Wii Sale

The Nintendo Wii has some exclusive unique games such as Boom Blox. Today, a new game was announced by Konami that they will release a sandcastle-building game that will be exclusive for the Wii.

The title of this upcoming game is Sandy Beach and players would use their Wii Remotes to build complex sand castles. When they have finished making them, they can capture images of their sandcastles and save them to their photo gallery.

The challenge in this game is that they must watch out for crabs in Crab Battle mode since they can destroy the sandcastles that they are making. In order to counter-attack the crabs, they can use cannons to fire on them.

Players could also add decorations to their castles by adding treasures to them. These treasures are found by using a metal detector which could also find additional cannons.

Sandy Beach will be a downloadable WiiWare game and it is scheduled to be released in Fall of this year.

The total sales of video game software and hardware has been released by the NPD Group. Their data is based only on video game items sold in North America in the month of August.

As usual, the Nintendo DS and Wii leads the hardware sales category. A total of 518.3K units of DSs were sold while 453K Wii units were sold last month.

As for video game software, the top three games are the same game that was released into several versions. The title is Madden NFL 09 which is the latest NFL game from EA Sports. The top game is the Xbox 360 version which sold 1 million copies. The Wii version only sold 15% of the sales compared to the Xbox 360 version.

The top-selling Wii game is Wii Fit which is in fourth place. The total sales of this game is 394.9K units according to the article at aussie-nintendo.com.

An inexpensive fix for storing files on the Wii is underway according to the President of Nintendo of America Inc., Reggie Fils-Aime, during an interview with a Latin American publication. The publication was translated by a Nintendo fan site called GoNintendo.

In the interview, the president says that the company will not release a hard drive but it will come up with something better.

Chris Kohler of Wired notes a solution which is to “just integrate the SD card reader that’s already in the Wii into the console’s available storage, treating it as if it were a seamless extension of the flash memory inside each console.”

The author of the article who posted this news at Computerworld, Jack Loftus, writes that this is an inexpensive fix and that Wii gamers who purchased big SD memory cards for the Wii would welcome this type of solution.

On amazon.com, the game called Guitar Hero World Tour for the Nintendo Wii is now ranked as the 26th best-selling product in terms of video game items.

It will be released next month with a tag price of $189.99. It includes a guitar, a drum kit, and a microphone. A separate Guitar kit will also be released for this game which costs $99.99.

The drum kit will utilize velocity-sensitive drum heads with soft rubber construction and it will include three drum pads, a pair of raised cymbals, and a bass kick pedal according to the publisher, Activision.

One of the modes in the game is a music creator which let players create, record, share, and edit their own tracks.

Up to 8 players could play this game online. This will be the first Guitar Hero game to offer an option to download additional content using the Wii according to Punchjump.

A standalone router for the Wii and DS has been announced by Nintendo. It is called “Nintendo Wi-Fi Network Adapter” and it will presumably replace the USB connector for the Wii and DS. At the moment, it will only be released in Japan and the cost is ¥5,800 according to the article at Games Are Fun. That cost is approximately $54 when the cost of this item is converted from Japanese Yen to American Dollars.

There are complaints from Nintendo customers about compatibility issues of various wireless routers. Therefore, by releasing one official router, it will lessen the problems that the company has to answer when people want to use the online functionality of their games.

It will be released on September 18 which is a week and half from today. The design looks like a Nintendo Wii system.

Worthplaying has 100 new screen shots on the upcoming video game for the Nintendo Wii titled Captain Rainbow. Based on the box image of the game that is included in their article, this game will be released in Japan.

The article notes that there are two parts in this game. One is adventure and the other is action. The title of the game is the name of the main character. In the adventure section, Captain Rainbow perform various tasks such as fishing and bug catching. He has to do this things because they are  requests from other Islanders.

Captain Rainbow receive crystals from helping the islanders and these crystals are called Kirarin. Once he collect a total of 20 Kirarins, he will get a star. The action part of this game is fighting a mysterious character while bringing a star to an altar.

What is interesting about this game is that he will meet past minor Nintendo characters according to the article. No specific character names were released but maybe at least one character from the Super Mario franchise would make an appearance on the island where Captain Rainbow lives.

A new wireless controller for the Nintendo Wii was unveiled recently. It is based on the classic controller. As shown in the images at Gizmondo, it has two analog sticks, a directional pad on the left, a minus (select), home, and a plus (start) button is on the middle, and there are four buttons on the right side. Two of them are labeled ‘x’ and ‘y’ and they are colored red while the other two are labeled ‘b’ and ‘a’. Their color is blue.

There are a total of 4 trigger buttons on the top which are labeled ‘R’, ‘ZR’, ‘ZL’, and ‘L’. Two of them are on each side. the ‘ZA’ and ‘ZL’ buttons are red while the other two are blue.

The author who wrote about this news in Gizmondo notes that the shape is more like a PS2 or Xbox 360 controller but it is not as nice as an official Nintendo product. The price tag of this product will be $30 and it will be released in October.

CBC, which stands for Canadian Broadcasting Company, has posted an article on the health section of their website about a story that involves seniors who are playing the Nintendo Wii.

“I don’t do a whole lot of exercising where I’m not able to walk. With the arms and the exercise that I’m receiving, I find that I’m after building up a muscle here,” said Linda Paul who is one of the sixty residents who play the Wii in a Seniors home called Carmelite House.

A woman aged 89 calls herself a bowling expert after playing the system. She said, “Oh yes, yes, well it’s something different you know, and I’m willing to learn something different if I can. I’m old now.” She is also a war veteran.

“It affects the residents, the staff, volunteers, family, just opens up a real great opportunity for more communication, more enjoyable time in a long-term care setting,” said the home’s recreation specialist. He noticed an increase in the residents’ energy levels and co-ordination.

Yesterday, two virtual console games were released.

The first one is a famous Mario game called Super Mario RPG. It is a role-playing game that was first released on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. In this game, you will be able to play a variety of characters instead of just Mario and Luigi. It costs 800 points on the Wii Shop Channel.

The other game is Clu Clu Land which is game that can be played by up to 2 players. The player controls a bubble fish named Bubbles and his goal is to get all the gold bars in each maze. The total number of stages is 20. The enemies in this game are Sea Urchins and Bubbles has the ability to stun these creatures. Since this game was released on the NES, it is 300 points cheaper than Super Mario RPG.

Nintendo also released a WiiWare game yesterday and it is called My Aquarium.  This game does not really need an explanation but if you are interested, visit the Wii Shop Channel for more details about the game.

There are new screen shots that were released for the next Rayman Raving Rabbids game for the Wii subtitled TV Party.

Worthplaying.com has a total of nine screen shots for the game. The first image shows the rabbids in a quiz mini-game. It is vague on what the player is supposed to do in this activity. The next one is also about the quiz mini-game except that it is a cut-scene image rather than a gampeplay action. It shows the host near the camera and four rabbids are sleeping on their contest seats. The third image looks fun. The location is a wrestling arena and the goal is probably to hit the big human wrestler as much as a the players can. In the second-last image, players have to make a brushing motion as if they are brushing their teeth. The final image looks like it will be the main menu of the game. It shows one rabbid and he is about to choose a TV channel.

The game is scheduled to be released for the Wii this holiday.