Star Wars: The Force Unleashed at Nintendo Media Summit

If you aren’t already excited about Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, this clip should do the trick. Courtesy of Gametrailers, developers of the game shed some light on the control scheme of the game at the Nintendo Media Summit.

Simply put: the remote controls your lightsaber, the nunchuk controls the force. Oh, the waggling combo possibilities!

Capcom to Make WiiWare Games….Eventually

In recent interview  with Gamasutra, Capcom’s Vice President of Strategic Planning and Business Development, Christian Svensson, made the exciting announcement that Capcom has future plans to bring new games to Nintendo’s upcoming WiiWare service. But not just yet. Capcom currently has a plethora of games coming out for Xbox Live and PSN and aren’t quite ready to start churning extra games for the Wii. Svensson explains it as such:

I’m going to lump WiiWare in with PSP e-distribution, in that we’re looking for the right content first — a lot of the content we have now isn’t quite right in value or approach or interface for WiiWare.

I fully expect us to be doing some WiiWare titles very shortly in the west. I won’t speak for Japan on that particular issue, but there are interesting things happening at some point there, maybe.

WiiWare has some interesting challenges in terms of interface. I shouldn’t say challenges: both challenges and benefits. The controls are different and frankly we’d like to make good use of the Wii Remote. We have a couple of concepts internally that I think would be perfect for Wii, as well as other platforms.

The other part of this is we’re trying to get a better handle on the online services that are going to be available to us on WiiWare. One of our hot buttons here across PC, PS3, and 360 is that we’re trying for feature parity across all platforms. That’s not a trivial task, especially when it comes down to user-created content.

Let’s say at some time we get into clan and guild support, or other aspects of user-created content propagation, that becomes a more interesting challenge on the Wii. Does that mean we couldn’t do WiiWare stuff that doesn’t have feature parity? Yeah, we could do that, but we have a couple of things where we might not have to cut anything. Let’s talk again next year about that.

Svensson’s thoughts on the challenges and benefits for WiiWare remind us that companies really need to think about what they are doing. I only wish he had gone a bit further and discussed what he really thought all the problems with WiiWare were. One of the most obvious problems so far is that no one really has a clue where WiiWare is currently going. If it’s in line with the rest of the Wii’s online services, it’ll be functional but not fantastic, which could definitely scare some of the big developers away. I’m guessing the biggest fear Capcom could have, like Svensson said, is that they won’t be able to do everything they want to with downloadable content on the Wii.

Many of us around here absolutely agree that time needs to be spent deciding what games to release for the Wii, but hasn’t Capcom already had a good chunk of time to prepare already? It would seem like the WiiWare service isn’t exactly coming out of the blue and surprising anyone. Either way, it’s good to see that they’re putting some thought into their WiiWare games, especially since Capcom has put out some of the best third-party titles for the Wii so far (Zack and Wiki, Okami, etc.).

Wii Want More? Rumor or Real?

According to this Nintendo Press Room document, a new Wii Channel called “Wii Want More” will bring more downloadable content (DLC) to the Wii this May. This shows that Nintendo may be following suit of Microsoft’s popular Xbox LIVE and Sony’s not so popular DLC store that offer users the ability to purchase additional content to games.

Along with this announcement came the mention of a few of the first games to receive DLC, notably Super Smash Bros Brawl, Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and Mario Kart Wii (which is already out in Europe and Japan, and comes out in America on April 27^th). This news is huge for Brawl fans and Nintendo fans in general, but many people have been speculating if it was an early April fool’s joke by Nintendo. Since no other official mention of it has been made by Nintendo, many bloggers are insisting that it was a prank.

Personally, it doesn’t matter to me if this is a joke or not. This display not only shows that Nintendo knows what its fan base and customer wants from it, but also that they can provide what they want as well. Nintendo has always been slightly behind the pack when it came to internet connectivity and usability with their consoles, but they are slowly starting to change that with the Wii. A DLC channel would be a step in the right direction towards having the accessibility and connectivity of an expansive network such as XBOX LIVE.

The online response this has created will surely stir up some bad feelings among Nintendo fans if this does end up being a hoax. I mean what Brawler wouldn’t get excited and giddy at the thought of four new characters and new stages and for free (if downloaded in the first month of the channel’s release). Can life get any better? Oh yeah, with additions to Twilight Princes…yes just maybe it can. But I guess Wii will have to wait and see if this fantasy is real or if Nintendo will just leave us wanting more.

Of J. Alfred Prufrock’s Love Song and the Wii

Well, it finally happened.

My editor at the newspaper that I write for gave me my most dreaded assignment ever. Just as I sat down at my desk, before I could even finish my cup of iced coffee, she asks, “Can you go to the local senior citizen’s center to take pictures and do a story of them playing the Nintendo Wii?”

My heart sank, not only because I am a gamer, but because I also value my journalistic integrity. Thoughts filled my mind of how I would be coerced to watch senior citizens enjoy Wii Sports and how numb I and dirty I would feel from doing so. All the while I would be forced to maintain a smiling demeanor, while my inner nature cried “Shenanigans!”

All just to immortalize the moment in my newspaper.

It was one of my biggest fears since the Wii’s launch. There isn’t a day that you can’t search Google news and find at least one story about senior citizens playing the Wii, and now after everything, I would be contributing to this plague of hype cause by news outlets everywhere.

Please, don’t get me wrong. I’m all for seniors playing video games. Such mental activities can not only possibly stifle dementia, but the motion controls of the Wii actually get them out of their chairs and moving. But reporting on this is a nightmare. In fact, I’m pretty sure Dante Aligheri mentions this at the beginning of Canto III of “The Divine Comedy” when approaching the gates of the Inferno:

“Through me you pass into the city of woe

Through me you pass into eternal pain

Through me among the people lost for aye.

Justice the founder of my fabric moved

To rear me was the task of Power divine,

Supremest Wisdom, and primevel Love.

Before me things create were none, save things

Eternal, and eternal I endure.

All hope abandon, ye who report on senior citizens enjoying the Wii.”

On second thought, I may not be remembering that exactly how I first read it. Anyways, I digress.

I sat there, motionless in my chair as my editor waited for my response. Time slowed and I knew that I had to come up with a response before she threw her Swingline at me to wake me up.

All the time, I kept thinking of poor T.S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock:

“I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.”

I could feel my heart slow to a numbing tempo as anguish poured over me. I, too, could feel Death grabbing me, laughing as my integrity was about to die. Was I ever more afraid? I suppose some journalists would have just bit their lip and taken the assignment without a word. But I couldn’t. The gamer in me was crying, “Foul!”

I then launched into a diatribe of how constant media attention of senior citizens enjoying mind-numbing casual games has caused Wii gamers everywhere to endure a monsoon of lack-luster titles. This is all because grandma and grandpa can swing a Wiimote. I questioned — to myself — if I was over stepping my boundaries as a staff reporter, but I couldn’t help myself. This journalistic injustice had to stop.

I continued, telling her that I am indeed a gamer — specifically the Wii — and that this type of publicity only makes things worse for people like me; real gamers. Every time a story of some old person bowling a strike or hitting a hole in one gets published, developers see one more reason why it is okay to publish titles that don’t even deserve the sad distinction of a discount bin.

Also, every time senior citizens are reportedly enjoying the Wii, an angel loses its wings.

And now, after everything that I have written and spoken on, I was going to feed the beast. I was now going to show how great the Wii is for old people. I sighed and thought about how I would rather set a basket of kittens on fire, before kicking them off of a cliff.

I finished explaining my biased point of view on the topic, and instead of hearing legions of gamers cheering me as I stepped down from my platform, I just heard the voice of my editor, laughing at what I had just told her. Wanna know the best part? I convinced her and we are not covering it.

It seems she, too, has a part in J. Alfred Prufrock’s love song:

“I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”

It would seem that the mermaids have stopped singing for her. My voice — the human voice — has finally awoken her. How sweet it is to drown.