Nintendo Wii Fanboy

The boxes for three more Wii games have been finalized -- Metal Slug Anthology, Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam and Monster 4x4 World Circuit all got the stamp of officialized boxart love from IGN. Since none of these games are unique to the Wii, the boxes are no great revelation, but they're pretty because they're ours.

[Update 1: Seems there are multiple versions of the Tony Hawk box floating around. Some have the WiFi logo and some don't. Could the logo be a mistake from someone putting the boxart together and not paying attention, or is it a sign of things to come? We're looking into it.]

[Update 2: Spoke with our Activision rep, who indicated that any boxes floating around with the WiFi logo must be placeholders -- nothing has changed in regard to the lack of WiFi support for the Wii at this time. And we were so excited. Beware, beware of placeholder boxes! Thanks to our eagle-eyed readers on this one.]

Yesterday, we told you about a nasty, nasty rumor concerning the graphics of the Wii games we've seen so far. Could it be true that the "real" versions of some of the most anticipated games were being withheld so that the Wii, when revealed in full at last, could make a bigger splash than even we could hope for?

Seems silly ... but according to an IGN blog, that could be the case. After they posted videos of Red Steel from Leipzig, Ubisoft apparently contacted IGN to let them know that the footage still didn't reflect the latest build of the game. What we saw at E3 was version 1.0. Let's call LGC v1.5, then, with the amorphous v2.0 still unseen. Why haven't we seen it?

If this is true -- and according to the same post, other tweaks are being considered for Activision's Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam as well -- then this begs the question of what, exactly, is going on with the Wii? Here, in the tag end of August, with Nintendo's Fusion Tour just around the corner, and the event on the 14th, as well as the release date coming in November at the latest ... isn't it time to let us know what the real deal is?

[Thanks, vidGuy!]

There's a list of Wii launch games traveling through the myriad computers, routers, cables and robotic gnomes that comprise the Internet, though it mostly amounts to a bunch of good guesses as opposed to official confirmations. No doubt obtained from retailers and not publishers, the list suggests that the following games will be available when Nintendo unleashes their Wii:

• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
  
• Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
  
• Wii Sports
  
• Red Steel
  
• Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam
  
• Madden NFL 2007
  
• Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors
  
• Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz
  
• Metal Slug Anthology
  
• Trauma Center: Second Opinion
  
• Elebits
  
• Marvel: Ultimate Alliance
  
• Blitz: The League
  
• Rayman Raving Rabbids
  
• SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature from the Krusty Krab
  
• Disney/Pixar's Cars

Since most of these games were playable at E3, it's not too much of a stretch to think that they'd fall within the system's launch. However, this could be another case of that mysterious launch window marketing nonsense messing with our calendars and drawing a distinction between games that launch on day one and games that release shortly afterwards. Atlus told us specifically that Trauma Center: Second Opinion was a "launch window" game and if Activision is serious about Tony Hawk, Downhill Jam will be one too (because people, that game still needs a lot of work).

If the folks at Gaming Age are to be believed, this footage was swiped from an early build of a next-generation Tony Hawk game. There's nothing in the video that points towards this being Downhill Jam (confirmed for the Wii last month), but footage this early is unlikely to be tied down to a specific platform yet. It appears to be an animation test, showing a skater flail his arms about while attempting to maintain his balance. It looks good (if it's real), though expect next-gen naysayers to complain that "It's still just a guy on a skateboard. What's so next-gen about that?"

[Via Gaming Age]