One of the most talked about upcoming games for Wii is The Conduit. High Voltage Software has proven that they want to make a game for hardcore gamers that uses Wii’s power to its max. The Conduit has great graphics, 16 player online play, and WiiSpeak compatible… and now it can add one more thing to its list: Wii MotionPlus. While I don’t see how much a FPS can be changed by Wii MotionPlus compatibility, the fact that High Voltage Software is trying to make The Conduit the best it can be is proof that this game is going to be awesome. I’m looking forward to seeing what Wii MotionPlus will do for the game and I’m ready for it’s release in 2009 (possibly in March, which is the target release date). Now if only we would find out who the publisher is already!
Tony Hawk’s Motion uses the Motion Pack accelerometer by Kionix for its control scheme. According to Activision “players can twist, tilt and turn through numerous skateboarding sessions.” This Motion Pack plugs into the GBA slot of the DS.
Activision knows their Tony Hawk series is getting stale, so what did they decide to do about it?
Add motion sensing support of course! Well, aside from choosing to add motion sensing to the mix they also decided to throw in snowboarding and an art game. The thing is, that is all included in one pack.
[pun] Will it be stellar or will they bail out? [/pun]
The Wii and DS communicating… It seems so perfect. Yet, only a few games have taken advantage of this ability. Quite often, I find myself looking for games that do. So, I was just watching a video about a game called MaBoShi which uses Wii-DS compatibility via DS Download. Check it out.
Then I thought back to the time when the GBA connector came out for the Gamecube. One game they said that would use this ability would be football games, like Madden. You could choose your own play secretly on your GBA. Well, I’m curious why they haven’t used this feature on Wii games with the DS. It seems to me like using the DS to pick your secret plays is a great idea. Not only that, you could even draw up your own plays. What other games could benefit from Wii-DS compatibility? Well, I would like to see another Zelda game with a Tingle-like ability on the DS. I know there are already a few out there that use this ability, but not too many. Right now, I believe the list only comes to about 10 games (including Galaxy Wars, Pokemon Diamond/Pearl, the above mentioned MaBoShi, and the future Animal Crossing: City Folk). What existing games would you love to see use this technology? What new games could they make with this sort of connection?
Pirates Vs. Ninjas will be hitting the Wii console this winter. The game has its origins in a popular Internet meme, and has now been turned into a dodgeball battle.
The game allows competition up to eight players and offers a total of seven teams, including pirates, ninjas, robots and zombies, plus three unannounced ball slingers. Each team utilises its own unique techniques and strategies to try and ultimately defeat the enemies. The Nintendo Wii build of the game (it’s also being launched on Xbox Live shortly) features a number of new features, including fresh challenge modes and a number of customisable control options.
So, I kept hearing about this service, but I never saw anyone write or post about it. And after Nintendo brought it up again at their E3 press conference, I had to look into it. Maybe this is old for some of you, but here is a video of the Seattle Mariners Nintendo Fan Connection, downloadable software for your DS. You can check out games stats, watch live video/replays, order your food, and it looks like even play games with others in the stadium. I hope this spreads to more than just Safeco Field.
What do you think of this service and the potential it creates for more like it (i.e. other stadiums, airports, etc.). Also, have any of the readers been to Safeco and tried this out?
Last night, a few of us recorded the first segment of The Wii-kly Fuse, which is WiiNintendo’s podcast. We made it episode #0 because it was our first time and if things didn’t go well, we wouldn’t post it. Thankfully, everything went well and the podcast is finished. The podcast crew consisted of me, Charmy, queenzelda, and mazer. Durffen from the The Gamers’ Cafe (I knew him from the site we were on previously, Wii Live) also joined us for a while. Even MegaOmegaMegaZetta, who we refer to as MOMZ (his username was actually changed to MOMZ now) dropped in once or twice. If you want a brief outline for this week’s podcast, you can read what we talked about below:
- We introduce ourselves and say our positions on WiiNintendo and WiiFuse
- We discuss Wiigg
- Go over this week’s Wii, DS, and Wii Shop Channel releases
- Discuss recent news stories
- We give our thoughts on some Wii titles, such as Animal Crossing: City Folk, Wii Music, The Conduit, and more
- We discuss our plans for future podcasts
So that’s what you can expect from Podcast Zero, which clocks in at 55 minutes and 44 seconds and the file is 51 MB. We had a lot of fun recording it and it was great getting to know some Nintendo fans. I’m very excited to record future podcasts and I hope all of you enjoy them. You can download Podcast Zero below:
PLEASE give us your feedback and any suggestions you may have for future podcasts. The whole point of these podcasts is for all of you to have a great listening experience and for us to enjoy recording the podcasts. Your suggestions have already been helpful and we plan to include some of them in the future, but if you have anything more you want to suggest or to submit a question for the podcast crew (which we’ll play in an upcoming podcast), you can do one of three things. You can post a comment on this post, you can email me at DarkWish@WiiNintendo.net, or you can post it in the Submission/Suggestion Thread on the WiiFuse forums. I look forward to hearing from you.
Nintendo has denied neglecting core gamers and claims to have new projects based on existing IP in development with “all development teams”.
“We have never neglected our core gamers. We still have developers working on popular core gaming franchises but we need longer to complete these games, approximately two to three years,” the company told the October issue of Edge.
“These games are not ready to launch in early 2009 but are being worked on by all development teams.”
Skate It takes place in San Vanelona, five years after the events of the original game. A series of unspecified disasters has rocked the city, leaving it in ruins and almost completely devoid of human life. Almost. You’re one of the last people left in the once-great city. Why? Because all of the destruction has created a new landscape–one perfect for skating. One day you’re skating around a school when Reda, the photographer from the first game, spots you. He breaks out his camera, you do a few tricks, and the next thing you know, you’re gracing magazine covers, earning sponsors, and traveling the world.
Before the whole “traveling the world” thing, you’ll need to create a skater. Using the game’s deep character-customization tools, you’ll be able to make pretty much any crazy-looking guy or gal you’d like. (You couldn’t make female skaters in the original.) Once you’ve got their faces just right, you can dress them in a wide array of clothing, much of which is name-brand, as are the skateboards. There’s plenty of stuff to choose right from the get-go, but you’ll unlock plenty of gear as you progress through your career in case you want to freshen up your look.
You’ll also need to pick your control scheme, of which there are three available. The most basic uses only the Wii Remote; you tilt it to steer and flick it to do tricks. If you’re looking for a little more control, the second option lets you plug in the Nunchuk, which is used to steer the board while tricks are relegated to the remote. The third control scheme uses the Wii Balance Board and the remote. Given that we had previously covered both the first and third control options, we chose the Nunchuk-and-remote combination. Right off the bat the game puts you through a tutorial to help you learn the controls. We started outside what was once a school, skating from point to point without having to worry about doing any tricks. Tilting the remote slightly forward or back let us easily perform manuals. As soon as we showed that we were capable of remaining upright on a moving board, it was time to move on to some tricks. You can ollie by flicking the remote upward, and you can nollie by flicking it down. Add a twist left or right and you’ll be able to perform kick flips. You hold the B button while in the air to perform a grab. We struggled a bit while trying to grind rails in the tutorial, but it wasn’t too long before we embarked on our career.
G4 had a news story recently saying that there is a new peripheral for Guitar Hero: World Tour, aside from the new guitar, drums, and microphone. G4 said that this peripheral would only be used in the music studio mode. Well, turns out G4 lied to us.
“It turns out we got some wires crossed on this story: According to a Red Octane rep., there is no new peripheral. There is an option in the Studio Mode to add keyboard sounds but that comes from the guitar. The input port on the drums is for any other instrument you would like to add to the tracks. Our apologies for misinterpreting.” — Stephen Johnson of G4
To be honest, I’m glad. We don’t need more peripherals to Guitar Hero: World Tour. You can already do so much with it. One other tidbit on the music studio that people have wondered about that I should clarify as well is the vocals. You CAN record your own vocals, but you can’t put the lyrics in the game, so you’d basically just hum along. I’m assuming this is because of the copyrights to lyrics or something of the sort. So there’s one thing that can be learned from this experience: never trust G4.
