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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Wired.com’s Game|Life has an interesting report from DICE about Nintendo’s intentions to support independent gaming on both Wii and DSi.

Nintendo’s director of project development, Tom Prata, accepted that Nintendo could potentially have issues in that department - particularly on Wii given its lack of storage space - but it’s evident that the big N is seeing how well games like Flower and Noby Noby Boy are working on rival hardware and wants a piece of that critically-acclaimed pie.

Nintendo, of course, has its own figurehead for indie gaming on Wii, and 2D Boy’s Kyle Gabler was introduced to talk about World of Goo. Nintendo would be wise to throw a bit of money to keep the two-man devteam working on titles for its consoles, though it’s heartening to see it taking steps in this direction - especially as it recently seems to have focused on commercial success over genuine gaming innovation. Though that would be to ignore some of the smaller-scale, more experimental titles like Skip’s Art Style series, which runs across both Nintendo’s download services - for my money one of the most exciting developments in Nintendo gaming since the Wii’s launch.

The rise and rise of digital distribution, and the subsequent growth of indie gaming may well have caught Nintendo on the hop, but it’s certainly taking steps in the right direction. Let’s just hope that fridge-clearing solution comes along sooner rather than later.

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LIT has just arrived on the Wii Shop Channel for US owners, who can download the spooky puzzler for 800 points assuming they have 232 blocks of fridge space. I’ve just spent an enjoyable hour or so with the game - while it’s very limited in some respects, it’s also quite ingenious, and worth a bash if you’re after a download that offers something a little different.

You play as Jake (think Xander out of Buffy but a little braver) who finds his school overrun by creatures that skitter about the floor, but only in darkness. Any steps into the inky blackness and Jake gets dragged away by said monsters, who emit a really quite disturbing asthmatic wheeze as they pull Jake into the aether. So it pays to stay in the light, of which there’s precious little as you step into each classroom. But you’ll soon discover lamps, which reveal ammo for your slingshot, with which you can smash windows to let in more light, and soon the room becomes crossable - make it to the exit and it’s straight into another puzzle, more difficult than the one before.

It gets pretty intricate surprisingly quickly - and the trial-and-error nature of the gameplay could be off-putting to some. But persevere and get your head around its tricks and you’ll soon figure out which windows need to be smashed in which order. As the game progresses, it adds plenty of neat new ideas - Jake’s girlfriend Rachael is the only other survivor, and she’ll find a way to call you on the various ‘phones in the classroom, with her worried voice audible when you hold the remote to your ear. Moving fans force you to think fast as you try to stay in their beams, while a bar at the top prevents you from switching on too many appliances - sometimes you’ll have worked out a plan of action only to realise it’s going to involve too much power, which forces a restart of the stage. Oh, and there are boss battles - the two guardians I’ve faced so far try to destroy the light sources which are harming them, forcing you to improvise strategies on the fly.

It’s not a good-looking game - the art style is quite ugly, and technically it’s at about PSone level. But with terrific use of sound, it retains its uniquely creepy atmosphere, and its intriguing gameplay makes it just about worth the 800 point outlay.

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Two new WiiWare additions for lucky Americans today - one balance board-enhanced bit of arcadey winter sports fun, and a puzzler which Game | Life described as “a pretty cheapo affair”. One is tempting me; the other isn’t. Can you guess which is which, WiiWii.tv readers?

That said, I’m still holding out for impressions of Hudson’s Snowboard Riot - there’s a global recession on, y’know, and 1000 US points is a lot more costly than it used to be. And perhaps LONPOS has been unfairly treated so far - after all, Nintendo is publishing the puzzler for its American debut, so maybe it’s got more to it than meets the eye. Or perhaps Nintendo is just trying to fill the schedule in an otherwise slow week. One of the two.

If anyone’s taken the plunge and downloaded LONPOS, I’d welcome your impressions in the comments thread. Otherwise I might just give Snowboard Riot a quick bash tomorrow.

Those who like their pixels large and their gaming old-school get a Master System-shaped treat this week in the form of Sonic Chaos, available on the Virtual Console service for a mere 500 Wii Points.

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Japanese Wii owners were this week given the opportunity to purchase a digital representation of the manga comic, Princess Ai - available on the Wii Shop Channel for 500 points courtesy of publisher SunSoft Books. The software uses the Wii remote to scroll through the pages, and further paid downloadable content will be available - initially the manga came in three volumes, so presumably the initial outlay is for the first, with the second and third available for extra Wii points.

There are two particular points of interest here. The first is that English subtitles are available throughout, though perhaps that’s not such a surprise when you discover the second reason this is interesting - the manga itself was co-created by none other than mildly bonkers rock widow Courtney Love.

The manga has a few parallels to Love’s own life - ‘ai’ is Japanese for ‘love’, while the amnesiac protagonist has a boyfriend named Kent, reportedly based on Love’s late husband, Nirvana singer-songwriter Kurt Cobain. Ai also owns a heart-shaped box - clearly a reference to the Nirvana song of the same name.

While the manga itself has been published in other countries, this is likely to remain in Japan, though it’s nice to have the option of English subtitles for a change. If only more Japanese titles gave English speakers the opportunity to enjoy them, too. Nintendo, please take note - oh, and offer us poor, underserved westerners downloadable subtitle packs for Another Code: R and Captain Rainbow while you’re at it, please.

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Two more WiiWare games, and just the one Virtual Console release - it’s a schedule which has become fairly familiar to US Wii owners, but this week looks like the best in a little while.

High Voltage, arguably Wii’s hardest-working third-party developer, has yet another game for release, this time in the form of High Voltage Hot Rod Show, a multiplayer-focused racer which offers a nod towards top-down classic Micro Machines, but features stunts, boosts, power slides and more to keep things interesting. With four-player split-screen play and online leaderboards, it’s another feature-packed WiiWare release from the developer, and it costs 1000 points. It’s over 300 blocks, though - can I really bear to (temporarily) delete the Art Style games to make room? I’m not so sure. Get that storage solution sorted, Nintendo - and quickly.

Meanwhile, Aksys Games offers Family Glide Hockey for 500 points - glide hockey being air hockey to you and I. The same four cel-shaded characters which popped up in Aksys’ earlier table-tennis title on WiiWare make a reappearance here, and compete in one of four different environments, with a basic single and multiplayer mode bolstered by three minigames. And on the Virtual Console is Genesis/MegaDrive favourite MUSHA - 800 points’ worth of old-school blasting, which appears to be a popular choice with hardcore shmuppers.

Nothing hugely inspiring, then, but we’re still getting a fairly regular flow of downloadable content on the Wii, which will make that storage issue even more of an irritant before too long. SD card access isn’t the most elegant solution, but it’s certainly preferable to the current situation. Fingers crossed we’re offered some kind of alternative before too long.

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Blend the glorious purity of a Rhythm Tengoku stage with a Bit Generations aesthetic and you have BIT.TRIP BEAT, a forthcoming WiiWare title unveiled today by Aksys Games.

From the video on the official site, it looks like a high-score-chasing rhythm-action collect-’em-up, which requires the player to move a line up and down to collect chunky pixel ‘beats’, to beef up the chiptune soundtrack burbling away merrily in the background.

Developer Gaijin Games describes the game thus:

“[We] wanted to make a game that used the tools of today to inspire the fun of yesterday. Our goal was to make a game that was as simple in gameplay as the games of the early 80s and equally as fun - even though gamers’ tastes have changed over the years.”

So a delightfully old-school experience with a modern twist? Colour me very intrigued indeed. BIT.TRIP BEAT has no ESRB rating yet, and with Nintendo’s reluctance to announce release dates for WiiWare games before their arrival on the service, it could be with us in two weeks or two months. But as something a little different from the WiiWare norm, I think this is one worth splurging a few hundred Wii Points on. Expect a review in the not-too-distant, with any luck.

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If nothing else, small indie developer Semnat Studios has come up with the most stupidly brilliant game name of 2009 already, but Eduardo the Samurai Toaster has more than just a daft title to recommend it.

Its art style, for starters, is pretty unusual - a mix of pen & ink, acrylic paint and charcoal art scanned in to make for a rather unique-looking run ‘n’ gun shooter. You’ll be attacked by Peking Opera pastries (whatever they may be) and robot mangoes as you pelt through the levels, apparently shooting out various delicious pastries from Eduardo’s head to take out said foes. Well, anyone who’s ever eaten a Pop Tart will know how deadly they can be when hot.

If you’re finding the action a little too frenetic, then you can call on your mates to join in and help out, with drop-in co-operative support for up to four players in total.

The press release has a release date of ‘winter’, so it should be with us by the end of February at the latest. Will Eduardo be the toast of WiiWare? I’ll let you know as soon as it arrives.

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It’s surprising that Nintendo hasn’t yet announced a Wii version of the 1080 Snowboarding games, though it wouldn’t entirely surprise me if we see a balance board-enhanced Wii-make of Avalanche rather than a brand new title. With Shaun White offering a decent alternative to Wii Fit’s winter sports, Hudson is the next developer to send players wobbling down the slopes with Snowboard Riot, its forthcoming WiiWare title, which will be available soon for 1000 points.

It’s clear from the trailer that this isn’t going to be the best-looking title around, but it moves pretty smoothly, and offers online play, which is a real bonus. More importantly, it’s going to feature something quite different from your average boarding sim - something which should make it stand out from what could well be a crowded genre by this time next year. As the official site itself would have it - “Snowboarding + Weapons. Enough said.”

Road Rash on boards? Mario Kart on the piste? This could potentially turn out to be a minor classic. Hopefully Hudson can do the idea justice.

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MaboShi’s Arcade

Finally! Four months on from its PAL release, MaBoShi finally makes it to the US WiiWare service. And it’s a strange one, for sure - neither as gloriously minimalist as Cubello or Orbient, nor as accessible and constantly restless as World of Goo, it’s a game which takes a while to get its hooks into you, but reveals itself to be quite an ingenious little puzzler.

I say it’s not that accessible, but its controls are - for two of the games you’ll need just the A button, while the third simply requires you to use the d-pad. The first game sees you trying to spin a ball around a circle, hitting nasties before they reach the edge. Should just one venture outside the circle, then it’s game over. Hitting A merely changes the direction your ball spins in, so it’s all about timing your presses, and making sure you take into account the obstacles in the ball’s path. The second game sees you holding A and releasing it to propel a spinning stick forward, demolishing blocks and hitting enemies. Should one of said beasties crash into the stick’s circular core - wallop, game over. Game three is like a slow-paced version of Snake, except here your trail sets blocks on fire, the idea being that they’re all destroyed before they reach the bottom of the screen, and that you don’t fence yourself in by slithering down a blind alley. Fail to leave yourself enough wiggle room and that’s it.

The stroke of genius here is that all three games fit together, affecting each other in different ways. When playing alone, the two other games will be taken up by computer-controlled players, and their performances affect yours. The stick can encroach on the circle’s game, whacking the ball or sending blocks to destroy monsters, while defeated foes often spiral off into the other displays, helping to pull off combos by killing multiple enemies in one go. You can even save your own replay data and play it in one window, using that to pull yourself out of a sticky spot in another game. It’s a concept that’s difficult to really get your head around at first, but once you’ve seen it in action, you’ll find it a useful tool to get closer to that elusive score of 1,000,000 points. I’ve not come anywhere near so far, needless to say.

It’s occasionally a little capricious, and its cause-and-effect mechanic is undoubtedly going to be too much for some people, but this is one seriously brain-twisting puzzler which deserves the plaudits its had so far from those who’ve bothered to play it. It’s generous too - offering DS owners the chance to download the game to their handheld for free. Brilliant. 

Pool Revolution: CueSports

A reduction in price (from 800 points to 500) makes Hudson’s ball-potter even more appealing on its US debut. It might not have the presentational razzmatazz of Gameloft’s Midnight Pool - nor that game’s amusing story mode - but it does play a slightly better game of pool (and snooker if you’re that way inclined) and even offers an online mode. Though the latter is marred by the fact that the game uses individual Friend Codes, and not your Wii’s own. Bah.

The cueing mechanics are solid, although it can take quite a while to adjust your aim, particularly when there are plenty of balls left, as the cursor moves much slower when a ball is targeted, allowing you to fine-tune your shot. Still, with several options to tweak your game - from rule adjustments to different ball sets, tables and arenas - as well as a (limited) replay function and a trickshot mode, this represents great value for money, and makes for a fairly enjoyable (if basic) multiplayer experience.

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