Some dude at GamePro is reporting No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle will be a Wii exclusive in 2010.

Suda confirmed the news at this week’s Tokyo Game Show, but he also suggested other platforms were considered, specifically the 360.

“We wanted to do it for the Xbox 360, but the Wii’s motion-controlled interface feels the best,” says Suda.

The eccentric developer self-proclaimed Suda 51 also dismissed concern over the graphics potential of Wii and the ability of the system to adequately convey the visual style of his maniacal games.

“There’s still room for the Wii’s graphics to get better and better.”

No More Heroes released in Jan. 2008. It developed a passionate following thanks to its stylish presentation and immersive gameplay. IGN recently included the game in a list of the 20 best Wii games.

It has sold about 350,000 copies worldwide, according to VGChartz.

Forgetting the fact that the past 12 months have been a Nintendo first party bonanza, we want more. It’s how we roll, especially when those games are so, well, good.

But wait. What’s this? There is more? And it’s from the notoriously loose-lipped Shigeru Miyamoto? Do dish, Miyamoto-san, do dish:

“The Zelda team in particular always works on Zelda titles. The core members of the Zelda team have for a very long time now been focused on Zelda games, and continue to focus on Zelda games, so they are hard at work and working away,” Miyamoto said. “And then, of course, we have the DS Zelda team as well, so even there we’re having some switching of people in and out where the DS team is mixing in with the Wii team and working on the Wii version.”

Hmm, still ambiguous at best. Perhaps a follow up question on some first person shooter changes from GDC 2007 will grease the wheels a bit?

At GDC 2007, Eiji Aonuma gave a presentation on The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. At that time, he showed a brief snippet of an experimentation the Zelda team conducted — it was Twilight Princess running in the first-person view. We asked Miyamoto if such a fundamental change could await players of Wii’s next Zelda adventure.

“I don’t necessarily think it will change that drastically, but I think that Zelda is a franchise that does need some big new unique ideas,” he said. “And so the team right now is very focused on trying to find those ideas.”

Alright. So we know what a Wii Zelda won’t be. In that respect, we can approach Nintendo’s clandestine new approach to game announcements like Sherlock Holmes: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Any thoughts on Zelda now that we know a FPS design is, thankfully, in the garbage?

"Let me tell you about the game I played when I was still young..." Growing up, I was familiar with the name Bionic Commando, although I'd never played it for myself. I've had lots of conversations with friends about old games, and they'd reminisced about some game with a guy that swung around on a grappling arm. Yet strangely enough, none of my friends could remember what the game was called. When it was announced that Bionic Commando was to receive a re-imagining, I finally was able to match that game my friends loved, with the title. With the hype for the new game, I caught my first glimpse of the old 8-bit classic in promotional videos, and I really felt like I'd missed out on something special. But my disappointment quickly turned to anticipation when it was later revealed that the game would also be remade in 2D for download on all the popular home consoles!

(raucous cheering)

But not the Wii!

(sound of crickets)

Long-time Nintendo fans love to remember the old times, but we don't hold dear the memories of being repeatedly snubbed out of multiplatform ports. With GlovePIE running and Wiimote in hand, I turned to the PC version of Bionic Commando: Rearmed.

I actually purchased Rearmed via the PSN first, because I figured the Playstation controller at least had a functional D-pad, which is vital for classic 2D gaming. Xbox 360 owners who've played Street Fighter II or Lumines know what I'm talking about when I say that D-pad needs some work. Anyway, I started playing Rearmed and discovered that it wasn't just waxing nostalgic. This was the real deal down to the near-crippling legacy controls of a hardware-limited era. The NES control pad was an evolution beyond the nightmarish input devices before it, but it was extremely primitive compared to today's tech. We take for granted being able to press a diagonal direction on our D-pads and have the game respond to it, but the poor old NES pad was unreliable in that respect. Bionic Commando didn't use diagonal controls, and the less-than-intuitive control scheme developed for it was carried over to Rearmed. Following the example of my hero, the Lorax, who spoke for the trees, I take it upon myself to speak for the Wiis. I set out to prove that the Wii is most certainly worthy of a slice of this pie, by virtue of its controller.

What did I change to make it Wii-riffic? Well, not much. I tried several motion and tilt control schemes, and found myself playing for long stretches of time, at the end of which I realized I kept reverting to the old digital controls. Rearmed has weapon switching and a few more controls, so I had to map grenade-tossing to a shake of the Wiimote. But like the sweet and pure Smash Bros. formula, Bionic Commando doesn't need to be messed with. Sure, its unintuitiveness is not going to win over any "soccer moms," but this kind of game was never intended to.

It takes a little practice to get the hang of things (no pun intended - honest!), and there's a deliberate learning curve to master the timing for deploying your grapple arm and swinging, but the effort you must put in is what makes this game so fun. We have to take care not to let these types of games go extinct, or our children will have no reason to throw their controllers across the room in frustration.

//Arm
If Wiimote.Two
J = True
wait 20ms
J = False
Else
//Movement
Down = Wiimote.Left
Up = Wiimote.Right
Left = Wiimote.Up
Right = Wiimote.Down
EndIf

K = Wiimote.One //Fire
L = (Wiimote.RelAccZ > 4) //Shake to throw grenades
O = Wiimote.A //Change weapon 1
I = Wiimote.B //Change weapon 2
U = Wiimote.Plus //Inventory menu
Escape = Wiimote.Minus //Pause
Shift + P + I + E = Wiimote.Home //Stop script running

Bionic Commando Rearmed was created as a fun project to help promote the upcoming remake. It runs on the same Capcom multiplatform Framework engine as the remake, which, unfortunately doesn't support the Wii. However, Dead Rising was built on that same engine, and it's getting ported over to the old Resident Evil 4 engine. We can hold onto hope for some BC-lovin', but why do we deserve it? Well, we've got a functional d-pad for starters! Maybe throw in some diagonal controls to soften the learning curve for our console's market. It doesn't need rolling, pitching, or infrared sensor controls to be a fit for the Wii. With the Wii it's already got a proven market of nostalgics who've spent their hard-earned Wii points on Virtual Console classics and the retro-stylized Mega Man 9.

I know GRIN is hard at work finishing up the new Bionic Commando, and there's no chance of a Virtual Console port of the original, but wouldn't you, dear reader, love to play Bionic Commando WiiArmed?

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GameCyte: Was there another game in the works, perhaps an aborted project for one of your other clients for which the new tech was originally intended?

EN: No, not really. It really all started, initially, with a conversation between our CEO Kerry Ganofsky and myself, where we were sitting around and bemusing the state of the Wii. We were saying, “We love the Wii, this is such a neat system,” but our game consoles were gathering dust. The first-party stuff was awesome but there wasn’t a lot of great third-party stuff at the time, and we said to ourselves “this sucks, we’re spending all our time on 360 and PS3…”

(later on, the conversations moves to Animales de la Muerte)

EN: It’s a crazy, over-the-top and gruesome brawler, multiplayer kind of Smash TV-style game. Like Monkey Island, you have to save the good animals, and if they get infected, you have to take out the bad animals. It’s a simple little game concept, but it’s funny as hell and there’s lots of comedy, and we think it’s something really good. Internally, where we’ve been on the fence with it is we’ve put a lot into the development of it, and we’re looking at doing it as a WiiWare title, but honestly we’ve had a little bit of trouble squeezing it into 40 megs.

We’ve got a lot of cinematics, and a lot of comedy there. We don’t want to kill the comedy.

Check out the full interview here

It’s not what you know, its who you know. Connectivity is a huge part of all new technology, whether your fragging 12 year-old boys on Xbox Live or producing a kick-ass podcast with your colleagues over Skype on your PSP.

It has always been at this hurdle of connectivity that Nintendo has traditionally stumbled, offering remarkably lackluster online experience compared to its competitors. But no more! As of December 5th, Nintendo is done with just bringing people together in the living room, it wants bring people together from across the world. At the centre of its efforts to do this is the company’s latest branded gizmo, WiiSpeak.

WiiSpeak enables Wii owners to communicate with friends for the first. Connected directly to the console, the device will pick up the conversations from an entire room of people. Which means unlike headsets, everyone you’re with can get stuck into the flaming exciting social experience!

The new WiiSpeak Channel, accessed from the Wii’s main menu, allows up to four consoles connect together to chat, share pictures and send text messages.

The first game to use the full capabilities of WiiSpeak is Animal Crossing: Let’s Go to the City. Which, in the run up to Christmas, will be bundled with the WiiSpeak microphone. Nintendo is still keeping it all family friendly though. Users will still have to share Friend Codes to be able to communicate with each other. At the end of the day, it’s all about keeping the little ones safe.

Kombo: When is Kid Icarus going to be announced? Maybe not Kid Icarus but an Icarus game? The one Factor 5 is working on?

Charlie Scibetta: Yeah, that rumor rang up right before E3 and it got momentum. We have nothing to announce on Kid Icarus but we hear gamers and we hear that they want it.

More here

Kombo: How is the US economy and the worldwide economy affecting Nintendo’s game plan? We’ve been hearing that Nintendo has moved items like Wii Fit and Wiis themselves to the European market because it’s a more profitable move. Are these claims true? Is the economy affecting the direction that Nintendo is going?

Charlie: We understand that people have to tighten their belts in a rough economy and we’re definitely in one right now. We like the value that we give with our products. The DS Lite is $129 is a great value, and the Wii at $250. You get 5 great games right out of the box with Wii Sports - Tennis, Baseball, etc.

More here

(On SD card storage)…We heard the gamers, there was frustation there. We hate hearing that so we tried to create a solution for it and we’re still listening, we’ll see what the response is to this and see how it goes. To why it took so long, I can tell you that quality control is job number one for us.

More here

VC and WiiWare are going head to head this week with both of them releasing two games for our downloading pleasure. I can’t say I’m as overly excited for these games as I was for the past few week’s, but not every week can be gold, can it? This week we receive Midnight Bowling (Gameloft, 1-4 players, Rated E for Everyone, 800 Wii Points), MadStone (Riverman Media, 1-2 players, Rated E for Everyone, 800 Wii Points), Mario Golf (Nintendo 64™, 1-4 players, Rated E for Everyone, 1,000 Wii Points), Shining Force II (Sega Genesis, 1 player, Rated E for Everyone—Mild Fantasy Violence, 800 Wii Points.

Let’s start with the VC where an elusive N64 game pokes up its wild head to pop onto the Virtual Console along with a Genesis classic. I’m all for Mario Golf but with the Wii’s controls there just doesn’t seem to be much point to playing a golf game when you can’t swing the controller. Shining Force II is a tactical RPG that is well worth your time if you like those sort of things. I don’t, but that’s just me and my wallet could use a break anyway.

WiiWare wise (I think I’ll copyright that saying) we’ve got bowling and another puzzle game based around falling pieces. If you’re wondering why you would pay for bowling when Wii Bowling is still amazingly fun, the answer is because this bowling has an “immersive career mode, where you will play in the trendiest bowling spots on the planet against charismatic characters that will give you a run for your money.” Oooooo, ahhhhhh.

One of the most significant announcements to come out of Nintendo’s otherwise abysmal E3 press conference (and even this was announced before the conference) was the Wii MotionPlus. With this adapter, which attaches to the bottom end of the Wiimote, the controller will be capable of a 1:1 response to the user’s movement. Great, right? But there’s one nagging question about MotionPlus that we raised immediately after it was first announced: Why wasn’t this technology in the Wiimote from the beginning?

As we’ve now learned, it all comes down to cost. Chatting with VentureBeat about the MotionPlus, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime explained that Nintendo was aware of the technology while designing the Wii but implementing it would have proven too costly for the business model Nintendo was looking to employ. “By waiting about three years, the costs come down substantially and it becomes a viable product,” he offered.

While it excites us to know the Wii will be capable of more precise controls, it’s difficult to avoid wondering if it was the right move to make. The MotionPlus will segment the Wii’s market and potentially cause confusion among the casual crowd — the same audience that Nintendo has to thank for returning it to the position of top dog in the videogame hardware biz. What do you think; is it a wise decision to add this functionality in or should Nintendo have waited for its next system to give gamers a 1:1 control experience? Let your voice be heard in the comments below.

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Related Articles at Gaming Today:

• Wii Shortage Prompts Nintendo to Pull U.K. Ads
• Nintendo Not Capping File Size on WiiWare Games
• Nintendo's Response To Sony Price Cuts
• Monster Hunter 3 Now a Wii Exclusive
• Red Steel 2 Will Use Wii MotionPlus

Available on the US service at the moment (and probably due to hit PAL Wiis this Thursday) Art Style: ORBIENT is easily one of the top five WiiWare games, and is recommended to anyone who doesn’t own a copy of Bit Generations: Orbital on Game Boy Advance.

If you do? Well, it’s up to you, but you’re paying 600 points for what - to all extents and purposes - is the same game. Sure, it looks a little nicer on Wii, but it seems to fit the handheld a little better - particularly as the presentation, while remaining true to the original’s minimalist ethic - seems a little bland on the big screen.

For the uninitiated, ORBIENT is a game where you play as a small satellite, which has to gobble up others of the same size or smaller in order to grow, and absorb ever larger entities until it’s large enough to snaffle the ‘goal’ planet. This is done by pressing A to bring yourself closer to the orbit of one of the larger celestial beings, or B to repel. Get close enough and you’ll circle said star automatically, but mostly you’ll be using gravitational fields to manoeuvre around the empty expanses of space, picking up planets as you go by bumping into them or letting smaller stars orbit yours by aiming to ensnare them in your own gravitational pull without allowing them to collide into you. It’s worth doing this with as many satellites as possible, as these get you extra ‘lives’ - important in the later stages, when you’re bashing into planets within seconds and your stock starts dwindling rapidly. It does get very tough when you’re near the end.

Two buttons makes it sound disarmingly simple, but there’s a real knack to ORBIENT, and it’s not as easy to master as you might think. You at least get the assistance of a visual clue to your planet’s movement this time, with small particle effects representing the pull and push of each star. Chances are you probably didn’t pick up the original, in which case ORBIENT is a bit of a bargain - offering a substantial challenge and addictive gameplay for a mere 600 points. And if you’ve cleared the original and fancy another bash at it, then its cost is a small price to pay for revisiting a true original. Highly recommended.

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