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Highlights:

Wii Sports Resort

- It’ll sell a lot
- They’ve all had a chance to play it
- Only 1 or 2 duds
- Craig doesn’t like cycling
- Just sit there and drum the controllers for cycling
- Some games clearly not MotionPlus
- Airplane game probably not using the attachment (if it does, probably for the hell of it)
- The airplane game still feels good…Makes Craig want Pilotwings
- Have noticed a lot of drift – As you’re playing it gets out of calibration
- Can push down on d-pad with sword fighting for calibration – Not ideal
- Weird that this is sort of the revision 2 of the Wiimote and we still have to deal with these issues
- Don’t have as much control in frisbee golf compared to the dog-throwing mode
- Matt really enjoying archery – gives you a really long range (depth) to the course – Get a taste, then you wish it isn’t as shallow
- Wind should play a bigger factor in archery
- Wii Sports Bowling is the same game

Wii Sports Resort games in general/games Nintendo Team doesn’t like

- Wake-boarding – not much too it, Craig convinced it’s not MotionPlus at all
- Basketball mode, since it seems it’s about timing
- Power-cruising (Bozon) – felt it just feels like tilt to move, revving your wrist a lot
- Canoeing – Craig likes it, only good when you’re playing with other people
- Cycling – Not very good, just drum the controller and tilt
- Bozon doesn’t like airsports, Bozon/Craig do – Matt not a timer on the exploration mode
- Like archery, frisbee stuff, swordfighting, table tennis (controls are great, still very timing based) – bowling/golf are marginal updates
- Tiger has better putting than in Wii Sports Resort golf

The Conduit

- Gave it an 8.6/10
- Misspelled Matt’s name in the credits
- Liked the game, thought it was pretty good
- Good shooter, problem with it is that it doesn’t feel new at all
- Doesn’t push the genre forward other than controls
- Felt like Perfect Dark – straightforward FPS, couldn’t knock it for that because he still had a lot of fun
- Intense, controlled well
- Frame rate online dips but still a lot of fun
- Not the greatest FPS of all time but still a damn good one
- Nintendo Team is aware of the reviews that Wii owners have been complaining about
- Online mode is a big deal for Wii, people are having a lot of fun

Overlord Dark Legend

- 7.5
- Had a lot of potential
- Visuals were getting there
- Framey, had slowdown and camera issues
- A lot of good stuff but there were times where tech was holding it back
- Storyline was funny
- Controls well done
- Frame rate is a killer, it got in the way of gameplay
- Minion AI very dumb sometimes

Harry Potter

- More of the same
- EA hasn’t used the added time to make the game better
- Can tell it’s been shelved for awhile
- Dev team has immersed you into Hogwarts, feel like you’re a part of the school
- Flying stuff is pretty good – simple but cool
- Story crudely composed – cut-scenes clip, animation stiff, lip-syncing off
- Nearly Headless Nick will guide you around – funny and a great guide
- Harry Potter controls like a tank
- Overall Matt had fun of the game, it’s a good update but not anything amazing
- If you’re a Potter fan you’ll probably like it, if not it won’t draw you in
- Review tomorrow
- Hoping next year’s version will use MotionPlus
- Matt thinks EA needs to rethink their approach to the series and make a Wii-exclusive game which takes advantage of the system

Renegade Kid

- Got quick preview of Maximillian and the Rise of the Mutant Mudds
- Interesting since it’s their attempt at a different genre
- It’s a 3D platformer
- Has a lot in common with Super Mario Sunshine
- Max’s main gadget is his water pack
- Shoot water at mud characters
- Demo was very, very short (1-2 mins)
- Controlled pretty well
- Hold L or R button to go into first-person, control view point and gun by aiming with d-pad, aim with a face button
- Can also use touch screen for camera view
- Engine’s good
- Very early in development
- Has a lot of potential
- Could be retail or DSiWare release – Haven’t made a decision yet

Flower, Sun, and Rain

- Pretty cool
- Biggest problem is that it’s very obscure and strange
- Old game from PS2
- Puzzles are tough to figure out
- Feels kind of dated
- Probably will frustrate more than it pulls people in
- Gave it a 5.0

Overlord Minions

- Craig liked what they did for the DS version
- Follow the minions instead of the overlord
- 4 different minions, have their own abilities
- What wrecks the game is some of the most insensitive touch screen controls you could possibly have in this kind of game
- Controls like Phantom Hourglass – Control characters with stylus but then you have gesture controls too (work only about 50% of the time)
- Very frustrating experience
- Some clever puzzles
- Craig couldn’t get over touch screen controls
- Not shovelware but didn’t produce good-controlling game

Transformers (DS)

- Better than the original, better than the console versions
- Still has its problems
- Well-produced
- Gave it a 7.0
- Have voice-acting
- Don’t play direct with people online – Download a mission, play it, upload your score, depending on whether you’re an autobot or decepticon, mark that place on the map and take over the world
- Online is kind of like a weird version of Risk

Reader questions

- FPS on dual thumb stick feels archaic but still haven’t seen anyone that just locks the cursor in the center of the screen
- Bozon and Matt would recommend Tiger Woods MotionPlus bundle over Wii Sports Resort, but if you’re not a golf fan you should buy Wii Sports Resort
- Have no idea how well The Conduit sold – Matt has an interview with marketing director of SEGA about their sales projections – Will be tracking the game closely
- Predictions for The Conduit for the end of the year – 250K – 300K for Bozon, Matt agreed with it – Matt optimistically HOPING for above 500K – Probably 250,000…Matt doesn’t think that’s enough for a sequel
- Not sure what’s going on with Orbital Media or Racing Gears DS, will try to find out
- Guys handling Rock Band 2 DLC delay juggling a lot of stuff
- Little King’s Story better than Overlord, but don’t have cursor control, still really fun

[NeoGaf]

Matt Casamassina writes:

At E3 2008, Nintendo’s legendary master designer and recognized international superhero Shigeru Miyamoto said that the Mario and Zelda teams had reunited and were actively working on their next projects. Vague, but enough for us to throw parties. He also admitted straight up that Pikmin 3 was in development. More parties on our side. Miyamoto later commented that he liked the foundation that the company’s Tokyo studio laid down for Super Mario Galaxy, but wished the concepts were taken farther. With so much critical praise and equally strong sales, we think a sequel to Galaxy would be ideal, and timely. Meanwhile, we know from separate interviews with long-time Zelda director Eiji Aonuma that he is once more involved in the next major Wii title and it’s bound to use MotionPlus in some capacity. We would not be shocked if Galaxy 2, Pikmin 3 and even a teaser for the next major Zelda debuted at the big conference this June.

Nintendo trumpeted the benefits of Wii to the casual crowd at last year’s E3 — maybe not the best move given that the attending audience consisted of slobbering hardcore fanboys. Soon afterward, global leader Satoru Iwata apologized for not showing more ‘core’ titles. We think the Big N will correct that glaring oversight at this year’s exhibition. We already mentioned Mario, Pikmin and Zelda sequels, but expect to see more traditional software to complement the big guns. Games like Cosmic Walker, Takt of Magic, Dynamic Slash and Sin & Punishment 2, for starters. We fully anticipate that at least one if not more of these titles will showcase the gains of MotionPlus to the core in the same way that Wii Sports Resort does to the casual.

Okay — a bit of an open-ended prediction, we admit. The point is, with slowing sales in Japan and the sluggish economic climate around the globe, it might finally prove time for Nintendo to offer Wii buyers a couple of incentives. A price drop is a possibility, especially since the cost chasm between competing high-definition consoles is no longer so wide. Yet, at least outside of Japan, Wii and DS continue to sell very well — the two systems remain at the top of sales charts every month. There’s still life in them. For that reason, the publisher may opt instead to do what it always does to increase demand: offer new colors or develop some kind of attractive bundle. Black and silver are the obvious choices for colors, but Nintendo showcased Wii in all sorts of primary hues, including red, green and blue, when the system was unveiled. As for a bundle, Nintendo has traditionally included hot new releases in console packages, but with the ridiculous shelf life of Wii Fit and the high price of the peripheral, we would not rule out a Balance Board bundle without an overall price hike. That’d be a great value.

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The Texas powerhouse behind the Metroid Prime trilogy has publicly busied itself recently with Wii updates to the two GameCube titles in the series, now complete with remote support and new widescreen modes, among other things. By the way -- hey Nintendo, whenever you want to bring those games to America, feel free. But we know for certain that Retro Studios also has something else underway for Wii. Something big. And it could finally be time to show off that title at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2009. Bear in mind, we haven't heard anything so there's always the possibility that we'll have to wait even longer. However, if Nintendo is planning to dazzle the core fanbase, it usually draws on Retro Studios to help do so. And we're convinced that the developer's next big thing will blow people away.

The Big N’s Virtual Console Wii service has proven to be an easy cash cow for the company. Take catalog titles, untouched, and put them up for sale. Easy money. It’s only a matter of time before Nintendo offers a similar feature for its connected DSi via the DSiWare service. Imagine that you connect to DSiWare and can click on ‘Portable Generations’ to download classics from various portables, including Neo-Geo Pocket, Atari Lynx, SEGA Game Gear, Wonder Swan, and the obvious Nintendo systems like Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance. For a small fee, you could download and play through the Golden Sun series on Game Boy Advance, Capcom Vs SNK: Match of the Millennium for Neo-Geo Pocket or even the cult-favorite two-button real-time strategy game Warlocked on Game Boy Color. These, and all of the iterations of Nintendo’s own big games that have persisted through the generations.

[Read More]

Given that the game is geared toward those who like to play with others, there’s almost twice the amount of multiplayer content this time, so you can grab a friend or four and play against each other, in teams or cooperatively. There’s also a greater variety with the amusement-park themes. Some of the games that we played in Versus mode involved shooting each other’s pirate ships with the cannons, and knocking each others pucks off of the board. You’re still aiming for the highest score, so the goals and premise are the same, but the stages are more diverse this time around, which makes each round feel a bit different. You’ll earn achievements as you go along in the form of Boom Bux, the in-game currency that will let you unlock new levels and features if you don’t want to unlock them the traditional way. If you’ve completed everything and are still itching for some new content, you can always create new levels or edit the existing ones and share them with friends online.

Boom Blox Bash Party appears to be a bigger, flashier version of the previous game, with plenty of new mind-boggling levels to conquer and an array of features to mess around with. It’s really easy to get caught up destroying towers and tossing around bombs because it’s so simple and fun. Wii owners who missed the original may want to keep an eye on this one when it is released on May 19.

[Read More]

Josh from WiiFolder puts together, once again, a great video tour:

One of the really fun features in Excitebots are the random minigames that popup while racing. There is also a special mode where you can play just a certain mini game to earn stars. In this Wii Tour we’re going to sit back and quickly check out a few of them!

Kim and Jason contacted me a few weeks ago and we had a friendly chat about video games, getting older and still playing video games, and losing weight with video games. Kim and Jason were great.

Mickey DeLorenzo is a regular guy from South Philadelphia who lost weight with his beloved Wii and had fun doing it. In 2006, he began his “Wii Sports Experiment,” in which he simply added 30 minutes of Wii Sports to his day for six straight weeks. Pounds melted away and a media onslaught followed.

We caught up with Mickey for an interview. We asked him about the details of his workout regime, his favorite Nintendo game, and got him to share some tips for people who’d like to try using their Wii to get fit.

[Listen to Interview]

Sean Aaron writes:

Visually the game is quite nice to look at. There’s this cube floating in blackness that looks like it’s made of dry ice: it’s translucent with clouds or mist moving inside it and a faint glow around the edges. In the background is what can only be described as a grey sun looming over the proceedings. The mechanics are pretty simple: you’re supposed to fling these little people at the cube and ensure it’s balanced so they don’t slide off. That’s the game, right there in a nutshell. Interested? Of course! Who could resist throwing little people at cubes?

There are six levels in total and each level is divided into six stages. Each stage involves playing through a series of six cubes (well, if it wasn’t already obvious Nintendo is in league with the DEVIL). Each of the six cubes (called Cube 1, Cube 2, Cube 3, etc. up to the final one which I presume is called something like Final Cube) grow out of the previous ones creating a lovely geometric structure. When each cube starts you will be shown how many seconds you have to complete the cube and how many little people (called ninge — that’s pronounced “neen-gay”) you need to fling on it successfully.

A More Challenging Cube — no I don’t know what it does!

The controls are as follows (note that a small graphic in the lower left will show you what to do at each stage):

1. Shake the wiimote up and down (I expect most people — especially men — to be familiar with this motion) to “load” two ninge to fling.

2. Use the pointer and click A to indicate where you want to fling those ninge (people who use remote controls will be familiar with this motion) — oh you get one of each per “load”: red females and blue males.

3. Swing or flick the wiimote overhand to launch the ninge at the cube (Boom Blox players, baseball players and cricket bowlers will be familiar with this motion).

[WiiWareWorld]

Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo, will be speaking at GDC 2009 on Wednesday, March 24th (tomorrow) at 9 am pacific time (that’s noon eastern time for me). When the President of Nintendo speaks, it’s often good to listen. There has been a lot of talk about what to expect and I’ve taken the liberty of gathering the facts and rumors, as well as adding in my own opinion to give you a peek at what we can expect to see tomorrow.

The Topic

The topic of Iwata’s keynote is “Discovering New Development Opportunities”. What kind of new development opportunities could they be talking about? Well, there’s the Nintendo DSi for one thing. Nintendo has stressed that the camera is not meant to be high quality, but meant to be a tool to explore more uses in games. Maybe we’ll see our first retail DSi title or at least some creative use for the DSi. It is possible though that any DSi announcements will be held off until later in the day when Masato Kuwahara will talk about the DSi in a session called “The Inspiration Behind Nintendo DSi Development”.

More importantly though, I think Nintendo will talk about Wii MotionPlus. Its release date slipped from Spring 2009 to a generic 2009 on Nintendo’s Press site and now we don’t know when it’s coming. Wii MotionPlus can definitely offer up some great new development opportunities and I would say it’s a shoe-in for the keynote tomorrow. Nintendo could easily show that they will be supporting Wii MotionPlus and making it the new standard by announcing some new games to go with it as well.

Previous Keynotes

Sometimes it’s good to look at the past to get a good indication of what’s coming in the future. Last year, Nintendo announced their Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection Pay and Play service which included DLC and announced more details on WiiWare. In 2007, Miyamoto announced the Check Mii Out Channel and debuted a new Super Mario Galaxy trailer.

The last time Iwata took the stage was in 2006 when he talked about “disrupting development”. That’s when he revealed The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and the addition of Sega Genesis and TurboGrafx-16 games on the Virtual Console. He also had some Nintendo reps demo some games, like Brain Age and Metroid Prime: Hunters. The year before that, in 2005, Iwata revealed new details on Wii (then codenamed “Revolution) and revealed a new trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

Based on history, it seems that when Iwata comes on stage, there is a big announcement or two. He also seems to love to bring something new about Zelda with him, like a new trailer or the announcement of a new game. Could we see a new Zelda title? Let’s take a look at history…

The Legend of Zelda

If we look at history, we’ll see that the console Zelda games have all been released two years apart, except for the three year gap between Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. Since Twilight Princess released in 2006, we can expect the next Zelda title this year or early next year. That means we know we’ll have to find out more about the next Zelda sometime this year. We know it’s coming to Wii and we know that it’s been in development since around when Twilight Princess was released. The only question is whether Nintendo will show it off tomorrow at GDC or wait for E3. They do love to make us wait until right before release time to give us details, so who knows. If they show it off at E3 and show off one or two other things, their conference will automatically be awesome.

However, the GDC keynote is all about new development opportunitites. A recent patent which referenced a game known as The Legend of OO. The patent hinted at a new casual audience-friendly Zelda title that included hint videos in the game that would be accessible at certain parts of the game and a collection of cutscenes and other important storyline portions where players can just jump into the game at any point. We do know that the next Zelda for Wii will be like no other Zelda title, so this patent could be hinting at new features of the next Zelda or the title could be used as a reference only. We’ll just have to wait and see if Nintendo will reveal it at GDC or E3, but you can expect it at one or the other.

The Facts

What do we know will happen tomorrow for sure? We know that the press will be allowed to live-blog and write about the keynote, but will only be able to film the first five minutes of the keynote. Why the first five minutes only? We don’t really know, but it seems odd that only that part of the keynote can be filmed. We also know that Punch-Out!! will be playable on the show floor, so maybe they’ll also demo it during the keynote as well. All of that comes from IGN’s Nintendo Voice Chat Podcast.

Sam Kennedy from 1Up had much more interesting tidbits to tell us about the keynote. Kennedy mentioned that he thought they would only be talking about Wii MotionPlus and the Nintendo DSi, but it turns out they will be announcing some new games. The new game announcements will be for Wii, WiiWare, and Virtual Console and they’ll include Nintendo titles and third party titles. Kennedy says he has heard about a few of them and one of them makes him giddy and excited for tomorrow.

While not completely related, we know that the storage solution for Wii is coming in the Spring, and IGN has said they heard it will release at the end of March. Could we hear about it at the keynote? Maybe a passing mention.

What To Expect

Based on everything, it sounds like it’ll be something to pay attention to. We can expect some Wii, WiiWare, and Virtual Console game announcements from Nintendo and third parties. We can also expect more on Wii MotionPlus, including hopefully its release date. It’s very hard to say if the new Zelda Wii will be shown tomorrow or if they’ll wait until E3. If it is shown, we can probably expect Wii MotionPlus compatibility for the game. Whatever the case, we should expect some good announcements. WiiNintendo will have all the latest posted here for you, so make sure you tune in!

[Via Kotaku, Joystiq, 1Up, and NeoGAF]