For many, Animal Crossing: City Folk looks a lot like the original GameCube game, both from a presentation standpoint and included features. Sure, Animal Crossing: City Folk has some new stuff, but none of it is really that innovative or indicative of the franchise going into any kind of new direction. It's basically the equivalent to treading water. But, it turns out that popular opinion may not be justified, as some new details regarding the game can be found in the upcoming issue of Nintendo Power.
First of all, those of you who spent time with Animal Crossing: Wild World on the DS, you can transfer your avatar over to the new game. Another cool DS-to-Wii feature will allow you to "take your travel data and download it to your DS." We've no idea what that will entail exactly, but it sounds promising.
As for the Wii game, the holiday-themed events will be returning. Jingle the Reindeer will be back for Toy Day and a new character, Zipper T. Bunny, will make an appearance for Bunny Day. Sound promising!
If one was to make an estimation as to the end of the console race today, it would appear Nintendo has things on lock. But, the future isn't always certain, so some folks don't mind coming up with their own guesses as to where we're headed in the years to come. The latest person to toss their 2 pennies into the fountain is former SCEE president Chris Deering. He thinks that come 2011, the Wii and the PS3 will be in a dead tie.
How can this be, with the monthly NPD numbers and weekly Japanese sales figures showing Nintendo selling truckloads of its hardware? Well, for Sony, Deering predicts that combined sales of its PS3, PS2 and PSP devices will be around 240 million units, which he also predicts for Nintendo, but they'll have done it with only the DS and Wii. For the Xbox 360, Deering predicts it will have a base of 40 million units.
240 million units, though? That's just lunacy, in our eyes. But, hey, if anyone can reach that figure, it's Nintendo. As for Sony doing it, well, there are a lot of PS2 consoles out there ...
Why do we love the Wii with friends? Because we want all to share the splendor and majesty that comes from playing the best home gaming console around. So that's why we set out to bring you a nice, easy package of great multiplayer games for the Wii.
Both online and local multiplayer is covered, as well as games that have released and those that are still in production. We hope you find this useful in your own life, in some small way, or at least a good place to link a friend who has no idea what they're getting into with the Wii. So read on and see what we have in store, then come back here and tell us what multiplayer experiences you enjoy most on the Wii!
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.
We're sure all our readers out there are gearing up for the forthcoming Wii Fit and the plethora of exercise accessories that are sure to follow. In the spirit of that, you can now purchase a quirky "Wii"-branded pedometer to track your fitness goals in a more traditional way.
Although it appears a little light on features, the Sports "Gage" Pedometer for Wii Gamers is as inexpensive as it looks at only $6.98, though why it comes shaped like a dog bone is beyond us. The vendor and producer also seem unable to agree on the proper spelling of the word Gage... or is it Guage? (For the record, it's Gauge) But don't let little details like that discourage you!
A word of caution, however: the ever-so-slight alteration of the trademarked Wii logo (and complete absence of the word "Nintendo" from its packaging) likely indicates this to be an unlicensed product without any approval from the big N, so don't be fooled that this is any kind of official companion to Wii Fit's balance board. But for such a low price, it might still be of interest to Wii-oriented gyms out there.
No, this isn't about Smash Bros. In fact, Famicom Dojo probably won't be about Smash Bros. for a good few years. Famicom Dojo is a new show from Powet.tv and 4 Color Rebellion about our favorite subject: old Nintendo games. Combining clever comedy with in-depth coverage of old Japanese game hardware, specifically the Famicom and its Disk System.
Surprisingly, not all of the comedy comes from the appearance of the Famicom. Other people think it's a little silly-looking, right? Maybe we're just jealous because its player 2 microphone makes the system vastly superior to the compromised hardware we received in the US.
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.
Could the Wii end up outselling the PS2? Satoru Iwata seems to think so -- at least, that's what he told Reuters in a recent interview. He even waved away the impending PS3 price drop and redesigned PSP as likely having little-to-no effect on sales of the Wii and DS.
The PS2, however, is a legendary juggernaut in the world of consoles, with more than 120 million units shipped to date. The Wii is estimated to hit around 20 million by next March, and if Nintendo wants to catch the PS2, they better fix that whole shortage problem. But it's still early in the cycle of the system, and at the current rate, anything is possible.
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.
