Wii Rally

There were probably a few Christmas trees this season that were devoid of at least one present: a Nintendo Wii. The Nintendo Wii was in short supply this holiday despite efforts by Nintendo to increase production. Many people are continuing their search for a Wii and hope to find one within the next month. While Nintendo has increased production of Wiis, it can still be quite challenging to find a store with any in stock.

Procuring a Wii within the next few months will take patience and perseverance. There have been Wii sightings in stores during the holidays. I have heard of people purchasing one at Target, Wal-Mart, and even Sears. I’m unsure if the stores know just when the Wiis will come in. After hanging out at our local Wal-Mart a good bit(buying groceries, shopping, etc) it seems that Tuesdays and Fridays are the best days to find new electronic merchandise. One day I saw Wiis in the cabinet but they shouldn’t have been there and would go on sale that following Sunday. I guess their Sunday flier would advertise having Wiis in stock.

I would offer this advice to anyone looking for a Wii with no luck: do not pay an outrageous price through eBay or some other venue. The supply will catch up to the demand. It might take a few months of looking but don’t give up. Make sure friends and family know you are looking for one, and they should contact you when they find one, preferably while they are still in the store or within at least an hour of spotting one.

With a little patience and some luck, 2008 might start off on the right foot with a purchase of a Wii.

Besides being an avid video gamer, I love to play board games. Just like there’s nothing like clearing the hard level or beating the big boss at the end of the game, there is nothing that compares to making a good roll in Monopoly or making the winning guess in Pictionary. There are some board games that could easily make the jump to the video game genre, especially to the Wii platform.

Twister. Imagine your Miis spinning the wheel of color and then acrobatically pulling off that ‘left foot, green circle’ maneuver. This would be a fun game to play with your Miis.

Yahtzee. The dice game Yahtzee could be a lot of fun to play on the Wii. Players could use the Wii remote to shake and roll the dice.

Boggle. Boggle is a fast-paced word game where players must make as many words as they can from the letters showing in the Boggle square. Players could select the letters with the Wii remote to spell words.

Settlers of Catan. In Settlers, players inhabit an island and must use the resources at hand to build road, settlements, and cities. While it might sound tedious, it really isn’t. With a little tweaking to speed up game play, this could be a fun title to experience on the Wii.

Tsuro is a beautiful board game that literally means ‘path.” In the game, players take turns building paths and then your playing piece follows the path. Be careful for when your path leads off the board, it’s game over. It’s strategic, relatively fast, and fun. While it might not be as well known as Twister, Tsuro could offer a fun game play experience on the Wii.

I was contacted sometime ago by reader named Rustopher Hashonah a.k.a Rocket Man, you may have seen his comments around the site. He originally proposed a Remake of his favorite title Rocket Jockey, so I told him to go ahead a write up a “Wii Wish”. Needless to say he was so amped at the opportunity to share his love for what he calls a “hidden gem” that I received his “Wii Wish” within a couple days so without further ado I present…..

Rustopher Hashonah’s Wii Wish: Rocket Jockey

Whenever I see reminiscence about fun, yet somewhat dated PC games, the same group of popular gems like X-COM, Fallout, Star Control II, and Syndicate get the most attention. During these conversations, I always bring up a small lost gem, but very few have heard of it and even fewer have played it. This diamond in the rough is known as Rocket Science’s “Rocket Jockey”.

Published by SegaSoft back in 1997, Rocket Jockey lived a short life between being too powerful for some machines and yet incompatible with next generation PCs. In addition, the coveted LAN play-enabling patch was released far too late in the games lifespan, after any popularity Rocket Jockey had built faded away. Rumour had it the game would be released for the Playstation, but this never came to fruition.

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Gamers first met Simon Belmont way back in 1986 when the vampire hunter first burst on to the NES. Since then the Castlevania series has been going strong for the past 20 years and shows no signs of stopping with the recent successes of Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, Dawn of Sorrow and the soon to be re-released Symphony of the Night.

Over the past few years the games in the series have drawn many comparisons to the Metroid series mostly in regards to gameplay and level design. Yet when a series has been through 25 different iterations on almost every gaming platform out there it becomes harder and harder to keep a series fresh. Enter the Nintendo Wii.

Before the GameCube came out every Metroid game was a side scrolling platformer but Samus Aran got a new look and a new perspective for Metroid Prime. The new first person perspective was carried on with Prime’s sequel Metriod Prime 2: Echoes and will again be used in the 3rd, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption which is coming to the Wii later this year. Wait! I thought this was an article about Castlevania? Well it is and this first person perspective would be put to great use in a Castlevania game for the Wii.

The gameplay and level design would be pretty similar to Metroid Prime however it’s the Castlevania I.P that would make the game unique. Imagine you have the WiiMote in your dominant hand which controls your whip or weapon of choice while the nunchuck controls your movement and secondary weapon. Daggers, holy water what have you. I think this would be an extremely fun practice to engage in and would breathe new life into the Castlevania series. Not that it really needs it but one can hope.

Do you have your own idea for a game that would be awesome using the Wii’s unique controls? Well submit it to Wii Rally, send an email and put Wii Wish in the subject line and I may use it in a future.

For more information on Wii Wish click here

*Editors Note*
As of publication Konami has no plans for any sort of game for the Nintendo Wii. Wii Wish is a work of fiction and has no similarity to any game currently on the market or in development….that we know of.

The video game industry moves at an incredibly fast pace, especially since most of the news can be around the world in…..oh about six minutes via the internet. The fact that it’s a fast paced industry makes it hard to look to the future but Wii Rally will at least give it a shot.

Today I am introducing a new feature here at Wii Rally called “Wii Wish” where I and all you readers can dream, speculate, even inspire future Wii software. Is there a game that you think could particularly benefit from a rebirth on the Nintendo Wii? How would you use the new controls to add to the experience? I am opening up this feature to all you readers out there if you have your own “Wii Wish” than email it to me, along with a description of the controls and a brief bit about the gameplay and you may see your idea on a future segment of “Wii Wish”

I’ll get the ball rolling tomorrow with the very first “Wii Wish” so all of you can see what I’m talking about. Keep your eyes open for that and much much more.

Aside:

Today is also Virtual console Monday but Nintendo seems to be moving at a slug’s pace today. Head on over to 1pStart to see BB and his list of virtual console titles that should be released today. As of this post I can only confirm that Legend of Zelda a Link to the Past is available on the Wii Shop channel. aLttP is Wii Rally recommended and everyone should give it a download, play the game that caused so many to fall in love with the series including yours truly. That’s all for now I’m heading back to Twilight Princess, damn shadows.