Archive for July, 2008
There’s a lot of us out there who were let down with Nintendo’s press conference during E3 for their lack of attention to the core community, as a lot of you have made clear. I haven’t made a secret of my own disappointment with it either, but that doesn’t mean Nintendo’s abandoned us. It’s only E3 after all, and we all know how the event’s gone downhill.
E3 itself was a letdown this year. Publishers, developers, and high profile personalities in the video game industry have expressed as much. Most of the bigger studios naturally won’t be taking out their large guns during the event. Even Microsoft and Sony didn’t have that much to offer either. I expect to hear the massive news on the next big gaming event, at the Leipzig GC.
Come to think about it, E3 wasn’t that much of a disappointment, considering how everyone else didn’t bring their A game to the event. Video game industry analyst Michael Pachter also has his own views on the matter. Now I’m sure a lot of you have strong opinions about the man as well, but hold off until you read what he has to state, eh?
Some hardcore gamers were critical of Nintendo’s failure to announce new Mario and Zelda games at the show… we think that Nintendo focused upon building upon its formidable lead with the mass market, and do not consider the lack of major hard core game announcements to be an abandonment of its core.
Related Articles:
 Via [wii.qj.net]
Share This
Popularity: 1% [?] Share This
 No Comments »
You can’t say they didn’t try. The Wiibrew community has been all abuzz lately when Team Twiizer’s Bushing tried to contact Nintendo on a recently discovered Wii exploit, rather than sharing the hack with the rest of the community. Even though Nintendo has replied to Bushing, it seems they weren’t all that interested - or at least, not interested enough to follow up on it.
As you may know by now, the exploit allows the Wii to read DVD-Rs and Video DVDs without the use of a modchip, or even custom firmware. As Nintendo did not open up a conversation with Bushing, Team Twiizers has decided that they will be releasing a library that makes use of the exploit. The library will be released in the following week.
Needless to say, this is a remarkable leap for the Wiibrew community. Here’s what Team Twiizer’s Marcan has to say about the library, and the situation with Nintendo:
Share This
Popularity: 1% [?] Share This
No Comments »
 Ahh, Karateka. A game that many of us bloggers here at QJ.NET remember fondly. Jordan Mechner, the same dude who created the aforementioned game and Prince of Persia (a new one is in development for the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3), revealed at this year’s San Diego Comic-con that he is currently working on a follow-up to game.
According to Mechner, “there actually is a plan to bring back Karateka. It’s a project I’m going to be involved in. I can safely state it’s not going to be in the way you expect.” Interesting. We can’t wait to see what he comes up with this time around (and it had better be good lest he disappoint a lot of gamers who still remember how awesome the first game was).
He also spoke about how the guys over at Broderbond Software were able to pull off the Easter egg where you placed in the floppy disk upside down to be able to play the game upside down. Apparently, the programmer who was handling copy protection of the game was able to figure out how to do that by “messing with the bit table.”
As to how they were able to convince the publisher to burn the game on both sides of the disk, he gave out an interesting response. So before we go, here’s what he’d to say:
We went do the president of Broderbund to propose this, and we didn’t think they’d go for it, because it would require an assembly line change to actually burn the game onto both sides of the disk, which adds however many cents. So we went in, and he said, ‘Sure. Do it.’
 Via [wii.qj.net]
Share This
Popularity: 1% [?] Share This
No Comments »
Ahoy there, Wiibrewers! We live in exciting times for the Wiibrew community. Last week, Wiibrew developer bushing revealed to the community that he found a yet-untapped Wii exploit, and has decided to contact Nintendo about it. After a period of silence, Nintendo has finally replied. That and more in this week’s Wiibrew Weekend Warrior! Let’s get cracking!
Wiibrew Pick of the Week
 Wiibrew developer kriogeN certainly picked a fun game for his first homebrew project. kriogeN has reincarnated the classic card game UNO on to the Wii, complete with online multiplayer that supports up to four players. Nice, eh?
The translation of the readme is pretty rough with your average online translator, but the game pretty much talks for itself
Link: UNO v4 - graphics improved
Wiibrew Programs
Network Wiibrew programs FTPii and Wii Web Server were both updated this week. FTPii has been kicked up to v0.0.11, with improvements in stability so the program shouldn’t hang as often. Wii Web Server is now on v0.80 of its Alpha stage, with support for threading, and implementation of error pages.
Link: FTPii v0.0.11 - remote authentication administration, USB Ethernet fix
Link: Wii Web Server alpha v0.80: 404 and 500 error pages implemented
Share This
Popularity: 1% [?] Share This
No Comments »
 Okay, so quite a good number of fans reacted strongly against Konami’s Castlevania Judgment. But this certainly does not stop others to still wish that Koji Igarashi’s latest 2D adventure be also brought to the DS.
Apart from that wish, hardcore supporters are also “begging for Igarashi” to bring a traditional Castlevania title to the consoles. While we hear nothing about granting the particular wish of the fans, what we have heard is that Igarashi is looking at WiiWare.
Telling MTV Multiplayer at E3 last week, “I’m definitely interested in WiiWare and I think it’s one of the areas that 2D can still be very strong at… I’m very much looking into that.”
Very much looking into that, huh? Well then it seems like they’re already analyzing the pros and cons and the probable benefits of bringing an oldie Castlevania to WiiWare. Maybe this time you can share your ideas with him on what you guys want to see on WiiWare, and so critics will be more favorable for him next time.
Then everybody’s happy.
Related Articles:
 Via [wii.qj.net]
Share This
Popularity: 1% [?] Share This
No Comments »
It looks like the Wii’s rather limited storage capacity isn’t just a problem for “geeks and otaku” anymore. Talking to MTV multiplayer, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime stated that the company is now seeing it as a more mainstream problem:
From an Americas-centric perspective, here’s the reality we see. We’ve a consumer base who adores virtual console. We have a userbase who really is enjoying WiiWare content. So for us really our challenge really is how do we satisfy all these consumers who are loving all of the product we make available on a download basis?
As we continue to have things, as you point out, like Mario Kart that has its own channel when you re playing from an Internet perspective, we re just making this challenge tougher and tougher. So in our view this is becoming much more of a mainstream problem, which is why we have a sense of urgency to solve it.
Apart from assuring Wii owners that Nintendo is “looking hard at the storage situation”, Fils-Aime didn’t give any specific ideas on how they’ll tackle the Wii’s storage problems. Of course, it would probably be simple enough to roll out a firmware update that allows the Wii to access files on a USB storage device, but taking Nintendo’s views on piracy into account along with the current surge of Wii homebrew, it might take a while until we see anything concrete.
Keep checking back here on the QJ.NET Wii blog for more updates.
 Via [wii.qj.net]
Share This
Popularity: 1% [?] Share This
No Comments »
 Joining in the fray of the growingly exciting Wii homebrew community is Spanish developer technik and he brings with him his creation, the Revolution Engine. It’s a 3D games engine for the Wii that allows you to easily create cool 3D homebrew games for your console.
Cool, huh. This release is just a baby, so to speak, though, so there are still a bunch of features that aren’t installed yet. But technik reassures you’ll be getting them soon enough on the next release. In fact, he’s already working on it as we type.
Here are some of the features you may expect to find in Revolution Engine 0.1 public release:
- Allows you to render full 3D scenes in real time on your Wii with mulitple dynamic objects which have Mesh and Texture (only one channel textures right now).
- Allows you to render 2D images over the 3D image to use as panels, texts, etc… Using easy png files so you can use it for 3D games, 2D games or a combination of both.
- A vector Based Cameras system that allows you to make target, first person, third person, free cameras, or any kind of cameras you want.
- Mesh loading from its own file format, so performance is improved. This format is free, plain text, and easy to comprehend so anyone can make exporters or conversors from other formats.
- Texture Loading from png files using frontier’s pngu library.
Wow, those certainly look really good. I can only predict more good brews making its way to the Wii because of this release. Thanks for you contribution, technik! We’ll be sure to watch out for more updates on this project, so you guys better stay tuned here on QJ.
In the meantime, you can check out the official site for this project. But if you’re not that well-versed in Spanish, then you might want to bring in your handy translator with you. Oh, and there are also video clips in there to show you the progress of this release. We’ve imported one here for you guys so you can get a clearer picture of how this all goes down.
Share This
Popularity: 1% [?] Share This
No Comments »
 GamePolitics brings word of even more potential game legislation this day. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) introduced a bill to the US Senate yesterday that would, to quote the bill,
…prohibit the distribution or sale of video games that don’t have age-based content rating labels [and] prohibit the sale or rental of video games with adult content ratings to minors…
The text of the legislation isn’t out yet, however, so the details are still somewhat sketchy. That said, the bill currently has no sponsors and has been referred to the Senate’s Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
If you will remember, a couple of days back another important piece of videogame legislation was signed in New York. One of the law’s mandates was that “games sold at retail disclose the ratings obtained from the gaming industry’s voluntary rating system.” Such a law could provide a legal precedent for part of the legislation mentioned above.
Related Articles:
 Via [wii.qj.net]
Share This
Popularity: 1% [?] Share This
No Comments »
Fatal Frame 4 for the Wii is indeed a title to look out for. It’s right up there next to Sorrow, perhaps. And while we’re promised to see Sadness at this year’s Leipzig Game Convention (whew!), some of your were probably hoping to hook up with some info or footage from Tecmo about Fatal Frame 4 during E3.
An email sent to Siliconera explains why Tecmo had a no-show for Fatal Frame 4. Likewise, we also finally hear an update about the MIA-since-last-year Rygar: The Battle of Argus:
Several of you asked about Tecmo s other titles that have been announced in Japan which were not on display at the show. Fatal Frame 4 (Wii) will be published by Nintendo, so please contact your Nintendo PR contact for further information. Rygar: The Battle of Argus (Wii) is in development and we are planning to provide more information this fall.
 No wonder Fatal Frame 4 wasn’t in Tecmo’s booth. Maybe Nintendo’s giving it a bit of embargo time - a calm before the storm, so to talk. The game, after all, is already set to be released at the end of July in Japan. Maybe they plan to have a media blitz during the week Fatal Frame 4 hits retails or something.
We’ve also yet to hear something from Nintendo of America. Because even as of now, there’s been no confirmation whatsoever if they’re planning to publish Fatal Frame 4 for North America.
Meanwhile, I’m pretty glad Rygar’s gotten an update. It’s probably the closest thing we could get to a God of War for the Nintendo Wii. And prior to this, I was almost convinced it was chucked to the vaporware bin. If they’re planning to reveal more info about it by Fall of this year, that could probably spell out TGS for you.
Related articles:
 Via [wii.qj.net]
Share This
Popularity: 1% [?] Share This
No Comments »
|
