Musicians have Vienna. Catholics have the Vatican. And gamers have Japan. While many significant contributions to the world of gaming have come from outside the Land of the Rising Sun, Japan is the unassailable fountainhead of modern video gaming. It's the birth and workplace of gaming giants such as Hideo Kojima, Shinji Mikami, Yuji Naka, and probably others. To say that Japan is a place that hardcore gamers need to check out is an understatement at best.
Recently, I took a week to visit my brother who teaches English at a Japanese university near Nagoya. Hundreds of thousands of words could be used to describe the wonderful food, the beautiful temples, and the unique culture of the country. But being a life-long gamer, I paid special attention to the distinct connection between the country and the gaming scene we all know and love. For the Top 5, I usually come up with a topic, then list the top five items for that topic in order. For this edition, it was truly difficult to narrow it down to only five. With that in mind, here's my best attempt at listing the Top 5 gaming elements of my time in Japan.
The Top 5 is a weekly feature that provides us with a forum to share our opinions on various aspects of the video game culture, and provides you with a forum to tell us how wrong we are. To further voice your opinions, check out What Are You Playing?, submit a vote in the Wii Fanboy Poll, and take part in the daily discussions of Wii Warm Up.
Every Tuesday, Mike Sylvester brings you REVOLUTIONARY, a look at the wide world of Wii possibilities.
Inspired by Nintendo's own design, the work of another DIYer, and Alisha's challenge, I ventured to design and build my own "balance board." For a little more than $20 in materials, I've conceived an oversized Wiimote shell to translate exaggerated body movements into game commands through GlovePIE. I'm going to show you how I made it, and how it plays.
The analyst from Wedbush Morgan seems to think Nintendo walked out of the recently concluded E3 as the victor, for the second year in a row, commenting to gaming mag GamePro. He also commented that Sony would've walked away the victor, given news of their recent price drop for the PS3, but Nintendo still presented " new hardware and decent software introductions."
Of course, you already have our general impressions of the keynote immediately following it, but looking at the variety of content available for Wii owners now that the show has concluded, we're happy about the future of the Wii. And the experiences it'll provide.
Maybe you are really excited for Wii Fit, or maybe you aren't all that excited for it. Either way, you have to be able to extract some humor from Sarcastic Gamer's latest video. A lot of truth is revealed in this video, as we can think of no better recipe for fun when it comes to children like graphs and charts. Also, the Wii Fit looks great ... with anything from Ikea!
It's a pretty funny video, so be sure to check it out past the break (and try not to take it too seriously).
In releasing the final version of the Opera web browser for the Wii, it was believed that all security threats evident in the trial version of the channel were fixed. Turns out, that might not be the case, as hackers are finding a new exploit in the included browser's Flash Player. Through this loophole, it's believed that hackers could get emulators running on the system. This, for obvious reasons, would be a disaster for Nintendo.
Today's Dojo update reveals a new Pokemon in Deoxys. Not a new Pokemon, but rather a new Pokemon to Smash Bros Brawl. And, judging by the new screens in our gallery below, this Pokemon came to lay the smack down on some brawlers, as its Hyper Beam attack looks deadly. We can't wait to give our enemies a taste come December 3rd, that's for sure.
How could we have possibly missed Joystiq testing out one of the most bizarre, yet incredibly intriguing, accessories we've ever seen? Now, sure there are cans of soda resting there, but we all know what kind of chilled beverages this unit is begging for. Not only that, but there's a sweet little drawer on the bottom of the thing, which is something we didn't even know about. How is this thing going to be only 25 bucks?!
Be sure to check out images of the Wii Party Station in our gallery below.
Looks like it was our file, as we tried to upload to GT again, eventually attempting to force it on other online video hosting services. Sorry, but we won't have a video for you this week, it would seem.
To say we are not amused would be an understatement, as we've sat waiting for hours for our video to compress at Game Trailers. Instead, we'll offer up our coverage sans video, for the moment. The second it goes live, we'll update the post.
One of our alumni here, blogger Ludwig Kietzmann, got his hands on the upcoming joint venture between Nintendo and Sega in Mario & Sonic at the Olympics. As one might expect, the collection of minigames present in this overall game are some that fail to elicit any kind of enthusiasm or excitement in said blogger, as it is remarked this is the equivalent of "gaming chewing gum," as "beyond the initial burst of flavor upon discovering the Wii motions needed to complete an event, it's likely to degenerate into a bout of repetitive motion" for most gamers.
To call us disappointed is an understatement, however due to the fact that we pretty much knew this would be the case, at least we were prepared for it.
Apparently, many a gamer are stating that leaving their Wii console connected to Nintendo's WiiConnect24 service is damaging the system. Now, we aren't ones to say "we told you so," but ... we told you so.
Perhaps our Wii is still very much alive and kicking because of our paranoia? Or maybe these folks just had bad consoles to begin with? Whatever it is, the ones reporting these issues of damaged pixels showing up on their TV (due to overheated GPUs) all have one thing in common: leaving the console in Standby mode.
Establishing themselves as the dominant console just wasn't enough for the Nintendo company, as they declared themselves prepared to enter the NASCAR circuit with the Wii-themed Ford Fusion. Driven by Roush Fenway Racing and NASCAR Nextel Cup driver Greg Biffle, the car will make its debut at Watkins Glen next month, followed by an encore performance at Dover's Monster Mile in September. We have to question Nintendo's motives here, but not being NASCAR fans ourselves, we don't really think we're equipped to criticize.
Considering that the game won't be released on American shores until early 2008, it's probably much too early to consider any announced price for Wii Fit to be definite. Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime even stated that the company still needs to research the cost of its Balance Board controller before pricing can be accurately determined.
Wii Fit's product pages at EB Games and GameStop, however, list a placeholder price which is pretty much in line with what we're expecting -- $69.99. That might seem like highway robbery to those who naively hoped for the usual $50, but when you compare it with the expensive fares people will be paying to play games like Guitar Hero 3 or Rock Band, the bundle's pricing doesn't seem too unreasonable. Our only concern is that $70 might be too much for the casual audience Nintendo is hoping to attract with Wii Fit.
Alas, poor gamers in need, there is nothing new with which to enjoy yourself on the Wii. No new retail games for those of us who've been long through with Resident Evil 4. But, hey, at least there's some good stuff on the Virtual Console today, if that's any consolation.
If not, well you can cry yourself to sleep in the corner over there. Tissues are on the table.
This latest Super Mario Galaxy video doesn't introduce any new outfits like the last developer walkthrough, but it does demonstrate star-hopping, gravity tricks, and other essential skills for traveling in this 3D platformer. The latter half of this two-minute movie even features that curious portion of the E3 trailer in which the level builds itself as Mario moves around.
How will we make it to November 12th without our heads exploding from all this exciting media? Collect five star shards and fly past the post break for the embedded video.
This week's Virtual Console releases sees the inclusion of two high-profile Nintendo titles, along with a TurboGrafx16 game we're not familiar with. But, when looking at the two Nintendo titles mentioned, that couldn't matter any less. We know it'll be hard to pry us away from our Wii today, as we get knee-deep in some most excellent gaming.
Today's VC releases are:
Paper Mario (Nintendo 64, 1 player, 1,000 Wii Points)
The Top 5 is a weekly feature that provides us with a forum to share our opinions on various aspects of the video game culture, and provides you with a forum to tell us how wrong we are. To further voice your opinions, check out What Are You Playing?, submit a vote in the Wii Fanboy Poll, and take part in the daily discussions of Wii Warm Up. 
This week's Virtual Console releases sees the inclusion of two high-profile Nintendo titles, along with a TurboGrafx16 game we're not familiar with. But, when looking at the two Nintendo titles mentioned, that couldn't matter any less. We know it'll be hard to pry us away from our Wii today, as we get knee-deep in some most excellent gaming.
