Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Even though it's the most recent High Voltage game to be revealed, there's a good chance High Voltage Hot Rod Show will beat both The Conduit and Animales de la Muerte to market. In an interview with WiiWare World, producer Josh VanVeld has revealed the game is "basically finished," and discussed the racer in quite a bit more detail.

The games that influenced Hot Rod Show are enough to make us excited for the project; VanVeld namedrops the likes of R.C. Pro-Am, Micro Machines, and Racing Gears Advance (while criticizing the likes of Excite Truck and recent versions of Mario Kart for "losing some of their focus"). In Hot Rod Show, close quarters racing and the long-forgotten art of memorizing tracks will be the order of the day. Typically for a High Voltage game, loads of attention has been paid to the controls. VanVeld reports that we can use a horizontally positioned Wii Remote (as in Excite Truck), the Classic Controller, a GameCube controller, or add a Nunchuk and use the thumbstick for steering.

After the disaster that was SPOGS Racing, there's definitely room on WiiWare for a cheap, well-made racer that can be enjoyed with friends (VanVeld says four-player splitscreen "could be the best experience you'll have with the game"); we can easily imagine High Voltage Hot Rod Show being that game.

It would appear that High Voltage made a pretty penny or two from their last WiiWare release, Gyrostarr, as the company has announced they're working on a new game for WiiWare. Titled High Voltage Hot Rod Show, this game will be hitting WiiWare this fall and features a "unique stunt system" that gives players "multiple ways to build boost." The game will utilize the company's Quantum 3 engine technology and has support for up to 4 players via local split-screen, features 5 racers, and has 6 different tracks.

After checking out the trailer above, be sure to hit up our gallery below, which has screens from the game, as well as some promo art and wallpapers!

This latest tournament (check out previous tournaments here) for Mario Kart Wii focuses on Diddy and Donkey Kong. And, as you might have guess from the images above, will take place on the track DK64 Jungle Park. There, you must avoid the bananas that both Donkey and Diddy Kong drop from atop their motorcycles. Sadly, there isn't any other info, so we assume you can use any control method you'd like for this one.

The tournament starts today and ends on the 10th. Good luck!

Update: Courtesy of WiiFolder, a video has been embedded past the break, to give you all a better idea of what to expect.

Okay, you've had some quality time with every Wii owner's latest obsession, Mario Kart Wii. Now that you've had ample time to play a few of the game's tracks repeatedly, we were hoping you wouldn't mind chiming in and telling us who's hot, and who's not, so to speak. Loving the newer tracks? Been enjoying some of the remakes? Weigh in!

For those of you who don't want to settle for just some screenshots of the game's online menus, check out the video above. And, as you would imagine, the interface is slick (got to love that globe and player locator) and allows you to get your game on relatively easily. Oh boy, are we ever dying to get our hands on this!

Every Tuesday, Mike Sylvester brings you REVOLUTIONARY, a look at the wide world of Wii possibilities.

Ever since the motion sensing ability of the Wiimote was revealed, Star Wars fans have been pleading for a game that would let them live out their Jedi fantasies, swinging the Wiimote in command of an onscreen light saber. Well, Lucasarts recently announced that the Wii will be getting a version of the multiplatform title, The Force Unleashed, a game that's expected to fulfill all your fantasies of being an power-infused enforcer with a luminous sword.

But Lucas & Co. haven't always given us just what we want. In 1999 they released the first chapter of the long-awaited Star Wars prequel trilogy, The Phantom Menace, to an audience that was expecting something more, well ... Star Wars-y. Jar Jar, midichlorians, and a pre-pubescent, mop-topped future-fascist didn't quite make for the hit we were hoping for, and the most exciting moment in the film was not a war or a fight scene, but a race. Lucasarts seemed to agree and developed a game based around that scene (albeit, filled out with more tracks and worlds). In this week's Revolutionary, we'll be using GlovePIE to see if the Wiimote and Nunchuk can keep up with the Jedi-like reflexes you'll need to stay in the lead in Star Wars: Episode I Racer.

These new screenshots of Nintendo's Gamecube-turned-Wii racer haven't completely alleviated our fears over its new control setup, but we're excited to see that animal-riding has been included! With the game's Japanese release date (6/28) only a few weeks away, we can look forward to seeing a lot more revealing previews and gameplay videos soon. Head past the post break for rhino-riding images from DK Bongo Blast.