Nintendo Wii Fanboy

While most of us were sleeping -- like a bunch of chumps -- Nintendo launched its WiiWare service in Japan early this morning. As expected, the WiiWare servers are taking a beating from thousands of gamers hoping to try out the new downloadable releases, but Siliconera's Spencer Yip and Wired's Chris Kohler were still able to grab a few games and write up their impressions, all of which you can peruse below.

A few surprises revealed themselves with the service's launch:

1. My Life as a King is rife with microtransactions, offering additional costumes, dungeons, and races (Yukes, Selkies, and Lilties) for 100-300 Wii Points.
2. Star Soldier R features three light modes -- a two-minute mode in which you play through a quick stage for a high score, a similar 5-minute mode with two levels and boss encounters, and a "Fast Shot" mode for testing your button-tapping skills.
3. Saku Saku Animal Panic, the only WiiWare launch title from a US developer and a game we haven't paid any attention to at all, is apparently "pretty fun!" Judging by Chris Kohler's impressions, it sounds a lot like Jezzball, minus the balls ... And the Jezz.

Now all we need are detailed Dr. Mario, Okiraku Ping Pong,and My Life as a King impressions!

Read - The WiiWare Shopping experience
Read - WiiWare Impressions: Lonpos
Read - WiiWare Impressions: Angel's Solitaire
Read - WiiWare Impressions: Saku Saku Animal Panic
Read - WiiWare Impressions: Star Soldier R
Read - Extra content in My Life as a King explained
Read - Lonpos has pay-to-play content too

We spent yesterday going through the big releases that've been announced for next year so far -- Smash Bros. Brawl and/or Wii Fit likely topping your personal "must get" list -- but what about the second-tier games that don't usually receive much press or attention?

Though we haven't forgotten about the low-key releases, we've collected a selection of games and media to ensure that these titles stay on your mind too! Read on for our top ten list of awesome 2008 games that you totally forgot about!

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.

But how practical is that? Picture yourself in a year. Will you really want to do that? Will you even want to use SD cards? And re-downloading is twice as bad considering that sometimes, there are just issues with the Virtual Console and downloads don't go through. How often does this happen to you? For us, it's only been a few times, but it's still a problem that could be avoided here ... if we only had a hard drive.

In these latest screens of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Little King and the Promised Land, we can begin to see some hints of gameplay. Like King Story, the game involves building up a town using earned crystals. The crystals allow you to build different kinds of structures, like residences or weapon shops, that can increase different attributes of the town.

There are dungeons, but because young King Leo is too little a king for fighting, you choose parties of adventurers to explore them. It is unlikely that you as the player take part in this dungeon exploration, instead receiving treasure on a scale based on the attributes of the party.

It sounds like people expecting an action RPG like the first Crystal Chronicles game may be in for a disappointment when the game launches in March; however, if you're looking for something on the order of MySims with a coat of Final Fantasy paint, this might be worth your time. If it takes a Crystal Chronicles-style, uncomplicated approach to resource management and town-building, we may be up for it.

The news that Nintendo will be releasing a remade Dr. Mario with online play is, to put it in one capitalized word and a bunch of random key presses, KJDFLIOUROIEJ(RJNFAWESOME. The updated graphics and Mii integration look okay, but the real deal is the ONLINE PLAY_# #$())_IJM sorry, we did it again.

This adds a new dimension to our Thursday evening pastime of wishing for old games on the VC. Now we can wish for online versions of old games on Wii Ware. What would be your choice for an old game with new multiplayer? And, for added difficulty, you can't say River City Ransom, because we just did.

We'll come right out and say it: we love the Virtual Console, but Nintendo has lagged behind a little when it comes to the next-gen online marketplace. Don't mistake us -- we love the chance to replay classic games, because we love classic games, but some of the features found, say, on XBLA, would make nice additions. We've also been waiting for original content ... and when it comes to that, it certainly appears that Nintendo is about to deliver. Fifteen bucks seems pretty reasonable for a full-fledged Square Enix title (we just hope it's more than five minutes long), and then we've got karaoke and Bomberman to look forward to. But what's best is the idea of a Dr. Mario with online multiplayer. Now we're starting to feel like we are about to get a full-fledged online marketplace of our own, and we like it. With all of this, plus Iwata's statement about the sheer volume of titles proposed for Wii Ware, we're pretty deeply enthused. You?

After checking out Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Young King and the Promised Land, we can only guess one thing: a hard drive or some other storage solution for the Wii is coming, and it's coming soon. With 512mb, we can barely handle the title of this Wii Ware game, and that's not even counting the game itself.

The latest Crystal Chronicles looks like the result of a romantic evening between King Story and Chocobo's Dungeon, and we're behind that 100% ... especially when we see dancing moogles.

Along with announcing the slew of new titles for Nintendo's Wii Ware download service, Satoru Iwata revealed that the company has received lots of proposals for Wii Ware titles. In commenting to the press, Iwata stated "We've already received proposals for over 100 titles from software development companies. We've made a platform for developing software at low cost, and would like to offer a new business chance based around a battle of ideas."

That means this flood of new titles for the download service is only going to be followed by even more titles, causing us great joy here at the Wii Fanboy HQ. Because, you know, we like games.

If you've been wondering what to do with all that space from Wii channels you don't use so often, you can stop -- you're about to start spending a lot more time clicking around the home screen. This latest enormous press conference unveiled an avalanche of channel-related content that will should satisfy even the pickiest of Nintendo fans.

From DS demos to strutting around with your Miis, channel content is about to blow up ... at least, in Japan. We can only hope that the new channels are soon to follow for Wii owners in the rest of the world. Until release dates are confirmed, however -- or even rumored -- we'll have to settle for checking out what's to come, and we've got a ton of information for you after the post break.

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

In an interview with Cubed3, PLÄTTCHEN twist 'n' paint art director Bernd Geiblinger denied online play for the downloadable title, saying that "An online multiplayer mode would certainly be cool, but currently our focus completely lies on making the game as good as possible."

He then went on to utter the statement that will probably result in thousands of emails to Bplus: "Would you really want an online multiplayer mode? Would it be your reason to buy the game? If you like, you may start a poll about this and then we will discuss that again." We've learned that for any game that could possibly have online, there are plenty of folks out there who will demand it. Please, delete that draft you just started. Despite what Geiblinger said, they probably know that you want the game to be online.

Speaking of possibilities, does the fact that Bplus chooses not to include online play mean that it's an option for Wii Ware games? While you're pondering, be sure to check out the awesome PLÄTTCHEN wallpapers, from which we took the post image. They're certainly ... at a much higher resolution than the Wii can display!

[Via GoNintendo]