Just in - Nintendo’s first announcement with E3 2008 in their conference is a new balance board + Wii Remote game called Shaun White Snowboarding.
You lean forward to speed up, crouch, and other such movements on the balance board to control your character and snowboard. Your Wii Remote controls tricks, jumping, and other movements you can’t make on the balance board. Mii’s included.
Expect the game by the end of the year. Stay tuned for gameplay images, it looks nice!
The University of South Carolina recently received a $2 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, partly funding research on the rehabilitative effects of the Wii on stroke victims and their motor skills.
Debra Lieberman, director of the University of California Santa Barbara’s Health Games Research Center (you know, the UCSBHGRC?) said the researchers are “trying to find positive ways to use video games.”
The Wii-centric research will take a $200,000 chunk out of the grant money. The rest is devoted to other video game-centered research, including data gathering on players of an alternative reality game aimed at helping incoming college students fight the “freshman 15.” Hint: don’t drink beer.
Gaming masses have congregated online to loathe the research initiatives around the Wii, many of which are based entirely around the motion-sensing aspects of the console. We all win, however, when the rehabilitative properties of the leading home console spell good looks from the mainstream media.
Wish list: a hack n’ slash Doom-style Wii game that cures my arthritis.
In other news, typing “wii rehab” into google nets about 269,000 sites as of this writing.
Rumor-digging Quarterman in the May 2008 issue of EGM spread word that Tecmo is bringing back the beloved Tecmo Bowl series, straight to the Wii and DS. It seems that the DS version will be a retro take on the series, whereas the Wii version will be “an updated outing developed here in the States.”
The idea of an “updated” version hitting the Wii can be a cause of concern. I don’t want my Tecmo Bowl hanging around those Madden-types. Too much trouble.
If it’s true: We can look forward to, hopefully, a fresh look at modern football games. If Tecmo stays true to the series, we should see those exciting cut-scenes when you pick off a Rex Grossman pass and run it back for a touchdown. It would be “enlightening” to see artistic look at the game, maybe some 2D-to-3D perspective flipping like in Super Paper Mario? Or maybe a left-to-right look like the Fifa series.
If it’s false: Come on, it just can’t be. Any sane person would settle for an updated WiiWare title, and that could spell “graphically enhanced 2D” football. Doesn’t that sound great?
Updates to come.
How many Wii accessories is too many?
The photo above proves that people will buy anything. The look of the Nintendo Wii is so sleek and sexy that I proudly display it (along with the Wii Remotes and soon a Wireless Nunchuck) in my living room. The place where my company comes to sit and chat. The place that everyone sees when they come into my house. It is really a beautiful piece of hardware to display.
A few items in the box appear to be tennis rackets, a pool cue, baseball bat, golf club, a steering wheel, and a joypad holster. Does this make you a better gamer? No, but I’ll tell you what it does do. It makes the chances of you hitting the lights above you, the person beside you, or the television in front of you greater.
The sexiness of the Wii tends to cheapen with all of the plastic extras in the photo above. (Not to mention it will set you back about $45.) It belittles the Wii. It becomes a cheap and inferior looking device. Do the world a favor and don’t embarrass yourself or your Wii.
Mike Suszek | July 15, 2008
