Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Wild Earth: African Safari continues to keep us entertained for totally unintentional reasons. At first it was some of the absolutely loopy minigames, but now it's this terrible advert for the game, which depicts Mum and the kids getting their safari on, and falls in the "so-bad-it's-kinda-good" category. Frankly, we can smell the cheese from here.

Fortunately (and more importantly), the game itself continues to show promise. Some of the animation on display here is very decent, and the multiplayer sections, where one player steers the jeep or helicopter and the others snap the wildlife, actually look pretty exciting. There's even a brief glimpse of Whac-A-Meerkat!

Gallery: Wild Earth: African Safari

Not content with giving us the chance to wash other animals with an elephant, the most recent screens of Wild Earth: African Safari released by Majesco reveal a host of other zany mini-games. Apparently, we'll be able to fly through hoops as a vulture, or dodge yawning hippopotamuses as we negotiate whitewater rapids.

Best of all, there's a variation on fairground favorite Whac-A-Mole, only with what appear to be meerkats. That's right: Wild Earth: African Safari is a game that encourages players to bash nature with a huge mallet. Where the hell is FOX News?!

As casual Pokémon Snap/rail shooter aficionados, we find ourselves a bit interested in Wild Earth: African Safari. Photographic shooting games are generally a good time, and we're keen to use the Wiimote's pointer for more shooting games. Now that we know that there's a minigame in which, as an elephant, you wash passing animals, the deal is sealed. We're actually not kidding, either -- we're quite impressed by the weirdly creative thinking required to get minigames into a safari game and have them make some sense. It's becoming increasingly difficult to come up with unusual minigames as the Wii's minigame density increases.

Something that more people are going to find neat is the multiplayer. Four people can go on safari together, with one directing the movement of the party (either by leading on foot or by driving the jeep or helicopter) and the other three snapping photos. We (try desperately hard at all times to) see shades of Lucky & Wild!

Majesco has announced another Wii game: Wild Earth: African Safari. Based on (or more likely, ported from) a PC title called Safari Photo Africa: Wild Earth, the game takes you through the Serengeti National Park as you attempt to photograph over 30 African animals. The Wii version includes a multiplayer mode which designates one player as the driver and up to three others as photographers. Of course, being a Wii game, a hilarious minigame has been added as well, which allows you to play from the animals' perspective! It's all the fun of looking for some food with the added possibility of maybe being photographed.

After being reminded recently of our enjoyment of the (tiny) photography-game genre, we're maintaining tenuous faith that fun can be extracted from this title. The press release follows.