Let’s sweat! Just Dance 2 has become the eighth Wii title to clear five million sold.

The October 2010 release is now part of an exclusive club, heretofore populated solely by Nintendo first-party titles. One can imagine smoking jacket Mario sitting by the fireplace in mid-conversation with Reggie, their private discussion interrupted when the door opens and the Ubisoft dancers stroll into the penthouse suite.

The other seven games to crest five million are Wii Play (13.04 million), Mario Kart Wii (10.64 million), New Super Mario Bros. Wii (8.36 million), Wii Fit (8.17 million), Wii Fit Plus (7.06 million), Wii Sports Resort (6.45 million), Super Smash Bros. Brawl (5.28 million). Quite a spread in the numbers, but that’s the Wii for you. There are all US totals, incidentally.

Just Dance 2 Becomes Eighth Wii Title to Sell More Than 5 Million Units

Just Dance® 2 from Ubisoft®, which plays exclusively on Nintendo’s Wii™ console, has sold more than 5 million units, according to the independent NPD Group, which tracks video game sales in the United States. With this milestone, the Wii system now has eight 5-million sellers* in the U.S., twice as many as competing current-generation consoles combined.

In the month of July, seven of the top 10 and 15 of the top 25 best-selling software SKUs play on Nintendo platforms. Just Dance 2 sold more than 120,000 units to finish No. 3 for the month.

“By crossing the 5 million sales mark, Just Dance 2 joins one of the most exclusive clubs in the world of video games,” said Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. “Nintendo systems have games for every type of player. We’re poised for a great holiday season, thanks to tremendous value across all our platforms and fan-favorite franchises delivering fun new surprises.”

During the next few months, Nintendo will release a huge selection of fan-favorite titles. This includes Star Fox 64™ 3D, Super Mario™ 3D Land and Mario Kart™ 7 for the Nintendo 3DS™ portable entertainment system, The Legend of Zelda™: Skyward Sword for Wii and Kirby™ Mass Attack for the Nintendo DS™ family of systems, which was the best-selling platform in July.

* The Wii titles to surpass 5 million units sold in the U.S. include: Wii Play™ (13.04 million), Mario Kart™ Wii (10.64 million), New Super Mario Bros.™ Wii (8.36 million), Wii Fit™ (8.17 million), Wii Fit™ Plus (7.06 million), Wii Sports Resort™ (6.45 million), Super Smash Bros.™ Brawl (5.28 million) and Just Dance 2 (5.09 million).

As for the actual content for this week’s podcast, we cover all sorts of crazy stuff including the idea of whether pricing for downloadable games should drive the price of games downwards, the new Sony Play event and yes, how Fourhman wishes to be swaddled in a comfortable baby bjorn nested on Haygood’s chest.

Wait, that may not have come out as well as it could have, but that is the Aeropause crew for you.  Always making your day more uncomfortable for an hour at a time.

The podcast was mixed, by Stephen “Needing some Baby Bjorn Swaddling” Munn, and features “Droid Girl”, performed by Lazyitis.

Download the podcast from here or subscribe to the podcast using one of the services below. Also make sure to review us on iTunes and now, the Zune Marketplace. If you have not yet, make sure to visit our Facebook Fan Page.

This week on the Aeropodcast, Fourhman, Haygood and Stephen discuss what might have been behind the recent decision from Nintendo to cut the price of the 3DS by $80.  Did they feel the pressure of the Vita shipping at the end of the year at the same price, or could it have been due to slow sales for the device after four months.  Or is it the pains of having to compete against the likes of the Android and iPhone devices that are selling us games for a $1.00 a pop.  We look at all of those avenues, as well as answering a question from Harshy about whether it is wiser to buy a 3DS now and get all the free games Nintendo is offering, or just wait for the price cut to get it.

The podcast was mixed, by Stephen “Guaranteed Low Prices” Munn, and features “Droid Girl”, performed by Lazyitis.

Download the podcast from here or subscribe to the podcast using one of the services below. Also make sure to review us on iTunes and now, the Zune Marketplace. If you have not yet, make sure to visit our Facebook Fan Page.

GAME> The Legend of Zelda – Twilight Princess (2006)
SYSTEM> Nintendo Wii, GameCube
SOURCE> The Legend of Zelda – Twilight Princess Trading Cards, 2007

This is actually a mostly-useful tip. Another card I have suggests “find another Clawshot to create a Double Clawshot,” which is not especially useful.

This week on the Aeropodcast, we celebrate the San Diego Comic Con by talking about some of the best, and worst that have come to gamers with superhero adaptations.  Of course, the game above is mentioned, but we look at some classic titles and more when it comes to superhero games.

Also, we talk up the recent clearance bonanza for those that visited CheapAssGamer.com and got in on the $15 Guitar Hero/DJ Hero bundles.  Who went in, and who skipped out on this deal.  We were also joined by S-Tip in the episode who, as most cool kids do, talks about himself in the third person and talks about the trials and tribulations of being in a multi-million dollar selling band.

The podcast was mixed, by Stephen “S-Tip” Munn, and features “Droid Girl”, performed by Lazyitis.

Download the podcast from here or subscribe to the podcast using one of the services below. Also make sure to review us on iTunes and now, the Zune Marketplace. If you have not yet, make sure to visit our Facebook Fan Page.

When it was still working right, things were good.

My launch Wii is on the verge of exploding or something, so I decided to go buy a new one. Toys R Us had a promotion yesterday, online only, where if you spent $125 or more on a MasterCard, they gave you a $25 discount at checkout. With Wii bundles rolling out the door at $150 with Mario Kart Wii and one of those fancy new Wii Remotes with the Remote Plus built into it, I figured I could use the $25 and whatever pittance I get for that shit-on-plastic Mario Kart episode on eBay to make this cheaper than a repair. How could I lose?

Here’s how I lost.

I couldn’t get my $25 off on the website, no matter how I did it. I made an order to have it shipped, I made an order to pick it up at the store, I paid with a MasterCard, and no matter what it wouldn’t work. The deal was yesterday only though, so I submitted the order and hoped for the best, and when the full amount went through I emailed support and waited for a response.

Earlier today I went to pick up the Wii from Toys R Us, hoping they’d be able to credit me the difference, but no. I had to call support and tell them what happened, then wait on hold for a while for them to decide that yeah, I did everything right but it still didn’t work, and issue me a credit. They were nice about it though.

I got home with the oddly massive box and set up the new system, deleted all the crap channels they leave on there and then realized I had to copy all my saves over from my old console. That would be fine, but some of the biggest games on the console have their saves locked to the console to “prevent cheating.” This includes Animal Crossing, Smash Brothers, and any other online enabled game. On top of this, the menus for copying things to and from the SD Card are astonishingly slow and clumsy. Here’s the process for copying one game save from one Wii to another.

1. boot the old Wii
2. open the menu for game saves and select Wii
3. locate the game save by looking for its low resolution icon that has something to do with the game (like on a PS1) and point at it to see a tooltip
4. select it, click copy, say yes
5. wait about 5-10 seconds for the one save to copy
6. select ok
7. back out of the menus and off the SD Card
8. eject the SD Card
9. put the SD Card in the new Wii
10. boot the game disc for the save you want to copy
11. once the game’s booted, hit menu and exit
12. open the menu for game saves and select SD Card
13. locate the game save by looking for its low resolution icon that has something to do with the game (like on a PS1) and point at it to see a tooltip
14. select it, click copy, say yes
15. wait about 5-10 seconds for the one save to copy
16. select ok
17. back out of the menus and off the SD Card

You see, Nintendo has gone to great lengths to prevent piracy on their console, and they’ve failed miserably, if all the hacked Wiis with external hard drives full of Wii games on eBay and Craig’s List are any indication. What they have succeeded in doing though is making it very hard for regular users to do reasonable things on the system. Like file management.

Fortunately for me my old Wii isn’t completely dead yet, so I can spend a little more time playing those games on the old system as long as I don’t try to play in progressive scan, because the system overheats if I do. I considered doing homebrew on the old one to see if I might be able to get my locked saves off (someone has to have figured out how to do that) but I guess that doesn’t work with the newest versions of the firmware.

Oh by the way, hi everyone. Been a while.

So this week on the Aeropodcast, besides being on time for a change, we have a decent discussion about the recent spat between Origin and Steam and what it means to gamers in the long run.  But before we even got to that point, Fourhman and Haygood also dropped into the hatred surrounding the announcement of the newest entry into the Burnout franchise, Burnout CRASH.  Yeah, it does not end well for Criterion on that one.

The podcast was mixed, by Stephen “Podcast?  I’m Watching the X-Men Cartoons!” Munn, and features “Droid Girl”, performed by Lazyitis.

Download the podcast from here or subscribe to the podcast using one of the services below. Also make sure to review us on iTunes and now, the Zune Marketplace. If you have not yet, make sure to visit our Facebook Fan Page.

Issue #269, July 2011
featuring Rayman Origins (Wii/3DS), Solatorobo: Red the Hunter (DS), Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D (3DS)

Isn’t it weird that both Rayman Origins and New Super Mario Bros Wii have four player action, but feature a cast of two characters you know/care about and two generic background fops? Given that the Mushroom Kingdom has a ridiculously large cast that everybody knows and loves, the bizarre character choice of Mario/Luigi/Toad/Toad is more egregious than Rayman/Globox/Teensie/Teensie, but you still have to wonder why both Nintendo and Ubisoft went down the same route (watch for Kirby Wii to buck this trend!)

Origins follows Nintendo’s 2D platforming lead in more ways than one, and Nintendo Power’s seven-pager can’t stop comparing the two games. Origins also lets stressed-out players bubble up to float behind the one guy who knows what he’s doing. Although it seems like Ubisoft might be sidestepping dorky motion controls, which is a capital idea.

Something else we’ll see in Rayman Origins is some seriously pretty animated graphics. In action, this game looks like a dream, with stages and artistry tricks (silhouette levels!) that remind me more of Donkey Kong Country Returns than Mario. And while the 2D heritage may owe some subtle nods to Mario and Donkey Kong, Origins will include outright refs to other games… like a Tetris homage in the middle of a level, and NP even suggests one area brings Angry Birds to mind.

One super-important gaming secret is due to be revealed in Origins: why Rayman lacks arms and legs.

Rayman Origins was originally supposed to be a downloadable, episodic release. Rayman creator Michel Ancel says that positive fan feedback encouraged him to make the game a full retail release, but you have to wonder if the nigh-invisible nature of WiiWare made Ubi second-guess the downloadable decision.

I don’t get this at all.

You might remember Tail Concerto, a 1999 PS1 RPG that featured a anthropomorphic dogs and cats. The upcoming DS game Solatorobo: Red the Hunter is a not-quite-sequel to Tail Concerto, made by the same people and starring, again, anthropomorphic dogs and cats. In various forms, the game has been kicking around for years… the characters were even used a Japanese public-service campaign about disaster preparedness.

So why has it been over a decade since Tail Concerto returned (in some form) and why did Tail not sell that well in the first place?

Research was showing a lot of customer resistance to the game’s anthropomorphized dog and cat characters. “People see animal-based characters as having a small niche following and no mainstream appeal, “[developer Hiroshi Matsuyama] admits. “But that was an integral part of our game world, so I couldn’t back down.”

Talking animals have been a huge part of pop culture for decades, so why are focus groups suggesting developers shouldn’t make games with humanized animals? Is the supposition that animals are too kiddie? That animal worlds are too improbable? That you can’t do serious action or effective drama with anthropomorphics? Was publisher Namco Bandai constantly sending this guy letters telling him to change the cast to the usual eager cast of human anime visuals? Because hell yeah we need more of THAT.

Cheers to Matsuyama for sticking to his design guns, even though Solatorobo will likely hit the DS racks with a dull thud. It’s already a non-starter in Japan, having been released last year to minimal applause. Published by XSEED, the game hits the US this fall (in Europe, the publishing is being handled by Nintendo of Europe.)

Download Staff Picks: Chrono Trigger (SNES Virtual Console)

Top scoring Wii review: Cars 2: The Video Game, 7.0 (all scores out of 10)
Top scoring 3DS review: Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, 7.5
Lowest rated Wii review: NASCAR 2011: The Game, 3.0
Lowest rated 3DS review: Reel Fishing Paradise 3D, 6.0

Weird month for reviews. Usually the licensed movie games take bottom rung, but Cars 2 managed the top Wii slot. Mystery Case Files: The Malgrave Incident for Wii was given a 6.0, although I’d rate it considerably higher than that.

Who wants this? – There’s a Wii game coming in August that combines Nicktoons characters with Major League Baseball. It’s called Nicktoons MLB.

Face it: You’re never getting BG&E 2. – Michel Ancel calls Beyond Good & Evil 2 “the best game I’ve never done.”

Nearly Deleted. – Signature tune “Dearly Beloved” was actually cut from its original place in Kingdom Hearts, but the song found a greater role when recycled as the title screen music.

Oh yeah, the Wii U. – History shall mark #269 as the issue that announced the Wii U to NP readers, although the two page article on Nintendo’s Next says nothing we haven’t already heard online.

Next month in Nintendo Power… it’s another anniversary issue, this time celebrating the SNES turning 20. Someday I’m going to do a pie chart comparing the number of anniversary issues to the number of non-anniversary issues, because it seems like we have to endure a self-fellating retrospective every other month. Who wants to do a Super Metroid / Link to the Past drinking game?

In the second half of our double header podcast post today, Fourhman and Haygood talk about the decision by Capcom to use a single save game that cannot be deleted, meaning that things unlocked will stay unlocked.  Is it a big deal that only one person can unlock this stuff, or for this style of game it does not matter as much?  We also talk about the idea that this is solely being done with this title to remove the option of trading in the game, as the game would in a sense, be broken for a future owner, as everything would be unlocked.

We also have a quick discussion on the idea of Wii U for people and if it can be successful as well as the recent Supreme Court decision on California’s violent video game law.

The podcast was mixed, by Stephen “Nobody Does Straight Gangsta’ Like Me” Munn, and features “Droid Girl”, performed by Lazyitis.

Download the podcast from here or subscribe to the podcast using one of the services below. Also make sure to review us on iTunes and now, the Zune Marketplace. If you have not yet, make sure to visit our Facebook Fan Page.

Okay fans, we have some good and bad news with this podcast.  First off, the good – it is the only time you will probably get to hear Fourhman try to talk gangster in response to my comments about the meaning of the number 187 (the penal code for murder in California).  The bad – there were some issues with the recording tracks with bleedthrough on one of the audio tracks.  Sorry about that.

We do wrap up E3, including the rest of Haygood’s Thursday at E3 as well as Roberto’s E3 experience.  We also talk about a special E3 bounce house and our ups and downs for the show.

The podcast was mixed, by Stephen “Nobody Does Straight Gangsta’ Like Me” Munn, and features “Droid Girl”, performed by Lazyitis.

Download the podcast from here or subscribe to the podcast using one of the services below. Also make sure to review us on iTunes and now, the Zune Marketplace. If you have not yet, make sure to visit our Facebook Fan Page.