DigitalBattle.com

Black Wiimote bundle revealed

Nintendo has revealed a new, black Wiimote bundle, which includes the Wiimote, a Wii Motion Plus attachment, and a sleeve, all in shiny black. The new bundle will be available on November 17 and will retail for $50, which is a good deal, considering a Wiimote and Motion Plus attachment would run you $10 more if bought separately. If you wish to complete your black Wiimote controller, the black nun-chuck will be sold separately for $20.

Kororinpa Marble Mania Game Review–What Won’t They Make A Game Of?

It seems like most every time I pick up a Wii game these days I wind up getting slightly freaked out about the whole thing and trying desperately to pin down where the hell the logic is in these things any more.  I’ve seen them make some truly baffling games so far, and frankly, the weirdness only continues.

Today I venture into the depths of Kororinpa Marble Mania for the Nintendo Wii, a game that left me asking the question, is anything so simple and mundane that they WON’T translate it into a Wii game?  I’ve played Wii games around cooking and cleaning and washing things…it’s like there’s no activity so pedestrian that Nintendo or one of its many tentacles (Hudson, I’m looking RIGHT AT YOU) won’t convert it to a game.  I’m eagerly awaiting Super Mario Scratch Your Own Ass, or perhaps Donkey Kong’s Throw Your Feces At Passersby.

Kororinpa Marble Mania, for example, is a game that revolves around rolling a marble down a series of passageways until you manage to roll the ball into a hole marking the end of the course.  Along the way, you’ll be required to roll your marble over red crystals and challenged to roll your marble over green crystals, thus adding a bit of admittedly rather tedious and pointless challenge to your marble rolling agenda.  You’ll roll over a variety of different courses, including courses with walls, courses without walls, courses with slopes and steps and even some traps.  You don’t want to try rolling your marble through honey.  It’s just not pleasant.

I admit that, on certain levels, Kororinpa Marble Mania is actually a mildly fun sort of puzzle chill game that doesn’t require you to do a whole lot, nor does it ratchet your adrenaline levels through the roof.  The best word, for example, to describe the background music is “soothing”.  Indeed, when it’s just you and your marble and rails on the track, the game is downright relaxing.  Take off the rails, however, and things can get a little dicey.  This is really only a problem, of course, because the Wii controls are not well suited to this one.  See, rather than, for example, holding your Wiimote in the eight-bit-game format, or using the nunchuk’s joystick, you’re going to do your track manipulation by pointing your Wiimote straight at the screen, remote control style, and then twisting it from side to side.  Setting up the controls in this way requires you to twist your wrist left and right to twist the controls, and any kind of fine movement in that fashion is pretty much impossible.  This means that you’ll essentially be rolling your marble around by sheer brute force, which is all fine and well if rails are in place, otherwise, it’s an open invitation to repeated failure.

I admit that I liked the idea behind Kororinpa Marble Mania, and enjoyed the game to a certain extent.  However, some very serious flaws in execution kept this game from being all that it truly could have been.  A few minor tweaks would’ve served this one well, and hopefully, the next installment will learn from its mistakes.

More Semi-Useful Wii Accessories

The Wii is unique in that the control schemes for different titles goes far beyond which button does what- the game you’re playing determines which way you hold the controller. You can point like a lightgun, swing it like a tennis racket or tilt it side to side to steer around sharp turns. At the console’s launch some peripheral manufacturers put out some attachments for the Wiimote designed to look like tennis rackets, baseball bats and golf clubs, intended to make the Wii Sports experience feel more authentic.

I had plenty of good chuckles to myself every time I spied one of these sets in a store, but it seems not everyone was laughing- some were actually buying them. They must have been, because Nitho has announced they’re releasing a line of similar add-ons designed to fit with the Wii MotionPlus add-on. I can definitely understand the overall need for a lightgun, since it makes aiming for shooting games easier, but did we really need more fake sports equipment bits? They do offer a charging dock as well, but is it that difficult to pop the Wii MotionPlus off before you charge your battery packs?

A statement from the VP of sales and marketing in the US said that the company “focus{es} on innovation from the very beginning of the development cycle,” and that they “try to anticipate emerging market trends”. I’m not sure how well you’re doing claiming innovation at the same time you’re offering a ‘new’ product that’s essentially already been on the market for some time. The emerging trend they’re talking about? The fact that unsavvy parents and grandparents will buy some of these silly items for their children/grandchildren.

Mario Kart Wii Game Review–Time For Hyperbole

I’m generally not given to hyperbole, especially in the headlines of pieces I write, but there’s just no other way to put this.  Mario Kart Wii, for the Wii, may well be the best racing game I’ve played yet.

There really isn’t much of a plot here to speak of, but basically, you play as one of the various characters from the Nintendo universe, from King Boo to Wario to Diddy Kong and all the way back around to the standards.  You’ll then mount a go kart, or a motorcycle, at three varying levels of engine power and proceed to run amok on a series of wild tracks.

That may be it for the plot–and yes, by any standard this game has virtually no functioning narrative to speak of–but that’s not it for the game itself.  The game itself, you see, is a riot of fun things to do as you drive your go kart or motorcycle on a panoply of tracks with all sorts of different designs.

There’s a whole lot of fun involved in driving through a shopping mall (the Coconut Center) at breakneck speeds, whether you’re doing it on a go kart, or the admittedly much more fun motorcycle.  Seriously–who here hasn’t pictured the sheer amount of mindless fun involved in riding a dirt bike through a mall?  Bouncing up stairs and escalators, jumping fountains, tearing around columns in a beautiful slalom?  It’s fun on a bun, that’s what it is, plain and simple.  Though I have to admit, my time spent driving on the Rainbow Road left a lot to be desired.  Just try driving on a track several hundred miles above the Earth’s surface with no rails or anything else to keep you on the track and a whole bunch of lunatic drivers looking to get ahead of you?  I still get chills.

The controls are what make this really special.  If you don’t want to shell out for the Wii wheel, which is pretty ridiculous when you look at it, then you can simply hold your Wiimote like a steering wheel at nine and three and steer that way.  The controls are almost shockingly smooth and responsive, if a little twitchy at the higher engine levels, and do a pretty solid job of approximating actual steering.

Even better, there are tons of characters and karts and bikes and tracks and everything else that you can think of available to unlock, so there’s lots of value in charging around all the various tracks in single player mode.  For the completionists in the audience this will be an absolute nirvana.  There are those who’ll be turned off by the fact that the unlockables are only available in single player mode as opposed to any of them being found in the multiplayer modes, but this is a fairly small issue when compared to the sheer amount of stuff to do here.

It’s great to find a Wii game that has plenty to it and doesn’t result in a sore arm or a general feeling of disappointment, and Mario Kart Wii is just that game.  Single player or multiplayer, you’re sure to have a good time with this one if you even vaguely enjoy a good racing game.

Colored Wii, Wii Remotes pictured

Nintendo has been showing off multicolored Wii’s ever since the console was still called a Nintendo Revolution. Well here we are almost 3 years after the console’s launch and still no multi-colored Wiis.

However, it seems Kotaku has gotten their hands on a few pictures of both the limited edition blue Wii-mote along with Black Wii Remotes, controllers and a Wii itself. These aren’t really slated for release but instead were shown off at the World Hobby Fair held in Tokyo last weekend.

Common Nintendo, bring these to the US, I want me a black Wii!

Blue Wii Remote pictured after the break.

More »

Analyst: Project Natal and PS3 motion control won’t topple Wii

Noted game industry analyst Michael Pachter has given his opinion on the new technologies revealed by Microsoft and Sony, and their possible effect on the Wii. Pachter essentially said that Nintendo has nothing to worry about, and that the Wii’s domination of the current gen wars will continue, despite Natal and the new PS3 motion controller.

However, neither Microsoft’s nor Sony’s controllers won’t be out for at least a year, which will give the Wii even longer time on the market as the only console with motion controls.

Nintendo shows off Wii Vitality Sensor

What you see above was recently introduced by Nintendo during their E3 presentation, the Wii Vitality Sensor.

What this peripheral essentially is, is a heart rate monitor that you attach to the bottom of the Wii controller just like you would the Nunchuk attachment. Nintendo says this attachment will “expand the appeal of video games” and sense a players pulse along with “a number of other signals being transmitted by their bodies, and will then provide information to the users about the body’s inner world.”

So, exactly waht they will be using this attachment for? Not a clue but knowing Nintendo they will probably come up with something good.

Read (Kotaku)

505 Games teams with Rolling Stone for Rolling Stone: Drum King

An alliance between 505 Games and Rolling Stone magazine was recently forged to bring the Wii title Rolling Stone: Drum King to North America.

Don’t go thinking you’ll have to shell out another $100+ for this game as it’ll utilize the Wiimote and Nunchuk in place of actual drumsticks.

Publisher of Rolling Stone magainze Will Schenck had this to say about the partnership:

For more than 40 years, Rolling Stone has been a staple in the voice of American music culture and entertainment and we are pleased to collaborate with 505 Games as we venture into video games for the first time. With more people playing console video games than ever before, this was a natural next step for the Rolling Stone brand.

Rolling Stone: Drum King is set to be released sometime later this spring and thanks to Kotaku we have a list of all 29 original songs cover songs that will be featured in the game; check it out after the break. More »

Penguin Debuting Dedicated Wii Zapper at E3

Whether you prefer the double handed grip of the original Nintendo zapper, the more realistic gun style of Nyko’s Perfect shot or some other Wiimote add-on designed to simulate the lightgun experience, they all have something in common; they’re all just analog devices that utilize simple mechanics to depress the buttons. Unfortunately most zapper controls only utilize a trigger mechanism, leaving the rest of the buttons and the directional pad on top of the zapper. Unfortunately games like Red Steel 2 and the Conduit are going to be utilizing both the wiimote and the nunchuck, meaning that manipulating all the controls could be difficult and cumbersome.

Penguin is creating a new peripheral for the console that hopes to correct this issue, the CrossFire Remote Pistol. It’ll be a smaller, more compact device with the A, B and D-pad buttons are all repositioned for easier access. Of course the B button is located in the trigger position, with the A and D-pad buttons located right next to the thumb. It also features enhanced vibration function and more powerful speakers. Of course since it’s simply just a modified Wiimote with the same buttons it’ll function with normal games. The new peripheral is set to be debuted at E3.

Nyko Reveals New Wii Accessories

However much peripheral manufacturer Nyko had to pay in legal fees settling their lawsuit with Nintendo over the Kama it seems that it wasn’t enough to derail any of their plans for the future. At the Consumer Electronics Show they’ve unveiled a few of the new accessories they’ll be releasing for the Wii this year.

Already announced is the Charge Station Quad, which allows you to charge all four of your wiimotes at once and it’s joined by two other chargers and a new controller. The Charge Station EX is the newest version of the classic wiimote charger. It allows you to charge two wiimotes at once, but it now features an LED battery level indicator on the front so you can tell just how charged the battery packs are. Next is the Kama Charge Kit. This allows you to charge both a wiimote and Nyko’s wireless nunchuck peripheral the Kama at the same time. It includes the charger station, a Kama controller and battery pack.

Lastly and most interestingly is the Wand, a controller replacement for the WIimote. The layout of the buttons is more or less the same, although following the Kama lawsuit Nyko was careful to ensure that the appearance is vastly different from the official wiimote. The biggest difference is that the Wand features ‘Trans-Port’ technology which allows for new sorts of accessories that the original Wiimote would be incapable of interacting with. Wiimote accessories can only allow mechanical manipulation of buttons, essentially any peripheral such as the zapper can only manipulate existing buttons by including some mechanism that physically presses them. The Wand will allow for controllers that interface electronically.

All three products are scheduled for an April 2009 release date, but only the Charge Station EX has been given a price, which is $34.99.

WeeP5 Perfect for Your Shooting Wii Games

The Wii remote isn’t particularly appealing for first person shooters is it now? But a WeeP5 Wiimote gun will be better suited for those particular games.

This remote resembles an MP5 gun with the full setup of a Wii remote. The B button is the trigger and the A button is under the foregrip. 1 and 2 are on opposites sides near the front while the D-pad and Wii remote are on the left hand side. The +, – and Home buttons are on the top above the ammo clip. You know what’s the best of all? You can manufacture your own WeeP5. Just follow the instructions here.