nintendo

Wii virtual console releases for this week

As it does every Monday, Nintendo has released three new virtual console games to download via the Wii shop channel. They are:

Super Mario Bros. 2 (1988, NES, 500 Wii points) - Revisit this 1988 classic and play as Mario, Luigi, Toad, or the Princess, through seven different worlds. Dragon Spirit (1989, TurboGrafx 16, 600 Wii points) - This classic vertically scrolling shooter (they sure don't make 'em like they used to) takes you through eight levels on your mission to save Princess Alicia. Ecco: The Tides of Time (1994, Genesis, 800 Wii points) - The Tides of Time … Read more

PS3 is tops in Australia and a failure in the US

Michael Ephraim, managing director of Sony Australia, has officially announced that the Playstation 3 is the console war king - in Australia. According to Ephraim, sales figures in the Land Down Under have shown the "PS3...outselling Wii and Xbox 360 every week, except for last week."

The recent stories like this one out of the Sony camp are becoming pathetic at best. The company who formerly touted its dominance over the video game industry is left touting a 50,000 unit sale for March and a sales lead "for every week, except for the last week.&… Read more

Accessories that go a Wii too far

To all the makers of insane Wii accessories, we say thank you. Why? Because we were on the verge of actually thinking that the "Bass Fishing Wii" sounded like it actually made sense, but then the latest entries to the market jolted us back into reality.

The cooking utensils featured on Gizmodo--complete with "frying pan, knife, fork and spatula"--are disturbing indications that people have gotten a wee too close to the Wii. These, by the way, come hot on the heels of the screw-on pool cue.

If people must spend all their waking hours with … Read more

BBC's iPlayer to launch in late July, Mac and Vista support on the way

The BBC's iPlayer will be making it's official, public beta debut July 27 to U.K. residents who are legal TV license holders--a yearly taxation system that pays for TV ownership and usage. The small desktop software client allows users to download and view episodes or entire series of BBC television programming on their PCs.

In addition to launching the Windows client, the BBC will also be rolling out integration of the iPlayer to the BBC's U.K. site, and later to YouTube. The team behind it is also working on versions of the iPlayer client … Read more

Nintendo announces WiiWare

Pretty soon the Wii's online store won't be just for Virtual Console games and Opera. Nintendo just announced WiiWare, a Wii software creation service for indie developers. Smaller game companies will be able to use WiiWare to produce downloadable games to distribute and sell over Nintendo's Wii Shop Channel.

Nintendo's move has shades of Microsoft's XNA Studio Express initiative, in which the Xbox community can create games and potentially make them available for play on the Xbox 360 or on Windows machines.

This is more than welcome news for Wii owners, who have been experiencing … Read more

Nicole Kidman has a 'Brain Age' of 52

Nintendo fanboys are now officially in love with Nicole Kidman. Starting last night, she began appearing in TV ads for the sequel to Nintendo's incredibly popular DS game, Brain Age.

Kidman on the Brain Age series:

"I love the concept that Nintendo is reaching out to new audiences with its self-improvement products like Brain Training. Most importantly, I've quickly found that training my brain is a great way to keep my mind feeling young."

Interestingly enough, this campaign is being launched only in Europe with no announced plans to bring it across the pond. One would … Read more

The Wii goes fishing

Being old enough to have watched the original SNL--before it was called SNL--we've always had a special place in our hearts for bass. So we may well have a skewed perspective on the the "Bass Fishing Wii" game coming out of Japan (of course).

Kotaku says the game has six stages and takes place in locales around the world, including the Grand Canyon. (We had no idea that bass fishing was so big there.) It sounds pretty boring to us too, which is why Kotaku speculates that Chisato Morishita--a "former race queen model"--was hired … Read more

Choose your side in the Transformers DS games and fight on the web

OK, movie tie-in games tend to suck. It's a sad rule with few exceptions, but most movie games feel phoned in and generic.

Hope springs eternal, though, and the allure of giant transforming robots is keeping me at least a little bit hopeful for the Transformers games. Yesterday we received copies of Transformers for the Nintendo DS. I can't really give it anything beyond my first impressions yet (keep an eye on Gamespot for the inevitable review, though), but it seems like a fun game. The graphics are extremely blocky, thanks to the DS' relatively low power, and … Read more

Cosmic Wii story wins film festival

If you had a hankering to win a contest to make the best short Nintendo-themed film, you're disappointed Tuesday. Unless your name is Jack Paccione, that is.

Paccione's film, Good vs. Wiivil, in which the successful video game console is placed in the middle of a cosmic struggle between right and wrong, won the first-ever Nintendo Short Cuts Showcase film festival. He beat out nine other entrants.

Nintendo was clearly happy about the more than 200 content entries given that each of these works celebrated the company and its work.

"It reinforced our innovation and our own … Read more