Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Since the Wii Ware title was first announced, we've had no shortage of peeks at Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Young King and the Promised Land, but many of the screens have been small, grainy, or watermarked. Today, we're finally getting a new set of larger, pristine screens that show the forthcoming title off to its full advantage, and there's a lot to see. Not only are there a number of Final Fantasy trademarks, from costuming to characters, but the environments are lush and detailed. Length aside, it really looks like we're going to get plenty of bang for our buck on this one, and we can't think of a better way to get the Wii Ware party started.

Though its potential can't be denied, Nintendo's Wii Ware channel, an upcoming download service for new Wii games, didn't impress us much with the seemingly low-budget titles announced for it so far. Nintendo amended that worriment today at its Tokyo conference by revealing a lineup of impressive projects in progress, turning our "Excitement Level" knob to eleven, one measure greater than what we previously thought the mechanism allowed.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Little King and the Promised Land (1500 Wii Points, March), a "country-building sim," stands out from the bunch, promising an exclusive side story which takes place after the original GameCube game. This marks the fourth entry to the series and the second Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles title announced for the Wii. Square Enix has already made a teaser site for you to load up and immediately close once you've realized that there's almost nothing there yet.

Hudson, having kept things on and poppin' on the Virtual Console side for some time now, demonstrated its commitment to the new service by announcing new games like Bomberman, Star Soldier R, and Joysound, the last of which will be a karaoke title. Namco Bandai also chimed in with Mojipittan, a Japanese word puzzle game.

As for Nintendo's contributions to the Wii Ware channel, the company announced Dr. Mario (!!!), Pokemon Farm, Puzzloop for Everyone, and Maruboushikaku, all of which appearing to have some form of Mii integration. You can preview screenshots for those titles at the Famitsu links below.

Read - FFCC: The Little King and the Promised Land teaser site
Read - FFCC: The Little King and the Promised Land screenshots
Read - Star Soldier R screenshots
Read - Mojipittan screenshots
Read - Dr. Mario, Pokemon Farm, Puzzloop for Everyone, and Maruboushikaku screenshots