Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Nooo, not those balls. Get your mind out of the gutter, you disgusting piece of filth. These are super balls, the kind which need no human host to survive and can freely bounce about the galaxy of your child's bedroom or anywhere of their own volition. These balls truly are super.

Of course, they won't be available until April of this year, so this is only an opportunity to preorder. Each set will cost $22, with a variety of different balls on offer.

The name of another lucky winner floated across our prize desk this morning, from out of the teeming mass of entries in our VC Fanswag contest, and this time, the games go out to:

• Michael K. in comment 1071, who said he would give away Sin & Punishment. We're so proud.

Lucky Michael walks away with five awesome titles on the Virtual Console, thanks to the new gifting feature. As for everyone else? Stick around, as we're sure to get another contest underway soon!

If you've been out on the street like some kind of gumshoe, tracking down leads and putting in face time with store manager after store manager as you hunt down that Wii that certain someone in your life is looking for, you might have someone besides Nintendo to be angry with. Bowl officials responsible for the upcoming college bowl games (championship games) managed to snatch up tons of Wiis as a gift to those participating in these games. It's apparently some kind of effort to promote their games over others.

Three of the national championship games will award participants from the schools with Nintendo's latest console. That comes to about 750 total consoles being gifted. That's no small number to scoff at, if we may say so.

[Via Go Nintendo]

Now that the Virtual Console gift feature is alive and kicking, it just seems fitting that we celebrate with a few gifts of our own. Each member of the Wii Fanboy staff has carefully chosen one game currently available on the U.S. Virtual Console, and we're ready to show our appreciation by gifting the lot to one lucky reader. But guys! What if I already have the game in question? Well, dear reader, we've also each chosen back-up titles, just in case. If the winner has one, we'll move onto the next. If you have all of them? Maybe you should hang back and let someone else win! 'Tis the season of giving, after all.

To enter, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post telling us what you'd be most likely to give away, if you were so inclined. You may enter once per day, and we must receive your comments between now and December 20. The giveaway closes shop that night at 11:59 PM EST, so get to work! We'll announce the winner December 21. As usual, entries are limited to legal U.S. residents age 18 and older. Please check the official rules for any other questions.

Wii Fanboy's Virtual Console Gift Pack

• Devil's Crush -- TurboGrafx-16, 600 points (JC)
• Dragon's Curse -- TurboGrafx-16, 600 points (Candace)
• Excitebike -- NES, 500 points (Chris)
• Gunstar Heroes -- Sega Genesis, 800 points (Eric)
• The Legend of the Mystical Ninja -- SNES, 800 points (Dave)
• The Legend of Zelda -- NES, 500 points (Alisha)

While we certainly expected region-locking on the new gifting feature, we can't say we're too pleased about the country-lock. Sure, we'll grant that there are a lot of reasons for Nintendo to make such a decision -- legal reasons, currency issues, rights issues ... there's bound to be all sorts of things we haven't considered. It seems likely that Nintendo would want us to be able to freely gift. Or at least, to gift as freely as possible.

Or would they? Despite the DS, the region-free wonder that it is, Nintendo is still very focused on friend codes and encouraging people to play together, in the same room. Do you think that one of the reasons for the country-lock was to encourage people to continue the close-friends-only tradition of gaming interaction? What other factors do you think led to the decision?

Many sources are reporting that the new gift feature that allows Wii owners to send Virtual Console games to their buddies is, unsurprisingly, region-locked. That we expected; after all, VC games release on different schedules around the world. But what is surprising is that the function seems to be country-locked as well. Posters at NeoGAF are reporting being unable to send Virtual Console games between Canada and the United States, though no one has yet -- to our knowledge -- tested sending VC games between two European nations that both use the euro as currency. We don't know yet what the lock is based upon; it could be currency or just blanket national lines. We'll keep you updated as we learn more, but for now, reconcile yourselves to only sending gifts to people who live under the same flag.

The new update is pretty self-explanatory, but for all of you out there who don't have a Wii or might be away from yours, we figured a nice stroll through the update would brighten your day. So, hit up the video above and see how one hooks up a friend with a Virtual Console game on the Wii.

Sure enough, we got online to do our usual video wrap-up post when we discovered that the Shop was down. We tried our best to beat the buzzer, but sure enough, our luck is lacking. So, we're going to keep an eye on the store and when it goes back up, we'll do the feature, so be sure to keep an eye out tonight. If you aren't able to hang about late, then be sure to check in the morning.

Just in time for you to buy everyone you know a copy of Gunstar Heroes for Christmas! Nintendo announced that it will be enabling its Virtual Console gifting feature for the US later today, enabling Wii owners in the states to purchase classic games and send them to people they've traded Friend Codes with. We've already spent way too much money buying games for ourselves; we shudder to think how many Wii Points we're going to spend now forcing all of our friends to download Devil's Crush.

[Via Press Release]

So, with the VC gift-giving feature coming, we just have to ask -- are you planning on foisting something upon someone? We can't help but rub our hands together in excitement every time the subject comes up. In fact, we can't even remember the last time we were so thrilled at the idea of spending money on other people. What the hell is wrong with us? Now we just need some of the titles we've been turning over (but denied) to hit so that we can prepare to indoctrinate the masses.

What flavor of Kool-Aid will you be shoving down the throats of friends? Or are you more in the "screw 'em, let 'em buy their own games" camp?

The new gift-giving feature of the Wii Shop Channel will be available in Japan starting December 11th, according to Nintendo's demonstration video of the service. And, for those of you new to Nintendo, the service is quite easy to use. You just select a game from the shop as normal, at which point you're given the option to buy it yourself or give it. Then you select the recipient from a list (complete with Mii representations!) and send it away! An error message will tell you if they already have the game, or (we think) if parental controls prevent them from playing it. And then your friend gets a festively wrapped note on their Wii Message Board!

The service is supposed to be available worldwide in time for the holidays, so expect a similar announcement for other regions soon! Then we can all start forcing our preferences on each other.

[Via NeoGAF]

Nintendo has transcribed a Financial Results briefing given by president Satoru Iwata. Being a Financial Results briefing, it of course focuses on sales history, but it is also loaded with information that may be of interest to you beyond the charts and graphs detailing how awesome Nintendo is.*

This includes Iwata's new philosophy of the roles of Nintendo's gaming systems. The DS is now being seen as a "machine to enrich its owners' lives," in ways beyond gaming. Nintendo's plan for new DS-based utilities is an instantiation of this idea, allowing users to carry their DS systems around for many purposes, improving the quality of their lives. The Wii, on the other hand, is seen as the "Machine to put smiles on people surrounding it," meaning that entire households should be encouraged to interact with the Wii, even when not playing games. You are free, of course, to moan about this being the death of gaming or whatever.

Spreading happiness is the goal of the two new updates headed to the Wii. Check pages 6 and 7 for video of the gift-giving function of the Wii Shop Channel, which will work for both VC and Wii Ware games, and a demonstration of an early version of the TV Program Schedule Channel. It allows users to search by genre or keyword, and to mark their favorite programs with a color code.

*For an analysis of the charts and graphs detailing how awesome Nintendo is, check out this Gamasutra feature from our own Eric Caoili!

Sure, maybe a lot of you don't find the idea itself terribly exciting, but we are definitely pleased to hear that the Wii Shop Channel's new gift feature will be live worldwide in time for the holidays. Now you'll be able to gift friends with awesome old games without having to track them down in physical form -- and without unloading a lot of cash, either. That's a win all around.

It might also be worth noting that Gamefront's headline on the announcement had the "Wii Gift Channel" in English, and since "das Gift" means "poison" in German, Google's autotranslator informed us that the Wii Poison Channel would be a go in December. We're not quite as excited about that one, frankly.

Currently, the Wii barely has chance to make itself comfortable on shop shelves, such is its popularity with consumers. But that's not quite enough for Satoru Iwata and co. -- they want to rule the online roost as well. Problem is, quite a lot of people aren't terribly fussed about checking the weather or catching up on the news on their Wii, and let's not kid ourselves here: as far as online gaming goes, right now the Wii just can't measure up to some of the competition.

Something needs to be done then, something to get more people surfing this series of tubes using Nintendo's waggle box. Enter the firm's latest brainwave, a new Wii Shop feature which allows users to buy gifts for one another, such as a Virtual Console game. The lucky recipient will then receive notice of their present, and can start downloading it instantly from the Wii Shop.

"We think this will be a breakthrough in encouraging customers to spread news of fun games [other than by?] word of mouth," Iwata said of the new feature, which has no release date yet. "We also hope to spur more users to connect their Wiis to the Internet."

Is this the move that gets more people online on their Wiis? Do you envisage yourself using it? Share your thoughts, and we shall listen intently.

As a newlywed myself -- I traded power rings with my wife just last week -- I'm kicking myself over having not set up one of these Amazon wedding registries, filling our wish list to the topmost edges of the brim with niche games and controller geegaws. I could be playing Bust-A-Move Bash! right now, were it not for my shortsightedness.

Other couples with similar misplaced priorities, however, made sure to include Nintendo's much-hyped console on their lists, as Amazon charted the Wii as the number one most-registered-for item by engaged pairs. Pyrex's 10-piece tupperware set, long-criticized for its flimsy implementation of motion controls and lack of AAA titles, was a distant second.

Sony's 60GB Playstation 3 came in at a respectful 44th place, while the 20GB Xbox 360 managed to sneak in as the 96th most-registered-for product. As for Wii accessories, the remote (15), nunchuk (26), and Nyko's charging station (76) all made an appearance on the top 100 list. OXO's locking tongs -- which aren't technically a remote peripheral, but could be used as one anyway -- sit at the 35 marker.

[Via Digg]