Wii-U

Red Wii-Bundle Also Coming to North America

In a press release this week, Nintendo announced that the Red Wii-Bundle commemorating the 25^th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. will arrive in North America on November 7^th. However, don’t expect this new bundle to stick around for very long. This bundle will be the most cost effective and most fully featured Wii console pack yet released. Priced at $199.99, the bundle includes a red Wii console, a red Nunchuk controller, the new and red Wii Remote Plus controller, a copy of Wii Sports, and a copy of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, as well. The normal Wii package currently on shelves only includes a fourth of this content.

Speaking of Wii packages lacking in content, the Red Wii-Bundles for both Europe and Japan differ from the North American release considerably, with each territory’s bundle missing something the other releases contain. While the Japanese bundle doesn’t come with the two pack-in games North Americans get, the bundle does come preloaded with an altered version of Super Mario Bros. that features item blocks emblazoned with the number twenty-five in honor of the game’s 25^th anniversary instead of the traditional question mark blocks. The European bundle, on the other hand, will contain everything in the North American package, plus a preloaded copy of the original Donkey Kong, which will most likely be the NES version. However, the Europeans will not get the altered Super Mario Bros.

Professor Layton and Phoenix Wright Match Wits on 3DS

At a press conference in Tokyo, Level 5 has just announced Layton Kyouju VS Gyakuten Saiban, the Japanese name for a new 3DS game that they are developing as a franchise crossover between Level 5’s own Professor Layton and Capcom’s Phoenix Wright.  Level 5 has announced that they will be developing this fanboy’s wet dream in collaboration with Capcom.  Attentive fans may remember that the two companies recently teased that they would be cooperating on a project; this appears to be the fruits of their labor.   

Goldeneye 007 Story Trailer

The new trailer for the upcoming Goldeneye remake on the Wii focuses on how the writers have updated the classic story.  While the original N64 game was based on the 1995 Pierce Brosnan film of the same name, this Goldeneye “re-imagining” has been updated to be more relevant to modern gamers.  Not only will the game take place in the current socio-economic climate, but it will be replacing Pierce Brosnan’s role as James Bond with Daniel Craig’s version of the character as well.  Developers have also revealed that the current worldwide financial crisis will take a more prominent role in the plot, affecting character motivations and interactions.

New Release Date for Conduit 2

Sega has just revealed the new release date for Conduit 2 on their Conduit 2 blog site. This is the first concrete news involving the game’s release to make its way into the news since developer High Voltage Software announced the sequel’s delay this past September. Unfortunately, a specific day of release has not been nailed down quite yet, but fans of the original Conduit should be happy to know that they can continue exploring the series’ sci-fi universe come February 2011.

The Sega blog also reports that Conduit 2 experienced two very well received showings at E3 and PAX this year, which allowed High Voltage Software to come up with new ideas for the game and take in a lot of fan feedback. As it turns out, these new ideas and fan feedback were the direct cause of the Wii shooter’s delay. Hopefully, this extra development time will prove invaluable for Conduit 2’s development team, as the first Conduit was no more than an unoriginal, albeit highly competent, Wii take on the first-person shooter genre.

Famitsu Unveils Rune Factory Oceans

The Rune Factory series started on the Nintendo DS in 2007. Published by Natsume, Rune Factory took the farm work of Harvest Moon and introduced combat to the mix. A great feature about the game was the amount of variety. If you were not into farming, you could go mining and dungeon crawling or vice-versa.  In Rune Factory, you played as Raguna, a mysterious boy who has lost his memory. He collapses right in front of the house of a young girl named Mist. She offers you her old farm that she no longer uses; as long as you run the farm. You encounter a monster and defeat it with your hoe and Mist explains that monsters have been appearing everywhere lately.

Can Skyward Sword Evolve the Zelda Series?

Ever since E3 2010, hype has steadily built up around The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, and understandably so. Nintendo is positioning this new Zelda title to become the game that finally changes the tried and true, yet ultimately staling, Zelda formula that has been with the series ever since Link’s first days on the NES. The question is: How can Nintendo accomplish such a lofty goal? So far, the going looks tough for Nintendo. Fans have already decided that Skyward Sword will be nothing more than a combination of Wii Motion Plus controls and the art styles and game mechanics of The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. While that may appear to be true at first glance, it would serve fans well to remember that during Twilight Princess’ development, series creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, insisted that “Twilight Princess will be, without a doubt, the last Zelda game as you know it in its present form.” To figure out what this quote means for Skyward Sword, it is important to understand what exactly Twilight Princess did for the series.

Whether or not gamers played it on Wii or Gamecube, Twilight Princess represented a pivotal moment in the series that went far beyond the initial Ocarina of Time 2.0 accusations the game received. What Nintendo had aimed for and achieved with Twilight Princess was the culmination of nearly every success the series had attained so far. For starters, the game had Ocarina of Time’s game-play mechanics, Majora’s Mask’s dark narrative style, A Link to the Past’s dual world adventuring, and The Wind Waker’s technologically adept engine. The list could go on as to how each games in the series contributed to Twilight Princess’ make-up, but doing so would also reveal the game’s greatest weakness: It is the culmination of all these things. Sure, the game does venture beyond Ocarina of Time 2.0 territory when it combines all of these elements well, but Ocarina of Time had, unfortunately, already accomplished a similar cumulative task almost a decade before. Link’s first foray into the third dimension could not have existed had it not been for games that had come before it, and current series director, Eiji Aonuma, has long understood this point. Much like today, The Zelda franchise was in desperate need of a freshening up by the time Aonuma had taken charge of the series, and it was plain to him that Ocarina of Time, while impressive, had done little more than to transplant 2D game design into the third dimension. His response to this problem was Majora’s Mask.

Remote Plus Priced, Dated, and Ready to Ship

According to a press release on Nintendo’s Japanese website, details on the Wii’s new Remote Plus controller have finally arrived after two weeks of media dodging. Starting November 11th, Japanese gamers will finally get the chance to snatch up the system’s latest response to the current industry-wide motion control blitz for what is roughly the equivalent of forty U.S. dollars. Whether that price will make its way across the Pacific is still unknown, but it’s not very likely that the price will increase too much, if at all, during the controller’s ride over. Expect an official U.S. announcement soon regarding when exactly that ride will take place.

And, thanks to a translation of the press release made by Japanese gaming blog Andriasang, Player Affinity has learned that Nintendo intends to eventually phase out the current Wii Remote and it’s Wii Motion Plus attachment by packing the Remote Plus with future shipments of the Wii home console. Additionally, side-by-side comparison pictures included in the press release reveal that the Remote Plus is the exact same size as the original Wii Remote. This should come as good news for all the Nintendo fanboys out there. Because, Nintendo can finally tell Sony and Microsoft that they too have a new controller, and it doesn’t require a peripheral to play games.