Charlie Brooker - brilliantly acerbic, inventively sweary critic, and host of BBC4’s terrific Screenwipe and more recently Newswipe - appears to be working on a games-related programme, if his Twitter account is to be believed.

‘Tweeting’ (sigh) earlier this evening, Brooker had this to say:

“Worst videogame bosses ever? Email yr suggestions to gameswipe at zeppotron dot com. Make what you will of that email address.”

Potentially, we’re talking best games-related TV ever here, folks. If Brooker can handle the move to games half as well as his move to news-related commentary (and he has previous; he regularly contributed to PC Zone back in the day) then this will definitely be one to watch out for.

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It’s been too long, readers. But WiiWii.tv is back and (hopefully) better than ever. Certainly a little older and wiser, anyway.

Yes, this here blog is back on your internet, bringing you the best and most interesting Nintendo news on a daily basis from the start of next week. Today is but a brief taster of the feast of Ninty-related info heading down your cables next week. We’ll have stuff about ExciteBots (crazy), MadWorld (bloody) and Little King’s Story (buy it now), as well as possibly unwise speculation about what Nintendo might have in store at E3, whether and how Sony’s rumoured new motion-controller will impact Nintendo, and discussion on DS dungeon-crawler The Dark Spire - is it the most unfairly hard DS game ever, or is it completely brilliant? All these questions and more besides will be answered, and there’ll be more of that quirky Japanese stuff that I know you just love to read about.

Stay tuned. It’s going to be awesome.

(Even if we are having trouble with PHP code at the moment which means I can’t post pictures nor links. Tch. Technology, eh?)

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It’s been a lot of fun, but unfortunately my time on WiiWii.tv has come to an all-too-premature end. The current economic climate has forced many media organisations to cut budgets as advertisers are reluctant to spend the sort of money they used to before the credit crunch started biting, and Shiny Media is no different. I’ve been told by my superiors that the site will be closing - temporarily, anyway - and so there won’t be any more updates save for an official announcement of a vaguely similar nature (but presumably with slightly more official language).

Basically, I couldn’t pass up this opportunity to thank each and every reader who has spent time on here, whether you’ve just been browsing occasionally, visiting on a daily basis, or even commenting on my posts - seriously, you’re all great, and I really appreciate your support.

Hopefully this will just be a temporary measure, and Shiny will be able to reopen the site once more in the not-too-distant, but in the meantime I’ll be moving onto other things. I’ve enjoyed this so much that I might even start a new Nintendo blog of my own, but either way I’m sure you’ll see my name pop up on the internet every now and again, as there are a few other places I write for.

In the meantime, if for some bizarre reason you want to stay in touch, feel free to click the ‘contact’ tab at the top, and I’ll let you know what I’m up to and where you can find me.

Once again, thanks for your wonderful support which has helped make this one of the most purely enjoyable writing gigs I’ve ever had.

See you around,

Chris

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Sad times for the former King of Pop - he’s now so skint he’s even having to auction off his collection of arcade machines - and there’s some great stuff in there. I never really had Wacko down as a gamer, but he’s got a wide range of cabs, from the nostalgia-inducing to the ultra-rare.

Visit Julien’s Auctions and you can have a look at the items which are going under the hammer on April 24th. A Virtual Boy in its stand-up store display is one of the highlights, but there’s also an N64 unit, and several Nintendo-related arcade classics, like Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros. Plenty of other machines of interest there, too - and the starting prices are absurdly low considering some of these are genuine collector’s items.

Expect the prices to rise and rise as wealthy gamers start upping the ante, but for now, $100-$150 is the price for Gunpei Yokoi’s legendary cornea-scorcher - should you fancy giving yourself a permanent headache, that’s all the Virtual Boy will cost you. Bargain!

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The latest issue of unofficial UK Nintendo publication NGamer can be found in stores from today, though it’s next month’s edition which looks more interesting.

At the back of the mag, the next month page advertises an ‘Easter reviews special’, covering the likes of GTA: Chinatown Wars, Broken Sword and Little King’s Story.

But more excitingly, the mag also promises the first look at Red Steel 2, sequel to Ubisoft’s FPS/sword-fighter which was something of a commercial success during the Wii’s launch window. Better still is the news that the game will feature “Motion Plus swordsmanship” says the mag.

Issue #35 of NGamer, on sale March 25th, but likely to reach subscribers five or six days earlier, will also uncover Dead Space: Extraction in more detail.

Plenty to look forward to, then, especially if you subscribe to this excellent magazine.

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CliffsNotes: Mario & Luigi good, Another Code: R not so good.

Yep, this week’s edition of gaming Koran Famitsu carries reviews of CiNG’s Wii adventure and the moustachioed brothers’ third handheld RPG outing. The latter proved to be more popular, nabbing 9s from three of Famitsu’s four-strong review team, and a comparatively stingy 8 from the other. Another Code: R garnered a comparatively low 28/40, with all four critics slapping down a score of 7/10.

The suggestion is that Another Code’s story is perhaps a little too intrusive, taking up a substantial portion of the game and slowing its pace, while there aren’t enough puzzles, hints one of Famitsu’s team. It all sounds a little more Hotel Dusk than the original, but I’m optimistic that a decent translation will help it fare better with western reviewers. Dusk was all about the chat, with precious little genuine puzzle-solving, but its noir-tinged script, brilliantly localised by Nintendo’s crack translation squad at Treehouse, managed to save the day, creating a thoroughly compelling adventure game/visual novel hybrid.

Meanwhile, Mario & Luigi scored the same as its immediate predecessor, Partners in Time. Which could be a good or a bad thing, depending on your standpoint. I’m firmly of the opinion that Partners was a great game, slightly less so than its GBA forebear, mainly thanks to its reduced runtime and more linear worlds. More of the same in those respects in the third game would be a little disappointing, but the early videos suggest it’s as gleefully inventive and amusing as Superstar Saga. Let’s hope that gets a Q2 European release, too.

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A press release issued today has confirmed that Nintendo’s president Satoru Iwata will be delivering a keynote address at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this year.

GDC runs from March 23rd to the 27th, and Iwata’s speech will take place at the Moscone Convention Center, between 9 and 10am on the 25th.

It’s the first time Iwata has spoken at GDC since his 2006 appearance, where he spoke about ‘disruptive development’. He will be talking about ‘Discovering New Development Opportunities’ this time, which presumably will focus on DSiWare and - hopefully - MotionPlus. Whether he’ll hint at any new software is anyone’s guess, but undoubtedly there will be one or two nods in his address to forthcoming titles - Nintendo’s Q2 line-up will surely have been announced at that stage, and so we might learn a little more about Nintendo’s plans for 2009.

Hopefully Iwata will also discuss the opportunities for third-party developers on Wii and DS - 2009 looks like being a much better year for third-party titles on Wii, while Nintendo’s step back from first-party DS development has allowed other publishers to thrive with their handheld ranges.

Finally, it’ll be interesting to see whether he alludes to that recent patent for a video hint guide on Wii. Will he suggest that other developers take up that particular idea, or is that one Nintendo would like to keep for itself? We’ll know in just two months’ time.

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It’s been strongly rumoured for a little while, but today Ubisoft finally confirmed it - Wii will be getting a brand new Teenage Mutant Ninja (Hero, surely?) Turtles game this autumn. And it’s going to be a ‘four-player action fighting title’.

Ubi’s making a big thing about the fact that it’s the first ever Ninja Turtles game that isn’t tie-in, but more notable still is the name of the developer - it’s Game Arts, who worked on a certain other multiplayer-focused scrapper on Wii…

Yep, it’s Brawl with Turtles. Which, let’s be honest, sounds like a pretty good idea. After all, these green heroes are still pretty popular - 2007’s Xbox Live Arcade release of the original coin-op scrolling beat-em-up was the best-selling title on the service that year.  As Gary Richardson, CEO of Mirage Studios, would have it:

“We’re really excited to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the first TMNT comic and we have a number of radical ’shell-ebration’ events planned for 2009. The awesome new videogame that Ubisoft will release in 2009 is an important part of celebrating this Turtles milestone with fans around the world.”

Shell-ebration, eh? That makes my puns look good.

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KVue.com has a piece up about a new federal law from 10th February which will make it illegal to re-sell “any used children’s products, including toys and clothing”. This could potentially have serious ramifications for preowned games.

It might not seem too significant at first glance, but it’s being reported here that the ban could include “videos, computer and electronics products”.

The law is being brought into force after the US Consumer Protection & Safety Commission reported that dozens of toys had been recalled in 2008 because of concerns about lead poisoning. This means that “toys, clothing and other items used by children under 12 will be subjected to
lead testing and will have to have labels on them to prove that they have passed inspection”, says KVue.com.

It’s not yet clear whether this act is all-encompassing, but certain major US stores rely so heavily on second-hand sales that it seems likely prices will be forced upwards, or shops will go out of business. And eBay is likely to be seriously hit, too - as someone who has imported toys in the past for my son, it seems I won’t get the opportunity to buy used goods for much longer.

I’m sure we’ll hear more about this nearer the time the law comes into force - it could be that videogames won’t be affected, but if they are, expect this news to snowball over the next few weeks…

(Thanks to Chris Smith for the tip-off)

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Being locked in a darkened room will do this to a man, but it appears Robert Pelloni - creator of Bob’s Game, a DS title which reportedly took him 15,000 hours to make - has lost the plot a tad.

Initially, I had sympathy for the man - he started a 100-day sit-down protest because Nintendo hadn’t approved his developer license, nor sent him the SDK disc required so he could finish the game.

But the recent posts on his site suggest ‘Bob’ may not be entirely in control of his mental faculties. Firstly, he said he didn’t want to release the game as a homebrew title, but may have his hand forced by Nintendo’s reluctance to deal with him. Then he claimed that the game would be a ‘killer app’ for homebrew, which would lead to a huge increase in piracy, making the DSi entirely irrelevant and thus a sales flop.

In his latest post - after several others claiming he doesn’t want to ‘hurt’ Nintendo - has this to say:

“I am the GREATEST GAME DEVELOPER THAT EVER LIVED. I am a GENIUS, and I will be around for the next 40 years- eating away at your company until it exists no longer. I will find way after way to slowly destroy your bottom line, and your business will fail.
The name NINTENDO will be forgotten, a discarded husk like so many others. “bob’s game” will live on FOREVER.”
That comes after his claim that he’s a better developer than Miyamoto, [Shigesato 'Earthbound'] Itoi, and [John] Carmack combined. Because they don’t develop their games alone, and yet take all the credit, apparently.

I’m sure Nintendo is taking his request even more seriously now. Because it often allows crazy people to develop for its consoles.

Get well soon, you big mentalist.

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