Nintendo Wii Fanboy

We know we've been piling on the Mario Kart Wii videos recently, but we make no apologies -- with each new piece of footage, we become more and more smitten with this game. This latest batch covers tricks, tracks, and Balloon Battles, and it all looks ... well, we've exhausted all superlatives when it comes to Mario Kart, so we're going to invent one: extra-fan-freaking-licious.

One thing we drew from these videos was the increased emphasis on jumping. There are extra ramps added to many of the classic tracks, while one of the new circuits features giant mushrooms to bounce across. Bound past the break for another two videos!

After months of anticipation, with Nintendoholics craving any slight detail about online communication in Mario Kart Wii, here's how it all went down on a beautiful thing called the internet:

First, we pondered amongst friends about the possibility of voice chat in the upcoming racer. When we found out that this wasn't happening, it was no biggie -- while some of you, we're sure, screamed in anguish to the heavens, most of us (being the realists that we are) never actually expected such a feature in the first place.

All hope was not lost, though. Praying to the Nintendo gods, we begged for some way of communicating with friends, so that our online matches would be deeper than normal matches against the computer. After all, what's the point of online play in the first place if it doesn't feel human? Our pleas did not go unnoticed, though, and Nintendo announced text chat support for the game.

If you're anything like this blogger, you might actually enjoy Mario Kart's "Battle" mode more than the racing itself. Whether that's how you roll or not, though, you'll still probably find the above picture enticing.

Why, you ask? Well, for the fact that shows us an 8-player Battle mode! (Count the players in the bottom-right map.)

Sure, you'll have to type and not talk trash to the friends you're playing with, but when it comes to Battle mode, the more the merrier. While it may not support 12 players, eight is more than enough to keep us on our toes while we try to hang on to our precious balloons.

Just as we were starting to feel sorry for Europe, everything changed. First, folks in the oft neglected continent were told that they'd be getting Wii Fit before their American counterparts. And now, we can bet Europeans will be even more excited to know that Mario Kart Wii is releasing on April 11th. And yes, we mean April 2008.

In case you haven't been keeping up, April 11th is only one day after Japan gets the game. That sounds a lot better than 386 days, doesn't it? Europeans can also start perfecting their raspberry techniques, as a North American date for Mario Kart Wii has yet to be set.

What caused such a change of heart in Nintendo of Europe? Was it something they had for breakfast? We can't be sure, but let's hope this keeps up.



[Via press release]

In the most recent simExchange report, analyst Jesse Divnich had some interesting predictions about Wii software sales. According to Divinich, the top selling games will be as follows (including estimated worldwide sales for the software during the Wii's lifetime):

• Wii Play – 20 million
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl – 13.95 million
• Mario Kart – 13.16 million
• Super Mario Galaxy – 12.61 million
• Wii Fit – 8.73 million

We're not surprised that Divinich would predict Wii Play to be the top selling piece of Wii software, since the game is constantly popping up in the top of the NPD and Japanese charts. Since two of the five predicted games aren't even out yet, and one of them is only out in Japan, it's hard to tell by trends if the rest are good choices. Still, taking our best "we're not paid analysts" guesses, we'd say that Wii Fit will have much higher sales than Divinich predicted. The game already sold one million copies in Japan, and it's only been out for a month. We do think that those are a solid top five, though, even if we don't agree on the order and total sales for all games.

How about you? What are your best guesses for the Wii's top five?

[Via Joystiq]

As anniversary week winds down, we can't help but wonder: what's next? One good year for a video game console means nothing if it's followed by some not-so-great years. Fortunately, there are many fun things in store for the Wii, so we've decided to create this little guide to show you what exactly there is to look forward to.

We're all anticipating Mario Kart's release on the Wii. It may still be a while before we can fulfill all our Go-Karting (or should we say motorcycling) needs, but at least we can have a good laugh in the meantime. That's why we recommend that you watch this parody of the franchise's SNES original, titled "Super Manrio Kart." The folks behind this stop-motion film made if for an animation class, and all we have to say is, they better have gotten an A. It doesn't have a guy in a Princess Peach costume, but it's still fun, nonetheless.

[Via GeekStir]

Over at CVG, they pose a very interesting question: will the inclusion of motorcycles completely ruin Mario Kart? While we'd say the inclusion of bikes may perhaps go against the spirit of the title, we wouldn't go so far as to assume it's such a decision that would ruin the game. Considering we have yet to play it ourselves, we're trying to be open-minded about all of it.

But we will agree with them in saying that the GameCube entry Double Dash was lackluster, at best. The game seemed to be making a return to more traditional values, as it were, on the handheld circuit, with the DS game absolutely blowing us away. Now, the Wii game looks like it's going to follow in the footsteps of the GameCube game.

Now, as we said, we're not passing judgment prematurely, but we are concerned. Are you not concerned? Or, are you confident Nintendo will knock it out of the park, as they say?

With the emergence of bikes in the franchise, it looks like change is the order of the day. And changes are happening, as we finally have confirmation that the title will feature online play for up to 12 participants. While it isn't the 16-player support rumored some time ago, it's still something we're glad to see Nintendo do, considering that their support of their online service has been lukewarm at best.

Hints were placed that a more streamlined process regarding finding racers and setting matches up would be utilized, but no word as of the time of this post regarding that. And, we think we join the rest of the sane world in asking Nintendo not to burden us with a string of numbers known as the friend code.

Ed Boon likes the Wii. This makes us smile since he had made comments before that the Wii isn't a great place for fighting games. He has taken those hurtful comments back stating that it will be a good challenge to fit the game for the system.

Mortal Kombat happens to be one of our favorite fighting games (entering the blood code while our parents weren't watching gave us quite the adrenaline rush) and we are thrilled to hear that the king of fighting gore is appearing on the Wii, especially when it brings every single MK character with it in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon.

Anyway, MK god Ed Boon had a lot of nice things to say about the Wii including pearls like:

"I hope the Wii is going to carve out its own market and will be very successful. As budgets for game development keeps going up and the prices for each system does the same, the Wii will become a more and more attractive option for both gamers as well as developers."

When it came to talking about Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, he let us know that they are currently trying to find a way to fully utilize the Wiimote in this rather sticky transition. After all, we doubt you will find solace from fatalities with the usual combo breaker.

Boon also stated that he would love to see classic Mortal Kombat games be a part of the Virtual Console. Again, we can't help but smile and twist our fingers in anticipation for Armageddon to reach our bloodthirsty fingers.