Nintendo Wii Fanboy

The Nintendo Channel updated with fresh videos today, most important of which is a gameplay video showing off Nintendo's new WiiWare title, Art Style: Orbient. Our own JC noted that the title looked a lot like Orbital, a Bit Generations game for the GBA. Sure enough, it is!

Head past the break for some gameplay footage of Nintendo's new game.

Yeah, there aren't any Game Boy Advance games on the Virtual Console, and there probably won't be any time soon, but that's not important! This column is about games that should be on the Virtual Console, and this game should be everywhere.

Treasure is known for producing super-hardcore action games, from frantic run-and-guns like Alien Soldier and Gunstar Heroes to clever shooters like Ikaruga and Radiant Silvergun. Between original releases, they sometimes take on licensed works, seemingly to pay the bills. One of their best games -- and possibly the best game on the GBA -- combines all of these aspects of Treasure's style. It might be slightly strange to say that a licensed game based on a kids' show is one of Treasure's best, but it absolutely is.

NeoGAFfer JoshuaJSlone has devoted a serious amount of time to compiling weekly hardware sales figures in Japan, as they appear in Famitsu. That sounds like a task of almost Sisyphean proportions, but it's not all thankless. This week, for instance, his legwork and terrifying table of numbers (mercifully translated into the graph above) threw up an interesting little factoid: lifetime sales of the Wii in Japan have now surpassed those of the GameCube. Which is darn impressive, considering the Wii has been in Japanese stores for just 54 weeks.

Our new favorite NeoGAFfer also took the time to compare those first 54 weeks of the Wii's life with other consoles. Turns out the GBA needed only 40 weeks to reach where the Wii is now, and the DS an almost identical 53.7 weeks. What could have been in a world without Wii shortages, eh? Interestingly, the Wii is even outperforming the PlayStation 2, which required approximately 66 weeks to reach the Wii's current total.

For more graph-related tomfoolery, and to see how the PS3 is faring against the Wii (clue: it's not faring well, but let's not be complacent), head past the break.

Now, we've been saying for awhile now that the Wii would revolutionize the industry and it has. But, we wouldn't go so far as to say we were bored by it all pre-Wii. We loved the GameCube, we loved the GBA and we still love our DS. We loved the N64. We hardly found ourselves without games to play, that's for sure.

"A major insight that Nintendo had early on was that they saw that gamers were getting bored, even though they didn't know it yet," Kaplan remarked. Robert Matthews, senior director of consumer marketing for Nintendo of America backed her up, stating "Just look at the way people consume entertainment today. The idea that you would spend hours playing videogames is just not real anymore."

While we'd argue that, blogging doesn't leave us with as much time for gaming as we'd like, but we think overall that there will always be a place for lengthy games, jam-packed with feature-rich content and that Nintendo's new proven focus shouldn't try to do away with those.

Do you guys care to toss in your two cents?

Another Assist Trophy was revealed over at the dojo today in Lyn, a character from the GBA game Fire Emblem. Wielding a weapon of similar stature to another Assist Trophy, her attacks are more deliberate and less on the reckless side like Samurai Goroh. Aside from that, the site suggests that once you summon her, you grab your enemy and hold on to them, allowing her attack to hit them point blank for massive damage.

Is it wrong to have loved Crash Bandicoot back in the day? If it is, we'll just have to settle for being wrong ... but we will say that this news seems to have come out of nowhere. We're not going to ask any awkward questions about Sony (that would be the big elephant in the room here), but instead, we'll just quietly raise an eyebrow and hope that this game brings a fun and frenetic experience to Nintendo systems.

There's also a hint of DS-Wii functionality here, and even if Crash himself doesn't excite you, perhaps that will. According to a Spanish gaming magazine, Crash of the Titans will hit shelves in October, though we're guessing that's a European date.

As usual, you can see the scan after the break.

In using a special cartridge that allows a video signal to be sent to the GBA, You Tube user jackal27 rocks his Wii on the portable's tiny screen. Obviously, the practical use of such a feature is almost nonexistent, but it makes for a fun little You Tube video. Check out the video, which has been embedded past the post break.

Update: me am not so English good (I omitted a word or two in the post).