Scans of some interesting pages from the latest issue of Japanese gaming mag Famitsu have surfaced around the net, and what they show should make some Wii owners very happy. It looks like Capcom is bringing some good old zombie-bashing fun to Nintendo’s console with a port of 2006’s XBOX 360 title, Dead Rising.

It looks to be a direct port, al la Okami and Resident Evil 4, and will be played with the Wii-mote and nunchuck. No word yet on whether or not Dead Rising’s rumor-shrouded sequel is in for the Wii treatment as well.

I love Dead Rising. It was the first game I bought when I got my 360, and there are few thing more satisfying that fending off zombies with whatever you happen to find lying around. Whether or not it will work on Wii remains to be seen… it doesn’t strike me as a game that lends itself well to the Wii-remote… then again, RE4 wasn’t half bad on the Wii, so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

So… Nintendo is suing Nyko.

I can’t exactly say that I’m shocked. As anal as companies are about their patents and licensing these days, I’m amazed that third party controllers can even exist anymore.

The backstory on this is that Nyko decided to make something that Nintendo wasn’t making… a wireless Nunchuck peripheral for the Wii-Remote. Personally, I think it was a great idea. That cord is just a giant pain in the butt and kind of defeats the whole point of a freakin’ wireless controller (and it’s REALLY annoying if you have cats…).

So naturally, what does Nintendo do? Files suit saying that the design of Nyko’s add-on infringes on it’s trademarked design… which, granted, it does. But rather than working out a licensing deal with Nyko, Nintendo wants a cash settlement and a cease and desist on sales of the nunchuck.

Of course, it’s wholly possible (and fairly likely) that Nintendo is working on a wireless nunchuck of their own, but in this case, it’s their own damn fault Nyko beat them to the punch. Nintendo has been dragging it’s feet on Wii peripherals for ages now. The thing’s been out for going on two years, and there’s still nothing first party that makes use of the Wii’s USB ports. There’s no external hard drive, no wireless Wii-remote add-ons, and for a long time, there was no USB wired ethernet adaptor from Nintendo themselves, despite the demand for such products.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my Wii, but come on Nintendo… get in tune with the current generation of gamers. We were playing on the PSX while the N64 sank into virtual obscurity. The GameCube was great, but the PS2 and the XBOX spoiled us. The PS3 and the 360 have spoiled us even more. Nowadays gamers expect to have the option of expanding their gameplay experience if they so choose, and if the first party doesn’t provide, you better believe a third party will.

I think a large part of Nintendo’s problem is that they have been very first-party centric since the days of the NES. Unfortunately, that mindset isn’t going to fly forever, and suing the people who fill the void won’t make the gamers happy.

That being said, if you want one, you might want to grab it now.

Have you picked up Okami for Wii yet? If not, why? Haven’t I smacked you over the head enough telling you to buy it?

Well, if you’re still holding out, you may want to head on over to Best Buy. According to their weekly ad, it’s on sale for $29.99 through May 24. Or, if you’re too lazy/can’t afford the price of gas anymore/have a paralyzing fear of the sun, you can grab the same deal at their website.

Damn you Square-Enix. You do this to me every time… I’m busy playing one game, and then you go and release something new, and said game instantly begins collecting dust on my game shelf (in this case, Dead Rising is the poor unfortunate). It happened with Final Fantasy XII, it happened with Crisis Core, and now, of course, it’s happened with My Life as a King.

My Life as a King is available as WiiWare from the Wii Shop Channel for a somewhat pricey 1500 Wii Points (it’s actually the most expensive off all the U.S. WiiWare launch titles), and I’ll be honest… I’m cheap. If it hadn’t had the Final Fantasy moniker, I probably would have passed.

The first thing you might notice when and if you download Square-Enix’s first foray into WiiWare is that Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King is *gasp* not an RPG. Apparently they can make other kinds of games over there in Sephiroth-ville. No, My Life as a King is, in fact, a civilization simulator in which you are a king and you must rebuild your kingdom.

That’s not to say the standard Final Fantasy gloss hasn’t been put on this game. Even though it is a sim, it still sort of has the feel of an RPG. There is a battle system, even though you yourself don’t do any battling, and there is an engrossing (if somewhat simple for the franchise) plot that is revealed gradually through cutscenes that seem to come up about once a month (game time, obviously) or so.

To be honest, the first few days in your kingdom are a little boring. You spend a fair amount of time talking to Chime, your chancellor, whom you summon to your side by ringing a bell. Chime is in charge of the command menu, and will help you build, boost morale of your citizens, and tell you when it’s time to go to bed. Things are linear, you have almost nothing to work with, no one to talk to, and you’re stuck in tutorial city learning how to do the fun stuff but not really doing much of it.

And then the fun begins. Once you pick up the necessary fundamentals, you have a lot more freedom, and things get a lot more interesting. Instead of just doing what the game dictates, you can begin to commission adventurers, send them out to fight monsters, and build new structures to bring in more people to get more money to hire more adventurers to fight more monsters, and so on and so forth.

Initially, the days are short, cash is low, and buildings are limited (all you can build at first is one kind of very simple house). What really makes this game work for me is the desire to find more stuff. You know there’s stuff out there to unlock and you want it, damn it, so you start sending people out to unlock it.

Half the fun of the game, like many sims, is trying to keep up with the needs of the people. The adventuring system adds a nice touch, because in addition to keeping your adventurers in good spirits, you must also make sure they’re trained well enough to complete the the dungeons you send them to, make weapons and other equipment available to them, and ensure that they have time to rest. Things may start out slow, but they pick up quickly, and soon you have a lot of people who need bakeries, and parks, and sharp, pointy swords.

My Life as a King is also the first (and currently the only) WiiWare title to utilize the Pay to Play feature, which allows you to download additional (but optional) content for the game. There are already a number of options currently available:

1. Dungeon Pack (300 Wii Points) - adds 11 new dungeons to the game

2. Lilty Hut (300 Wii Points) - adds dungeons to unlock houses for Lilties

3. Selkie Den (300 Wii Points) - adds dungeons to unlock houses for Selkies

4. Yuke Shack (300 Wii Points) - adds dungeons to unlock houses for Yukes

5. Triple Race Pack (800 Wii Points) - combines the Lilty Hut, Selkie Den, and Yuke Shack content into one, slightly discounted download.

6. New Royal Outfit (100 Wii Points) - a new costume for the king

7. New Chancelor Outfit (100 Wii Points) - a new costume for Chime

8. Luxurious House (100 Wii Points) - unlocks a new house style that greatly increases income.

9. Sacred Shrines (200 Wii Points) - unlocks Shrines, which temporarily boost your adventures’ stats.

The nice thing about My Life as a King is that you can pick it up and play it for ten or fifteen minutes, or you can sit and play for 3 hours at a time, depending on what kind of mood you happen to be in.

The downsides? Well, for one thing, there’s a lot of repetition. For the most part you’re really just doing the same series of actions over and over to unlock more content and advance further into the game… but then that’s true of just about every sim I’ve ever played (which is probably why I don’t often get into them). For me, though, the story and the adventuring system somewhat make up for the repetitive nature of the game.

On the whole, it’s by no means my favorite Final Fantasy title, but it’s still fun and strangely addictive. I give it an overall 7 out of 10.

So, you may have heard that WiiWare launched yesterday. With it came a brand new Final Fantasy title, which naturally I had to immediately download and play. Well… maybe “immediately” isn’t the right word.

My first issue was with the Wii Shop itself. I could connect, but the connection kept getting dropped right as I was about to add Wii Points to my account so I could buy the game. Now if I were a smarter person, I would have saved myself the headache and Googled the error code before I did anything else. But I’m not. I’m an idiot.

So after attempting six or seven times to buy Wii Points and failing miserably, it (*cough*half an hour later*cough*) finally occurred to me that, gee… maybe my connection keeps getting dropped because my router is having some sort of emotional crisis or whatever it is that gets into those things when they stop working right.

Since yelling at the damned thing never seems to work, I decided to skip that step and try the age-old fix-all of unplugging it and plugging it back in. Well, that didn’t work, either. Now, I should probably, at this point, explain that I’m not a hardware person. If the issue is software-related I can usually figure out where the problem is, but when my hardware starts acting funny, my usual recourse is to format C:\ and cry myself to sleep.

As that solution seemed a little extreme for a router problem, so it was off to the Nintendo support website in the hopes that someone out there had the same problem I did. Handy thing that site. I was right… the problem was with my router. Support told me to try changing the broadcast channel from 1 to 11.

Except, since I’m not a hardware person, I had no idea how to do that. In the end, I decided to do the unthinkable… I referred to the manual. Funny thing is, my Wii always connected to the internet just fine before Comcast took over my service. Bastards. They forced me to read a manual.

Anyway, I guess the whole point of this post is to let you know that around 11:00 last night, I did finally get my hands on the WiiWare title Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King (look for the review coming soon) and also if your Wii’s internet connection keeps getting dropped, save yourself some time and try your router on channel 11.

You may have heard me mention something about today’s launch of WiiWare (four or five times over the last week or so…). Well, since it’s finally available, how about we take a closer look at what it is and what it has to offer at launch?

First of all, you may ask (if you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months), what is WiiWare, anyway? WiiWare is a new addition to the Wii Shop Channel. Much like the Virtual Console, it lets you download games directly to your Wii in exchange for Wii Points.

Unlike the Virtual Console, though, WiiWare games are not simply ports of older games for older systems. WiiWare games are games designed specifically for the Wii as downloadable content. Some of them are entirely new IP (like LostWinds), and some of them are simply new renditions of older ideas (like Dr. Mario RX, which unfortunately didn’t make the starting lineup).

So… now that we all know what it is, lets take a look at what’s available.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King

Developed by Square-Enix (as if the Final Fantasy in the title didn’t give that away), My Life as a King is civilization sim in which you play as a king who must rebuild his kingdom. The game takes place in the Crystal Chronicles timeline, and by using the power of a great Crystal you find in your realm, you can place buildings and attract new residents. To use the Crystal you will have to amass Spirit Power, which can be replenished by sending out troops to explore dungeons and the surrounding lands and collect smaller crystals.

My Life as a King also makes use of the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection Pay & Play feature, which allows you to download additional content (for a price) in the form of bonus stages, specialty items, costumes, buildings, and recruitable races.

Price: 1500 Wii Points
Rated: E
Players: 1

Lostwinds

From Frontier Development, Lostwinds is a platformer in which you control a boy named Toku who can wield the power of the wind. You must use this unique ability to control Toku’s jumps and glides, attack you enemies, and solve puzzles in order to release the curse placed upon the world of Mistralis and its people by evil Elemental, Balasar.

In LostWinds, you not only control Toku, but you must simultaneously control the speed and direction of the wind, making the game a challenging addition to the WiiWare launch lineup.

Price: 1000 Wii Points
Rated: E
Players: 1-2

TV Show King

TV Show King comes from developer GameLoft and is a game show-style trivia game. You can play by yourself or against friends and family. The title is a little misleading, in that you are supposedly on a TV Show… not necessarily answering TV-based trivia. Topics includes geography, literature, science, sports, entertainment, and history, and there are more than 3000 questions.

Players must answer timed multiple choice questions by selecting the correct answer on their screen with the Wii-Remote (faster selections get you more prize money), and can also take their chances for greater rewards by spinning a wheel between rounds.

Price: 1000 Wii Points
Rated: E
Players: 1-4

Pop

Courtesy of Nnooo, in Pop, you must pop bubbles to score points. The more bubbles you pop, the more time you have to pop more bubbles. The game has both a Casual level and an Advanced level and can be enjoyed solo or with up to four players.

In the end, Pop is all about popping bubbles as fast and accurately as you can. In multiplayer mode, items can be collected to hinder the other players, to add that extra level of aggravation to family fun night.

Price: 700 Wii Points
Rated: E
Players: 1-4

V.I.P. Casino: Blackjack

As the title implies, High Voltage Software brings a Blackjack title to the table (oy, that was a lame pun, wasn’t it…). The developer’s own description of the game labels it as “the most realistic blackjack game ever made”. I’m sure they’re just being modest.

V.I.P. Casino: Blackjack has both single player and multiplayer modes, as well as tournament play. So if you’ve ever wanted to bankrupt your older brother at the card tables, here’s your chance.

Price: 700 Wii Points
Rated: T
Players: 1-4

Defend Your Castle

From X-Gen Studios comes Defend Your Castle. The object of the game is to… well… defend you castle. You are in command, and you must stop the invading hoards from descending upon you and taking your castle for themselves.

There are several methods of accomplishing this task, including picking them up and throwing them, and attacking them with magic spells and arrows. Over time, power-ups and new weapons become available in the hopes that you’ll be able to hold the enemies off just a little longer.

This game is based on the original Flash game by X-Gen Studios, which you can try out here for free before you pay good money for the WiiWare version.

Price: 500 Wii Points
Rated: E
Players: 1-4

So there you have it. Personally, I’m looking forward to trying out that Final Fantasy title, along with LostWinds (which, naturally, are two of the most expensive titles on the list…).

There are only a handful of new physical, go-out-and-buy-the-disc titles out this week… But who cares? WiiWare launches today!

WiiWare

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King (1500 Wii Points)
LostWinds (1000 Wii Points)
Defend Your Castle (500 Wii Points)
Pop (700 Wii Points)
VIP Casino Blackjack (700 Wii Points)
TV Show King (1000 Wii Points)

For more info on WiiWare titles available today, check out my post on the subject.

Wii

We Ski - If you can’t guess what this is from the title, you need to pay more attention. We Ski, pretty obviously, is one of those sports games that try to be cute and family oriented. Bonus, if you’ve pre-ordered Wii Fit, the game is also compatible with the Balance Board. Of course, Wii Fit doesn’t come out until next week, so you’ll have to wait to try out that feature.

Deca Sports - Much like Wii Sports and Wii Play, Deca Sports takes a bunch of casual sports games and compiles them into one package. As the title implies, there are 10 sports to choose from, and up to four people can play. You have your choice of Beach Volleyball, Snowboarding, Badminton, Basketball, Curling (yes, seriously, Curling…), Figure Skating, Archery, Supercross, Soccer or Kart Racing.

Castle of Shikigami III - The laster in the Shikigami series, Castle of Shikigami III is a scrolling shooter that offers the choice of 10 characters and Dramatic Change Mode that lets you swap between two characters on the fly as you attempt to unravel the mystery behind the disappearance of the country of Alcaland’s people.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian - Wii | 360 | PS3 | PS2 | Nintendo DS
Oh look… another attempt to cash in on a highly anticipated movie with a half-assed video game featuring the characters, environments, and basic plot of said movie. And it’s on every system known to man. Again. Yeesh.

Nintendo DS

Myst - The classic puzzle RPG Myst comes to DS. Not really surprising, but hey… Myst rocks. The DS version includes re-mastered video and audio, new music, and a new Arctic world, as well as an interface redesigned to accomodate the DS stylus.

Drone Tactics - This one is a turn-based tactical RPG. You used cybernetic mechabugs called Drones to save the world of Cimexus. Build, customize, and optimize your forces, and play against friends using the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.

PS2

Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure - This little guy was released on Wii WAAAAAY back in January. Now you can play it on your PS2, if you are so inclined.

The Nintendo Channel launched yesterday for the Wii, and not surprisingly, one of the videos showed off some of the titles releasing as WiiWare (most likely as U.S. launch titles for next week). Some of them I’ve known about for a while now (because I’m obsessed with Final Fantasy), others have been rumored, and a couple are news to me, so I thought I’d share.

Seen in the teaser video are the following:

Critter Round Up
With gameplay similar to the arcade game Qix, you control a farmer who must build pens for your livestock. Separate the species, avoid running into them, and keep them away from predators. Adventure mode consists of 50 levels, and Marathon mode features infinite levels and multiplayer. There are also minigames.

Defend Your Castle
In Defend Your Castle you must dispatch all enemies before they reach your castle. There are several methods of accomplishing this, including picking them up and throwing them, and attacking them with magic spells and arrows. The game is based on a Flash-based game created by XGen.

Dr. Mario Online RX
Rotate and move multicolored pills to destroy the viruses in the game area. You all know this game. Dr. Mario Online RX also contains a version of Brain Age 2’s Germ Buster mini-game, which uses the pointer function of the Wii Remote to move pills. The game supports co-op play for up to four people, and uses the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection for online competition.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life As A King
From Square-enix, this is a city-building sim in which you create a kingdom from the ground up. By using the power of a great Crystal you can place buildings and attract residents. Use of the Crystal is limited by you Spirit Power, you can be replenished by sending out troops to explore dungeons and the surrounding lands and collect smaller crystals. The game also features additional downloadable content in the form of costumes, buildings, and recruitable races.

LostWinds
LostWinds is a platformer starring a young boy and Wind Elemental named Toku who must save his homeland from the elemental, Balasar. You must control Toku and simultaneously use the Wii Remote to draw paths on-screen that control the direction of the wind. Wind is also used to enhance Toku’s jumps, battle enemies, and solve puzzles.

WiiWare launches on Monday, so if you’ve been putting off buying those extra Wii Points, now might be a good time to do it. U.S. prices aren’t 100% confirmed, but Japanese prices have been in the 500 to 1500 Wii Point range.

Today marks the launch of the Wii’s new Nintendo Channel (5 days ahead of schedule, in fact). Not to be confused with WiiWare, which will debut in the U.S. on the 12th, the Nintendo Channel offers users the chance to view previews and trailers, download demos, and review WiiWare titles.

Joystiq has a guided tour, for those of you stuck at work or in class.

I got home from work today, and what do I find waiting for me on my Wii message board but a notice from the Mario Kart Wii channel. Seems a tournament has started! Yay!

The current competition ends on May 9, and demands the fastest time you can manage on the Mario Circuit course (my current record is somewhere around 2:04. Fear the might of Baby Peach!).