Mercury Meltdown Revolution review online -- Posted by James on Friday, June 15 2007
Mercury Meltdown Revolution has been eagerly anticipated for Wii since it was first announced that the PSP favourite was sauntering onto Nintendo's console - surely a game so suited to motion controls couldn't go wrong?
...Rather marvellous, then, that what initially feels like a clumsy, plodding gaming experience is actually one of the most intuitive and clever puzzle games I've played in quite a long while. Mercury Meltdown Revolution is one of those titles that really doesn't grab you by the nuts and shake you around...
Blimey, well if that didn't tantalise you then you're clearly an ice-hearted beast. If it did, follow this link to check out the review in full:
More Harry Potter Wii details -- Posted by James on Friday, June 15 2007
EA have announced that the website for the upcoming Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix ( cripes ) has just gone live - click here to check it out.
The website has a trailer, some screenshots, and a load of information on the game, so if you're a Harry Potter fan make sure you check it out. You can also enter a competition to win a copy of the game by visiting EA's website - it doesn't cost anything, so why not?
Harry Potter is due out on the 26th of June, and certainly has some potential - the player uses the Wii remote to cast spells. It will be interesting to see how well calibrated the remote is to this task, and how easy it is to cast different spells without getting muddled up and accidentally blowing your own legs off.
We'll be bringing you a preview of this game as soon as we've got everything sorted out with our web server.
Stay tuned for more news.
Virtual Console sees in 100th game... -- Posted by James on Friday, June 15 2007
Nintendo have announced today that the European Virtual Console roster has reached 100 games - a fairly impressive number, even if some of the titles are a bit... well, rubbish.
The Virtual Console certainly seems to have been a success, and whatever your opinion may be of some of the slowdown issues present in some of the games, it's good to be a good thing that you can experience games you might have missed out on by simply downloading them onto your Wii.
There's just 2 games added to the line-up today, that make it 100 - here they are:
F-Zero X - 1000 points - I'm a big fan of F-Zero games, and this N64 title builds on the madness instigated by the original SNES game. Worth a look if you like very, very fast games.
J.J & Jeff - 600 points - The Turbografx games keep on getting more and more bizarre: two graffiti artist detectives platform their way to solving a crime.
Mortal Kombat Armageddon ships -- Posted by James on Friday, June 15 2007
Midway announced today that Mortal Kombat Armageddon, the Wii incarnation of their violent beat 'em up series, was shipped today.
If you haven't played a Mortal Kombat game before, it can be summed up rather easily - violence. Lots of violence. Armageddon features, alongside the violence, full Wii remote support for up to 4 players, a character creation system, a new Wii-exclusive characters, and some extra game modes alongside the standard single player.
One of the most notorious aspects of Mortal Kombat games, the 'fatality' finishing moves, has been revamped - you can now create your own fatalities.
It's currently unknown if that means you can pick your teeth with your opponents spine, or even club them to death with a comedy phallus, but with any luck you'll have quite a great degree of control over exactly how you end your opponents life.
Ripping out spines and so on has been the staple of the game ever since the 16 bit days, so rest assured it'll be fairly violent, whatever happens.
We'll be bringing you a review of Mortal Kombat Armageddon as soon as we can get our paws on it.
Stay tuned for more news.
RSS Feed Changed -- Posted by James on Thursday, June 14 2007
It's all been a bit crazy around here the past week or so, and one of the many crazy things that has happened has been an upgrade of our news posting software.
That means the address for our RSS Feed has changed, so if you use it, please update your link - the feed can now be found here:
If you're using a recent browser you might find you don't need any extra software to download the feed, which is rather cunning. Basically it'll tell you whenever we post a new story on the site, so it's quite useful.
Stay tuned for more updates as we get back on our feet.
US Army recruits Wii -- Posted by James on Thursday, June 14 2007 Thunderbolt reports that the US military has been using Nintendo's Wii console as a form of therapy for injured troops.
We've even got a picture, look:
Doesn't that just warm your heart?
Instead of lying in bed thinking about murdering Eye Rack civilians, they can prance about with silly grins on their faces and get back to their jobs even more quickly!
Gosh, I really am cynical.
On a serious note, any tool, be it a video game or otherwise, that helps injured people recover more quickly has got to be a good thing.
We'll be seeing Wiis in hospitals next.
Stay tuned for more news.
Wii 'as powerful as original Xbox' -- Posted by James on Thursday, June 14 2007
Those cheeky chappies at Eurogamer have revealed in an interview with FIFA 2008 producer Tim Schirner that Wii is roughly as powerful as the original Xbox.
In what is sure to anger die-hard Wii fans ( lord knows we've got plenty here ), Schirner divulged the following about the Wii hardware:
" It's about as powerful as the original Xbox. The video hardware unfortunately is not as powerful. There's just a couple of key things that you can do on Xbox like shaders which you just cannot do on the Wii. It's unfortunate in the sense that for a lot of things we can actually use some of the current-gen code, and other solutions that already exist in the building, where people have already come up with, for example, a shader for the pitch; we kind of have to re-implement this now, but can't use shaders and have to find a different way to make it work. Overall though it's pretty much what the original Xbox was."
Of course, it's open to debate whether or not this comparison is down to the expertise and knowledge of the producer - I'm sure it could be argued that more talented development teams could glean more out of Wii's seemingly limited resources.
However, anyone preposterous enough to continue to bang on about how Wii is not far from the 360 in terms of overall graphical output should perhaps take a step back and look at how many developers have been coming out with statements like this.
Then take another step back and look at the graphics on the games you've got.
Let's hope developers start really putting the work in ( as some alreayd have ) to make Wii games look as good as they could.
EA confirms Ronaldinho Wii exclusive -- Posted by James on Thursday, June 14 2007
EA have confirmed today that master footballer Ronaldinho will appear as a customisable character exclusively on the Wii edition of Fifa 2008, in a move that will undoubtedly please football fans ( and particularly South American football fans ).
Ronaldinho also has his own minigame in the game itself, entitled 'Footii Party with Ronaldinho.'
More sodding minigames.
Despite the fact he can't speak a word of English, the master player apparently had this to say:
"My character looks like he enjoys playing football and shares my passion for the game. This is important to me. Whether you are playing football on the pitch or my party games in FIFA 08 on the Wii, it should be a fun and enjoyable experience."
Shortly afterwards I imagine EA stuffed his pockets full of cash and sent him off to a 5 star hotel with a load of hookers.
Stay tuned for more news.
Nintendo face lawsuit over Wii technology -- Posted by James on Thursday, June 14 2007 According to Gamespot, a lawsuit was filed against Nintendo last week by the amusingly-named 'Lonestar Inventions,' over some of the technology used in Wii.
According to the lawsuit, Lonestar believe that Nintendo's processor structure mimics their own patented development, namely a "high capacitance structure in a semiconductor device."
Lonestar appear to have been doing the rounds with this one - they've already sued three other companies, including Kodak.
Slightly worrying when a company seemingly develops technology purely for the purpose of nabbing anyone else who has an even vaguely similar idea.
Nintendo have so far refused to comment on this, so stay tuned from more news that probably won't be from the horse's mouth.
Play iTunes music through your Wii -- Posted by James on Wednesday, June 13 2007
If you've ever felt the urge to stream music from iTunes to your Wii, then your prayers have been answered.
Utterly stupid prayers, in my opinion, but nonetheless the hip-hop yoof iPod generation amongst you will be able to do the above by simply following the link previous and following the afore-mention instructions on the link just up there.
Simple, eh?
It's all rather clever, but being the grumpy old sod that I am I still adamantly refuse to use iTunes, as it's slow and rubbish. And I don't have an iPod, because they're rubbish too.
Sadly there aren't many alternatives around these days, so when my trusty MP3 player kicks the bucket I might just have to go all Apple.
At least I'll be able to stream it to my Wii.
Stay tuned for more news.
New French RPG coming to Wii -- Posted by James on Wednesday, June 13 2007
From the look of it the French do have more up their sleeves than maniacal rabbits hell-bent on world domination, if the first screenshots of new French Wii RPG 'Capucine' are anything to go by.
The official website for the game gives an insight into what could potentially be a rather interesting title. The website describes the game as "an exploration / adventure game, formulated as a tale and based on shadow and light opposition" - you command a rather strange-looking girl who can fire beams of light out of her hand.
Suddenly comparisons with crazy rabbits come to mind.
Rather marvellously, the game takes place in a world where "everything is dead." Everything. How happy.
Check out the official website for some screenshots and a trailer, and stay tuned for more news on this game as soon as we can get our grubby mitts on some.
CSI coming to Wii this year -- Posted by James on Wednesday, June 13 2007
It appears to have been confirmed that a Wii version of the 'popular television series' CSI is in the works and due for release later this year.
If you're into lots of thoroughly silly swooshing camera-work, terrible editing, and actors who look like the main character from American Dad, then no doubt you'll be excited about this one - presumably the game will have the same rubbish characteristics as the TV show.
According to the above website, the game features 'forensic rescontructions,' a 'garage lab' for analysing.. things, and - wait for it - mini-games.
Only on Wii will you be able to lathe the skull of a corpse cleaning with your actual hands!
That's got to be worth 40 quid.
( I made up the skull lathing part ).
Stay tuned for more news on this abomination, and more.
And the tumbleweed blows... -- Posted by James on Wednesday, June 13 2007
Cripes, we're back. A billion apologies. This really must stop happening.
Another week, another period of extended downtime, and it's really not funny anymore.
I'd like to apologise yet again for the inconvenience of not having Wii UK's unique brand of gibberish available to you for most of this week - the site chose to go down when I was in London, without laptop. Bastards.
We're undergoing a server upgrade to try and stop the site from going under, so please bear with us. I would also ask you to please not refresh the site too much, as that will help with our bandwidth.
We're not going anywhere, so please bear with me whilst all this gets sorted. Our hosts Flump are working hard to fix everything.
As you may have noticed the layout has changed to a less bandwidth-intensive version, and the news comments have been ( for the moment ) removed. I'm currently working on fixing whatever else might be wrong with the site, so if you spot anything if you could let me know it would be very much appreciated. We'll be back to normal news very soon indeed.
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