Something weird is up at Nintendo Europe. Over the weekend, two new DS games got announced and one long-absent Wii game got dated via their press area, despite total silence from America and Japan. Is Europe about to get a ton of exclusive Nintendo games, or has their press room committed a major gaffe?
Reportedly, Nintendo Europe's press area was updated with a new Disaster: Day of Crisis press release that announced the game for an October 24 release. That said, Day of Crisis has already missed at least three different ship dates and was declared "indefinitely delayed" just a few months ago.
While there's no press releases for them, Nintendo of Europe's press site is also reportedly listing the DS RPGs Herakles no Eikou and Bokura wa Kaseki Holder in their upcoming release schedule. Herakles no Eikou is actually a fairly old series of RPGs about Greek mythology, while Bokura wa Kaseki Holder has something to do with collecting dinosaur fossils.
EDIT: Looks like the second Professor Layton game has also been dated for Europe, November 7th. Of course, there's no new info on the US release date.
Here's an interesting follow-up on the last LucasArts rumor. This time is the source is the perennial but occasionally dubious Quartermann, so take it for what it is: another rumor, though an interesting one.
Remember earlier this summer when LucasArts finally announced Star Wars: The Clone Wars -- Lightsaber Duels, the lightsaber-wielding Wii game that everyone had been waiting for? And then not a month later, when Nintendo announced WiiMotion Plus during E3? Well, apparently LucasArts hadn't heard anything about this new technology, so Lightsaber Duels will not be implementing it. The understandably ticked-off publisher is already in talks about another Wii lightsaber game that will use MotionPlus for sometime next year, according to our sources
I sort of wonder if this new Star Wars lightsaber game, if it's not lies and vaporware, might use an Original Trilogy setting. It would allow for more "realistic" battles and better use of the MotionPlus support.
The upcoming Tatsunoko vs. Capcom fighting game is drawing quite a stir from the fan community, if less so than the much bigger Street Fighter IV. Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is a fighting crossover in the style of Marvel vs. Capcom, this time pitting Capcom against the anime heroes created by the legendary Tatsunoko Pro animation studio. While it's set for an arcade release, it's still interesting to us because of some information that popped up on this Japanese page.
Along with basic information about the arcade unit's price (a ridiculous 300,000 yen), basic gameplay style, and concept, there's some mention of the hardware the game is running on. The site describes the game as running on a "Wii interchangeable circuit board" - basically, an arcade board that's extremely similar to the Wii's own internal hardware. Think of the Dreamcast and its famous arcade sister board, the Naomi.
What this seems to mean (if I'm right) is that Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is, in hardware terms, basically a Wii game, and likely to be ported to the Wii when time for console editions comes.
Now here's a bit of speculation to chew on. There have been no official announcements, but Go Nintendo has put up an image of a flyer which states that High Voltage's highly-anticipated Wii FPS The Conduit will be at this year's Penny Arcade Expo... as part of the Nintendo booth. That is, it will be displayed at PAX alongside Nintendo's own first-party games.
At E3, High Voltage had to make off-site appointments to show off the game because they didn't have a publisher, and so didn't have a booth. Why is Nintendo suddenly playing host to them at PAX? Did High Voltage cut some kind of deal with Nintendo to get floor space? Possible, but... does Nintendo intend to publish the Conduit themselves?
The only hard source on this is a tiny paragraph in this month's new Game Informer, so take it with a grain of salt. It's long been established that Nintendo didn't bother to tell any third parties about the Wii MotionPlus peripheral until their E3 press conference this year, which means that basically nothing hitting in Q4 this year or even early 2009 is likely to support it.
The word is that LucasArts is hopping mad with Nintendo about this, since one of their Q4 titles for this year - Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels - is the sort of title that would benefit tremendously from 1:1 motion input. Instead, the "ultimate lightsaber combat game" is very likely to ship with swordfighting controls inferior to those found in Wii Sports Resort (on top of being beaten to lightsaber combat by No More Heroes).
If Nintendo had shared the tech with them earlier in the development process, then Lightsaber Duels could've shipped as one of the first titles with full Wii MotionPlus support. Instead, it's looking more likely that LucasArts and possibly other third-party publishers are simply not going to support the peripheral at all.
Star Wars The Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels
So, you can now pre-order Wii Music at Amazon.com for the expected price of $49.99. What's unexpected is that Amazon appears to be telling you that you'll get your copy of the game on November 3rd. It's a plausible enough date, but Nintendo hasn't announced anything official yet. Did Amazon leak the date, or is it just a placeholder?
Wii Music
Here's a weird story that may very well be true. The Times UK newspaper reports a rumor that game designer extraordinaire Shigeru Miyamoto isn't allowed to discuss his hobbies with the press, based on information given them by an anonymous inside Nintendo source. The logic is that since he bases all of his games on his pastimes, information about what he's doing could give the competition a heads-up regarding what Nintendo's next big game - or console - is going to be.
... According to sources at Nintendo, the games designer has been banned by the company from speaking publicly about his hobbies.
It's not that they are naughty, illegal or even nerdish, it's just that any glimpse inside his head could be worth billions. Particularly so now: the Wii still sells strongly around the world, but its successor is the talking point. Unfortunately, the only place where the discussion has any grounding is inside Mr Miyamoto's head.
It's been rumored for awhile that the Metallic Silver DS Lite model that's already available in Europe and Japan would be heading to the US this year. Kotaku offered the first evidence of this with a screenshot of an SKU search from GameStop, leading to rumors of the Metallic Silver being an exclusive. GoNintendo upped the ante with a screenshot of the Metallic Silver being offered at online store AccessIngram.com, whose information claims that the Metallic Silver is going to replace the Polar White DS Lite model. So while we can't say exactly what the terms of sale for the Metallic Silver DS Lite in the US will be, it's looking pretty likely we'll be seeing it going onsale sometime in September.
Kotaku's big readership means they snap up some tasty exclusive tips, like this one from an anonymous GameStop employee. Looks like the much-hated but ubiquitous specialty retail chain is going to sell a North American version of the once Japan-only Palkia & Dialgya Pokemon-branded black Nintendo DS Lite sometime later this year. The DS is going to be bundled with some exclusive Pokeswag like some sort of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DVD, a t-shirt, and a poster for $129.99. No word on whether or not it'll come bundled with a game, or which game it might be, but at the $129 price it seems unlikely.
See the survey pictures above, originally hosted by the great guys at GoNintendo? That's an image of a survey a cagey fan was taking online, sent out by Capcom through the GamersInstinct network. It clearly depicts questions talking about a Wii version of Resident Evil 5, currently slated to be a 360/PS3 title. Exactly how likely such a release is will probably be determined by how well, or poorly, Dead Rising: Chop 'Til You Drop performs. If Capcom moves a lot of Dead Rising on Wii, then I bet we see the Resident Evil 4 Wii engine come back to play host to a watered-down version of its own sequel. Which is, honestly, kind of weird, but probably better than no RE5 at all for Nintendo fans.
Resident Evil 5
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