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!
It's not to say that the company hasn't been mindful of community features in the past. They've launched the Check Mii Out Channel, as well as the Everybody Votes Channel. Sure, they were flops, but it's good to know that Nintendo is at least trying. And Reggie wants us to know that Nintendo has some things coming down the pipe.
"Nintendo has always had a vision on community," he said. "The issue is that we define community differently than our competitors. ... Our consumers do want a sense of community, and we're going to deliver that--but in a way that is unique to Nintendo." Thanks for being so vague, Reg!
Regardless, it's good to know Nintendo is thinking about it. Stacked up against Xbox Live and, even worse, PSN, the Wii is lacking in some very necessary community features. Why don't you all take a guess? What do you think Nintendo has up its sleeve? Personally, we'd appreciate Virtual Console and WiiWare demos and maybe more online multiplayer.
Contrary to what we originally heard, it looks like the Wii Speak Channel won't be launching alongside Animal Crossing: City Folk on November 16th.
IGN snapped a picture of the WiiSpeak box, complete with a disclaimer that the Channel (which allows chat outside of Animal Crossing) will actually appear in December. When in December isn't clear, though we know the Channel will be available in Europe from December 5th, so maybe then. Until then, you're just going to have to pick fruit and chat simultaneously. We can probably cope with that!
Studio Zan is lining up a November release in Japan for Overturn, a new vehicular combat game that sees manga characters (who look oddly out of place next to the game's 3D arenas) take control of hulking great robots.
Overturn has yet to be priced or confirmed for a western release, but a Game Watch preview reveals that it will come with a Story mode, local multiplayer, WiFi play for upto four players, Balance Board compatibility, and full online leaderboards. Nice. Oh, and it reminds us of Robot Wars.
Animal Crossing: City Folk is sticking to the formula laid down by Wild World fairly rigidly, but it's not all a rehash. Some new outlets and characters can be found in the city section next to your village, two of which have been recently showcased in daily videos at City Folk's official Japanese site.
The first of these stars Dr. Shrunk, whose dubious comedic talents have finally landed him the big one: a gig at City Folk's Theater. Here, you'll be able to watch the good doctor take to the stage, 'enjoy' his stand-up routine, and hopefully learn a brand new emotion in the process -- as you do. The second video (after the break) covers the Auction House (where you'll be able to offer items for those on your Wii's friend list to bid on), which appears to be manned by a Gyroid. Perhaps they ran out of ideas for new talking animals.
If your Wii's teensy amount of storage space currently resembles an overflowing suitcase, then Guitar Hero: World Tour isn't about to make life any easier.
According to Vicarious Visions' Karthik Bala, the game allows you to download songs to an SD card, but you'll still require "about 200" free blocks of memory to be used as a "content cache" for the song you're playing through. Once you've finished with that track, you can clear the cache and transport another of your downloaded songs to your 200 reserved blocks. Transferring songs, explains Bala, happens "pretty quickly."
It sounds like a workable solution, but 200 blocks? That's the equivalent of six Mega Man 2s or three Super Metroids, and is bigger than some N64 games; we're also curious about Karthik Bala's personal definition of "pretty quickly." Protip, Nintendo: if you were thinking of announcing a storage solution in the next decade, next week's Japanese Media Summit would be the ideal time.
Here in the Wii Fanboy dungeons, we've been squeezing bouts of Mega Man 9 in between blogging today, and have already made an exciting discovery in the game's manual (note: you can browse this without even purchasing the title): an apparently complete list of downloadable content.
According to this, five pieces of DLC will become available in the near future, including a Hero (ultra hard) and Superhero (so hard you'll cry) mode, a new Time Attack stage, the chance to play as Proto Man, and the utterly hardcore-sounding "Endless Attack," which is essentially a stage without end. These range from 100 to 300 Wii Points apiece, and you can check up on prices and release dates after the jump.
Now that we've all agreed on our hatred of friend codes, will The Conduitbe lumbered with them? High Voltage's Rob Nichols suggested it would in a recent Nintendo Radio podcast, admitting that the studio will "probably" have to use the dreaded digits. Though this isn't outright confirmation and we shouldn't take to the streets in anger yet (Nichols' colleague Tony Mecca promises that High Voltage is considering "every other option"), the general tone of the transcript is rather downbeat. We look forward to grumbling with you, dear reader, at future Game Nights.
In other news-we-kind-of-expected, the pair confirmed that the game won't feature downloadable content. A double blow, then, depending on whether you view DLC as a boon or a burden.
This update just appeared in Nintendo of Europe's RSS feed, yet mysteriously leads to a dead 404 link when clicked. As such, we can only really draw information from the title and brief description (at the time of writing, there is nothing on Google about this story), which suggest Nintendo will soon be selling music -- specifically music from artists signed to EMI -- in return for Club Nintendo Stars!
So what's happened here, exactly? Well, we suspect Nintendo has accidentally released a story, and then swiftly pulled it again. Either way, downloadable pop music isn't really something we'd have expected from the Wii, and raises new questions about Nintendo's storage strategy (unless these are playable on your PC). Keep your eyes here for updates as we learn more!
WiiSpeak isn't the kind of thing we can imagine selling in Wii Fitquantities, but it's getting hard to tell nowadays. Maybe the microphone add-on and Animal Crossing: City Folk will be overshadowed by the otherbig first-party release of November, and supplies will be plentiful, but why take the risk? You can now preorder your own WiiSpeak at Amazon, and rest assured that you'll be able to bitch behind Nook's back with your Wii Friends from day one. Hang around now, and you may be confined to the keyboard.
Our faces lit up this morning after seeing this image on Famitsu's site. Surely, this was it: Nintendo's long-awaited solution to the storage woes of every Wii-owning geek and otaku on the planet. Alas, no. After scrambling for a machine translation of the accompanying kanji, our hopes were emphatically mangled. This is no HDD unit, but a portable air conditioner the "Nintendo WiFi Network Adapter." Once again, life had thrown us a cruel curveball. Happy Monday morning, us.
Anyway, if you struggle to get your Wii or DS online (and we know from experience that it can be fiddly), then this dinky wireless LAN router is for you. It can be used with the Wii, the DS, your PC, and other devices, and will be available on Nintendo's Japanese homepage from September 18th, priced at ¥5,800 (US$53). There's no news yet on a launch outside Japan, though as the Nintendo WiFi USB Connector was discontinued late last year, a western release would be a safe bet.
Hit the break for three more images, one of which depicts the adapter's three modes: "Router," "Bridge" (for connecting to your Wii or DS via another router), and "Auto" (which automatically switches your network). As for our ongoing storage issues, we're still waiting, Shiggy/Reggie/Satoru ...
Okay, first of all, there are new screens for the upcoming WiiWare title. Hit them up in our gallery below, then come back here, because we're got some things we need to discuss.
Back? Good. Okay, to clarify: Bomberman Blast, the WiiWare title for download and not the retail disc, will feature Mii support and 8-person online multiplayer (up to four players can go online on the same Wii) and is officially on its way to North America. We know we told you something else before regarding the Mii stuff, but the press release that literally just landed into our inbox tells another story. So expect this to be one content-rich download.
And on top of those details, Hudson also let us know that they'll be offering online tournaments. In fact, one will even coincide with the release of the game (which is due out in Japan this fall)!
For those of you who've been tracking Quantum of Solace over at The Stiq, you know that most of the worthwhile things to discuss about the game have come from the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions. Well, it would appear that Activision isn't leaving Wii owners out to dry, as some cool features are being utilized in the Wii version of the title.
For one, there will be multiple control schemes. Gamers can use the tried-and-true Wiimote and Nunchuk setup, or they can bust out their Zapper and play with that. On top of that, Activision has also confirmed the game will feature online multiplayer, as well as 4-player split-screen local multiplayer, which is exclusive to the Wii installment.
Activision is also hard at work to make sure the game is no graphical slouch. Seeing as how the engine behind the game is the same used in Call of Duty 4, we're sure Quantum of Solace will have some lovely visuals.
We've known about WiiSpeak since E3, but it could have turned out to be quite different -- in name, at least. Siliconera's Spencer Yip has discovered a pile of trademarks registered by Nintendo in Japan from July 2nd - 4th, which he surmises are alternate names for the WiiSpeak device (considering E3 began on July 14th, Nintendo obviously left it late to settle on what to call its microphone add-on!).
These trademarks include "Wii to Wii," "Wii2Wii," "WiiFriend," "WiiTalk," and the final name, "WiiSpeak." We quite like "WiiTalk," but we're pleased Nintendo didn't opt for "Wii2Wii," which smacks of TXT MSG speak, which we despise.
What do you think of Nintendo's shortlist? Do you have any other suggestions outside of their ideas, or do you feel they chose the right name?
For those of you interested in upcoming Samba de Amigo for Wii (that would be all of you, we hope), word has dropped regarding what songs will be included in the title. And if the inclusion of Ulala is news to you, you've failed to pay attention.
The first pack of downloadable songs will be available on September 23rd and include:
