Bully: Scholarship Edition for the Nintendo Wii

You are Jimmy Hawkins, a stout adolescent with nothing to lose. Your mom has just departed for her fifth honeymoon and has dumped you at Bullworth Academy. You get to decide what type of person Jimmy will be. He could be a bully, a hero, a romancer, etc.

Its like reliving high school through another student. A large part of the game consists of conversing with characters in the game and completing tasks for them. This game is not meant for children hence the "Teen" rating. There is violence, offensive language, and some sexual content.

This game was developed by Rockstar games in Toronto.

Mario Kart for the Nintendo Wii

With both classic and brand new race courses Mario Kart for the Wii will be speeding onto shelves on April 27, 2008. If you plan on using the new Wii remotes during game play, you can buy specially designed steering wheels, known as Wii Wheels for this game.

When playing at home with others as many as four players can enter the game. If you are playing online up to 12 players can participate. A new feature of this game is the addition of motorbikes bikes into the vehicle selection.

screenshot

Rock Band for the Nintendo Wii

Rock Band is a multiplayer game based around popular music from the 1960s to the present. The game kit includes a microphone, a drum set, and two guitars. The customizable features include picking your band members gender clothes and accessories to be displayed during game play. There will be a total of 63 songs included with the game.

Rock Band is a product from Harmonix. Other popular products from Harmonix include the Guitar Hero instalments. The release date of Rock Band for the Nintendo Wii is June 22, 2008. The only difference there will be between the release for the Wii, Xbox 360 and PS2 is the ability to download new tracks will not be available with the Wii version.

Finally on the Wii: Super Smash Bros Brawl

While this might be a little late to be blogging about the hypemachine's brainchild that has been available almost two months, it seems appropriate to at least cover the game in our blog.

To start off, many people in the Nintendo army are huge fans of the Nintendo Original Character spin-off fighting game that is called Super Smash Bros. Its a simplistic fighting game that is surprisingly easy to pick up, but allows for plenty of strategy. It appeared for the first time on the N64 way back in the late 90s, 1999 to be exact. From it's inception it won gamer cool status and was an instant hit. Nintendo was sure not to disappoint the horde of fans that stuck around to get a taste of the sequel which was released very shortly after the release of Nintendo's GameCube. The Super Smash Bros. title would now be recognized as Nintendo super weapon.

This third installment is just as powerful as its predecessors in delivering what was expected. The game features about 35 characters, some of which are classics and others that have been recently added to the roster. Each player chooses a character and are dropped into a themed arena to battle each other using fighting styles that are defined by the character they chose. There can be up to 4 players in a match and opponent AI is offered in varying difficulties to fill any gap. Each character has a special set of skills that are based on the character's traits and games. This third game also features character themed "finishers" that remove opponents with one hit and adds a timeless sparkle to these duels. SSB:Brawl is also the first to introduce online play that can pit people against the world by using Wii buddy codes. This has many Wii owners publicly advertising their Wii buddy codes online to battle online.
The game has a bundle of new features that aren't only present in the classic battle modes and gameplay. Aside from characters and levels the game offers a great amount of trinkets an treasures, including trophies which were introduced in the the second game. While I won't go into them all I will talk about some of what i think to be the neatest new features. The coin launcher. It's basically an arcade style shooter in which you try to hit things with coins. It's extremely simple with enough bumps and kicks to keep you entertained. I find it a great way to earn trophies and space out. Also the Diorama feature is interesting as well. Players can arrange 4 trophies from their collection amongst a backdrop and make interesting scenes of battles or poses or crazy combinations. These pictures can then be sent to friends using Buddy Codes.

I'm no where near done with SSB:Brawl, and I won't be for sometime as the 'Challenges' the game offers to unlock some pretty cool stuff is going to keep me coming back. The game has plenty of unlockables and tidbits for the info hungry gamer.

While many people had a great sum of SSB:Brawl's secrets spoiled by an daily updated host site, I'm one gamer that didn't and have plenty left to discover.

Japanese Wii Ware Commercial

This is the first Japanese commercial for Wii Ware, Nintendo's upcoming downloadable games service for the Wii. They show off some of the games they are going to debut such as Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King and have the price in Wii points on the bottom right; where 100 points is approximately one dollar.

Last month IGN put up an interview with some details about the service here. Mainly they discuss what is happening between Nintendo and developers looking to create games for Wii Ware. Pointing out some specifics: developers will need to purchase a $2000 developer kit and have the appropriate licenses, they'll accept any game concept as long as it gets an ESRB ranking, developers can use any tools available on the Wii such as Wii Connect 24, and the control scheme is chosen by the developer be it classic controller or Wii remote. Wii Ware will also have approximately 100 games available at launch, but will be released over a period of time.

The launch date is planned to be May 12 in North America, so better prepare some points beforehand.

Wii Fit Tested by Blogger

The Wii Fit is one of the next big releases coming out for the Nintendo Wii, it comes with a balance board players use to do one of four activities: aerobic exercise, muscle conditioning, yoga and balance games. It has been out in Japan since November 30 and a writer for Kotaku, Brian Ashcraft has a feature up here detailing his experience with the Wii Fit.

A short summary of the Wii Fit appears to be that it will work as an exercise tool, thought there are cheaper alternatives if someone is looking for exercise. It also works well to motivate users because it keeps track of your weight so you can see how it changes through the day and over long periods of time. One big downfall thought is it limits the area user can move to the board for the most part and specifically caused the writer knee pains when doing what he felt was the most useful activity and caused him to stop.

Wii Fit seems like it would work best as a gateway activity to full on exercise, but for those unwilling to take the extra step it should help tone and lose weight. Expect it to hit stores sometime in May.