Highlights of Nintendo's Conference

-Shaun White playing Shaun White Snowboarding with Wii Balance Board.

- Satoru Iwata reminiscing of E3 ‘03. “What has really changed in this new Paradigm?”

-Animal Crossing City Folk to be released on the Wii in ‘08 with Wii Speak, a communication device. Talk to people all over the world via Wi-Fi. I can’t wait for this title, honestly.

- Reggie Fils-Aime talks about console and game sales trajectory. He said he would keep this short, but he really didn’t. 19 different third-party games on Wii have exceeding sales.

-Star Wars: The Clone Wars trailer. For the Wii. 2 player lightsaber fighting. Holiday 2008.

- Rayman Raving Rabbids: TV Party trailer. For the Wii. Fall 2008.

- Call of Duty: World at War trailer. For the Wii. Wii Zapper compatibility. Coming Soon.

- Guitar Hero On Tour sold 300,000 in it’s first week.

-Guitar Hero On Tour Decades for the DS announced. Song Sharing. August(?) .

-Spore Creatures for the DS.

-Pokemon Rangers Shadows of Almia.

- A custom version of GTA. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars. This Winter

- An idea for a new DS peripheral.

- Another idea. Ds Kitchen Help?

- The DS from a gaming device, to a PDA?

- Wii Remote add-on. Wii MotionPlus.

- Wii Sports: Resort. Wii MotionPlus comes with the game. Couple of games in Wii Sports Resort: Dog Frisbee catching, Jetskiing, Fencing, several more will be in the game. Next Spring.

- Wii Music. Let’s you do mostly whatever you want. It doesn’t evaluate your performance, it records videos of it. Iwata and some others from Nintendo start playing the Mario Theme Song. This Holiday season.

Wii Music Fact Sheet

Create a musical masterpiece with up to four players. Anyone can play the huge selection of instruments in Wii Music with simple motions—like strumming and drumming.
• It’s easy to play improv jams. Musicians in your band jam by simply playing their instruments to the beat of a song or by improvising to their heart’s content. Play faster. Play slower. Skip a beat, or throw in 10 more. No matter what you do, Wii Music automatically transforms your improv stylings into great music. There are no mistakes—just playing for the pure joy of playing.
• Wii controls immerse you in the music. You can play most of the 60-plus instruments in Wii Music using simple motions with the Wii Remote and Nunchuk controllers. Strum to play guitar, banjo and sitar. Drum to play jazz drums, congas and marching drums. Hammer away to play piano, vibraphone and marimba. Unlike most music games, Wii Music doesn’t make you use complex buttons. You only need to imitate playing the instrument.
• Wii Music offers virtually endless ways to make music. You choose the song and instruments and decide whether to blaze through a rock take on classical songs, put a jazzy spin on folk tunes or transform Nintendo classics like the Super Mario Bros.® theme into Latin-flavored numbers. The song list is only a takeoff point—it’s how you improvise with the songs that matters.
• Send your band-jam recordings to Wii Friends who have Wii Music. They’ll see your Mii™ band members, your players’ improv styles and your instrument selections. They can watch your recordings, or play over parts of your song, then send their modified recording back to you. Improv jams can be sent back and forth over WiiConnect24 and changed again and again.

Beyond the Jam:
Wii Music includes many other modes besides the main band jams, including several musical games and an enhanced video playback mode for recorded jams.
• Play it again: Use the playback mode to see your jam recordings brought to life with dramatic camera angles.
• Pick up the baton: Command an orchestra in the conducting game where you’ll wave the Wii Remote controller like a conductor’s baton to lead a Mii orchestra through orchestrated music. Make them play quickly, slowly, strongly or gently.
• Ring a bell? Play a handbells game where you’ll swing your Wii Remote and Nunchuk controllers to play your two handbells as part of a larger ensemble. Everyone on the team has a job to do: Play one of your notes only when the tune demands it.
• An ear for music: Take a tone quiz that tests your musical ear by giving you challenges, like putting note-playing Miis in order from lowest to highest pitch.
• Bang the drum: Play a virtual drum set in the drumming mode, the one mode in Wii Music that also uses the Wii Balance Board accessory (sold with Wii Fit™). You’ll use the Wii Remote and Nunchuk controllers as drumsticks, and place both feet on the Wii Balance

Kid Icarus is Somewhere...

As we all know, Kid Icarus Wii wasn’t shown at E3. Well, there’s much evidence to confirm its existence and a recent comment from Miyamoto helps to confirm that. IGN asked Shigeru Miyamoto about Kid Icarus Wii and he simply said…

“Yeah, I’m not the producer of any Kid Icarus titles. There are some people who have some different ideas, but since I’m not the producer I can’t comment on anything.”

Sounds like he’s saying it exists but he’s not with the project and can’t comment on it. Can you give us a hint as to when we’ll hear about this title, Miyamoto? I’d like to know that.

wiinintendo.com/ign.com

Animal Crossing: City Folk

Nintendo officially announced Animal Crossing: City Folk for Wii earlier today at their conference with a Holiday release date. Well, GameSpot is now reporting that the title will release on November 16th. No word on the MSRP though. And in case you were wondering, the WiiSpeak microphone won’t be packaged with the game and will cost $29.99.

Gamespot.com

WiiSpeak-ONLINE CHAT For Wii!

“Basically, our idea with WiiSpeak is rather than to just provide a voice-chat function, we want to really connect living rooms to each other. In that sense, the microphone in WiiSpeak is really designed to be able to clearly capture many different voices being spoken in a room at the same time and convey that over the Internet. It’s a very capable microphone and it’s designed with that intent. And so that’s why WiiSpeak has taken on the form that it has.”

WiiSpeak will be sold for $29.99, with no release date set yet. I would think that it would release on the same day as Animal Crossing: City Folk, which is the first title to make use of the WiiSpeak microphone. And speaking of the new Animal Crossing, why wasn’t WiiSpeak bundled with it? Miyamoto has the answer…

“In all honesty, it’s just in relation to cost. I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who want to play Animal Crossing over Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Maybe just as it is. There may be some people who want to use a USB keyboard to chat and we’re fine with that. And there may be others who want to use something like WiiSpeak. So just from a cost perspective and being able to provide the game to everybody, we thought that was the best way to go.”