Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Character design and concept art are two areas in which Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars excels, and the free gifts for those who preorder the game use both extensively.

Those who reserve a copy at Gamestop will be able to claim the "life-size" statuette above, as well as a pack of eleven Mushroom Men trading cards (a twelfth comes with the game itself) featuring the title's diverse range of enemies. The "Jackalope" has ensured that we shall not sleep easily tonight.

It's probably worth mentioning that a further eleven cards will be offered to those who preorder Mushroom Men: Rise of the Fungi on the DS, as well as a superb Les Claypool/Mushroom Men poster. Red Fly's customized Mushroom Men VW Bus is not, alas, a preorder perk, but it is rad. Take a look.

[Via press release]

... if you're in France. Despite much frantic hunting on the internets, we've only been able to locate this neat little piece of Boom Blox merchandise at a French outlet, where it's being given away to those who purchase the game early (Boom Blox launches across Europe tomorrow).

Although it lacks a ball to knock your blocks down with once you've finished building, assembling this puzzle is probably the perfect way to pass the time while your family plays on Boom Blox and you stubbornly refuse to admit that you might have been wrong. Bah. Oh, one word of advice, though: handle with care.

Wal-Mart's Wii pre-orders, despite coming with a ridiculous four game (!) bundle, apparently came and went in the space of a heartbeat. Tipsters have told Wii Fanboy that though they signed up for a newsletter or notification e-mail, nothing arrived ... so unless you were one of the lucky ones who got one, or you were camping Wal-Mart's site, odds are you didn't snag one of these pricey bundles.

There is, however, the possibility of a light at the end of this tunnel. At this time, we have not located anyone who actually obtained one of the bundles, and there is some question as to whether or not they even went on sale. Most of the people we've talked to who were camping the preorder got a big nothing. In the interest of getting the whole story (including how many units they had available for this), we've put in a call to Wal-Mart, but in the meantime, if you got one or know someone who did, we'd love to hear about it. We'll update you as the information comes in. It certainly looks like they really did sell out -- the main page at Walmart.com is advertising the pre-orders and the actual page is reporting them as out of stock ... but where are the lucky folks who got one, if that's the case?

Dislike forced bundles? Who doesn't! But word is that after the Xbox 360 launch (which featured another enormous bundle at Wal-Mart), buyers had little trouble returning unwanted items for a refund. That takes some pain out of the bundle, if there's a repeat of that policy this year ....

[Thanks to everyone who's been sending this in!]

[Update 1: Now seeing a few posts on forums from people who say they got one (where are the screencaps of evidence, guys?), but still waiting to hear back from Wal-Mart rep on veracity and number of units.]

[Update 2: Reader WedgeTalon forwarded us the text of an e-mail posted at Cheap Ass Gamer (it's somewhere in the 20+ page thread, we expect), and we quote this line only: Amount Charged to Your Credit Card: $ 597.66. Ouch! Looks like the two minutes of preorders did go down -- now we have to hope for the callback from Wal-Mart verifying number of units.]

Oh, hello Canadians, didn't see you there. How are you? Good? Great, we're glad to hear. How's that Swiss Miss treating you? Oh yeah, we love marshmallows in ours as well. Oh, you're getting ready to go sit in the cold, long lines outside your local GameStop/EB so you can pre-order yourself a Wii? Sorry, but you're going to have to wait until Monday. I know, I know, life is truly not fair.

So while you're performing your weird, almost satanic Canadian rituals cursing all of the United States of America's citizens, down on your knees, head raised to the heavens, loudly crying out that you, and you alone, will in fact destroy everything they hold sacred, at least you can feel good about, well ... about something. Sorry, we're a bit taxed from our lack of sleep in having to get up early to pre-order our Wii.

These days Wii rumors are about as common as PS3 delays. Anything and everything people scrounge up flies all over the interwebs but this one here is quite a doozy.

It's time to (hopefully) break out the fireworks and confetti 'cause an unconfirmed source told us that Wii system and accessory pre-orders are open TOMORROW. Re-read that a few times gents. It was hard for us to believe too.

Now the reason we say "rumor" is because we made a dozen calls to all our local GameStops/EBs and while a good chunk of them said yes to tomorrow, others said the boring non-helpful "sometime this week."

Still, even if it is "sometime this week" that is something to celebrate. Break the piggy bank and get your 50 bucks ready. Oh, and ignore those still trying to tell you that you have to trade in 50 dollars worth of games/systems/accessories. They are liars and thieves.

Celebrations commence!

According to a post over at bits bytes pixels sprites, a national conference being held tomorrow in Texas will determine allocation numbers for Gamestops across the nation. Allocation numbers for the Wii and PS3 are supposedly going to be divulged here and upon the conference's close on Monday, your local Gamestop could be taking pre-orders as early as next week.

We understand some of you feel the need to pre-order as it is an ever-comfy security blanket, but with the confirmed million units available to US gamers at launch, is this even a worry?

...a brand-new, impossibly soft plushie doll! Yes, of all games, Elebits is the first to offer an incentive to pre-order...to be honest, it probably needs it. The dolls will be either red or blue, and feature absolutely no way to tell until you actually open your box and the creature springs out to begin feasting on your brain. This action will, perhaps, increase the enjoyment of the game, but with any luck, maybe it won't be necessary.

Nice boxart for the doll, though. Is anyone considering picking this game up at launch? With one of the strongest launch lineups in video game history, it's going to be difficult to justify spending even more on this quirky little concept...

[Update 1: Okay, some stores in Australia had been giving out a whole bunch of coupons for pre-ordering the Wii itself. We refer here to the first pre-order bonus for a single game.]

Oh, the jealousy. Those lucky Wii-lovin' gamers in Australia can pick up one doozy of a pre-order bonus from none other than Toys R' Us: put down at least $50 on your future Wii console and you'll be treated to a free game. Details are still a bit scarce; it's unknown whether or not you'll get to choose the game, or what the price of said game might be, but who would turn down such a beautiful offer?

One must wonder if similar deals might be arriving stateside in the coming months. Oh please please please please please.