If you're the type to never pay retail on anything, especially video games, the like-minded misers at the Cheap Ass Gamers community have found two worthwhile Wii deals for you:
If you haven't looked into shoot-em-up Castle of Shikigami III before, make sure you check out the videos we posted a couple of months ago -- there's a flying butler! Amazon also has CSI: Hard Evidenceon sale for $19.99, but we have a feeling that not many of you will be too excited to pick up this video game adaptation of a poor man's Law & Order.
European publisher JoWood has announced that, along with new development partner Tivola (publisher of the great-looking Music Monstars on the DS), they're creating a yoga game for the Wii. The name: Wii Yoga. There are no specific details about the game yet (except those evident from the title), but it is planned for a "second quarter 2009" release in Europe, and it uses the Balance Board.
No information has been released about a possible American release, but a Wii Yoga game was among the titles revealed in the massive Intellisponse leak a few weeks back, which suggests that Activision or Disney may be releasing the game. Or that another game called Wii Yoga is planned, which isn't that unlikely given the completely, plainly obvious nature of the title.
We're going to talk about Mega Manmore, because, well, we can. The topic today is bosses -- with the introduction of Splash Woman, the series is taking an interesting step. How do you feel about there being a robot woman boss in the game? Intrigued, annoyed, or maybe indifferent?
Robot feminism aside, though, let's just talk about robot masters in general. Since there have been so manyMega Man games, Capcom has used up a lot of boss themes already. Even the ones in Mega Man 9 seem like slightly tweaked rehashes of old bosses. What do you think, though? Has the Mega Man boss well run dry? On another note, can you think of some nifty boss ideas here on the spot?
What an excellent week it's been for classic game fans! The DS gets a new (release of) Chrono Trigger, the Wii gets a new 8-bit Mega Man, and now this! NeoGAF's neo2046 noticed an update to Thunder Forcedeveloper Tecnosoft's website stating that a new entry in the longstanding shmup series is on the way. The WHOIS data for tecnosoft.com indicates that the domain has been in the possession of a Japanese company since 1996, and archive.org shows previous TecnoSoft webpages in that space, so this seems legit.
There's very little information on the barebones site -- in fact, you're looking at all of it -- so we don't know which platform or platforms TecnoSoft is planning to release the game on. But it's a shooter, and the Wii is where shooters go this generation. TecnoSoft would be able to release classic Genesis Thunder Force games on the Virtual Console to promote it. We'd love to see Thunder Force II and its indecipherable intro available once again.
This might just be the coolest thing we see all weekend.
Darkeru from the Ben Heck forums came up with the idea for this beauty, and after months of "careful planning," finally finished his creation. It's exactly what you think it is; a mod that plays NES games on a NES game cartridge. What an ingeniously simple idea (though if we really think about it, our brains might implode).
The games are built into the portable -- ninety-nine of them, in fact -- which sounds pretty convenient. Other than that, we have nothing to say except that we're still gawking at this thing. Oh, and do want.
108 days after it originally launched in the U.S., Super Smash Bros. Brawl was released in Europe and promptly flew to the upper echelons of Europe's sales charts. Nintendo's scrapper was top of the Week 26 pile in Sweden, Germany, Britain, and Holland, was only beaten into second place by the absurdly popular LEGO Indiana Jones in Denmark and Ireland, and will probably be top when the one-week-behind Spanish charts are revealed next week.
Yet it wasn't all smooth sailing. In the UK and Ireland, Brawl very nearly had its high position compromised by a game we haven't seen in a while -- Wii Fit. Thanks to the Balance Board game getting restocked, the title leapt 27 places in the UK to third place, and was also third in Ireland, after being outside the Top 20 last week. A remarkable recovery, but it just shows how overweight desperate we all are for Nintendo's wobbly creation!
Check out what Europeans are buying after the break.
In an effort to help build anticipation for Mega Man 9, and probably to prepare new players who don't realize how brutal Mega Man games can be, Capcom announced that the first two games in the series will be released on the Virtual Console in the two months leading up to the September release of the new WiiWare game.
Rockman will be released this month, according to both Capcom and Nintendo, whose VC lineup page has been updated to reflect this surprise announcement. Rockman 2: Dr. Wily no Nazo (Mega Man 2: The Riddle of Dr. Wily) will come out in August.
Both of these games have been out in Europe for quite some time, so the real surprise isn't that they're being released in Japan, it's why they haven't been released yet -- and it would seem that we have our answer now. Capcom was waiting until they could start promoting Mega Man 9.
If you visit this site you most likely enjoy playing the Wii, but where do you weigh in on this fad business? Do you think that the Wii's sales will eventually plummet? Or do you believe that the Wii might even overtake the PS2 at some point? Maybe you fall somewhere in between?
It's time to bring out your inner analyst and let us know where you stand on the issue.
If you've managed to get this far in your internet life without running into Goatse, congratulations! Do yourself a favor and keep it that way -- trust us on this one.
It has been months since Chinese accessory manufacturers last entertained us with inaneWiiremoteattachments; we were beginning to fear that they had run out of wacky ideas! But here comes the Ball Bearing Maze Special Salver [sic] to cure our accessory doldrums!
With this handy, Kororinpa-branded product, all you need to do is drop your remote into that center compartment, and you'll have more exciting, immersive experience playing marble/labyrinthine games such as Kororinpa: Marble Mania and, uh, that's it. Similarly designed games like Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz, Mercury Meltdown Revolution, and Dewy's Adventure all require easy access to the controller's buttons, so this accessory wouldn't work well with those.
Couple that limited support with the Maze Special Salver's pricing, $27.99 plus shipping/handling, and this attachment looks almost as unattractive as the terrible image its design alludes to. You would be better off taping your remote to a cafeteria tray!
Sick of the likes of Lara Croft jiggling up your video games? Looks like the LEGO games franchise has the answer to the bulging and bursting ladies of gaming. Poison Ivy might be a sexpot in other media, from comics to television to film, but in LEGO Gotham City, she gives a whole new meaning to brickhouse.
Check out her blocky style, as well as some other new images from the multi-platform title, in our gallery below.
This Wii had a lot of software representation in the top ten this week, with a third-party game taking the highest honors -- Namco Bandai's Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World. Japan's Wii RPG love wasn't enough to put the newest Tales game into first place, though; a DS title about horse racing, Derby Stallion, took that coveted position. Yet, Symphonia's first week sales are pretty impressive.
The other Wii games that found themselves in the top ten were Mario Super Sluggers, and of course Wii Fit and Mario Kart. As for hardware, the Wii dropped to third place, falling behind the DS by a minuscule margin: To see the top ten software sales numbers and rankings, just clicky clicky on the "continue reading" link below.
Now this is an old one. How many of you can remember this classic ad, utilizing the "SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY!" voiceover guy? Did you know that the karts found in Mario Kart have two speeds? Fast and WAY TOO FAST! Ah, classic commercials, it doesn't get much better than that.
Each week, our Friday Video segment takes a look at the gaming landscape online and brings forth an interesting video that (hopefully) gets the dialog started. Past entries have included a look at Mario on the PS2 (what?) and some of Nintendo's other marketing attempts.
People seem to either fall in the "love it" or "hate it" camp for Red Steel. For some, the controls were a mess, but others felt that they worked pretty well after an hour or so of playing. If such mixed opinions initially scared you away from Ubisoft's launch game, you might be happy to know that you can now pick up the title for super cheap.
Starting today (and lasting only one week), GameStop is selling used copies of Red Steel for $9.99. This deal is available in brick and mortar stores only, but you can check if your local store has copies in stock by using the retailer's website.
For those of you who've played Red Steel -- is it worth $10?
This week's notable title is none other than Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. With nothing else on the radar, we're wondering how many of you pounced on this one? Personally, we're not big Aerosmith fans, but that's just us.
If you aren't playing that, then what's going to be spinning in your Wii? What are you be playing?
We knew that Wario Land: Shake It! looked really nice, but we simply were not prepared to see it in motion in the gameplay video available on the new Japanese site. The crisp backgrounds and fluid character animation make Shake It one of the best-looking games on Wii or any other console. It's surprisingly beautiful for something that is also so Wario-like -- the gameplay footage is all busting stuff and hoarding treasure.
The site also features the animated intro created by Production I.G., which we've embedded after the break. In addition, an animated controller diagram details the game's sideways-Wiimote-based control scheme: the 1 button tackles, the 2 button jumps, and shaking the Wiimote performs various context-sensitive actions, usually shaking stuff.
We're going to talk about 
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