OK. The bad news first. It’s for PC. And it’s all in Japanese at the moment, so it’s pretty much useless and impossible to use unless you’re used to trudging slowly and painfully through Japanese RPGs in a trial and error fashion.
And you have to sign up with a Japanese company with Japanese details IN JAPANESE in order to actually use it. Then, even after all that kerfuffle, you’re treated to bewildering screens like this:
But if you do manage to trudge through it (helpful tips on how to do so here), you’re treated to the ability to create your own custom cases, followed by an emailable-to-everyone-you-know URL to show off your handiwork.
Designed to help promote the Japanese relaunch of the PW series in episodic format, we’d say the chances of it getting translated and appearing in an understandable format are rather remote.
Although imagine the fun to be had creating water-tight criminal cases against your friends if they whacked it up on WiiWare for a couple of quid…
No fatties on Wii Ware, please. Those obese games with megabytes of data rolling over the top of their belts had better get into shape: Nintendo are only allowing those weighing in at skinny 40MB or less onto their download service, according to an info drop on IGN’s Wii podcast this week. All you graphic intensive games, go off and cry on the PC, you big bloated pigs.
Evidently, Nintendo are going to lengths to ensure that the lack of memory space on the Wii doesn’t become too much of a problem, at least not initially. In comparison to the Wii’s limit, the Xbox 360’s arcade service originally capped games at 50MB to cater for their non-hard drive users. It didn’t take long, however, for that to balloon to 150MB in order to accommodate certain titles, e.g. Symphony of the Night.
We’re sure the Wii won’t go the same way. Nintendo have put across that they want to focus on ideas rather than spectacle for Wii Ware. As an incentive, they’ll be making sure that those developers who work their magic on making files as small as possible will be rewarded better than those who don’t. Additionally, they’re restricting each developer to only one title a month in order to stop shovelware and thus force people to use each opportunity to create something small but worthwhile instead.
You might think we’d be concerned about a 40MB limit. Not at all. When you’ve got infinite space to work with sometimes you tend to get lazy and cut corners (or delay for years and years). Some of the best games come out of restrictions imposed on game makers. When they don’t have their precious cut scenes and HDR lighting, they’ve got nothing to do except create something that plays good. Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network have already thrown out a few gems, and surely Wii Ware will do the same. Well, that’s the theory, at least. Don’t blame us if it doesn’t work out that way.
As for pricing, it looks like this will be the developer’s decision, not Nintendo. Which is a little surprising. We wouldn’t have expected such an open market policy on the Wii. We’ll take this piece of news with a slight pinch of salt just now.
Portal is the internet meme du jour, a first person puzzle game bundled in The Orange Box with Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress for the PC and 360. If you hadn’t realised, it’s the reason why black-clad gaming spods are making insider jokes about “cake” and “Weighted Companion Cubes” whilst chortling into their skinny mocha lattes. What we’ve seen and heard of the game is certainly intriguing, and the concept is original to say the least. Which is why we literally choked on our skinny mocha latte when we heard rumours of the game being developed for the Wii.
Alas, those rumours barely had time to flourish before developer Valve stepped into the fray. Their position is that, whilst an appealing prospect, there’s nothing Portal related in the pipeline for the Wii. According to spokesman Doug Lombardi: “It’s an extremely interesting idea, but there’s nothing in product - not yet, anyway.”
Hmmm, not a complete denial, then. There’s still a chink of hope that something could happen on this front. Given the non-violent nature of the game, Nintendo would have no problem with the content, and we reckon that the motion-sensitive Wiimote would work well with something like the Weighted Companion Cube. Perhaps Valve will consider making Portal a candidate for WiiWare?
Blimey! No sooner had we hit “publish” on our previous post, then another fantastic bit of news pops up from the very same source. Edge magazine sez that Nintendo is going to introduce an official DS flash card so they can start selling the back catalogue of Game Boy and Game Boy Colour titles via the Wii’s Virtual Console. Somebody pinch me, I’m dreaming.
It doesn’t stop there, though. Though initially the card can be used to sell games, there’s rumours that it will also be used to support third parties who want to - legally - develop applications for the DS. Kinda like WiiWare for the DS, except it’d have to be called DSWare, which isn’t as catchy.
Ironically, we were making similar observations about the piracy and homebrew scene earlier today. Given that it’s so popular, it’s blatantly counter-productive for games companies to try and stamp it out. Far better to legitimise the practice by offering these talented code monkeys an outlet that can be monitored and regulated.
And by regulation, we’re not talking about Big Brother style antics. We’re talking about fostering software standards, the absence of which makes most homebrew DS applications a tricky proposition. Knowing how domineering Nintendo can be, however, an element of Big Brother control may well come into play. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Nintendo head honcho Satoru Iwata is an ebullient mood, and he wants to spread the joy. In the aftermath of the Nintendo press conference he revealed that the company has received an avalanche of submissions for the WiiWare service. And by avalanche, we mean a lot.
Iwata stated that “We’ve already received proposals for over 100 titles from software development companies. We’ve made a platform for developing software at low cost, and would like to offer a new business chance based around a battle of ideas.”
Fair warms the cockles of the heart, doesn’t it? Let’s repeat the key phrases in that sentence; “developing software”, “low cost”, “battle of ideas”. It goes some way to contradict recent reports that third party developers were disguntled with Nintendo and the success of the Wii. According to Iwata, they’re falling over themselves for a piece of the action.
Of course, not all of those titles are going to be groundbreaking masterpieces, that’d be asking for too much. But if only a fraction of them are good enough, then WiiWare will have more than justified its existence.
Bedroom coders rejoice! The CEO of Vicarious Visions, Karthik Bala, has dished some very rare dirt on the forthcoming WiiWare channel. His comments were part of a presentation about working in the games industry at a conference in New York, and they bode very well for the future.
Bala was full of praise for the support that his company has received from Nintendo thus far, and he says that independent developers have been showered with special dev kits to help them realise their projects. Furthermore, and here’s where Microsoft should be getting hot under the collar, having a game certified for WiiWare is much easier than doing the same for Xbox Live Arcade.
With the possibility of a huge array of indie titles (from WiiWare) and retro titles (from the Virtual Console), the future looks very bright for the Wii. The only foreseeable problem is the lack of a hard-drive to store all this software; if Nintendo don’t release a peripheral to address the issue, gamers are going to become increasingly irritated by the limitations.
A small, independent developer called Cryptic Sea is desperately trying to get their PC game Gish on the WiiWare Channel. The fact that it’s won a stack of awards should only make the process easy, right? Actually, no.
Edmund McMillen, the creator of the game, had a meeting with Reggie Fils-Aime, the president of Nintendo of America, to discuss Gish’s candidacy for WiiWare. To cut a long story short, he was fobbed off with a business card, and has been left dangling ever since. You can see the transcript of events recorded in the short film above.
This is what we want from WiiWare: award-winning video games made by small independent developers. Please Reggie, give Edmund a chance to prove what he can do. You won’t regret it!
Don’t like this picture of Bonk? Well tough. I spent AGES drawing it to celebrate the virtual console release of Bonk 3: Bonk’s Big Adventure, which has to be one of the all-time seminal classics of caveman-based gaming.
Today’s other release is the the 1993 Super Nintendo classic Vegas Stakes, which is most likely one of the all-time seminal classics of Casino-based gaming, although I can’t verify that as I haven’t actually played it. Anyways, Vegas Stakes is 800 Nintendo tokens while Bonk is just 600, which has to be one of the, oh never mind.
Making full use of the brand’s endless pun-o-bility, recently founded American developer Medaverse exclaims in a press release: “Wii have made our choice!” (It works on so many levels.) What Medaverse goes on to explain is that it has a WiiWare game in the works — something called Gravitronix, which we like to pronounce as “Gravy Tronics”.
Gravitronix will be released next year, and someone at Medaverse has let a few cats escape from their bags, offering this overview of the game:
- Gravitronix is an action/battle game for 1-4 players — possibly 8.
- The game takes place in a single-screen arena.
- The objects seen in the logo are the projectiles used as weapons.
- These projectiles will have different physics, making them behave differently depending on how you use them.
- There will be a great deal of depth in the control scheme.
- Veteran players will master maneuvers which make rookie players cry “HAX!!!”
- These details are intentionally vague, but we will have screenshots and movies closer to release which will explain everything.
Over in America, Nintendo publicist Perrin Kaplan has stated that promotional tactics like the Metroid Prime 3 Preview Channel will be applied for other titles on their roster. More intriguingly, she also hinted at the possibility of downloadable demos for blockbuster games.
When asked by IGN about the perceived lack of advertising push for Metroid Prime 3, this was Kaplan’s response:
“We still have a lot of our more traditional marketing efforts planned. People will see it all shortly, from ads to many of the usual tactics we use to support our key products. Plus: a few more surprises like the Metroid Prime 3 Preview [are forthcoming].”
It all sounds very exciting, but given that the Wii only has 512mb of on-board memory, the onus will be on gamers to provide their own external storage if they want to download and play Wii demos. If Ninty wants to really push these preview channels as a marketing tool, it’d be more helpful if they could provide some kind of low-cost solution like discounted memory cards.
Blimey! No sooner had we hit “publish” on our 
Bedroom coders rejoice! The CEO of Vicarious Visions, Karthik Bala, has dished some very rare dirt on the forthcoming WiiWare channel. His comments were part of a presentation about working in the games industry at a conference in New York, and they bode very well for the future.
Don’t like this picture of Bonk? Well tough. I spent AGES drawing it to celebrate the virtual console release of Bonk 3: Bonk’s Big Adventure, which has to be one of the all-time seminal classics of caveman-based gaming.
Over in America, Nintendo publicist Perrin Kaplan has stated that promotional tactics like the 
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