Nintendo Wii Fanboy

We're fascinated by Karaoke Joysound Wii, Hudson's karaoke program that allows players to turn their Wiis into karaoke machines and download selections from a massive library of songs for a 300 yen fee (for one day of unlimited downloading). But we believed that it was going to stay in Japan, for various reasons including the greater popularity of private karaoke in Japan, the reliance on a massive licensing deal that Hudson USA doesn't have, and the fact that Hudson said so.

But 4cr's Keito reported in her hands-on preview of the game that "The game is going to be released in Japan on December 18th, and then in both the USA and Europe in 2009." Could Hudson be working on a deal with an American music publisher? If so, we may have $3 karaoke parties soon.

While we completely freak over the news that Alien Crush Returns will be coming Stateside soon, take a brief second to remember Karaoke Joysound Wii. A few months ago, Hudson's Mike Pepe stated that two games from Alien Crush Returns, My Aquarium, and Karaoke Joysound Wii would be localized. With the first two now confirmed for North America, that means (as expected) that the karaoke game will be staying in Japan.

The silver lining: if you're feeling adventurous and refuse to let such obstacles prevent you from warbling to J-pop, you can always get your import on -- Hudson just gave the game a release date of December 11th in its homeland.

[Via Siliconera]

EB Games' site has a rather interesting listing up. It's for Boogie Superstar, which we can only assume is a sequel for EA's Boogie game (you think, Wii Fanboy?). Uh, did Boogie do well enough to justify a sequel? Also, will this supposed new sequel utilize the Balance Board, as rumored?

Despite some lukewarm reviews and an overall failure at retail, it would seem that EA is not giving up on their rhythm-based franchise. Let's just hope that this time around, it will require more than a babbling baby's effort to actually succeed.

[Via Go Nintendo]

During Hudson's WiiWare event, the company also revealed new details about Karaoke JoySound Wii, which is actually a hybrid WiiWare/retail release. The singing game, designed to provide a karaoke-club experience at home, will come in two versions: a retail package with a microphone, and a downloadable version that requires separate mics.

Rather than pay-per-song DLC, Joysound actually uses a subscription model that provides access to Xing's existing Joysound library of 20,000 songs, with 1,000 new songs added every month. Hudson plans to release Karaoke Joysound Wii this summer in Japan. Since it relies so heavily on an existing collection of Japanese karaoke songs, an American release doesn't seem likely.

Not being familiar with the High School Musical movies, characters, or songs, we aren't sure if High School Musical: Sing It! has the wide appeal required to be a good party karaoke title. However, if you're a fan and have yet to pick up the Wii game (for some reason), then today's Amazon Deal of the Day is for you. That is, if you love karaoke and don't care what you're singing.

The online retailer has dropped the game's price to $29.99 for today only. If you've got a Boogie microphone or other Wii-compatible USB mic, you're good to go. If you don't, you may be stuck paying the same price for the separate components that you would for the bundle. So, really, this Deal of the Day is big news for a very specific audience: super karaoke fans (who either have Boogie or are planning to buy American Idol or another mic game) who also love High School Musical. Or people who can find a cheap used Wii mic.

Though its potential can't be denied, Nintendo's Wii Ware channel, an upcoming download service for new Wii games, didn't impress us much with the seemingly low-budget titles announced for it so far. Nintendo amended that worriment today at its Tokyo conference by revealing a lineup of impressive projects in progress, turning our "Excitement Level" knob to eleven, one measure greater than what we previously thought the mechanism allowed.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Little King and the Promised Land (1500 Wii Points, March), a "country-building sim," stands out from the bunch, promising an exclusive side story which takes place after the original GameCube game. This marks the fourth entry to the series and the second Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles title announced for the Wii. Square Enix has already made a teaser site for you to load up and immediately close once you've realized that there's almost nothing there yet.

Hudson, having kept things on and poppin' on the Virtual Console side for some time now, demonstrated its commitment to the new service by announcing new games like Bomberman, Star Soldier R, and Joysound, the last of which will be a karaoke title. Namco Bandai also chimed in with Mojipittan, a Japanese word puzzle game.

As for Nintendo's contributions to the Wii Ware channel, the company announced Dr. Mario (!!!), Pokemon Farm, Puzzloop for Everyone, and Maruboushikaku, all of which appearing to have some form of Mii integration. You can preview screenshots for those titles at the Famitsu links below.

Read - FFCC: The Little King and the Promised Land teaser site
Read - FFCC: The Little King and the Promised Land screenshots
Read - Star Soldier R screenshots
Read - Mojipittan screenshots
Read - Dr. Mario, Pokemon Farm, Puzzloop for Everyone, and Maruboushikaku screenshots

Not long ago, we posted about Nintendo's newest trademarks (in Japan), and today, we'd like to focus on one: Mii Audition. What could it be? We have a few (off-the-wall) ideas, and we'd like to hear yours as well. The first is an idea we've been kicking around for a while: the idea of a dedicated karaoke channel featuring performing Miis and downloadable songs. We just can't help but think this would be a blast, though the Wii's small hard drive may be a detriment. On the one hand, that could be a way to get people not interested in the Virtual Console to get into downloadable content. On the other hand, it could be a really good argument in favor of a hard drive, and with the increasing popularity of flash drives (we're even required to have them for college classes these days), the idea of an external hard drive may not be as complicated as some people make it out to be. But 512 mb isn't an unreasonable size for downloading enough songs for a decent karaoke mix; after all, the first iPod Shuffle was that size in the low end model, and it held over one hundred songs. So, say, twenty-five or so, priced at maybe two bucks per song? Seems reasonable. And the content available could be region-specific.

We'd love to see something like this. We're not the first people to line up to buy karaoke games, usually due to the selection of songs. But if we were allowed to choose songs that appealed to us? That's a whole new ballgame, and one that would really make us want to whip the Wii out to tempt even the most staunchly opposed nongamers.

But that's just us dreaming. Our second notion is probably much more likely: perhaps this could be an expanded form of Stage Debut, the application that was demoed every now and then, but never came to light. Stage Debut incorporated the GBA camera for face-mapping your likeness onto a character you could then personalize through a quiz. Replace the GBA camera and face-mapping portion of Stage Debut with your own Miis, but keep the other elements, which feature your character doing a bunch of random things. This has the benefit of being already designed and would need only to be adapted, and could even link in with the Check Mii Out/Mii Contest Channel.

Enough about our ideas -- what do you see coming with this intriguing trademark?

Boogie just looks like good, clean dancin' fun and we're really excited about giving it a try, particularly after seeing this new video of ... well, video! Specifically, the video-making function in the forthcoming EA title. Looks very easy to use, and the results are pretty spiffy. Seems that impressions from the Nintendo Media Summit were on target -- Boogie is ready to get down. Now if only we could speed ahead to August!

We love the basic idea behind High School Musical. We think a karaoke game would be a big hit with the "expanded audience" out there in the "blue ocean." If we were the type to perform in front of people rather than hiding in total silence, we'd totally play it.

The major problem with High School Musical is High School Musical. If we're going to be singing in a game, we'd rather not sing material from a Disney made-for-TV movie. We'd rather belt out the theme from Night Trap than whatever was written for High School Musical.

Check the link for some new screens. We hope the game is more exciting than the microphone peripheral!

Before you go running off to troll post on various message boards, we'd like to give you some specifics. A recent CNN technology feature details some of the various chips and components found within the forty-dollar Wiimote. Among the Bluetooth converters and accelerometers is a component listed as an "audio translator," which "converts analog data such as human speech into a digital data stream. This feature is unused now but will probably be employed in future games." The approximate cost is listed at $2.00.

So, what's the deal? First, there is no actual microphone (a device capable of converting vibrational energy into electrical signals) found within the Wiimote. Though basic electrical engineering principals allow a standard speaker to act in such a fashion, the signal quality and frequency response would be unacceptably low. This chip actually requires an expansion device for it to be used at all. So why add it? It's only two dollars, but this rather unnecessary addition has cost the company several dozen million dollars. We can only assume that Nintendo or significant third parties are planning a title utilizing an expansion microphone, which will be presumably cheap enough to bundle with a title and incur no markup in price.

God knows the masses need a mainstream karaoke game (we know about Karaoke Revolution for the PS2, but it never really took off), and the Wii is just the system to do it. Like a Virginnnnn ... hey!

After several weeks of hushed rumors about Electronic Arts' rhythm-based game for the Wii, the video game giant finally pulled the curtains back on its gossiped project, Boogie. The new IP will take advantage of the Wii's unique controls, encouraging gamers to sing and sway along with the karaoke/dance game. The reports of a microphone peripheral for the Wii remote seem indisputable now, but we're puzzled as to how it will work since the nunchuck will already be attached to the controller's bottom port.

Players will be able to customize their characters and even "[star] in their own music videos." We're not sure if that means Boogie will allow us to import our Miis, but it would be a criminal oversight if the game didn't. Judging by the screenshots released so far, it would pain us to hear that our character selection would be limited to SpongeBob rejects with chest hair.

EA Montreal (SSX Blur) is handling development for this Wii-exclusive game, and they expect to release the title worldwide later this year. Check out the first screenshots for Boogie after the post break!