Elite’s developer bringing impressive LostWinds to WiiWare.

If you don’t know his name, you know his work. David Braben and Ian Bell co-wrote Elite, a classic space sim/space trading game which pioneered, among other things, the concept of infinite gameplay. The universe in the game was generated using an algorithm, which meant you could theoretically play the game for a very long time without it having much of a digital footprint as a piece of software.

Who better to lead the team of Frontier Developments, the group that’s pulling together the impressive LostWinds to appear on Nintendo’s WiiWare download service this year? Check out this video where Braben discusses just how the game is played, and try to use your mind power to ask him if Elite’s NES port, which Bell has said is “the best way to re-experience the feel of 8 bit Elite,” will ever come to Virtual Console. Go on, that’s what I’m doing.

Rondo of Blood to Virtual Console at last! Localize!

Chris Kohler at Wired’s Game|Life blog is waving around a list of games coming to the Wii Virtual Console in April. Most prominent on this list is Dracula X: Rondo of Blood for PCEngine, which was wrapped with a remake of itself and also with sequel Symphony of the Night to ship as Dracula X Chronicles last year for PSP.

Of course, the version due for VC is only going to be the PCEngine SuperCD game, not the remake, and this is just for Japan so far. But Nintendo’s track record for bringing these things to the US has been pretty solid so far, with Sin & Punishment, Super Mario 2, and a bunch of other imports making their way over with varying levels of localization and somewhat of a surcharge on the Wii Point cost.

I’m pleased, of course.

Source: Game|Life

Gameloft making WiiWare. Not a bad fit.

Gameloft, the popular developer of a number of mobile phone games, has announced a handful of casual titles currently in development for WiiWare. It seems an excellent fit, as Gameloft is adept at shoehorning surprising amounts of software content into the limited storage of a mobile phone. The space afforded for WiiWare must seem like a huge area to them.

The launch title I bought for my DS was Gameloft’s Asphalt Urban GT, and while it wasn’t a great game as it had been rushed for the launch, it may have been the best looking launch title the platform had. That’s not a casual title really, so that’s me hoping they’ll bring some of their more core franchises along for the ride.

With games set to launch in Europe, United States and Japan, Gameloft is planning a diverse line-up that consists of Block Breaker Deluxe, Midnight Pool, Midnight Bowling and TV Show King. Each game will either be completely original to WiiWare or vastly enhanced and redone for the platform. In addition, all the games are created to complement the Wii RemoteTM, a motion sensing controller which allows the player to interact with the screen.

Read on for the full press release.

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Wii Shop Channel: DoReMi Fantasy: Milon’s DokiDoki Adventure and Puyo Puyo 2: Tsuu

What the hell! Nintendo’s dropped two more imports into our Wii Shop Channel, once again jacking the price a bit on both titles. So here we have our first SNES import and our first Genesis/Megadrive import… at the same time. Nice.

Milon’s DokiDoki Adventure made me think of Milon’s Secret Castle, so I looked into it, and it appears it is actually the sequel to that game. It’s remarkable that the effort was made to localize this game for release in English.

Puyo Puyo fans might recognize the second game as an episode in that sprawling puzzle franchise. Still others might recognize its various offshoots like Mean Bean Machine or even Kirby’s Avalanche, both of which are already on the Virtual Console.

Read on for the full release.

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Promised long ago, Commodore 64 functionality to arrive on Virtual Console.

The Commodore 64 was something of a phenomenon in the US, particularly in the early to mid-1980s. I did a lot of gaming on the Commodore myself in fact, and some of it was actually on legally purchased software.

As to those situations where it wasn’t, I will now have an opportunity to make myself feel better about all that free fun, 500 points at a time, as the people who now own the rights to the platform are shortly to bring those games to the Wii Virtual Console, beginning in Europe. Europe? Why Europe?

Well, Europe holds the distinction of being Commodore’s last bastion. Long after people in the US had moved on to more powerful home computers, Europeans were still spending lots of money on the platform. So to me, this makes sense, as long as this comes here eventually. I mean hey, we get everything else first.

My first picks for the platform are going to be MULE (assuming EA doesn’t bring over the superior NES version first) and simplistic classics like Jumpman and Jumpman Jr.

Source: Next Generation via Infendo. Image source: Wikimedia Commons.

Review: Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest (Virtual Console)

NES, 1988; VC release 29 October 2007; 500 Points.
What is it?

Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest is the sequel to Castlevania on the NES, and is intended to continue the story of hero Simon Belmont shortly after the events of the original game. Dracula apparently has cursed him as a final act at the end of Castlevania, and Simon is now tasked with collecting all the bits of Dracula’s body from around the game world, bring them together to resurrect Dracula, and kill him the right way to break the curse.

The RPG/adventure Simon’s Quest is very different from the original action/platformer Castlevania, which was a very linear affair with stages that ended in bosses. Simon’s Quest has a large open world with towns and dungeon-like mansions to explore, items and weapons to gather into your inventory and use, and more.

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Wii Shop Channel: 1080¬∫ Snowboarding (N64)… and that’s it.

What’s going on here? After two weeks of two releases, down from their normal three, Nintendo’s closed the tap on their retro game releases for Virtual Console to a mere drip. The release is a good one, one of Nintendo’s unique first-party titles which I was unaware of until its sequel released on Gamecube, almost simultaneous with one of EA’s SSX games… which completely flattened it in sales. Marvelous, really. As we all know, the perception is that Nintendo’s games always outsell the competition on their own platforms, regardless of merit. Here’s a single instance where that didn’t happen. Speaking of which, the SSX games on Gamecube were pretty well-received. I own SSX 3, in fact.

But that’s kind of getting off topic, because this isn’t 1080¬∫ Avalance, this is 1080¬∫ Snowboarding. The point I was starting to make was that this is only one game, and it’s an interesting trend. I wonder what was behind the decision to offer one game at a time, and if this is a permanent thing.

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Virtual Console game demos to appear in Brawl’s Masterpieces feature.

The more feature-rich Brawl becomes, the more impressed I become. This particular feature is kind of a strange one, but those who pick up the game will find a number of hidden time-limited versions of games that are available on Virtual Console. The games are tied into the characters in Brawl, and while the developer blog says these are the characters’ “greatest battles,” they aren’t necessarily the first, as Super Metroid is represented (the third game in the series) while Metroid does not appear to be. The reason I point that out is, while we have at least one (and probably two) character from the Mother series, it’s probably a safe bet that Mother won’t make it onto the disc, but perhaps Earthbound (Mother 2) will. Wouldn’t it be nice to see Mother 3 instead? Of course, that would mean they’d not only have to localize an entire RPG, but they’d have to put GBA games on the Virtual Console, something they’re not likely to do, at least not while the games are still on shelves.

So you start up the game, play it briefly and the time runs out, like on those in-store demo kiosks we all despised for their pushiness back in the day. Games mentioned include Super Mario Bros, Kid Icarus, Legend of Zelda, Super Metroid, Ice Climber, Kirby’s Adventure, and Star Fox 64. I expect we’ll see Sonic the Hedgehog and Metal Gear as well.

Note that Animal Crossing on Gamecube had full versions of a large number of NES games built right in as items you could find and then play emulated within the game. That was a clever and surprising little bonus from Nintendo back in those days, and uncharacteristically generous when compared to the current VC pricing.

Source: Smash Bros DOJO!!

Nintendo bites us again with a third Street Fighter II on Virtual Console.

I don’t think I need to spend much time on how I feel about this kind of thing, as I’ve made it clear in the past, but let me just point out that now Nintendo has released a third version of Street Fighter II to the Wii Shop Channel for play on the Virtual Console. This time, it’s Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers, which was the version where they added some characters, like Cammy and T. Hawk.

Adventures of Lolo 2 also appears, and that’s my recommended pick of the two.

See also:
Nintendo sets “Don’t Buy It” Precedent; Here’s How to Oblige.
VC Monday: Slap in the Face Edition.
Redundant SFII listings on ESRB creates questions.

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Wii Shop Channel: Pac-Attack (SNES) and Riot Zone (TG16)

Last week, we got two games on the Wii Shop Channel, and both were of significant quality. That made it more acceptable to me that there were only two games. This week, I’m finding the selection to be as disappointing as it is brief. Pac-Attack sounds like Tetris with Pac-Man in it, and I’ve never heard of brawler Riot Zone, though I have to admit I haven’t met too many brawlers I didn’t like. Something about marching along and punching the tar out of waves of generic, largely identical enemies appeals to me. Though less so when I put it that way… Hm.

Read on.

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