Nintendo's Tomodachi Connection features Miis in a big way

Nintendo’s Tomodachi Connection (a kind of cross between Nintendogs and The Sims) is comfortably number one in Japan this week, selling three times as many copies as its nearest rival, with over 100,000 units shifted. Not bad for a brand new IP.

Given the long tail of Nintendo’s more mainstream-friendly output, I’d expect it to hang around the top ten for quite a while longer. Let’s hope it continues to sell, as it would certainly make a western release more likely - like labelmate Style Savvy, it’ll require a big localisation effort, but I wouldn’t bet against this arriving in the west at some point in 2010.

Elsewhere, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days creeps towards half a million sales, while Level 5 continues to have success with its increasing range of puzzle games - though Sloane and McHale is no Layton, it looks like it could well have legs. Meanwhile, Miles Edgeworth hangs on in there, making it a good week for Capcom, with two further entries in the top ten on PSP, including the imperious Monster Hunter Portable 2 G. Sad to see Platinum Games’ Infinite Space plummet from top spot to number 18 - hopefully this won’t deter Sega from bringing it to the west, even though there’s no sniff of a launch date over here.

The full top ten follows…

01./00. [NDS] Tomodachi Collection (Friend Collection) (Nintendo) - 102,000 / NEW
02./00. [PSP] Fate/Unlimited Codes Portable (Capcom) - 34,000 / NEW
03./02. [NDS] Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days (Square Enix) - 27,000 / 457,000
04./03. [NDS] Sloane and MacHale’s Mysterious Story (Level 5) - 15,000 / 144,000
05./06. [PSP] Monster Hunter Portable 2 G (BEST) (Capcom) - 14,000 / 749,000
06./04. [NDS] Gyakuten Kenji (Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth) (Capcom) - 11,000 / 244,000
07./00. [NDS] Akira Tago’s Mind Exercises (Atama no Taisou) Vol. 1: Puzzle Solving Journey Around the World (Level 5) - 10,000 / NEW
08./08. [WII] Wii Fit (Nintendo) - 10,000 / 3,463,000
09./05. [PS3] Shin Sangoku Musou 5 Empires (Koei) - 9,000 / 125,000
10./18. [NDS] Pokemon Platinum (Pokemon Co.) - 7,000 / 2,447,000

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If not best, then almost certainly its most charming. The latest game to hit the Japanese WiiWare service is a twist on the usual Harvest Moon formula, tasking players with running a virtual store in a village populated by cutouts of familiar Mooners from the full-fat farming sims. Objectives include making the perfect icecream, decorating eggs, and - but of course - rhythm-action cow-milking. It’s 1500 points with further paid DLC promised, so it’s firmly in the upper bracket of WiiWare prices, though it looks to be one of the more polished games to hit the service.

A localisation is a possibility rather than a certainty, so I’m holding off a purchase for now until I find out that a western release is definitely off the cards - I’ve emailed Rising Star Games (the usual suspects for any game with ‘Harvest’ and ‘Moon’ in the title) and will report back if and when I hear any news of a PAL version.

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Gorgeous. Just gorgeous. Capcom Japan certainly knows how to treat its fans, as proven by the truckload of extra goodies featured in the Special Edition version of forthcoming Miles Edgeworth adventure, Gyakuten Kenji - or Perfect Prosecutor as it’ll be known in the west.

The package contains a miniature version of the April ‘08 Gyakuten Saiban concert pamphlet, complete with a manga from character designer, Tatsuro Iwatmoto, portraits of Mitsurugi (Edgeworth), Mei (Franziska von Karma) and new rival prosecutor Mikumo, a DS card case, a collection of Kenji promotional videos, and a five-song mini-album containing orchestrated versions of tunes featured in the game.

This can be preordered from Capcom’s e-shop, and it looks like you’ll get a limited-time-only bonus of a Steel Samurai phone strap should you fancy shelling out 9490 yen (£67.26) for this corking collector’s item.

And no, we never get anything this good. And no, it really isn’t fair.

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Big news in the Japanese hardware charts this week - Microsoft’s Xbox 360 not only shifted more units than Sony’s HD rival, but also managed to outsell Wii, and by quite some margin to boot.

For the week ending 22nd February, the 360 topped home console sales with 21,013, more than four thousand ahead of Wii on 16,900. Meanwhile, Sony is snapping hard on Nintendo’s heels with 15,967 PS3s sold for the week (these figures taken from CVG.com).

The software charts make the reason for the 360 spike obvious - Square-Enix role-player Star Ocean: The Last Hope, sold a whopping 162,000 copies, easily beating last week’s chart topper, Mario and Luigi RPG 3, into second place, the latter suffering a large drop in sales to 62,000 units on its second week of release.

The other big success was the PSP, with poptastic starlet-grooming franchise Idolmaster greedily hogging three chart positions, with the Perfect Sun, Missing Moon and Wandering Star variations snaffling third, fourth and fifth place respectively. Shining Force Feather kept the DS’s end up, taking sixth spot with 30,000 copies sold.

Thanks to GAF for the software numbers.

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Nintendo’s Japanese site has pics of a new design of Classic Controller set for release this year. Named the Classic Controller PRO, it’s essentially a cross between the original Classic Controller and a GameCube pad, with a dash of the DualShock thrown in.

Wider than the original, and with Wavebird-aping hand grips, this doesn’t have the old-school class of the original Classic, though it looks a little comfier to hold for longer gaming sessions. The Z buttons have been enlarged, and have been sensibly positioned behind the L and R triggers, which is one nod to Sony’s controller, the other being the larger gap between the two analogue sticks.

A worthwhile upgrade, then, with one glaringly obvious flaw - Nintendo could easily have made it wireless, but has opted instead to keep it tethered to the remote for additional battery-drainage. It’s definitely worth choosing over the original Classic if you don’t already own one, but wireless was the real tipping point for me. As I’ve got plenty of Cube pads, I’ll happily stick with those, if only to save me a few quid on AAs.

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As if to make up for the fact that the Japanese don’t have a new handheld launch to look forward to, Nintendo has announced the launch of three new DSi colours, which will join the white and black flavours on store shelves in Japan on March 20th.

There’s a lurid pink model, which I think is the least attractive of the three, while the lime green is suitably bright, but still not to my tastes. Much more pleasant is the metallic blue number - very reminiscent of the Enamel Navy DS Lite.

Watch-Impress has more pictures. Go and have a look and be envious of our eastern brothers and sisters. Still, we’ve not too much longer to wait - it’s around six weeks until DSi launches in Europe and the US.

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Famitsu has new shots and information about the forthcoming DSiWare title based on Keita Takahashi’s brilliant roll-em-up, Katamari Damacy.

Named Katamari Damacy: Korogashi Puzzle, it’s released on the handheld’s download service, and will cost just 500 points. The DS is held in the book style, with the left screen showing the King of All Cosmos, while the touchscreen has a vertical puzzle display. It’s similar to Meteos in that you need to match tiles to blast items off the screen - in this case, combining specific items to make stars in the night sky, a concept familiar to fans of the series.

There are two main game modes - a self-explanatory Endless Mode, and the Challenge Mode which has differently-themed stages. It seems that the King will have specific requests for the types of items to be included in the stars - again, this mechanic is well-known to Katamari fans.

Whether the game can live up to the addictive nature of the originals remains to be seen, but the presentation is charming (if a little cluttered) and it’s a nice twist on familiar puzzle mechanics. Expect a western release later in the year. If you want to see more shots, click here.

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Nintendo’s Japanese site has details of the new DSi software which will be available to download next Wednesday, February 25th.

For 200 points you can get a Nintendo-themed calculator, with Super Mario Bros. and Animal Crossing skins among others, while there’s also a slightly unfathomable app which Google Translate suggests is a ‘clock software dictionary’. Erm.

Thankfully, the remainder of the games are a little more understandable. For 500 points you can get one of two new Art Style games - Nalaku is a faintly nightmarish isometric puzzler which sees your stickman avatar climbing and pushing to reach the top of a cube while trying to avoid being crushed by falling blocks. Hacolife seems a little more relaxing, requiring you to cut out and fold together cubes from flat grids of squares - sometimes needing to ensure you’ve packed away an item within your created box before it’s lifted away by some omnipotent crane thing.  Also for 500 points is a collection of table games (chess, reversi, connect five and two more) and a stripped down version of that 100 Classic Book Collection, offering twenty titles to read on the move.

800 points gets you a Mahjong game and a new Mr. Driller title, the latter looking a little more interesting than the former.

It seems that Nintendo has settled into a rhythm with DSiWare - updating the range once a month with a mixture of games and applications at very reasonable prices. It’s good to see the Art Style series continuing to thrive on the service - and what we’ve seen so far seems to be a good indication of the sort of games we’ll see when DSi hits the west in April (so we’ll probably have to wait until June to see Hacolife and Nalaku unless Nintendo chops and changes the release order.

Excitingly, according to Offworld, next month sees a Katamari game come to DSiWare - though rather than the ball-rolling exploits the series is famous for, it’s a block-puzzler set in Takahashi-san’s esoteric universe.

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The pattern’s starting to become familiar - DSi still reigns supreme in Japan, with PSP in second place. Wii’s just about scraping into third, with PS3 hot on its heels.

That said, it’s interesting to note that even with the release of Street Fighter IV this week, PS3 couldn’t raise its game enough to topple Wii for a single week. So perhaps once it’s over this slightly fallow period, Nintendo’s casual-courting console will start to pick up sales, particularly as the bigger third-party releases hit (how Nintendo must be looking forward to Monster Hunter’s arrival). It’s hard to see Wii de Asobu: Metroid Prime having any effect on Wii’s sales next week, particularly as the series is much more popular in the west - if any console sees a sharp rise in sales next week it’ll be the 360, with Square-Enix’s Star Ocean IV on the way.

Figures below, courtesy of Chart-Get.

DSi 53,483
PSP 34,256
Wii 21,016
PS3 18,656
DS Lite 14,810
Xbox 360 9,833
PS2 5,332

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Mario & Luigi RPG 3, as predicted, topped the charts, but there was a disconcerting lack of Wii games in the Japanese top ten this week, as Sony dominated the upper echelons of the chart.Though some were predicting even higher numbers for Mario & Luigi, just under 200,000 copies is by some distance the best first week for the handheld franchise. Indeed, it beat the first week sales of both Superstar Saga and Partners in Time combined. A localisation really can’t come soon enough (will it launch alongside the DSi in Europe perhaps?)

Elsewhere, the sole other Nintendo console representative was the DS version of Echoes of time, hanging in there with a small drop in sales this week to a still-healthy 20,000 units. The Wii take on the game is outside the top 30 despite a hefty price cut. Ouch.

Meanwhile, Street Fighter IV was the other dominant force, the exceptional revival of the 2D beat-em-up genre’s most famous series coming in at second on PS3 and 5th for the 360 iteration. Many Japanese stores reported selling out, which, assuming Capcom gets plenty of stock back in, could make it a contender for the top next week (though Xbox 360 exclusive RPG, Star Ocean 4, could yet have a say).

Full chart below - hardware will follow tomorrow.

01. [NDS] Mario & Luigi RPG 3 (Nintendo) 193,000 / NEW
02. [PS3] Street Fighter IV (Capcom) 86,000 / NEW
03. [PSP] Kidou Senshi Gundam: Giren no Yabou (Namco Bandai) 40,000 / NEW
04. [PS2] Kidou Senshi Gundam: Giren no Yabou (Namco Bandai) 38,000 / NEW
05. [360] Street Fighter IV (Capcom) 38,000 / NEW
06. [PSP] Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 (Konami) 27,000 / 174,000
07. [PS2] Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 (Konami) 25,000 / 170,000
08. [PS3] Demon’s Souls (SCE) 22,000 / 62,000
09. [PSP] Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2 (Namco Bandai) 22,000 / 280,000
10. [NDS] Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time (Square Enix) 20,000 / 156,000

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