Nintendo Wii Fanboy

The majority of coverage for Worms: A Space Oddity has focused on the lack of online play (including the title and first sentence of this post). However, lots of Worms games have been offline-only (if only because so many of them predate online capabilities in game consoles), and fixating on that disappointment draws attention away from the other aspects of the game, which include: the whole game.

Four new trailers for the game focus on the game's new or updated weapons, like the Robo-Sheep seen here. The Robo-Sheep is like a regular sheep, but robotic, because it's more sci-fi that way. Also you can move the Wiimote up to make it jump before exploding.

This week sees the release of a couple of high-profile titles on the Wii, both of which we were hoping would include online play. Reality, however, is different. Still, these titles are interesting nonetheless.

Releases for the week of March 17th:

• Sega Superstars Tennis
• Worms: A Space Oddity
• George of the Jungle
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2008
• WWII Aces

So who's planning on picking any of these up?

We were recently sifting through the latest list of forthcoming Wii releases, when it struck us: for Wii owners, the opening three months of 2008 are looking surprisingly healthy. As anybody who is familiar with this industry will know, the first quarter of any given year is usually a drought for quality games, a period for wallets to gain some respite from the Christmas bombardment of releases.

Things seem different this year, however. We've already enjoyed No More Heroes (which, don't forget, you can win in our latest Fanswag) and Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law, and still have Baroque, Okami, Opoona, and Worms: A Space Oddity to come. Oh yeah, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Even though Mario Kart seems to have slipped to not-Q1, that's a tasty line-up for what is traditionally the quietest time of the year. Are you similarly impressed by this unexpected onslaught, or are we getting over-excited?

No games? The latest word from Nintendo on upcoming releases hopes to change your mind on that. Like sports? Action? Quirky fun? Mini-games? Well, on the last one, you were already covered, but now, you've got extra cheese. Nintendo's let fly with their current Wii and DS release schedules, and while the dates on some titles are a little vague (or have already passed, as with the first few), the full list includes a bevy of new and previously-undated games.

There are even a few amusing observations to be made, such as Nitro Bike's March release, which actually came, uh, this week, and the dreadful fate of Worms: A Space Oddity, which is certain to disappear in the wake of Super Smash Bros. Brawl chaos. What's not there is also a little disappointing: Samba de Amigo is missing from the list, but that doesn't mean we won't see it before the fall. We can still hope, but with everything we've got to look forward to, we can wait a little longer for quality time with the maracas-monkey. But we could be wrong -- Sega releases are not showing up at all, just as last time, Capcom was missing from Nintendo's updated lists. It seems likely that we're still looking at fall for Civilization Revolution, as well, since it's not on the list. So there's even more upcoming goodness after we're done with Okami, Brawl, No More Heroes, Opoona, and more.

Some of you might have noticed the absence of Worms: A Space Oddity in our "awesome games that you forgot about" list; that omission was deliberate (and not an ironic "awesome game that we forgot about"), as we'd heard rumors that the strategy title's promised Nintendo WiFi Connection support had been cut. No online? No sale.

IGN Australia confirmed in a recent preview that developer Team 17 has left out the online multiplayer and WiiConnect24 downloadable content features we were looking forward to. The hands-on impressions also has details on the level editor and new weapons, but those points seem overshadowed by the missing online support.

Why wasn't this a high priority item on Team 17's docket? And what reason would any level-headed gamer have to purchase A Space Oddity over the online-enabled, $20-dollars-cheaper Worms: Open Warfare 2 on the DS?

We love us some Worms, particularly those of the superior 2D variety, so news that the Wii would be getting its very own title dedicated to the soft-bodied invertebrates raised spirits somewhat in the NWF dungeons.

These new shots of Worms: A Space Oddity follow up from October's lone trailer (which you can view after the post break), and certainly live up to the "Space " bit in the title; those green worms look reassuringly Martian. All being well, the antagonistic annelids should be touching down on Earth around next March, though considering its cheapness on PC and Xbox Live Arcade, anyone else think a budget price might be in order here?