Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Ultimate Shooting Collection will release in the U.S. later this month, but it might not be the last shmup port we see from Milestone. Sega's Illvelo / Illmatic Envelope is based on the NAOMI arcade system board (the Dreamcast was rife with NAOMI ports), and appeared earlier this year in Japanese arcades. Now, according to a Play-Asia listing, the Wii will be getting its own port on November 13th in Japan.

As you can see above, it looks pretty wacky, with cel-shaded levels populated by everything from giant cutlery to confectionery, a tongue-in-cheek approach that reminds us of Star Parodier. Presuming it does exist, will Illvelo Wii get localized? UFO Interactive helpfully picked up Ultimate Shooting Collection for the States, but that contained a wallet-pleasing three shmups -- as Illvelo will only feature one, a North American release looks less likely.

[Via Siliconera]

Good news for people who want even more space shooters on the Wii: the Milestone Shooting Collection, a three-game bundle including Chaos Field, Radilgy and Karous, has been picked up for U.S. release on September 23 by UFO Interactive. Chaos Field was released here on the GameCube in 2005, but the other two games are completely new to us -- partly because the GameCube release of Radilgy was cancelled.

When Milestone announced this item for Japanese release last May, it was going to be a retail release of Karous only. Then Milestone decided to throw a couple of bonus games on there, and then it became the "Shooting Collection." The bundle is probably the only way it could ever get picked up by an American publisher. And $30 isn't bad at all for three games, even in the age of downloadable games!

While most readers of Wii Fanboy don't have to face this kind of problem, there are many nations throughout the world that force gamers to resort to the gray market to pick up their system of choice. Take India, for example, the second most populated country in the world.

Sony and Microsoft have distributors in the country, but the Wii doesn't. However, that may change soon enough, after Milestone Interactive tests out the market for Wii software. We're not entirely confident in Milestone's approach, though. For one, it hardly seems smart to base results on game sales when the console itself hasn't even officially released yet. On the other hand, since that's just how things are in India (and they're not likely to change anytime soon), we can understand Milestone's rush to get the ball rolling.

Here comes the other, less excusable problem: the game Milestone chose to distribute is Alone in the Dark Wii. Not even critics are playing the Wii version of Alone in the Dark, so is it fair to assess the Wii's chances based on Atari's survival horror title? Also, because Indian gamers import their Wiis, we wonder if the region of the disc will have any effect on sales.

At least this is a step in the right direction, but now that supply for the Wii is starting to meet demand globally, we hope Nintendo branches out into some of the areas it currently neglects.



[Thanks, Vijay!]

The next Boogie is only rumored to include Balance Board support, but a dancing game is coming out in Japan that features a style perfect for the Wii Fit peripheral: hula. That's right, you'll now be able to seductively wiggle those hips of yours and call it a game. So many Japanese Wii owners have Wii Fit that we don't see userbase being an issue, as the peripheral will be required (not optional) to play this title.

Keep in mind, though, that the game's publisher (Milestone) didn't officially announce Hula Wii: Minna de Hula wo Odorou (Dance Hula Together); a listing was discovered on a Japanese online retailer's site, revealing the release date as September 25th.

The Milestone Shooting Collection, featuring Karous, Chaos Field, and Radilgy, has been delayed until "TBA 2008," according to retailer NCSX. It was once planned to be released this month, but NCSX said that retail preorders for the game were "apparently ... insubstantial." Insubstantial for a shooting game. We're guessing retailers had yet to see the stylish boxart when orders should have gone out.

Even though the collection was never announced for localization, we were hoping for it. Radilgy was already cancelled once, and we hoped that it would come along with Karous via this disc. But now it's been (effectively) cancelled again before the Japanese release. Not a good sign. Maybe shmups on the Wii face too much competition from the Virtual Console?

First it was just going to be Karous, then Milestone decided to toss Radio Allergy/Radilgy and Chaos Field on the disc. Now the package is officially called Milestone Shooting Collection Karous Wii, and it's being released in Japan on March 27th.

Karous has been enhanced with some slight waggle: you can now swing the Wiimote in order to swing the sword weapon. It sounds kind of distracting to have the controller waving around while you're trying to make precise movements. We would like Classic Controller/Hori stick play with this title, so we hope that the waggle is optional (and that the game supports the Classic).

Radilgy and Chaos Field seem to have been left untouched from their Gamecube iterations. Not that we mind -- the only difference we want to see in Radilgy is in the crucial "being released in the U.S." category.

Retailer NCSX started taking preorders for the Japanese Wii release of Karous. It's got a product code and everything, so this is definitely a for-real thing. Unfortunately, the breathtaking, minimalist boxart used on the product page is not.

We're glad to see that developer (and apparently publisher) Milestone is in fact including Chaos Field and Radilgy on the disc, which will release March 27th at a cost of $49. We can only sit and wait for news of a localized version; hopefully O3 will see fit to try again to release Radilgy in the U.S. They didn't quite make it with the GameCube version.

We've seen a few snippets of news on the journey of Karous to the Wii so far, but now it looks like we're starting to get a little more information. The Dreamcast shooter is set for release in Japan in late March, and the game will include, as a bonus, both Chaos Field and Radilgy. We're assuming the latter two won't be updated, which is just fine. We'll be too busy shooting everything that moves (in various ways, in various games) to care.

Even better news? Since it seems that Karous is going to be localized by O3 Entertainment -- who also published the other titles in these parts -- we should get the game with bonuses complete on this side of the ocean. Here's hoping, anyway.

Update: Looks like there is no deal between Milestone (the devs) and O3 Entertainment to publish in the United States. Milestone is currently looking for a U.S. publisher, however.

We were tunneling out of our pile of press releases, and found something interesting: a game called Crow from O3 Entertainment with a release date of TBA. O3 Entertainment was the publisher of Chaos Field and the cancelled Radio Allergy, both of which are Milestone shooters. Milestone's followup, Karasu (often transliterated as Karous) has a title that means "Crow." Karasu was announced for the Wii in Japan.

Putting it together, we can only arrive at one conclusion: REPLY HAZY TRY AGAIN. Wait, hold on. Stupid Magic 8-Ball. Oh, right-- O3 is localizing Karous for US release. That's better.

Radio Allergy, Milestone's "Wii Compatible" shooter for the Gamecube, has finally been canned by publisher O3 Interactive after months of delays. We like cel-shading, and we like shooters, so we're a little sad. In a statement to Cubed3, O3 said that there was a hope of putting Radio Allergy on the Wii. No plan, but a hope.

Aeropause then speculated that this hypothetical Wii release would be bundled with Karous, the current "last Dreamcast game ever" from Milestone, or-- even better, both Karous and Chaos Field, Milestone's first "last Dreamcast game ever." We do like the idea of more games, but we don't have any evidence of that right now. All we know is that we aren't getting Radio Allergy any time soon. At least we can all download the papercraft patterns from the Japanese website! Video game papercraft beats actual video games every time.

Old school gamers rejoice; vertical shoot-em-up Karous is headed for the Wii. Karous was released a couple of months ago on the Dreamcast and currently stands as the last game released on the system.

We've already talked about how many classic shooters are available on the Virtual Console, so it's nice to see a new release joining the party.
The cel-shaded shooter is hardly a genre classic, but does add something a little different to the Wii's library. Who knows, if sales figures are good, a few other shmups might find their way over. Radiant Silvergun on Wii, anybody? Now we're dreaming ...

There's no release date yet, nor any confirmation of a U.S. release. Keep your itchy trigger fingers crossed.

Bad news for both of the people that preordered this one. O3 have delayed the US release of Milestone's shmup Radio Allergy until March 30th. The game, known as Radilgy in Japan, was released on the Gamecube in May of last year. We understand the delay-- shooting games have so much text to translate. Or maybe they didn't want to bring the game out in the midst of a busy Gamecube release season.

Also (and this is what makes this news item explicitly appropriate for Wii Fanboy) O3 have deployed the "Rhythm Tengoku trick" in marketing their game-- there's a little "Wii Compatible" icon on the box. They might as well use every tactic they can think of; we get the feeling that selling a shmup for the Gamecube in 2007 is harder than, well, a certain kind of frantic videogame that is notorious for difficulty.

We'd actually like to see the "Wii Compatible" tactic used by other developers to sell localized versions of obscure titles from the Gamecube back catalog at budget prices, but we think it would take a more popular game to start a trend. What do you think?