Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Three games that were assumed to be headed for the Virtual Console have disappeared from the ESRB's ratings list. Zombies Ate My Neighbors, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game, and Duck Hunt are no longer listed for the Wii on the rating organization's website.

The most obvious interpretation is that these games are no longer planned for release on the Wii. But why would the ESRB remove the ratings? Even if Nintendo (or Konami) decided that they were definitely not going to release the game, ever, the content rating would still be valid. And we find it very hard to believe that Duck Hunt, a game that is pretty much synonymous with Nintendo nostalgia, has been permanently banished from the VC.

[Via GoNintendo]

While Kenney Vleugels developed Wii Covermaker to help with designing packaging art for "back-ups" -- a practice we don't endorse -- this little application can still be pretty useful for easily creating CD jackets for games that aren't pirated.

Wii Covermaker allows you to import images and attach to them a number of elements common to Wii game covers: ESRB and PEGI ratings, logos for several prominent developers and publishers, and a header strip. There are also options for you to drop in the "CD Type" and a credit for the boxart's author.

We would like to see a few more features, like an option for DVD covers and a header strip that better resembles the official one, but those will probably come with future updates. For now, we'll settle with this ersatz Zombies Ate My Neighbors CD case we've put together, wondering to ourselves when we'll ever be able to fill its empty plastic. Leave us to our sorrows and jump past the post break for a Wii Covermaker demonstration video.