Nintendo Wii Fanboy

The clues are beginning to come together: there's a countdown on the official site of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and some rumblings of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption news coming around May 20th. In this month once reserved for the mighty E3, it's been quite some time since Nintendo has held a major press conference. Finally, good 'ol Matt has made it perfectly clear in a recent IGN Mailbag: he's on his way to Seattle next week for some mysterious reason, and it's not for Starbucks.

About freakin' time, Nintendo. For a company still claiming that the big three will release in 2007, they've been awfully tight-lipped about the impending trio. We look forward to bringing you some surely awesome news coming next week ... uh, you know, assuming that this actually happens.

Must ... resist ... urge to use "Thwii" pun ...

Now that we've sufficiently girded, here's the news: the PS2 Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI is getting an enhanced port on the Wii, to be released in Japan on March 21st with the enhanced title Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI with Power-Up Kit. Along with the obvious Wiimote functionality, the game will be getting some new gameplay modes and scenarios.

After trying to figure out the first NES Romance, we swore the series off forever. Kudos to those of you who managed to play these things.

[Via GAME Watch]

The ESRB ratings website is a veritable treasure trove of nuclear launch codes, CIA secrets, and unannounced Virtual Console games. Recently, ratings have popped up for Mighty Bomb Jack, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV: Wall of Fire. While not all of the ESRB rated games have yet arrived on the console, it's fairly certain that they'll get here eventually.

In addition, Super Ghouls n' Ghosts was announced not only for the Wii, but for the 360 and PS3. This would make it the first game to be released on all three systems' classic download services, which then brings up silly flame wars and pointless arguing.

But seriously, the Wii version will totally be the best.

(Note: The GameSpot article mentions that Galaga was also tagged for release, but we actually caught this back in January. We rock.)

VGCharts, the "premier source for videogame sales charts on the internet", has totaled worldwide Wii sales now in excess of three million units. The same list has Xbox 360 at 7.74 million, and the PS3 at a rather stunted 1.18 million. By comparison, other-unofficial-internet-tallying site NexGenWars has the three consoles at 9.18 million for the 360, only 2 million for the Wii, and 800,000 for the PS3.

Which should you believe? We're inclined to roll with VGCharts, which seems to have a very meticulous method of gathering numerical data. The competition uses an arbitrary "unit sold every x seconds" formula until the site owner can alter the data manually after press releases and official data; in the first week of sales, the Wii inexplicably went from 700,000 to 400,000 in the blink of an eye.

We all know that Nintendo promised four million worldwide by year's end, but over 75% delivered isn't such a terrible let-down. And hey! There are still five days left! C'mon, Nintendo, you can do it!

[Thanks, Richard!]

A delicious, full-course meal of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption videos has been served up by IGN. As one of our most anticipated launch titles games coming in 2007, we soak all things up Metroid Prime 3 related and absorb it into our bodies, using it to sustain our life force.

These videos showcase not only some mouth-watering gameplay, but also a dazzling attention to detail in the graphics. The particle effects look better, textures look more crisp, and a cutscene of Samus floating out in space causes us to convulse in excitement. We really can't wait to get our hands on this game at launch in 2007.