That’s a lot of peripherals and a lot of money right there. But yes, according to a report on Eurogamer, both titles soared past the total needed to secure diamond status, which represents the kind of figures most other games would be extremely envious of (and probably make snide comments about the size of Mario Kart’s arse while doing so). Indeed, the hugely popular Grand Theft Auto IV could only manage double-platinum - a comparatively paltry 600,000 copies, though admittedly it did that for both currently available versions, so the sales might compare favourably with the two aforementioned Nintendo titles.

Elsewhere, Big Brain Academy (the DS version) reached double-platinum status while Super Smash Bros. Brawl reached single-platinum, with over 300,000 units shifted. A quick scan for Super Mario Galaxy reveals that still holds platinum status, though its star has risen faintly of recent weeks with Nintendo’s recent advertising blitz seeing it shift a few more copies. Can it reach double-platinum?

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Oh, if only Nintendo would hold regular online competitions for Wii Music like they do these challenges for Mario Kart. Serious missed opportunity.

Anyway, should you still be playing Nintendo’s terrific online racer, then you’ll no doubt be pleased to hear that you’ve got another challenge coming up on Monday. This time it’s on the Wario’s Goldmine stage, where you’ll have to evade a rampaging Wiggler who’ll bump you off the track before you can say “wah!”

Once again it runs from the 1st to the 10th. Here’s hoping the next one has a suitably Christmassy theme.

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Things in the delightful village of Meltown are going pretty well. I have ten villagers, I’ve upgraded my initially-tiny house and Tom Nook has had enough of my money to build a new store - Nook ‘N’ Go having replaced Nook’s Cranny. I’m collecting mushrooms on a daily basis, and occasionally finding the odd piece of furniture when I bend down to pull up certain fungi. That, and I just gave excitable pink rabbit Chrissy a migratory locust and she now thinks that I ‘totally rock’. Life is good.

Or is it? Because all is not well in Meltown. Just yesterday we had the Harvest Festival, with mayor Tortimer expecting the arrival of a turkey. Trouble was, said bird was still alive and well and hiding behind a tree close to the museum. Franklin - for that was his name - informed me that he was to be roasted and eaten, and proceeded to request I give him my knife and fork, which Tortimer had passed to me so I could ready myself for the feast. I did get a nice piece of special Harvest furniture for my troubles, and so decided to repeat the process until I got the full set, taking knives and forks for the other villagers until poor old Tortimer got so confused he couldn’t remember whether he’d given me any or not. After about the twentieth hunt round the village to find Franklin, I gave up hoping to get a Harvest carpet as he handed over a Harvest bureau for the third time. So I’m one rug short of a full set. Here’s hoping I can trade with someone who was lucky enough to get said carpet. In the meantime, I’m stuck with this lunar floor (above) which I obtained from travelling camel Saharah, who swapped three old carpets gleaned from my animal neighbours for an exclusive design. Nice, but it doesn’t exactly tie the room together…

And that’s not the only trouble. While I’m quite a fan of froggy pal Prince, other characters have been making complaints to me, with ordinarily pleasant dog chum Goldie admitting she struggles to find any good in him. Blimey. As I’m now able to inform Pelly at the town hall whether any animals are causing trouble, I’m reluctant to snitch on my pal - even if he does rub a few people up the wrong way.

Still, with plenty of bells in the bank, and a funky tuxedo from GracieGrace wowing all and sundry, things look fairly rosy. Let’s just hope there’s something more special in store for next week, as this one has induced quite a strong feeling of deja vu. City area aside, there’s just not enough new stuff here to suggest I’ll last as long in Meltown as I did in its GameCube equivalent a few years back.

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Lovely lovely lovely. Colourful boxarts ‘for the win’ as I believe current internet parlance would have it.

Anyway, Konami has released a boatload of info about the forthcoming Adventures of Kai & Zero, which make it a little clearer how the game is going to play. I’ll be posting some more about this tomorrow, but in the meantime, you can have some info about the game’s special Omega Elebits and what they can do.

The first one you’ll meet can be found right at the start of the game’s first world. Naturally, it can be used to burn stuff. Meanwhile, the ice Omega is used to freeze water - allowing protagonist Kai to cross rivers. Magnet Omega moves metal spheres, while the Melody Omega has “mysterious musical abilities”.

With Power Omega, Warp Omega, Water Omega and Speed Omega being pretty self-explanatory, that just leaves Mobius - the most powerful of all the Omegas who is apparently spiralling out of control, and causing all the chaos in the Elebits world in the first place.

Excitement +1. Sounds like a neat little puzzle-solver, which should hopefully garner the success that eluded its Wii predecessor. Oh, and should Konami be reading this - can we have Dewy (of Dewy’s Adventure fame) as an unlockable character, please?

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No real surprise to see Animal Crossing topping the charts - though perhaps it is slightly surprising that it beat out a DS remake of one of Japan’s favourite games, Chrono Trigger. Guess that proves the Animal Crossing phenomenon is showing no signs of dying down any time soon. Given the success of the DS game, I think this one should sell and sell - though it could be that word-of-mouth is somewhere shy of ’stellar’ when people find out just how similar it is to Wild World.

Square-Enix’s DS remake of the superb Chrono Trigger is in second spot, while Sega’s Saka DS: Touch and Go breaks into the top five too, nudging Kirby down to number six.

Animal Crossing’s week one sales make it already the fourteenth best-selling Wii title to date. Wii Music isn’t even selling fairly steadily any more - a month and a half after release and it’s down to 9000 sales this week. Ouch.

In hardware sales, the DSi outstripped all, with sales of 88,843, though there was a significant spike for the PSP, which rose to 61,226. Wii sales were up to 35,298, while the DS Lite outsold the PS3 - 18,580 to 17, 436. Yikes.

Full details below, stat fans. 

01. [WII] Animal Crossing: City Folk (Nintendo) 305,000 / NEW
02. [NDS] Chrono Trigger DS (Square Enix) 271,000 / NEW
03. [PSP] Gundam vs. Gundam (Namco Bandai) 267,000 / NEW
04. [360] The Last Remnant (Square Enix) 101,000 / NEW
05. [NDS] Saka DS: Touch and Go (SEGA) 72,000 / NEW
06. [NDS] Hoshi no Kirby: Ultra Super Deluxe (Nintendo) 55,000 / 418,000
07. [NDS] Wagamama Fashion Girls Mode (Nintendo) 25,000 / 209,000
08. [NDS] Rhythm Tengoku Gold (Nintendo) 25,000 / 1,184,000
09. [NDS] Pokémon Platinum (Pokémon) 24,000 / 1,941,000
10. [PS3] Way of the Samurai 3 (Spike) 20,000 / 100,000

DSi - 88,843
PSP - 61,226
Wii - 35,298
DSL - 18,580
PS3 - 17,436
X360 - 15,474
PS2 - 5,281

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Japanese gaming bible Famitsu has only ever handed out eight 40/40 scores in its time, with its four reviewers very rarely all agreeing to award top marks. Yet it’s now happened for the ninth time, and is the second Wii game this year to get the accolade.

Somewhat surprisingly it’s come for a game which few people will have on their radar - partly because it’s unlikely to ever see the light of day outside Japan. Published by Sega and created by Chun Soft, 428: Fuusa Sareta Shibuya de (official site here) is a sound novel which sees a group of disparate characters collide in the Tokyo district of Shibuya. It has several branching story paths and multiple endings - indeed, Famitsu was lavish in its praise of the story, which is presented mainly using a series of still photographs, rather than the painted look favoured by so many games of this nature.

I’ve mentioned before that I think visual novels and sound novels (Chun Soft owns the trademark to the latter title, with all others in the genre referred to as the former) would make excellent ‘bridge’ titles for casual gamers who want to move on from Brain Training and the like but aren’t quite prepared to dip their toes into hardcore waters just yet. But unless you’re counting the likes of Phoenix Wright and Hotel Dusk (which aren’t too far removed from visual novels) then the best examples I can think of are the superbly-written dream sequences in Xbox 360 RPG Lost Odyssey. If you’ve played that game, you’ll know how effective these can be, and it’s a great pity no western publisher is prepared to take a chance on such titles.

I’ve mailed Sega in the unlikely event that the Famitsu score (and hopefully healthy sales which follow) will encourage a translation. But given how Japanese the game is - Japanese setting, Japanese characters, Japanese…well, everything - I think there’s more chance of us getting Captain Rainbow. Or Mother 3. Or the surprise release next week of Super Mario Galaxy 2.

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The internet is never going to let cold, hard facts get in the way of a good furore, so a Kotaku report (discussed on Casualgaming.biz) that Nintendo of Europe issued a press release politely asking “publications” not to use the old red logo, but the ‘new’, grey one is naturally causing some tears and tantrums before bedtime.

Of course, anyone who’s purchased a copy of the Official Nintendo Magazine in the last couple of years (or, indeed, any Nintendo-published game, though it’s marginally less obvious there) will be aware that the logo’s been grey for ages. It’s just that with this email it’s now sort of official, and it represents Nintendo making further steps towards the Dark Side in some people’s eyes.

While grey isn’t the most inspiring of colours, Nintendo has increasingly wished to position itself away from its previous ‘kiddie’ image towards something a little cooler and more sophisticated, so the abandonment of red makes sense, really. Of course, certain internet-goers see it as further evidence that Nintendo is neglecting its fanbase, who apparently adored the original colour so much that this move is akin to erasing the golden memories of their childhood. Boo frickin’ hoo.

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Some admirable honesty right there from Mr. Zelda - Nintendo’s Eiji Aonuma - in an interview with Nintendo Power, as reported by Nintendo Everything. Discussing one of the most influential and important games of all time, he admits that the fact that it’s spoken of in such hushed tones is indicative that no Zelda since has topped it.

“I’m happy that a title I worked on some time ago remains highly praised to this day, but that also shows how none of the subsequent games in the series have surpassed it,” Aonuma suggests. “As someone who is still working on the series, I have mixed feelings about that. Because I haven’t yet surpassed it, I can’t quit. Surprisingly, that simply motivation may be the reason I continue to work on the Zelda series.”

Interesting stuff. Having played Wind Waker before Ocarina of Time, it’s clear that the GameCube game owed a lot to the N64 classic, which was very much ahead of its time, but I personally preferred Link’s sea-faring adventure. Indeed, some would suggest that, while it could never be as influential as Ocarina, Twilight Princess was such an effective homage to that game that it surpassed its predecessor.

So will Nintendo ever top Link’s 1998 adventure in the eyes of those who played it and loved it at the time? Probably not. Times have changed, and a combination of nostalgia, the feverish excitement built up by such epic games in those heady days where games didn’t have their endings dissected on forums and uploaded to YouTube on release day, and the simple fact that it’s virtually impossible for one single game to define its console quite as effectively as Ocarina did these days means you’ll always have those hardcore fans saying “yeah, but it’s not as good as Ocarina”.

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The Nintendo Stars Catalogue hasn’t been known for its quality gifts in the past, but the current update actually has some decent stuff on offer - assuming you’re awash with spare points, that is.

For 3850 points, you can get your hands on the superb Super Mario Galaxy soundtrack - or, even better, pay an extra 1000 points for the platinum version which has all the game’s music as opposed to the main orchestral themes for each galaxy. It’s one of the best soundtracks ever made, really - if you’re a serious Nintendo fan, you owe it to yourselves to grab this if you can.

If you’ve even more points burning a hole in your invisible Wii wallet, then you could always go for a gold Twilight Princess statue. Those less well-endowed in the points department may have to settle for a Wii Fit winter scarf or hat.

Head on over to this page to get hold of said items. Or just to cast an envious eye over things you’ll never have unless you pay over the odds on eBay.

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Eurogamer has a piece up clarifying the situation regarding Wii Speak, which caused certain internet-goers to get all flustered when they thought they wouldn’t be able to get hold of the peripheral second-hand.

(Though why you’d want to buy a second-hand peripheral I don’t know. Games are one thing, but controllers and other accessories I’d never consider getting pre-owned. Maybe you’re different, but it just seems a bit weird to me.)

Anyway, I digress. Nintendo had the following to say about the matter: ”Nintendo can confirm that when consumers purchase the Wii Speak accessory, they are provided with a Wii Download Ticket with a unique number. The ticket, which can be redeemed via the Wii Shop Channel, will enable the user to download the Wii Speak Channel free of charge to a single Wii console. Any consumer who may have misplaced their Wii Download Ticket number for the Wii Speak Channel or require a new number following a Wii exchange may contact their local Nintendo Customer Services department, where they can request a replacement Wii Download Ticket number.”

So that’s that, then. If you’re getting a preowned Wii Speak, then you’ll still be able to download the Channel. Praise be.

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