Nintendo Wii Fanboy

You might have to take some notes on this one, because it's a little complicated, especially since the games involved have very long, very similar names. Tomy and D3 Publisher have announced a new Naruto game called Naruto: Clash of Ninja MVZ, to be released on the Wii in the US with exclusive new content.

However, exactly which Naruto game it is is somewhat of a mystery. The unruly (but perspicacious) NeoGAF horde thinks that it's not the Wii Naruto (Naruto Shippuden Gekitou Ninja Taisen EX) that just came out in Japan, but rather a port of the Gamecube Naruto Gekitou Ninja Taisen 3 with some new characters, minigames, and, we would assume, new controls.

But Gamespot is reporting that we're getting a version of EX with the animations and characters changed to reflect where the US localization of the anime is in the Naruto storyline.

We don't exactly know what's going on. There will be a Naruto game of some kind on the Wii this fall, and the rest is obscured by ninja trickery, deployed in a successful attempt to confuse and disorient us.

Takara Tomy have stealth-released a new trailer for Naruto Gekitou Ninja Taisen EX, the Wii sequel to the popular Gamecube 3D fighting series, and it's looking ... well, heavily compressed. It's hard to tell how the game looks based on the size and quality of this video. Despite the technical difficulties, there were a few noteworthy things we could glean from the video, and its now-standard use of the "picture-in-picture of person making Wiimote gestures:"

• There are a lot of characters in the game.
• They fight each other.
• Adorable children can control this character-fighting with Wiimote and Nunchuk motions.

We can assume that the new one will look at least as nice as the Gamecube versions, and will probably have new characters and some new moves and such. Previous Naruto games have been well-received; we are crossing our fingers that the new one will be just as good, and that the motion control is fun and not gimmicky. We think we should have started crossing our fingers after typing this post.

[Note: the link goes directly to a .wmv video.]

[Thanks, Creamsugar!]