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Wii Previews

New Super Mario Bros Wii (Hands On)

Nintendo may have figured out that their characters are their real hot property. No matter how many senior centers and soccer moms put a Wii in the living room, it’s the guarantee that a new Mario and Zelda game will sell their systems. That's why with the popularity of the Wii waning, and the system in search of a new hit; we saw two new Mario games announced at E3 this year.   The first was a ...

Diner Dash (Hands On)

Diner Dash was a hugely successful Flash game that came out a few years ago. It was ported to the DS, PSP, and the iPhone/iPod Touch. The premise was simple, you played Flo who left the corporate world and started her own restaurant.  Legend of Zelda it isn’t, but who needs deep story for a Flash game? The game spawned a couple of sequels, but now Hudson is porting and expanding the original for the ...

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2

Marvel Ultimate Alliance was the follow up to the great RPG Brawlers X-Men Legends and its sequel Rise of Apocalypse. Instead of dredging the bottom of Marvel’s mutant barrel, Marvel Ultimate Alliance expanded the games universe to include the entire line up of Marvel favorites, and some not so favorites. It made for a fun game, but it brought with it a lot of X-Men: Legends’ poorer traits.   Getting some time with the game before its launch, I got ...

Dead Space: Extraction (Hands On)

Rather than downgrading a game to fit into the Wii’s specs, the trend seems to be making an alternate version of the game that slims down the experience. In the case of Dead Space: Extraction it changes the game completely. New gameplay and a new story make it a new game altogether. Dead Space has done a great job of making a horror franchise that surpasses Resident Evil in every way.  With this Wii title ...

Tony Hawk: Ride

Tony Hawk games are getting along in years, and it's hard to keep your edge when it's obvious the franchise is just "cashing in" with annual updates and no innovation. Like Kiss or Cher perpetuating another farewell tour, I'm more pointing and laughing than planning my next purchase. Well Activison has taken note of EA's Skate franchise and decided what is needed to keep the franchise going is more simulation. Keeping with modern fashion, there will be another cumbersome plastic controller next to ...

TMNT: Smash Up

One of the things that works so well for the Smash Bros franchise is that it is to pick up and it has a huge variety of characters. I am more surprised that no one has copied the formula sooner. Ubisoft has taken second in this category, giving us Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash Up, featuring all of the Ninja Turtles characters, as well as the ubiquitous Raving Rabbid. The similarity isn’t an accident, as developer ...

The Conduit (Hands On)

The Conduit created hype by simply revealing its engine a few months back. An FPS engine for the Wii was more than a little shocking considering this year the Wii was declared dead by many for traditional gaming. Well, if the platform is dead, we have a zombie on our hands. Then again, considering that the developer is named High Voltage: maybe Frankenstein's monster is more appropriate. The Wii still carries a lot of ...

Mushroom Men: Hands On

Mushroom Men is a new franchise from Red Fly Studios. A solid platform game infused with the same odd sense of humor you would expect from games based on anthropomorphic fungi. When you throw a bunch of Les Claypool music into the mix, this game may make a rather large splash when it hits for the holidays. The story is divided into two games, The first part of the story is on the ...

Naruto: Clash of the Ninja Revolution 2

While the Wii remote may not seem like the ideal controller for fighting games, it got a pretty decent one early on in its life in the form of 4-player fighter Naruto: Clash of the Ninja Revolution. Although this was merely a port of the GameCube game, it managed to draw its own crowd and become a success in its own right. Now, developer 8ing has brought the formula ...

Onechanbara Wii First Look

Okay, so there are a few rules of business that seem pretty obvious. We all know sex sells, right? And right now, the Wii definitely sells. So... wait for it... how about a game with sexy girls on the Wii? Oh, and let’s toss in some zombies, too. Everyone like zombies, right? Okay, that’s not quite how all this started. In Japan, Onechanbara is a game series that’s been going strong for a while now, ...

SimCity Creator (Wii Version)

SimCity Creator is a lighter version of the classic city builder. Meant for the "casual" audience of the Wii, it takes the series back to its simple roots. This means it strips away the feature laden complexity of the more recent PC titles. At first glance it looks like any other SimCity game, albeit with more cartoon art stylings. This is part of the aesthetic design of the new game, everything has been ...

Skate It – Hands On

For many years, Tony Hawk was the only way to play skating video games. EA sought to change that with the Skate franchise, introducing a system where players control the board rather than simply button mash. This feature ended up creeping into the next Tony Hawk game. Imitation is the highest form of flattery. Skate had only been made for PS3 and 360 however this time around the ...

MadWorld

The Wii isn't exactly known for gritty titles, and there are lots of complaints about the lack of “core” gamer titles. I'm going to take a moment to go off on a tangent here, and thank the zeitgeist as a whole for dropping the term hardcore game. I always got pictures of Ian Mackaye playing Counterstrike in a darkened basement, and that is an image I could have done without. Anyway, No ...

Our House (Hands On)

It may be too late for the housing bubble, but the idea of a home improvement mini-game collection was a clever one. Considering how many TV shows are based around fixing up and redecorating it was only a matter of time. When added to the expanded demographics of the Wii, you have a perfect marketing storm. Many of the new gamers that are clamoring for Nintendo's little white box are the same ones that ...

Zoo Hospital Hands On

Zoo Hospital is yet another medical game for the Wii. Working from the game play made popular by the Trauma Center titles, now players to step into the role of an aspiring Zoologist. The structure of the game sticks close to the Trauma Center play book. Instead of the skeleton storyline that sets up the Trauma Center games, Zoo Hospital relies on managing a group of animals. It may not be as fantastical and attention ...

Shaun White Snowboarding (Wii Hands On)

While I got my hands on a number of games at this year’s E3, the one I spent the most time with was Shawn White Snowboarding. There are two games in development, one for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and another for the Wii. The Wii version has much more of an arcade feel and style, with the other (PS3 & 360) finding a more “traditional” balance between arcade and simulation. For the Wii ...

Castlevania: Judgment Hands-On

Konami, here’s some free advice for next year’s E3 - make sure the people you have stationed in your booth to demonstrate your games actually know how to play them. Especially if your game is for the Wii and uses waggle, as Castlevania: Judgment does. I’m just sayin’. While many had hoped that the Wii would see an entry in the Castlevania series that would incorporate the Wii’s motion ...

Fishing Master World Tour Hands-On

One of the complaints I had about the original Fishing Master was that its Japan-centric focus really narrowed the potential target audience for the game. It seems that the game’s developers may have taken this criticism to heart, because the big change in the sequel is the ability to fish in locations spread throughout the globe. Fans of the first title will find that a lot has stayed the ...

Major Minor’s Majestic March

The Wii's unique controller gave people a lot of ideas for games. The motion controlled sky is the limit, however I am sure that very few of you immediately thought "Hey, I could totally lead a marching band with the Wii Remote as a baton." There was a soul tragic enough to think this up. I don't know if they just can't get enough Sousa on their MP3 player, or they have ill fated ...

SPRay First Look

Most people, when seeing the words “Tecmo” and “SPRay” in the same sentence will probably be inclined to think that a bunch of DOA fans got out of control and the resulting scene caused every observer’s caps lock to get stuck. However, believe it or not, SPRay is a family-friendly game coming to the Wii. However, your initial assumptions aren’t entirely off, because the game does involve bodily fluids. No, wait! Don’t go! I said ...

Sonic Unleashed (First Look)

Poor Sonic: it took a joint Sega and Nintendo effort to make a game where he managed to recover some of his old hipness. If that wasn’t bad enough, it was sports game. Then it wasn't until his apparance in a totally different game that he fully regained any respect. To rub salt in the wound, it was a game developed solely by Nintendo and Sonic only had a cameo role. All of the ...

Monster Lab

Editor’s Note: Due to his expressed interest in the game, we’ve decided to turn over this preview to the esteemed Dr. Frank N. Stein, who has a PhD in Evil with a minor in Stupid Pun Names. They said I was insane. They said it would never work! But who’s laughing now!? Muahahahahahaaaaa! Yessssss, those fools and their Pokemon and Digimon, whose idea of a monster is a little electric rat or a three foot ...

Cooking Mama: World Kitchen (Hands On)

Cooking Mama was one of those definitive DS titles that gave a good example of what the system had to offer with its new control scheme. Then came the Wii, and Majesco sought to bring that same fit to the motion controls. Alas, it was not meant to be as Cooking Mama: Cook Off was a stunning disappointment. The motion control ended up falling flat on its face, where some of the mini games ...

Animal Crossing: City Folk First Look

Like Tom Nook forcing new “residents” into perpetual child labor to pay off their interminable debt, Nintendo has once again found a way to turn Animal Crossing into a profit machine that transforms the sweat and tears of the young and innocent into crisp dollar bills. Somewhere in Nintendo’s offices, the gyroids are even at this moment dancing the waltz of oblivion. Er… that is to say… guess what! ...

Facebreaker (Hands On)

Mike Tyson's Punch Out ranks among the greatest video games of all time. It came down to the politically incorrect yet memorable characters, and a simple interface that relied more on strategy than on simple replication. Facebreaker takes these threads and updates them for modern game play. The classic feel is fully intact with an updated aesthetic and rendering. There are two versions of the game: one for the PS3/360 and one ...

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