So that started my Mario Kart envy.

I went out and purchased the game along with a couple of steering wheels. It turned out to be some great family fun.

My kids love it. Granted, they don’t win many races, they still have fun.

My six-year-old daughter plays by herself and generally takes last place. It is quite easy to pick up. She just has to hold the gas and turn the wheel.

My 3 year-old son on the other hand has a more difficult time. I generally help him steer and together we can win some races.

If I just want to let them play together, there are some courses that let them just drive around and collect coins or try to pop other racers balloons. This is generally more enjoyable for them.

My wife, who is not a video game fanatic also enjoys Mario Kart. I can still hear her telling me that our family will never have video games. Her tune has certainly changed! She can get quite competitive in her little go-kart!

For me, I enjoy playing on my own and unlocking new vehicles, players and stages. It can be a nice stress reliever - unless its a close race, then it can get stressful!

The steering wheel controls are much more responsive than I expected them to be. I wondered how well it would work. We have Wii Play and the cow racing can be a little hectic with the controls. The steering wheel actually performs quite nicely.

That being said, if I am playing by myself, I will generally use the numchuck controller. Why? It gives me more precise handling and I find I can usually win by a greater margin. We currently only have one numchuck control and I hate to use it playing against my family because I think it gives me an unfair advantage. Besides, I’m just too darn good, even with the steering wheel!

To be honest, I have never video came console since the original Nintendo, so I can speak to how the game compares to past versions of Mario Kart. While I have played the game in the past with others who owned it, I never did know much about it and generally lost every race. Now, after only a couple of weeks worth of practice, I think I would feel comfortable challenging my old friends to a game of Mario Kart!

And on that note, I think I could. They may live miles away, but all it would take is a phone call and we could get online and play each other if they also have a Wii and a copy of Mario Kart. How cool is that?

Initial assumptions was that Wii Fit would be gimmicky … and not really achieve what it set out to do. I was wrong. Although you can “cheat” your way through some activities, most of the time the Balance Board will hold you accountable to doing each exercise/activity correctly. For example, during a yoga or strength training exercise, the balance boards is used to ensure that you are keeping your weight evenly distributed and performing the moves correctly. I can get a good workout if I combine a good mix of “aerobic”, “yoga”, “strength” and “balance” exercises. I found it best to start with “aerobic” to warm up and to end “balance” when finishing.

So far, I’ve enjoyed every aspect of Wii Fit. From the daily “fitness tests” that track some sort of progress (even if it is not the ideal way to calculate fitness)… to all the exercises and activities. It is fun to watch the kids do the hula-hoop game, or the ski-jump, and to see who holds the current records. Tracking the records keeps me coming back to try to place 1st in the various activities only to later be beaten by one of the kids… which leads me to try again to get on top.

Instead of getting a treadmill or other exercise equipment, Wii Fit is a cheaper alternative that costs less and take up even less room in the house. I would highly recommend getting Wii Fit to any family. It provides a fun and competitive way to stay in shape!

It will be released on December 25 exclusively in Japan. Players would use the Wiimote and Nunchuck to perform action moves. However, they could also play the game by using Gamecube or a classic controllers. A horizontal 8-bit position for the Wiimote is being developed by Capcom for this game.

In the Capcom official forums, Christian Svensson of Capcom says, “In Japan, Zero sold well, indicating that many people have never played the title and there is demand for it. This project is a reaction to the sale of Zero. Like Zero, think of this as a Greatest Hits re-introduction that just happens to be on a new platform. At the moment, like Zero, this is Japan only. That could change but that’s the current situation.”

All the images are similar to each other. The only exceptions are the camera angles and characters which appear different on each screen shot. The first five does not show any overlay statistics or interface and they are probably shown during musical breaks.

The music interface where you need to time your button presses are on the left. On the top right corner, it shows a heart with a meter and this probably shows how much the fans love your performance. In some of the screen shots, they are red, others are pink.

The feature list notes that there are 12 playable characters and the songs include from artist such as Miley Cyrus and Maroon 5. There will be a single player mode which is called Career Mode and a multi-player mode called Co-operative Mode. There will also be mini-games for both single and multi-players.

Dan Houser made a response on why the new GTA game was made for the DS, not for the Wii. His response was, “It didn’t feel natural to us, I guess. It really was that the DS felt like it had a lot of interesting challenges that would be totally different from what we’d done in the past. The stylus and the chance to use mini-games in that way was really interesting and exciting to us, and we thought we could integrate seamlessly between those two modes. And it would be the chance to make something really good on a handheld with our handheld-focused team. That was really why we went that way. We haven’t really done any concrete, major thinking about the Wii, one way or another. They’re sort of separate issues.”

There are only 6 steps that are involved in the process which are:

1. Patch the ISO with the .EXE that comes in the download.
2. Install the CIOS on your Wii.
3. Install DVDX.  Go to Advance and choose 249.
4. Install Wii loader
5. Use a software called ImgBurn to record the patched ISO.
6. Run the loader.

The author of the tool announced that he has dropped the project and he will no longer continue on working with it. The author for the article at tomshardware.com, Aaron Heibert, notes that he (the tool author) has demonstrated that this process could be made. Hiebert also notes that someone will continue on working with the tool.

The links on where to download the tools has been shut down but Heibert do not know whether a company has shut it down or the links are just getting so many hits.

The press release lists the following details:
1. The release date is Oct 20.
2. Players can use over 60 instruments.
3. The instruments include electric guitar, trumpet, saxophone, clarinet, steel drums, marimba, and sitar.
4. Both the Wii Remote and Nunchuk will be used to play the music tracks.
5. Players could enjoy the game even if they have not played an instrument before.
6. Over 50 songs will be included. Not only will they be Nintendo songs, but there will also be classical, popular, and licensed music.
7. Players could edit the songs by adding new beats to them.
8. Players could post their songs in the Message Board to forward it to their friends. By doing this process, their friends could reproduced their created songs and then pass it back to them.

The company also filed a similar lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Maryland last month. Their patents include technology that allows users to select items on a screen by making a waving motion using a handheld device. Some companies had licensed their technology including  Eastman Kodak.

Both Nintendo and Hillcrest were not available to give an immediate comment on the issue.

If Nintendo lose this case, they would probably settle a deal with Hillcrest rather than letting the ITC ban all Nintendo Wii systems from being sold in the U.S.A.

He said, “We’re excited to stay with Nintendo. And we like developing for the Wii.”

He told the interviewer about a story of a fan who thank him for making the game. This is due to the fact that the fan’s son is crippled and could barely use one side of his body. In the Wii game, the son could use the nunchuck-Wiimote combo for imitating the drumming movements, unlike playing Rock Band or Guitar Hero on the other console systems.

When he was asked about his favorites in the game, he said he like to drum on Foo fighters songs, play guitar to Assassin, and sing the Rebel Yell song by Billy Idol.

The article at Kotaku notes that each feature on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions are included in the Wii version. However, the graphics do not look as good as the versions of those two systems.