Nintendo Power

Cover
Mario Kart Wii

News
Fatal Frame: The Mask of the Lunar Eclipse (Wii, Tecmo/Nintendo)
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness (DS, Nintendo)
New International Track & Field (DS, Konami)
Death Jr.: Root of Evil (Wii, Eidos)
Bleach: Dark Souls (DS, Sega)
Bangai-O (DS, Treasure)
SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 1 (Wii, SNK)
Facebreaker (Wii, EA)
FFCC: My Life As a King (WiiWare, Square Enix)
LostWinds (WiiWare, Frontier)
WiiFit (Wii, Nintendo)

Wii Channels (WiiWare/VC coverage)
Major League Eating (WiiWare)
1080 Snowboarding
Adventures of Lolo 2
Columns III: Revenge of Columns
Lords of Thunder
Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers
Harvest Moon
Operation Wolf

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Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword – 8.5 Worms: A Space Oddity – 6.0 Baroque – 3.0 Sega Superstars Tennis (Wii) – 8.0 Bully: Scholarship Edition – 8.5 House of the Dead …
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What, A retro time during the Week! Big whoop want to fight about it?

 Link

* the image is bit blurry—but the game really does look pretty solid, graphically

The latest issue of Nintendo Power has the first Wii screen and snippet about Tomb …
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Super Smash Bros. Brawl – 10
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates – 7.0
Dungeon Explorer: Warriors of Ancient Arts – 6.5
No More Heroes – 8.0
Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer – 6.5
Bomberman Land – 5.0
Apollo Justice: Ace Attourney – 8.0
Assassin’s Creed: Altair’s Chronicles – 7.5
WWII Aces – 3.0
Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors – 7.0
Naruto: Ninja Destiny – 7.0 Read More

A summary of info from Nintendo Power…

– Symphonia highest selling Tales game in the US and still selling better than Abyss
– originally planned as a spin-off, but plans changed into full-fledged, direct story sequel
– dev started in 06, before the Wii casual market was established
– Nintendo specifically asked for a game that would cater to the core audience
– Monster system was added for casual appeal
– no specific changes were made after it became clear that the Wii was clicking with casuals
– Wiiimote uses, button shortcuts, pointing at what you want to shoot with the Sorcerer’s Ring; click and drag the world map and select destination with the pointer.
– more motion controls may be added for NA release
– Scenario writer for DotNW wrote the original game. There are others on-board from the original project, but most of the staff is new.
– Character proportions changed to stay faithful to new designs
– Fujishima was too busy to do the character designs, so Daigo Okumura (art director for Symphonia and Abyss) did it.
– Monster capturing system intended to be strategic, and also provide people with something to collect. It’s a difficult task to collect all the monsters first time around.
– Affection system present in the monster attraction aspect, no story changes as there were with the original game. Optional side quests available.
– Cooking system returns, but now the Wonder Chef teaches you recipes for monster food, which will change your monster parameters or aid their evolution.
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That big RPG announcement that Nintendo Power was promising to be in the next issue of Nintendo power is none other than the next installment of the Tales …
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According to the March Issue Of Nintendo power it is. Here is a “supposed” excerpt for the issue:

– Kingdom hearts 3 Wii exclusive, developed and published by square-enix. – …
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Link 

Previews: Apollo Justice, Brain Assist, Dinosour King, Dungeon Explorer: Warriors of Ancient Arts, Eco-Creatures: Save the Forest, The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return, Insecticide, Mushroom Men, Robo-Revolt: Robocalypse Now, Sega Superstars Tennis, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Super Dodgeball Brawlers, SSBB, WWII Aces

Alone in the Dark

– Edward Carnby – mysteriously transported to NYC
– Technique – momentarily clear your vision
– First/third person perspectives
– Switch to third person for action-oriented gameplay
– “Episodic” feel to the game
– Different control schemes which depends on context/actions
– Items available through Edward’s pocket, not inventory screen -> can combine items
– Puzzles present
– Can drive some cars – hot-wire mini-game occasionally

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Advance Wars: Days of Ruin – 8.5 One Piece: Unlimited Adventure – 6.5 Endless Ocean – 7.5 Mario & Sonic At The Olympic Games (DS) – 7.5 Bomberman Land Touch! …
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“Upcoming Virtual Console releases are a closely guarded secret, but consider this: Metroid went up right before the launch of Metroid Prime 3, and Super Mario Bros. 3 arrived …
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Taken from the “next month’s preview” section in this month’s Nintendo Power

“Next month’s cover story is an RPG so fantastic, so engrossing, so epic, and so hush-hush that we’d …
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Taken from the latest Nintendo power:

– water color/hand drawn graphical style – 4 party members – character specific abilities – 11 party members total – Characters known thus far: …
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Voice chat/Virtual Console
– Reggie talked about how Nintendo is still considering voicechat, and how he wouldn’t be surprised to see it on Wii in the future.
– Both expect it to happen (when Nintendo say stuff like this, it basically means it is happening) but are dumbfounded by how long it is taking.
– Both really hope it comes out in time for Smash, but are doubtful.
– For the majority of VC games, we’re not going to see modifications or upgrades (like we did with Pokemon Snap), simply because Nintendo doesn’t need to do it.
– Don’t expect a VC price drop in the future – they’re doing great and there’s no need to change anything.
– Hope to see more import games (like Sin and Punishment) and expect this because it appears that Nintendo is paying attention to the wider gaming community.

NPD
– Both Wii and DS did exceptionally well.
– Analysts are predicting around 1.6-1.7 million for Wii in December.
– Make sure you camp out if you want to get a Wii – don’t go on ebay or anything because you will be ripped off.
– If the quantity had been there, Wii sales would have definitely been over 1 million. Nintendo would be kicking themselves right now because of their inability to get more units out.
– Very solid performance by 360 (not too far away from Wii) and PSP, as well as Playstation 2. Playstation 3 numbers are still comparatively low, but much improved from last month.
– Galaxy released a week later than COD4, so both games are basically selling at the same pace – if Galaxy came out earlier, then it would probably have reached around the same numbers as COD4.
– Guitar Hero 3 Wii should be a 1 million seller by the end of the year, which should do very good things for future Wii 3rd party support and also proves that 3rd party games can sell very well if they are high quality and appeal to the Wii audience. EA should be kicking themselves for not releasing Rock Band on Wii.
– Bozon thinks it’s taken way too long for the mono issue in Guitar Hero 3 Wii to be fixed. Action needs to be taken.

Wii Software LTD’s

Super Mario Galaxy = 1.2 million

Smackdown vs Raw 2008 = 53,000 – not very good first-month numbers, and comparatively lower to PS2 and 360.

Carnival Games = 300,000 – has sold better than Nintendo’s Big Brain Academy.

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– Controls very smoothly – Graphics: much greater visual detail than any other Mario Kart. character animations, rushing water, exploding fireballs – Sound is great – 16 brand new courses …
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NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams (Wii) – 9.0 Warhammer 40,000: Squad Command (DS) – 8.0 Samurai Warriors: Katana (Wii) – 7.5 Draglade (DS) – 7.5 Boogie (DS) – 7.0 Super Swing …
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