Archive for the 'Wii games' Category

RE4 for Wii: dreams come true?

Published on 2 years, 11 months ago in 2000s games, External articles and Wii games. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

From IGN:

After rumours that a Wii version of Resident Evil 4 was appearing on the release schedules of Japanese retailers, the latest issue of Famitsu has confirmed the tittle-tattle and gives a few details about the Wii installment.

Imaginatively titled Bio Hazard 4: Wii Edition, this updated version features new Wiimote-specific controls. These include using the remote to aim weapons, moving the control to reload and using a knife by waggling the controller.

According to Famitsu it also features Ada’s missions from Resi 4 on PS2 and comes with a trailer for the upcoming Umbrella Chronicles, which is also on Wii.

A Capcom representative was unavailable for comment at the time of writing.

I hope it includes true widescreen support as well. This is a dream come true. :)

EDIT: More details (though no definitive confirmation yet) here and here.

EDIT2: According to Famitsu, it is indeed confirmed, at least in Japan… and does include widescreen. Yes! :)

Yet another EDIT: More info here.

Dream game: Resident Evil 4 for the Wii

Published on 3 years, 2 months ago in 2000s games, GameCube games and Wii games. 3 Comments

Have you thought about how great it would be?

And Capcom could produce it in an instant. They’d just have to:

- use all the content from the GameCube version
- add all the extra content from the PS2 version, updated to have GC-like graphics and lighting (otherwise, the extras would look visibly worse than the rest of the game)
- add widescreen mode (I think the PS2 version already includes it)
- add wiimote + nunchuk support.

Advantages:

- it would look better than most current Wii games (including Zelda: TP and Red Steel)
- most of it is already done, so development time and costs would be low
- the game really begs for wiimote control.

Me, I’d buy it in a second, even though I already have the GC version.

Bad news reporting: The Virtual Console Archive

Published on 3 years, 2 months ago in Commodore 64 games, Consoles, Misc stuff and Wii games. 4 Comments

Since I bought my Wii, a site I’ve visited regularly is The Virtual Console Archive, which has news and reviews related — you guessed it — to the VC.

However, in one of the last posts, there’s so much ignorance that I’m not even sure it’s a joke or not. I believe it isn’t, however. The post is called Commodore 64 games to join the Virtual Console, and it includes this gem:

All in all quite underwhelming news. The Commodore 64 isn’t even a console! The games have dated too much for them to be worth downloading unless they were 50 or 100 Wii Points at the most. At least that way you could spend your change on a novelty bit of nostalgia and fill up yet another of the 48 channel slots!

I don’t even know where to begin.

Isn’t a console? So what? I’d see it as “the VC isn’t limited to console games! Cool!”. Besides, the C64 was turned into a console in 1990 (by then, it was admittedly too late, and it wasn’t successful), simply by removing the keyboard and disk interface.

Have dated too much? I can’t believe this one – either this is a joke, or the reviewer never had anything but consoles in his life. The C64 compares favorably to the NES! Better graphics, better sound, and more varied game genres. In fact, a lot of C64 games were converted to the NES, and the ports were usually much worse. The C64, meanwhile, could do a Super Mario Bros. perfectly well. :) If C64 games were to cost “50 or 100 Wii Points at the most”, then they’d have to give NES games for free.

Really, to suggest that the C64 is more “dated” than the NES… Ah, youngsters, these days… :roll:

Oh, and one more thing: unlike what the news (and I’ve seen it in other places, too) suggests, this is not “C64 games coming to the VC”. This is a company (System 3) releasing ports and remakes (of their own games, and Epyx’s) for the VC (and they’re releasing some for the DS and PSP, too). The Virtual Console isn’t just a means for playing old console games; new games will be released for it (much like the Xbox Live Arcade), and in this case some of them are remakes or ports of old games. It doesn’t mean that we’ll be regularly seeing new C64 games there, among NES games, SNES games, and so on.

Nintendo Wii: first impressions

Published on 3 years, 3 months ago in Consoles and Wii games. 2 Comments Tags: , .

NOTE: the following is translated and adapted from a post of mine on the Nintendo DS – Portugal forum.

I have it at home, since yesterday.

I’ve been playing with it for several hours, now. Unfortunately, my brother (who is the one who bought it for me; I wasn’t in the country on release day) was only able to buy the basic package: the console itself, Wii Sports, one wiimote and one nunchuk.

I haven’t been able to explore Wii Sports thoroughly, as my TV is in my bedroom, and the bed is in the way. :| I’m going to move the TV to the living room today or tomorrow, hopefully. I’ve won a couple of tennis games (which is much more fun than you’d imagine), but the “real thing” will be when I can play with more room, and with more people (which will require more wiimotes, and they’re completely sold out right now).

Besides disk-based games, the Wii supports several channels, and can go online. Connecting it to the Internet was extremely easy; there were no compatibility problems with my Linksys WRK54G router, which I already use for the Nintendo DS. The wireless range seems to be better than that of the DS, and it now supports WPA encryption (which I’m not using, though, because of the DS – only WEP there). As soon as you go online, the console updates its firmware, which takes a little while, but no effort at all.

News and weather channels are available on the channel selection screen, but they’re not working yet; according to Wikipedia, they’ll be up and running either this month, or in January. Same thing about the Opera browser, whose release date is apparently December 23.

One of the most interesting channels is, of course, the Virtual Console. Apparently, new games will be released every friday. I’ve already bought a few: Donkey Kong (NES) due to nostalgia (even though it’s a relatively poor version, quite inferior to the original arcade), F-Zero (SNES), Super Mario 64 (N64), Donkey Kong Country (SNES), Sonic the Hedgehog (Mega Drive), Super Star Soldier (PC Engine) and Dungeon Explorer (PC Engine). A special note about Mario 64: I never had an N64, and, though I had already played the game using emulators, and later on the DS, I had never played it using an analog controller (in this case, a GameCube one) until yesterday. And the game really needs one; it’s like I was playing a different game! Moves and tricks that I had to struggle with on the DS come up absolutely naturally here. The N64 version doesn’t include the DS extras (3 new characters, more stars, better graphics), but this game really requires an analog stick…

A couple of PC Engine games support 5 players at a time. Dungeon Explorer is a more complex Gauntlet clone, and Bomberman 93 probably needs no introduction. Since the Wii can only support 4 wiimotes or classic controllers at a time, and up to 4 GameCube controllers, you need to use a combination of both. I have 4 GC controllers, so I will, hopefully, be able to play 5-player Dungeon Explorer after the next lunch here. :)

One warning: some (not all) NES, SNES and Mega Drive games (not PC Engine, oddly enough) weren’t, originally, properly converted from NTSC (60 Hz) to PAL (50 Hz); they had black borders on the screen, and were about 13% slower than the original versions. Since they’re perfectly emulated here, and the European Wii uses emulated PAL versions, the problem persists. If you’ve played the original versions and were OK with them, you won’t see a difference here, but it’s a pity that Nintendo didn’t do the extra work of fixing this problem… after all, the Wii supports 60 Hz PAL, unlike the original consoles.

And that’s it for now. When they’re available again, I hope to buy Wii Play (which includes an extra wiimote), a second nunchuk, and a couple of classic controllers. As for games, I want Zelda, Red Steel, DBZ: Tenkaichi 2 and Call of Duty 3. It’s likely that I’ll only be able to get most of those next year, though…