Kelvin

I don't see why C64 shouldn't be priced at NES levels; the hardware is comparable, and the games are just as good. Damo, I'd put Mayhem in Monsterland or any of the Creatures series up against SM3 any day. Or Great Giana Sisters.

(And wouldn't it be wild to see Nintendo release that on Wii?)

The C64 had some great what we called "arcade" games back in the day, and those will be easily mapped to the Wii's controls. There weren't many games that used both joystick and keyboard, and even those didn't use a lot of keys; even Turrican could be mapped to the Classic Controller, I think. Even so, I'm sure keyboard support could be emulated through the USB keyboard, if necessary.

Rhys, I'd love to see The Detective Game. Utterly unique, and of course, I never finished it back in the day. Did anyone?

Master System. C64. If they announce Amiga support, then I'm the happiest bunny there is!

Atlantis1982, I'd argue that the USB slots suggest that the Wii is supposed to be expandable.

Huzzah!

That's "Frontier" as in "Frontier Developments" of David Braben of Elite fame. While Lost Winds looks good, I'm more excited that Braben's working on Wii software.

I'm also hoping for Sam and Max point-and-click games on WiiWare; the Wiimote is perfect for that genre.

Could be the new Lemmings. Let's see.

deadly.by.design, I agree completely. I can't wait for Yoshi's Island. And Bass X0, you're probably right; Baby Mario is most likely deliberately annoying, or you wouldn't rush to get him back!

deadly.by.design, I'd also love to see Yoshi's Island on VC. It's one of the best platformers ever made, perhaps even better than the original Super Mario World, and I absolutely adore the game design. I'm also holding out hope for River City Ransom, which I never got to finish the first time around.

Really? Myself and friends have had the things actually posted out to us, boxes and all. Is this not how everyone's getting them?

Bass X0, that's a good idea. The way Nintendo convert your Stars to Wii Points borders on the cretinous.

Consider that both Stars and Wii Points are electronic; why on earth do they think that it's a good idea, when we've been able to connect our Wii to our Nintendo site accounts from day one, to have you convert electronic Stars into a physical Wii Points card, which is then posted to you, so you can turn it back into electronic Wii Points? Why not just convert the Stars to Points electronically like they do if you buy them via credit card? Jeepers.

Not to mention that they're sending out big chunks of plastic when they post your Wii Points, which is hardly great for the environment.

Bass X0 and Damo, note the smiley.

Not according to Drake.

Honestly though, Eternal Champions is a good, solid fighter. I'm a big fan of SFII, but there's definitely room for both.

Drake, I think you're being a bit unfair on Eternal Champions. It may not be part of a big multi-game franchise, but it's a very strong fighter, and it deserves better than comments like "there's not much reason to get this game". That's just unnecessarily harsh.

It's a good selection this week, and it's nice to see things get back on to a more sensible schedule. I hope it continues.

I really like the look of this one. I hope it's got good music though, as this kind of game benefits from a top soundtrack. I could see some nice ambient FSOL style stuff working well.

Valien, I know that Nintendo were late to release the online developers' kits, which is why none of the first wave of shop-bought Wii titles had any sort of connectivity.

However, I don't know if that has affected WiiWare titles too, and even if it did, shop-bought games are starting to show connectivity now, so I don't know why WiiWare games coming out no earlier than six months from now couldn't have the feature.

Starwolf, it's a good point, as some games really don't require much translation!

And surely if the thing is being digitally distributed anyway, they can release language versions as and when they're ready, or update the language support via patches, instead of waiting until they've got one version that supports English, German, Spanish, French, etc all at once.

Also, presumably the NA launch will include Spanish (for Mexico, Latin America, and the large Spanish-speaking population in the US) and French (for Canada) in addition to English anyway, so that's half the work done.

This is a good pick for WiiWare. Released to stores, it would probably die a death among the endless FPS and racing games, but through WiiWare, interesting games like these have a better chance of success.

Ha! I wouldn't be surprised!

Yes, it does seem silly to put a generic socket (USB) on the thing, only to enforce a specific kind of hardware. If they wanted to do that, then why not have a proprietary expansion port?
So yes, there could easily be generic HD support through the USB, but games companies, Nintendo included, have done foolish things in the past, so you never know!
While I could see generic USB HD support added, I can just as easily see them pi**ing everyone off by only allowing official drives, because sometimes companies do dumb things.

I hope we do get generic USB HD support, as I have a 60gb external that I have no use for at the moment, and I'd obviously much rather use that than buy a new, official, Nintendo HD.

Even if Nintendo don't allow it, I'm sure hackers would make third party HDs work with Wii, but then I'd be worried about new firmware coming along and bricking it.

All that said, there's no Nintendo USB keyboard so far, and the company seems happy to let people use their own with Wii... for now.

It's about time we started to get downloadable content for Wii, but I'm not sure about paying for it. The price would have to be very good, preferably nothing.

Also a general downloadable content channel might be a better idea, because if we get one of these channels for every game with the feature, the Menu is going to clog up fast.

Still, we'll see how it goes. I'm certainly looking forward to this game, and each bit of new information makes it all the more exciting!

KirbyPunk, probably not brilliantly. The GC controller's layout just isn't laid out for this kind of game, where you need easy, equal, access to a number of buttons.

Master Chief, I'd say get Turbo, as I think it's a better balanced game, but most people prefer Super.

Yes, that is the original music from the game. The reason it's overdubbed in the video is because those are scenes from different points in the game, and if they included the original sounds, it would be a bitty mess, as they switch from scene to scene and tune to tune. The track you hear in the video is actual music from the game, as you hear it in the game.

No speech from the original version, but that music is brilliant! I'm not much cop at the game alas, but I've had the thing running on sound test mode for ages! I'm absolutely astounded that the guys at ocremix.org haven't had a go at this one yet.

I hear that Sam and Max is coming to WiiWare, and I hope it's the first of many point-and-click adventures, as the Wiimote is perfect for that genre. Monkey Island! Beneath a Steel Sky!

Ten million downloads is good, but I'd imagine things will slow down now we're down to one game a week!

Dazza, I think that may have been about it. There weren't many card games out, as the storage capacity was far less than that of a cartridge. Only the earliest games (and the 3D glasses) used the card slot. I think.

What I'd really like to see from WiiWare more than anything else* is online board games like Settlers of Catan. It's one area where XBLA excels, I think, and there's no reason we can't have it too.

*aside from Sam and Max, obviously.

Dazza, yeah, the screw-sticks were a very weird add-on. I had a Master System II first, and only got the original later, complete with a few of the older pads with the screw-sticks. Never used them, as even the huge spongy MS d-pad was better than those funny things.

I agree with Baldasacoot; the "Master Control Stick" was pretty good though. Bizarrely set up for left hand play (buttons on the left, stick on the right), and it looked ridiculous, with a flat base with tiny fire buttons and a huge mushroom-shaped joystick (a design later re-used by Sega for the 32X ), but it was a really good controller. Very responsive and the huge stick actually made control a bit more precise.

The steering wheel was an abomination though. Looked like a great big plastic H strapped to an upturned bucket.

KeeperBvK, a lot of those early Sega peripherals had dodgy names. I think one of the MS joypads was called "The Commander"!

Heh, true, but the MS is hardly better. Was there a good home version of Out Run on any format? I have vague memories that the C64 and Amiga ports were quite good, but it was never really a game I had much interest in, so I didn't follow it in any detail. Good soundtrack though!

Ugly? That's top 1980's design!

Tim, in some cases, such as Out Run, I would also prefer the MD versions, but there are some titles (like the Sonic series), where the MS versions were completely different, but just as good in their own way. But yeah, Out Run wasn't one of them.

I wouldn't say that third-party support was too bad, in Europe at least. Towards the end of the MS's life, there were a fair number of third-party titles released from companies like Probe and Domark; I remember them as the ones with the blue and white labels on the carts, as opposed to the Sega dark red.

I think that just as Nintendo ignored the European audience, it also ignored the European developers, neglecting to sign them up for the same agreements as their US counterparts, and so they were free to develop for any system they liked, including the MS. These were in the days before three big companies owned everyone, of course.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the MS games arrive!

We can but hope. A week with Mario Tennis 64, River City Ransom and SNES Mario Kart... I believe it could happen!

I think WiiWare must lead to some sort of memory expansion option, as the "fridge" argument Nintendo have been using up until now (i.e. you only keep the stuff you're using right now) falls apart when you start storing these much larger games.

This is great news. I'd heard a rumour to this effect about six months ago, but it's good to see it finally confirmed. This kind of thing opens up the door to more indie development on Wii, a huge asset for the console, and one of the areas it was lagging behind the other formats.

And aside from all that, it looks like a good game, too.

tnk4god, those are excellent games, but I doubt we'll be seeing any Gold Box titles on VC any time soon. The closest we'll probably get is "Heroes of the Lance", and the less said about that one, the better.

Sort of. Technically, Wii pointer functionality and NES Zapper functionality are different things, so if they don't include Wii pointer support, they're not strictly breaking any promises.

Yes, it's still a cheat, but one Nintendo could get away with.

Jeepers. Not a great week, even if it is a solid game. Disappointing.

Demon212, you joke, but you might be on to something there. Perhaps Nintendo have decided that the Wii has more lifespan than they originally thought, so they're slowing things down a bit?

Happy Birthday Dazza!

I really quite like the Mii Contest Channel. I thought it would be banished unused to the back of the menu, like the Photo Channel, but it's been a lot of fun. Well done Nintendo!

Although neuzd is right, the navigation isn't as slick as it could be.

Not the best in the series by a long shot, but as it says in the article, it opens up the possibility of the release of the other, better, games.

And you know, if all we ever get is PSII, it's still a good solid rpg.

1) Coming up in Season Three of "Heroes": Hiro and Ando teleport further than they've ever been before!
2) Nintendo's attempts to bring next-gen photo-realistic graphics to the Wii had mixed results.
3) The cake is a lie.

The phaser was a nice bit of kit. Better quality than the NES zapper, although it didn't have a great set of compatible games.

Somewhere I have a tape of Cathy Dennis giving out Sega game cheats and tips in between songs. I think it came with "Sega Power".

Do me a favour, plug me into a Sega!

I don't think he knew about it! Oops!

Clearly, we remember the release of the game differently. I don't recall it being a big release, but it's not worth getting in a twist about. I'd like to see it released on VC as it was a good solid game, and in many ways better than the NES Castlevanias.

starlac, I don't think it's a case of "can't", and more that it's not going to be a high priority release due to (a) it being a relatively obscure title, and (b) us already having the real Castlevanias on the VC.
It's not impossible that we'll see Master of Darkness, but I think it unlikely. I'd be happy to be proven wrong though, as it was a good game.

The licensing for properties like Smurfs and Asterix may be easier to get than for the Disney stuff, so you never know. We saw TMNT after all, so it's not a blanket case of "licensed games won't appear".

I think it unlikely that we'll see VC releases of Disney and Lucasarts games, but we'll see others, I think.

I would hope that they'd put SMS versions of dual-format games on the VC, if only because the screen size would fit better. In those cases where there's only the GG version, obviously we'll have to make do, but I see no reason to go for the GG version when there's one that's formatted for a TV.

Absolutely. The NES didn't do very well in Europe, but the Master System did very well indeed. Part of this is to do with support; the MS was very well backed by its various local publishers, but Nintendo didn't invest much in Europe until the SNES came along.

NES owners in Europe found themselves with a poorly supported console, and that's part of why there's still to this day an uneasy relationship between Nintendo and Europe.

diablos79, I'm pretty sure that's a European Master System*. I had a European one too, and it did have a card slot. The thing is, there were only a handful of releases on the card format, and they were all very early in the system's life (they were a holdover from the earlier SG-1000 console), so they were rare and difficult to find later on. The Master System 2 omitted the card slot altogether.

*The Japanese had the SG-1000 MkIII, which was internally identical, and didn't get the Master System we see above until 1987.