Nintendo Wii Fanboy

In an interview about digital distribution (Bomberman for all!), Siliconera asked Hudson's Vice President of Product Development, Sabine Duvall, about the prospects for an U.S. release of the Turbografx-16 CD-Rom version of Ys Book I & II. Her response: "We'd love to make our fans happy, so we're still evaluating if it's right to bring Ys over."

We fully expect the game to show up on Virtual Console here at some point. There's no reason for it not to. It's not even as if Ys is an import title like Battle Lode Runner or DoReMi Fantasy. It was released in the U.S. For that matter, it was bundled with TG16 CD-Rom drives.

But for whatever reason, they've been evaluating this for a long time. Ys was actually given an ESRB rating back in November. We wonder if they're trying to decide between releasing Ys I & II as an $8 VC download and publishing the DS games that recently bombed in Japan.

Already having Okami for the PS2 is the most valid excuse for not buying the game on the Wii. If you fall into this group, you're probably still tempted to make the purchase because of the added motion controls. Should that not be enough to get your wallets in action, though, you might want to check out this side-by-side comparison video. We already knew that the Wii version looked better, but seeing the two compared with each other shows just how much.

The colors are much more vibrant on the Wii, and for a game that's main draw is its beautiful artistic style, that's kind of big deal. The 16:9 support doesn't hurt matters, either. Have any of you played both Okamis and noticed the difference for yourselves?

Amazon must need to clear out its GameCube stock of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, as this is the second sale the online retailer has hosted in just two days, not that we're complaining!

The last deal lasted only four hours and offered the GameCube release for only $19.99, and, while that sounds much cheaper than the $25.99 Amazon is asking for Twilight Princess now, keep in mind that that $25+ pricing includes free shipping. You can make that kind of change slashing at grass and breaking pots for two minutes!

[Via CAG]

It's no secret that Okami's sales on the PS2 weren't too great, despite the fact that the game was hailed by critics and gamers alike. Some companies might be touchy about things like that, but not Capcom. Even though the gem they published sold a lot less copies than it deserved to, Capcom at least has a sense of humor about the whole thing, as the ad to the right shows us. Hailing Okami as "the best game you've never played" is one of the funniest Wii ads we've seen, in fact.

Way to go, Capcom -- that's what we call good marketing.

Christian Svensson, Capcom's VP of Strategic Planning and Business Development, recently answered a few questions fans had for the upcoming Wii release of Okami. According to his report, preview copies of the game are being sent to media outlets this week, so it won't be long before we hear hands-on impressions for the PS2-to-Wii port!

While Christian warns gamers not to expect any new content or a special edition release, he makes sure to remind us why we wanted the game brought to the the Wii in the first place: "It takes about 10 minutes to get used to using the Wii drawing, but once you do, it's effortless and fast as compared to the PS2 version. The act of physically drawing also has an amazing feel to it and really changes the pace/feel of the game."

As if that wasn't enough to sell the game to anxious fans of the ARPG, he went on to add, "We have reasonable but modest expectations for the title ... If it happens to "destroy" said expectations, I'd definitely think hard about new content." It's a difficult promise to keep considering the current status of developer Clover, but stranger things have happened!

[Via Nintendic]

Nintendo's going to have to divert every Wii shipment straight to Japan for this one. The Monster Hunter series, while certainly doing decent business in the U.S., is an absolute sales monster in Japan. Monster Hunter Portable 2nd on the PSP sold half a million copies on its first day and became the first million-selling PSP game in Japan.

Monster Hunter 3 was previously announced for the PS3, but Capcom has now changed their plan and announced it as a Wii exclusive. Without the barrier of having to buy a new $500+ system, Monster Hunter 3 (tri-) (that's the official title-- we don't know either!) should be quite the hit. An important part of the Monster Hunter experience is online play. We expect such a feature will appear on the Wii, though we don't look forward to seeing how the game will integrate friend codes.

We're already in agreeance that Oboro Muramasa Youtouden is one of the best-looking games announced for the Wii -- we shook hands on it, signed the appropriate forms, and even had a notary stamp the papers to make it official. Still, this first video glimpse of the 2D ARPG managed to leave us in a state of ecstasy, our skin alive with pleasure. What secret resource has Vanillaware tapped into that other developers have so far ignored? Most of the titles we saw at the Tokyo Game Show didn't look half as good as this.

You've likely seen these screenshots of Oboro Muramasa Youtouden already from when we covered the newly announced ARPG last week, but we'll grab at any opportunity to put the spotlight back on this beautiful looking game. Supplementing its weekly magazine, Famitsu has updated its site with direct-feed images, providing a more accurate display of the Vanillaware-developed title than what scanned pages can provide.

We have a couple more images past the post break for you to check out if you're interested -- though we can't imagine why you wouldn't be interested in the most gorgeous 2D game coming to the Wii.

Vanillaware, the same developer behind GrimGrimoire and Odin Sphere, both gorgeous 2D PS2 titles, revealed in Famitsu's latest issue an ARPG for the Wii, Oboro Muramasa Youtouden. It looks absolutely stunning, almost to the point where we're disappointed in other companies for not working on their own 2D games at a similar level.

Loading up the magazine scans, which you can see for yourself past the post break, was like sighting the promised land, a brand new colony, from a distance after months of wandering our ruined, post-apocalyptic Earth. JC fell to his knees beside me, tears in his eyes. The amaranthine sun slipped out of view behind us, leaving our caravan to celebrate its newfound hope. We had many hard months still to weather, but we'd finally found a place to call home.