Nintendo Wii Fanboy

This week's Famitsu sheds some new light on Chocobo's Dungeon: Labyrinth of Forgetting, Square Enix's randomly generated dungeon romp announced earlier this year for the Wii. It will apparently forego use of the nunchuck, but players will be able to choose between pointing the Wii remote at the screen and holding it sideways. The Final Fantasy series' Cid will join Chocobo this time on his quest to restore the memories of people in the labyrinth, created by a boy named Raphaelo. Chocobo will also venture into dungeons more familiar to the series, with randomly generated levels, enemies and boss encounters.

The new Chocobo title will also feature a job system not unlike its Final Fantasy progenitor. Although Square is remaining tight-lipped on exactly which jobs will be featured, executive producer Shinji Hashimoto does mention we can expect to see around ten jobs in all, though he won't say which (but we can see both white and black mages from the magazine's screenshots). Jobs gain levels by collecting Job Cubes after battle, giving new spells and abilities, naturally.

Be sure to check out more shots of the multi-talented Chocobo in action after the break!

Using a Firefox browser workaround, intrepid Virtual Console fans can occasionally get a peek into the future of Nintendo's retro gaming plans (and the dripping irony is not lost on us). Aiming their black-hatted crystal ball at Nintendo's U.S. VC servers, their recent exploits have today turned up images of the start screens for both the original Metroid (already available in Europe) as well as Super Metroid.

Could Nintendo be priming these titles to coincide with its release of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption later this month? Don't you know it!

[Via GoNintendo]

Endless Ocean was released into the wild today in Japan (as Forever Blue on that side of the pond), and it seems not all is flowing smoothly for Arika's peaceful diving game. Early adopters are reporting large numbers of game crashing bugs, with specifically reproducible instances when adding shark rays into your aquarium. While there's still time before it's arrival on U.S. shores later this year, this certainly doesn't bode well for its prospects in either country's waters. Some of us weren't all that excited about Arika's glorified aquarium screensaver anyway, but now we have an excuse to be downright critical of it!

No word yet on whether the much beloved penguins have the potential to fry your system as well.

[Via Kotaku]

After only a five month lag since its U.S. and Japanese releases, Nintendo announced today that Super Paper Mario for the Wii will be released across the continent of Europe on September 14, 2007.

In case you haven't had a chance to pick the game up, it's quite delectable and well worth checking out. One of its strongest points in the American version was its witty, tongue-in-cheek localization courtesy of head translator Nate Bihldorff. Given that Final Fantasy and other relatively text-heavy games often take far longer than this to translate into one language (English), it's rather impressive that NOE can ready this game for release in at least five (UK English, French, German, Spanish and Italian) in as many months. If their work can stand up to the quality of the U.S. localization, Europeans should be in for a tasty treat, indeed.

We're sure all our readers out there are gearing up for the forthcoming Wii Fit and the plethora of exercise accessories that are sure to follow. In the spirit of that, you can now purchase a quirky "Wii"-branded pedometer to track your fitness goals in a more traditional way.

Although it appears a little light on features, the Sports "Gage" Pedometer for Wii Gamers is as inexpensive as it looks at only $6.98, though why it comes shaped like a dog bone is beyond us. The vendor and producer also seem unable to agree on the proper spelling of the word Gage... or is it Guage? (For the record, it's Gauge) But don't let little details like that discourage you!

A word of caution, however: the ever-so-slight alteration of the trademarked Wii logo (and complete absence of the word "Nintendo" from its packaging) likely indicates this to be an unlicensed product without any approval from the big N, so don't be fooled that this is any kind of official companion to Wii Fit's balance board. But for such a low price, it might still be of interest to Wii-oriented gyms out there.

In case you missed your chance to unwind to relaxing clips of Arika's forthcoming Endless Ocean (or you happen not to live in Japan, where it goes by Forever Blue), GameTrailers has posted several Japanese commercials of this bluest of the blue ocean games, and we'd like to present them to you. They may not be exactly trailer-length, but they're still quite graceful and give a nice glimpse of the floral and faunal variety you'll encounter. (Psst, show 'em the penguins. Girls love the penguins.)

If you have any doubt about that last statement, don't forget to check out the final clip, where several ordinary Japanese young ladies take the diving adventure for a test drive. Although in full disclosure, it's the dolphin that really sets them off.

It should come as no surprise to any of our readers that the Wii is selling pretty well, hindered almost solely by its own production problems. Today, Nintendo confirmed any suspicions in announcing its Q1 sales figures -- 3.43 million Wiis sold since the beginning of April, bringing the running worldwide total to 9.27 million. In light of the greater than expected success, it also upped its forecast for the entire year's Wii sales, now predicting to sell upwards of 16.5 million Wiis by April 2008. What do you think? Can it be done?

And what do you get when you remove those pesky production constraints? The company also confirmed nearly twice as many Nintendo DS' sold in the same period (nearly 7 million), and it now thinks it can sell another 19 million this year. Between the two systems and the confirmed million sales of both Super Paper Mario and Mario Party 8 (and a couple little guys named Diamond and Pearl), Nintendo verified it's reaping windfall profits on the order of $666 million in just three months, an increase of 416% over last year. Some out there may think the company's recent success isn't going to last, but Nintendo certainly believes otherwise.