Born for Wii: Stranger's Wrath

After the dreary all-night study benders, frantic cramming, and endless writing that coalesce to produce the torturous period that is college finals, gamers around the country find time to kick back, relax, and play through the dreaded backlog that resulted from the flood of titles released during the holiday season. After playing through the wonderful Mirror's Edge, I set my sights on an older title I'd had sitting around for several months (thanks to the Xbox 360's spotty backwards compatibility). That game was Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath. Released towards the end of the Xbox's life cycle in 2005, Stranger's Wrath was also the last game created by Oddworld Inhabitants before the studio shifted focus to creating cinematic movies. And it's a shame, because Stranger's Wrath succeeds at everything it attempts. It's fun, inventive, and as full of life as every other Oddworld creation. Follow along with Stranger (in both first and third person!) as he tracks down bounties in the Odd version of the Old West in this week's Born for Wii.   Gallery: Born for Wii: Stranger's Wrrath

 

Nintendo makes Brawl world less colorful

Remember the awesome Super Smash Bros. Brawl hacking project through which some guys were making alternate color schemes for all the character models? Well, the group responsible started calling themselves ]EE[ Syntax-Error, and they were planning to distribute a patch for Brawl that would allow any homebrew-capable Wii owner to play with all kinds of recolored characters. Soon before this patch was to be released, their site went down. We don't know exactly what happened, but according to a post at Stack Smash, a related Smash Bros. character model hacking site, Nintendo threatened Syntax-Error with lawsuits. As a result, the site is down and the patch is shelved. The image above, found in another Stack Smash post, features almost every texture alteration that was to be released with the software. Check out Pac-Kirby! Oh, we've just made ourselves sad. Gallery: Smash Bros. Brawl Snapshots [Thanks, Ants!]

 

Sonic and the Black Knight boxart suggests more storybook games

Without making a big deal about it, Sega quietly began a new spinoff franchise with Sonic and the Secret Rings. The first Sonic Wii game put Sega's mascot into an Arabian Nights-influenced world. The followup, Sonic and the Black Knight, was announced as the second entry in the "Storybook Series." New North American boxart for Black Knight found on Amazon shows that Sega has now decided to officially identify the game (and thus Secret Rings, retroactively) as a Storybook Series entry, right there in the corner of the label. And, really, the only reason to do that now is to set it up as an ongoing series. That means more Wii Sonic games in different worlds taken from classic stories. Hopefully for Sega, this initiative will work out better than Nintendo's Education Series. Gallery: Sonic and the Black Knight [Via GoNintendo]

 

VC Tuesday: Salamander's Firey Ambition

What a delightful variety of games on the Japanese Virtual Console this Christmas week! Compare that to the American selection, which is delightful but not at all varied. Japan has four new old games, from four different systems, in four different gameplay styles, including a shmup, a strategy game, a platformer, and a wrestling game -- and great examples of all four genres! Salamander (Famicom, 1-2 players, 500 Wii Points) Super Nobunaga no Yabou (Super Famicom, 1-8 players, 800 Wii Points) Super Wonder Boy: Monster World (Sega Master System, 1 player, 500 Wii Points) Fire Pro Wrestling 3 Legend Bout (PC Engine, 1-4 players, 600 Wii Points) WiiWare is also a treat this week, but one the rest of the world has already been served: LostWinds, published in Japan by Square Enix.

 

Wii Warm Up: Saturday special

With Animal Crossing: City Folk having released for awhile now, we were wondering how many of you managed to catch a performance or two by the one they call K.K. Slider. We used to catch his Saturday concerts all of the time in Animal Crossing: Wild World, so we're anxious to hear your thoughts on the dog's performances in the new game. So, have you caught a show yet? Thoughts?

 

Japan now to have two WiiWare manga services

Sunsoft's WiiWare manga viewer, through which users can download manga for a fee, is a great idea. At least, Shonen Jump seems to think so. At their Jump Festa event, the publication offered demos of a WiiWare service called Mangaon, branded with the name of Jump's online manga site Jumpland. Posters indicate that the service, also available on DSi, will have some kind of "game" element -- a 3D world with original characters to interact with. This could be the navigation system for the manga. The real draw here is Jump's stable of manga: One Piece and Dragon Ball were on display in the demo. Surprisingly, the web version of Jumpland actually includes a site for English-language manga, and, of course, Shonen Jump is outrageously popular in the West, so it's not entirely unbelievable for Jump to consider bringing this service over.

 

We hope this Wallace & Gromit preview becomes relevant

We're quite happy Eurogamer suggested that Telltale's latest episodic adventure game, Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures, could be headed to Wii, because we wouldn't have been able to post about it otherwise, and we're totally excited about it! They seem very confident, even putting a Wii icon in the image on the front page that links to the article. Eurogamer's logic is fairly sound: the game is to be released on PC and some console, so why not the one that Telltale put their last two games, Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People and Sam & Max, on? Especially since Strong Bad has done so well as a WiiWare game. The new game sounds brilliant, combining Telltale's signature humorous puzzle-solving with elements of the classic Aardman series like Wallace's baroque inventions, and bringing more personality and interactivity to NPCs. We suggest you read Eurogamer's preview and set yourself up for potential future disappointment should this end up on N-Gage or something.

 

Secret of Mana, Sonic 2 on PAL Virtual Console this week

As a Christmas treat to its impeccably-behaved PAL region fans, Nintendo of Europe unveiled this week's Euro/Aussie Virtual Console offerings early, and holy crap it's Secret of Mana. Square's classic three-player RPG has been available in Japan and North America (in Virtual Console form) since September and October respectively, and will make the trip to PAL land on Boxing Day. The toys we excitedly unwrap in front of our parents on Christmas Day morning will be swiftly cast aside! Less thrillingly, Secret of Mana will be joined by the Master System version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2; and because this is essentially VC Friday on a Tuesday, you can see footage of both beyond the break! Gallery: Secret of Mana (SNES) As a Christmas treat to its impeccably-behaved PAL region fans, Nintendo of Europe unveiled this week's Euro/Aussie Virtual Console offerings early, and holy crap it's Secret of Mana. Square's classic three-player RPG has been available in Japan and North America (in Virtual Console form) since September and October respectively, and will make the trip to PAL land on Boxing Day. The toys we excitedly unwrap in front of our parents on Christmas Day morning will be swiftly cast aside! Less thrillingly, Secret of Mana will be joined by the Master System version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2; and because this is essentially VC Friday on a Tuesday, you can see footage of both beyond the break! Gallery: Secret of Mana (SNES)

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Klonoa to North America in spring

Yay! The latest Nintendo Power has confirmed a North American localization of Klonoa: Door to Phantomile (under the abbreviated moniker of Klonoa), and the good news doesn't stop there. For example: The magazine states that Namco Bandai has settled on keeping the more chibi of its two designs for our eponymous hero, meaning Klonoa won't be made to look like about a million other cute, generic platform anthropomorphs. The elongated ears stay! Pleasingly, there will be a sensible range of control options, allowing you to rock a side-on Wiimote (surely the closest to how the PS1-era originals were enjoyed), a Cube pad, or the Classic Controller. Apparently, there has been much discussion of sequels and remakes; let's hope the game's weak sales in Japan don't affect any plans to follow through on this! Gallery: Klonoa: Door to Phantomile [Via Go Nintendo]

 

Inafune says more Mega Man sequels could happen

If there's one thing that Mega Man 9 proved to us, it's that we desperately need a Mega Man 10. Seriously, Mega Man 9 might have done more harm than good, because at least before we never held out hope for such a retro-revival. Now, having tasted the greatness, we need more. That's where Mega Man character designer and Capcom bigwig Keiji Inafune comes into the picture. During a recent interview with 1UP, he commented on the possibility of another downloadable Mega Man title, stating that Mega Man 9 came based on "our users' feedback." He went on to elaborate by saying the users "indicated that they wanted to see it again, so if we can continue to find ways to involve users and use their feedback to evolve the game, I think we can go on to continue to make MM10, MM11, and so on. The main point is how and if we can continue to incorporate user feedback into the creation of the game." Mr. Inafune, just do it already. Mega Man 9 had to have sold truckloads, and you all got more from us on the DLC, so what's the deal? Personally, we're not willing to settle for any less than a new 8-bit Mega Man each year. So can you get on it? Please? Gallery: Mega Man Boxarts

 

Wii resale price plummets to sane level

Desperate parents pushed the Wii's average resale value to $469 during December 2007, but this year is a different, cheaper story. According to Video Game Price Charts, the system is now reselling on sites such as eBay and Amazon for an average of $250 -- otherwise known as the Wii's list price. Witness the effect of an increased Wii supply to North America, and also of people having no money! Fortunately for heartless Wii scalper jerks, the site calculates that the average "gray market" price of Wii Fit is still comfortably above what you would pay at a store. Gallery: Can't find Wii Fit? Try these alternatives! [Via Gamasutra]