industry to re-invent itself. Let me explain to you why.

If anything over the past few months stood out to me in terms of news and announcements, then I’d have to go with this trend of big developers and publishers seemingly losing interest in Nintendo’s white box of fun and starting to show their love to Apple’s iPhone. We’ve all seen big name publishers statements, thought mostly informal, with regards to the slow game sales on the Wii. And where some developers switch to PS3/360 development, others turned to the iPhone (or both). EA, Sega, Capcom, Square Enix and others have all started creating iPhone games in one form or the other. Read more

Nintendo Japan Comes With the “Minna no Osusume Collection”

The “Minna no Osusume Collection” ( “People Recommendation Collection” ) offers the players the best games for a lower price.  How much? In Japan it ranges from ¥7,140 to ¥2,800 (roughly €55 to €21)

The games rate from platinum to bronze.

Here is the list of the first Japanese Minna no Osusume Collection games:
428 ~Fuusa Sareta Shibuya de~* (Platinum)
Muramasa: The Demon Blade (Gold)
ARCRISE FANTASIA (Silver)
Family Ski: World Ski & Snowboard (Silver)
ONE PIECE Unlimited Cruise Episode One Nami ni Yureru Hihou (Silver)
Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World (Bronze)
Dragonball Z Sparking! METEOR (Bronze)

Europe and the US have no news about any plans from Nintendo up to now.

Nintendo Gets Endless Ocean 2 Dated

Nintendo today announced that Endless Ocean 2: Adventures of the Deep would launch on Wii across Europe on February 5th.

The sequel to 2007’s tranquil, underwater exploration title puts players back in the scuba suit as six brand new locations are open to you, ranging from icy Arctic depths to the freshwaters of the Brazilian Amazon.

or the first time, Endless Ocean 2 also features Wii Speak support, allowing you to keep constant communication with your friends as you embark on some treasure-hunting together.

Analysis: Matt Matthews says Xbox 360 Software Leads as Nintendo Falters

Gamasutra analyst Matt Matthews looks at the changing U.S. software landscape as part of their November NPD analysis, finding that Xbox 360 software is surging into the sales gap left by a declining Nintendo market.

According to Michael Pachter, an industry analyst for Wedbush Securities, Wii software revenue in November 2009 declined 18 percent from the same time in 2008. The only systems to see more dramatic decreases were Sony’s PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable (PSP), which were down 69 percent and 21 percent, respectively.

But that’s not all,

After 12 months, the picture has shifted dramatically. As the following figure shows, software revenue from the Wii now accounts for under 30% of the market. Combined with the share from DS software, Nintendo now holds only around 40% of the market – a drop of 7 points from the previous year.

Be sure to read the whole article on Gamasutra.com if you’re interested. I sure found it an interesting development.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii Play Together

by Tom Kerkhof (and Geert van Ostaden)

New Super Mario Bros. Wii (NSMB from now on) is basically the sequel to the original New Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo DS. The catch is, as we are all constantly made aware of by any form of advertisement Nintendo throws at us, that we can play this game with up to four players simultaneously. I know you could play four player games on the DS version, but you were never able to traverse through the levels of the main game with more than a single player. On this Wii sequel, you can.

And it is this feature, and possible this feature alone that can possibly make NSMB stand out from other platform games, or even Mario games.
I think it should be noted that NSMB is by no means a bad game – in fact, the single player is of that trademark, familiar high quality you’d expect from a Nintendo title – it’s just that it’s not what it was made out to be. For me, playing the game with four players isn’t as fun as I thought it could be – not by a long shot.
The main reasons for this are some minor annoyances that don’t do the game any justice and should really be fixed to make a better game. For instance, it is very easy to kill off your fellow players. I can honestly say it’s easier to kill them off then it is to truly help them. Now I would be the first person to admit that annoying your fellow players a bit is good fun, but it can really spoil the game in the long run. As such, I don’t understand why Nintendo made these settings both the default and without alternative. Were it possible to switch off some of the more hindering features, like how your character treats your fellow players as obstacles, or how the ‘death’ of your partners hinders your movement for a second due to its animation.

Then there is the bubble. I would love the bubble, were it not for the fact that it is sometimes too easy to accidentally activate it. Also, being able to save yourself as long as your partner is fine, perhaps makes the game a tad too easy, a feat its predecessor suffered from. As it stands, I merely like the idea of the bubble.

Of course, most of these problems are mostly absent in the versus (or ‘Coin’) mode, where the only objective is to collect as many coins as possible to win. In this mode, it’s a free-for-all and each player is allowed to hinder the other players as much as they can. However, the goal in this game is perhaps unsuited for this kind of game play. There is no way to ‘steal’ other players’ coins; you just have to collect as many coins as you possibly can. In some levels, it is thus very hard to stop players who already managed to collect enough – or many – coins. A shame, really, since I would bet some good money on this mode being an absolute hit, had it been refined a bit more.

In the end, this mostly means I think NSMB disappointed me a little. I though the concept of playing a classic Mario game would be a unbelievably good one, but it turns out it is merely a mildly entertaining one (or possibly an annoyingly frustrating one). Had Nintendo fixed some of the problems I listed before, then perhaps the game would have been great. In that case, I would even forgive the game its complete lack of any online support, a feature I think is sorely missed in a game of this day and age, especially when it tries to profile itself as a multiplayer game.

What remains is the excellent single player that takes elements from many classic Mario games and, like its predecessor, is an excellent addition to the library of Mario games. Admitted, it lacks the ‘fresh’ feel of its cousin on the DS, but it still has everything you loved about Mario. I just really miss the Multiplayer mode that could be so awesome, but even that mode is at least enjoyable, so in the end NSMB turned out to be a fine addition to the Wii library.

New Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles Trailer

Well here it is the new and gorgeous  Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles  ”Reliving the Nightmare” video trailer.

Lately Capcom seems to found the graphics in the Wii since more and more Wii games from Capcom look really nice indeed!

About Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles

Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles sends a full cast of characters into a world where the lines between good and evil are blurred and the potential to go to the dark side lies within everyone. Leon S. Kennedy, Claire Redfield, Jack Krauser, Steve Burnside, and Chris Redfield all play their part in an engrossing storyline that will fill in the missing pieces from Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles.

The game’s on-rail, arcade shooter game-play first featured in Resident Evil®: The Umbrella Chronicles, has been radically upgraded in Resident Evil The Darkside Chronicles. With the focus on creating a more terrifying experience than ever before, the camera now mimics the first person point of view, providing a more cinematic and immersive experience. Combined with an eerie soundtrack and a new graphics engine utilizing state-of-the-art technology, Resident Evil The Darkside Chronicles delivers the most fun and accessible horror game on the Nintendo Wii™ yet.

Hoax of the month: Wii2 + BluRay

Several smaller online gaming publications started publishing stories about a rumored Wii2 this week. A visitor at nintendo HQ supposedly walked in on a couple of developers watching a BD (BluRay) movie on a Wii. Who then supposedly quickly tried to cover everything. The original article mentions a channel with a BD logo on it and a disk being put back into a BD case.

As a happy PS3 owner, and a disgruntled Wii owner, the article sparked my attention just like everyone elses, but seemed too good to be true. A quick background/source check turned up absolutely nothing, which could mean two things: 1) it’s a hoax, or 2) it’s an exclusive and the rest of the internet hasn’t discovered it yet since it’s a small(er) website.

Not know which one it was, I decided to let this one slide for a few days, see what the internet would do, and then write something about it. And Boy! was I happy I did that!

505 games gives birth to a baby for the Wii.

We’ve seen bizarre Wii remote accessories before (this Wii Sports accessory certainly comes to mind), but everyone else can quit now — 505 Games has won. Because as Aussie-Nintendo, 1up and  Kotaku reports, their latest Wii exclusive title Baby and Me encases your Wii inside a baby.

No, really. The special edition of this child-rearing game aimed at little girls comes with a baby doll with a slot in its back for the Wii remote, which allows the doll to react “by giggling, gurgling or crying through the Wii remote [speaker].” At last, this makes real the futuristic vision of doll playing made tantalizingly vivid in that one scene in Steven Spielberg’s virtuoso sci-fi flick Minority Report (pretty sure there was a scene like that in there, haven’t seen it in a while).

But the doll doesn’t just giggle or cry. With Balance Board support, you can also “rock baby to sleep, burp baby, [and] teach baby to walk.” There will be 10 “Baby Mode” games such as “feed baby” and “send baby to sleep,” and 8 “Play Mode” games such as “rattle, catch, clap & balloons.”

How long will it take for the adult industry to pick this up?

Nintendo announces steep Wii sales drop

The moment has finally arrived. Well, that’s what you’d say at first glance when you take a look at the sales numbers which were released by Nintendo this week. They’re expecting an almost 20% drop in console sales this year despite the price-cut from $249 to $199, announced last September.

Nintendo is of course having an increasingly difficult time competing with Sony and Microsofts’ offerings which are looking more and more like an attractive option over Nintendo’s shiny white box.

The big N is hoping for a brighter holiday season, but to be completely honest, we don’t. The flattened-gamecube with waggle controller was originally brought as the biggest revolution in gaming history, but instead turned out to be more comparable to nintendo selling it’s soul and fanbase in return for a purely money-hungry market exploiting company. Nintendo fans, and gamers in general have abandoned Nintendo completely, leaving two platforms with mostly shovel-ware behind to gather dust for your mom and little sis to poke around with.

I can personally only hope for Microsoft and Sony to pick up where Nintendo left off, and as much as I dislike Natal, I think that Sony and Microsoft are going to give Nintendo a run for it’s money when the playstation wiimote and xbox natal hit the shelves.

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