“Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) today announced it is the first cruise line to offer guests a chance to experience Nintendo’s red-hot Wii video game system on board its ships.”  Sure you’ve seen hotels with game controllers hooked up to the TV in your room, but this installation they’re using for the Wii on these ships are more prominent. Observe.

Holy cow, look at the size of that screen. The press release says they hold tournaments for all the sports every night (probably on those giant screens), but there’s also smaller setups around the ship which play Wii Play, WarioWare: Smooth Moves and Excite Truck in addition to Wii Sports.

They plan on adding the Wii to their entire fleet in the next month. So if you’re looking for a good way to squander away your expensive cruise here’s your chance! Yahhhoooo! (More pictures inside)

(Continue)

Comments(1)

Being from the era where the entire ‘console war’ had only two sides, Nintendo and Sega (Mario and Sonic), this is just plain weird to me. Sega publishing games on Nintendo systems is one thing, but the two company mascots together starring in a single game is something else entirely. I present to you a fanboy dream or one of the best pranks ever.

Click for full size

Does this not increase the chances of Sonic in Super Smash Bros. Brawl? Full press release inside lists more characters from both franchises and details about the game.

(Continue)

Comments(7)

This week the Virtual Console update is small, but interesting none the less. The one title added is an SNES game called “Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV: Wall of Fire”. I’ve never played this one, but back during the SNES era Koei made quite a few of these types of games and they were always too complicated for my tasty child brain. This one even supports 8 players, impressive!

Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV is a tactical simulation game in which the player takes the role of a ruler seeking to unite China in the era of the three kingdoms of Wei, Wu and Shu. The role of the ruler is to command a range of officers with differing characteristics - some cunning strategists, others brave warriors - and strengthen the military might of his or her kingdom. Foreign policy, involving forming alliances with certain kingdoms and hatching plans to weaken others, will play a major role in this process. Once players have developed a powerful enough military, it will be time to expand their borders through military conquest. Ultimate victory will only be achieved once all 43 cities in China lie within a player’s control.

“PREPARE TO BE ROMANCED!” is one thing I never thought I’d see on a game box.

Comments(0)

Since December 22, 2006 the free beta version of the Opera Browser for Wii has been available. The new Opera Browser will launch in late April (a few weeks after previously announced). People who have the beta version will get the new version for free, and it will remain free until the end of June. After that you’ll have pay $5 to download it, so if you haven’t already done so go download the beta.

Good news, that new version is nearly done and has some substantial improvements over the currently available one including:

• improved zooming and scrolling
• an improved zoomed font
• shortened startup times
• quicker access to “favorites”
• an ability to hide the toolbar
• buttons that will instantly type common preset letters, such as “www” or “.com”

No word on if it has an updated Flash version, but I hope it does as it’s one of the biggest drawbacks of the beta. Well… that and occasionally freezing.

Comments(0)

Oh yes, the days of playing Zak McKraken, Maniac Mansion, and The Dig. I love adventure games, but I haven’t played any for years as they’ve seemed to have dropped off a bit in popularity and I never see a single one anymore. To me, the entire genre seemed to fade away.

Enter Sam & Max adventure game episodes with great humor and gameplay. I downloaded the demos for PC and now I can’t be more excited about the recently semi-confirmed announcement that they plan on releasing versions for all three consoles, on the systems respective digital distribution services and retail disks.

A good adventure game is one of the things I’ve hoping for since the Wii came out. The remote is better or at least as good as a mouse for adventure games.

Personally, I prefer a disk instead of a download. Whatever Telltale Games decide to do, I’ll buy a disk or download day one. Please take these to the consoles, my PC chair is so uncomfortable.

Comments(2)

I didn’t find this one, rather I saw it on Kotaku, and I thought it was worth posting because it’s pretty neat.

XCMLive.Com has among their other interesting products this sort of case mod for the Wii which looks very slick. Not bad for a kit, not bad at all.

Personally I’d still like a red Wii with matching controllers, but hey, I guess I’m lucky enough to even have one after hearing about how some people are still having problems locating units.

By the way, I’m really sorry about the sluggish recently. I’ve got some little things on the way but they take time, and I’m just one man! If you’ve got something you’d like to share or want to write a review or article, or just want to tell us about some piece of news fire it off or contact me. Every bit improves the site and really helps me out. Thanks!

Comments(4)

I’m a bit late here, had some computer problems. Anyway, here it is.

Beyong Oasis looks interesting, anyone play this one before? Full press release inside!

(Continue)

Comments(1)

The guys over at Mega64 have a funny but short video that you need to see. I don’t think you understand, you need to see it. I’m not going to spoil anything, just take a look.

Very fun. While you’re there you might want to check out some of their other videos if you haven’t already.

Comments(2)

It’s that time again, but it might as well not be. There’s a reason Sonic Spinball is the box art for this update…

It’s because it’s beyond a doubt the best addition this week, and I’ve never played this one and I’m sure it’s the best. Well, I guess they can’t all be winner can they?

This update includes two other games Tecmo Bowl for NES, and Double Dungeons for TurboGrafx16. On the plus side all of these games are mutiplayer, Sonic goes up to four?

Full press release on the inside.

(Continue)

Comments(6)

Every time a new generation of consoles is established the previous console begins to lose steam. Developers start focusing on the new hardware and stop production on the old. This means two things, less or no new games for that platform, and cheap prices for the already made software. Here’s some examples:

Donkey Kong Jungle Beat (with bongos) for $15 and Killer 7 for, ironically, $7. Two of the most overlooked games of the sixth generation and both are very fun. I’m sure there’s of other great deals out there, just look around at the used game shops.

This is also a good time to trade in games or systems you want to part with. The stores want to be able to sell used games to you, but they need stuff to sell. As an incentive I’ve noticed a couple stores have increased trade-in rates for used software and hardware, as high as a 50% increase (with coupon).

Now I’m not saying you should rush out and sell off parts of your lovely game collection, because I’ve usually regretted doing that (expect for some certain titles I’ve like to forget). But y’know, if you were looking to get rid of some stuff now it’s probably a good time.

In summary: Last-gen games for cheap, increased rates trade-ins, a good way to beat the software drought months.

(Continue)

Comments(0)