Fact: feet are disgusting. Also a fact: the Wii Balance Board is very, very white. What price will you pay to keep it that way, and prevent mucky feet from tarnishing its perfect surface?
Linx Products hopes that you'll pay ¥1,554 (around $14). The company recently started marketing these ivory-colored protective covers for Nintendo's peripheral, and they're available now on Amazon Japan for exactly that price. They can be washed up to fifty times, and apparently feature ... some anti-bacterial agent that we couldn't decipher.
These are still Japan-only, so the rest of you will have to settle with stickingotherstuff on your Balance Boards. Or you could just wash your damn manky feet.
Putting your feet on the Balance Board and measuring your own BMI is so last year -- head here to read up on one blogger's quest to measure his apartment. And a cat.
If the cold, hard, infinitely white surface of the Balance Board has you too scared to jump back on the Wii FIt bandwagon, a solution has been found. AMR Racing has thrown together a few snazzy little cover designs, so if you're gonna be staring at the Balance Board while doing pushups, you may as well stare at a Hoochie Mama.
Each cover will set you back around US$20, which might just be a small price to pay to cover up the current gross state of your Balance Board. Check out the full range over at Amazon -- or, if you are a British chap or chapette, Amazon UK.
Any White Stripes fan -- nay, any music fan at all -- can only look at this trailer for Disney's Ultimate Band and weep, perhaps while pounding a sharp-edged rock into the side of their skull. It's not the idea of yet another music game that will probably do the same things as all the other music games (including using Rock Band's instruments). It's the absolutely abhorrent quality of the included covers that has us writhing on the floor in pain and shame. That's got us wondering if all the music will be covers, since we know of several other songs and artists on tap for the title (and more who are rumored).
Ultimate Band was initially announced as being the peripheral-free answer to Rock Band and Guitar Hero, but now that rumored versions for the Xbox 360 and PS3 have been announced, word is that there will also be a version with instruments that will retail for $170.
Drag yourself past the break to see the list known artists and songs.
Wii Fit can be hard on your feet. So why not give them a nice massage? And by "give them a nice massage," we mean "make them stand on some plastic nubs." Japan Trust Technology hopes that the nubs on their Silicone Fit Cover Tsubu Tsubu (tsubu tsubu refers to something grainy or pebbly) will be just the thing to put them at the top of the burgeoning Wii Fit board cover market.
In addition to feeling neat, the nubs help players keep their feet positioned properly and prevent slippage. JTT is selling this item online -- in blue only -- for 2480 yen ($23). We make fun of stuff like this, but we can certainly see the appeal of getting a nice cover for something that we have our feet on for hours.
Designer Mayumi Hasegawa does a lot of work in "python leather." As in "snakeskin." As in "a surefire way to get us to stop using our Wiimotes immediately, because ewww." This Wiimote cover isn't just a fashionable print. Snake! A snake! Oh, it's a snake!
The Remocon Python Suit comes in two styles: "white" and "black" and sells via Hasegawa's website for 15,750 yen (about $150). With the slightly snake-like shape of the Wiimote, having a snakeskin-augmented controller on your coffee table is basically guaranteed to freak your cats out.
If you happen to think it's great, Hasegawa also has a line of pricey and vaguely unsettling DS Lite covers.
Our undercover brother from another mother, GameOPS, has continued its documentation of video game piracy in the Philippines with more packaging photos taken at a Manila mall. The island nation's counterfeiters aren't content with just purposely mislabeling GameCube titles; they're taking a page from their handheld capers, packing multiple titles into one disc and selling them as unofficial Wii anthologies.
The 4-in-1 Zelda "Collector's Edition" pictured above contains the following GC/Wii releases - Four Swords Adventures, The Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, and Ocarina Time [sic] -- all for only 400 pesos (approximately $8.75). Further insulting the series, the offending shop also sells a Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic Riders 2-in-1 pack for the same price, suggesting equal worth. That is some straight-up malarkey. Jump past the post break for more examples of this duplicitous practice.
The last time we visited the Philippines, we stopped at a video store and picked up a movie labeled Anaconda 4, amazed to find that the horrible horror film had received three sequels which we'd never heard about. Imagine our surprise when we popped in the VHS tape later that evening, only to find that Anaconda 4 was actually Komodo, a completely unrelated B-movie with absolutely no anacondas in it whatsoever. It's a good thing we passed on Breakfast Club 3.
Filipino site GameOPS found that pirates are up to their old tricks again, copying GameCube games onto DVD discs and packaging them as Wii releases. Titles like Luigi's Mansion, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, and The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition are advertised with new covers that've been rebranded with Wii logos and boxart elements. Unlike official GameCube-to-Wii ports, these don't even feature tacked-on waggle controls!
When asked about the "Wii" copy of Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes on display at ShopesVille, a department store in Manila's Greenhills Shopping Center, one of the salesladies explained that it's the same Metal Gear Solid release as the upcoming PS3 game. We bet that all the people who argued about the Wii not being able to handle next-gen graphics feel a bit silly now! Check past the break for a couple more photos of the counterfeit case jackets.
While Kenney Vleugels developed Wii Covermaker to help with designing packaging art for "back-ups" -- a practice we don't endorse -- this little application can still be pretty useful for easily creating CD jackets for games that aren'tpirated.
Wii Covermaker allows you to import images and attach to them a number of elements common to Wii game covers: ESRB and PEGI ratings, logos for several prominent developers and publishers, and a header strip. There are also options for you to drop in the "CD Type" and a credit for the boxart's author.
We would like to see a few more features, like an option for DVD covers and a header strip that better resembles the official one, but those will probably come with future updates. For now, we'll settle with this ersatz Zombies Ate My Neighbors CD case we've put together, wondering to ourselves when we'll ever be able to fill its empty plastic. Leave us to our sorrows and jump past the post break for a Wii Covermaker demonstration video.
We try to tip our hats whenever we spot a magazine cover that catches our fancy, but after having received numerous complaints from the jerks in accounting, upper management recently revised our office dress code to prohibit the wearing of sombreros, bowlers, and Davy Crockett caps. Our heads have been bare ever since the decree was passed down, and we haven't been doing much hat-tipping as a result. Needless to say, we really miss our silly hats.
Edge's cover for its July issue is just what we needed to lift our spirits. The UK magazine has a reputation for attractive layouts, inside and out, and this month's artwork is no exception, heralding Nintendo's victory run on gold. Though the image pasted above captures the basic gist, you can see a shot of the full cover after the post break. Ironically, only one Wii game made Edge's review pages this time around -- Mercury Meltdown Revolution. Ignition's labyrinthine title garnered an 8 out of 10; quite impressive considering the magazine's traditionally tough scoring.
If you've got the wrist strap secured tightly and you're still launching your Wiimote skyward, then ... well, you have a problem. Maybe you're eating too much Xtreme Butter popcorn, or maybe the can of WD-40 you always carry around is leaking.
This product from Elecom is for you and no one else, Mr. Comically Slippery Hands. It's a silicone Wiimote sleeve with a big handle on it. There's no link to order one yet, so you have time to wipe your hands off and put some grip tape on your mouse in preparation for placing an order.
There are further rumors about Nintendo Power, Nintendo's official gaming magazine, but the rumblings have changed slightly. The latest word is that the publication will continue, just with a new publisher working things behind the scenes, which is how the European Nintendo magazine is handled.
It's a good time to to relive some nostalgic moments with the magazine, and Infendo recently clued us in on a shiny new set of covers courtesy of Flickr user kocojim. Go forth and bask, and let's hope this version of the rumor is true.
You've been able to cover your Wiimote and Nunchuk with a colorful silicone shell for some time now. But your poor Classic Controller has remained-- shamefully-- nude.
Cyber Gadget is offering a solution to this indecent situation with Classic Controller skins in six colors: blue, pink, white, black, clear, and clear black. They even come with little coordinating analog stick covers!
Cyber Gadget has yet to put these up on their own site, so it seems that they aren't available for sale yet. We're sure someone will offer them to non-Japanese markets once they're released.
Nintendo of Japan has long supported a "Club Nintendo" program by which ridiculous fanboys (like us) get to register their purchased consoles and software for various rewards. Of course, we have a similar "registering" procedure at MyNintendo.com, but we rarely have anything to show for it ... we got a Metroid Prime 2 demo disc, once. Woo-hoo.
It turns out that platinum members (a status obtained by magically accruing four hundred points in a year) of Club Nintendo get to choose between two wonderful prizes: Tingle's Balloon Fight, for the DS, or a custom battery pack cover with your very own Mii imprinted on the back. Such a difficult decision! Whilst they ponder, perhaps we may spirit away these prizes in the night. Who's in?
Putting your feet on the Balance Board and measuring your own BMI is so last year -- head here to read up on one blogger's quest to measure his apartment. And a cat.
