Japan Gaming Guide

An enterprising seller on Yahoo Auctions decided to put this cute little guy on the market. It seems like the recent Pokemon Platinum has whetted a few appetites, since the closing price for the wee beastie was over 900 billion dollars. That seems a little steep to us, although we’re not sure if it was the Pikachu or simply a Pikachu. That would make all the difference.

Mind you, even super rich Nintendo boss Yamauchi san couldn’t afford to pay that.

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Nintendo have just announced the release of a wireless network adapter. The device will allow you to connect your Wii and DS to a home network. Judging by the diagrams on the site, you won’t be able to use it to connect other devices, such as a PC, although we can’t confirm this yet. The adapter costs 5800 yen, which seems a bit steep if you can’t use it with other devices. For the record, the Wii connects to most standard wireless adapters without problems, although the DS needs to piggy back off the Wii’s connection.

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Shigeru Miyamoto, the creative heartbeat of Nintendo, has been honoured again. Vanity Fair, the American culture magazine, put him at number 73 in their list of movers and shakers. While we’re suspicious of any list that doesn’t put Miyamoto at the top, we can hardly complain when he’s in the same company as Vladamir Putin and Robert De Niro. Behind Al Gore though? Manbearpig has a lot to answer for.

We assume that he’s made the list for his recent bringing of gaming to the masses with the Wii and it’s various mainstream hits. If the Vanity Fair people had played Ocarina of Time he’d surely be much higher.

[Read, via The Tanooki]

Club Nintendo of Japan have just released details of their new gift range. There’s some good stuff this time around!

First of all, for 500 points,  is a new DS cart: Game & Watch Collection 2, featuring Parachute and Octopus. Very old readers will remember when these things were all the rage in the playground; others may want to spend their points on the Touch Generations Soundtrack. At 400 points you can relieve the classic musical moments from Wii Sports, Wii Fit and others. Still not tempted? Then for 300 points you can get your eager hands on the pictured Mario Party Cards! Now they look good. Think I’ll order a pack myself.

Also available for 300 points are cute pouches in the shape of Mario and Luigi’s caps. At 250 points are some citrus coloured DS lite cases… mmm starburst..

Rounding off the show at 250 points are some unique and very cool looking Mario pin badges. With a choice of 4 designs we might bag ourselves one of those if we have enough spare after the cards.

And that’s all. Oh thank you Nintendo for bestowing this bounty upon us!

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There’s a new Harvest Moon game coming to Wii this year. Famitsu published a whole bunch of screenshots. There are all sorts of animals to populate your farm with this time around. There are cows, sheep, horses, ducks, goats and of course your faithful pet dog. According to the text the farmyard animals will be joined by more exotic fare such as lions, elephants and ostriches. As if that’s not enough, there will also be a nature Goddess to keep happy if you want to ensure a fruitful harvest who will no doubt be handing you a few quests to break up the farming.

If previous games in the series are anything to go by, you’ll also be able to stride into town to get yourself what every good farmer needs: a wife. Impress her with vegetables, or by riding your goat.

The Harvest Moon series is always top quality and a nice break from all the shooting and maiming we get up to in most of our gaming hours. Can’t wait to try this out.

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The latest Wario game comes to Wii later this month, Wario Land: Shake is coming out July 24th. Unsurprisingly, the game will involve shaking the Wiimote. A lot. You’ll shake to attack, grab items and shake enemies so that they drop those o so lovely coins.

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One of the downsides of the Wii is its draconian region protection. By design, you can’t play games from any other region. That’s a major headache for anyone foreign living in Japan because hardly any Wii games offer a choice of languages.

Fortunately Datel’s excellent Freeloader let’s you get round the protection and lets you play games from any region you want – until now that is.

The latest Wii firmware download has again stopped freeloader from working. You can choose not to download the firmware but newly released games may require it, leaving you with a nasty choice as to which games not to be able to play.

This is a fairly petulant move by Nintendo, do importers really do that much harm? Hopefully Datel will be able to issue a patch of their own soon.

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Band Brothers DX is coming to the DS in a couple of weeks. The DJ sim lets you pick any part of any song to play. You can also sing along via a karaoke mode and can take part in an 8 person multiplayer jam over wi-fi.

If you got a Wii you’ll be able to play the game sound on your TV via the new Wii Speaker Channel. Hundreds of new songs will be made available for wi-fi download.

A load of screens and info is on the official website now.

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The official site for the new Wii Baseball title just launched. Some videos show off the characters’ special swings, a fireball shot for Mario and a charmed shot from Peach that nobody wants to catch. You can also see the gestures for swinging the bat (a swinging gesture) and pitching (a downward swipe, but you can twist the Wiimote to add curve, much like in Wii Sports). Several mini-games are shown or named: Jewel Catcher, Fireworks, World Gun, Ice Block Shot, Ghost Shot, Castle Pinball and others.

Super Mario Stadium Family Baseball launches June 19th for 5800 yen.

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A brand new Wii-white version of the gamecube controller is coming to Japanese stores this month. The wiimote’s simple beauty is all very well, but it does lag behind in the buttons department. Not so the gamecube controller, which requires a certain amount of digital dexterity to get the most out of, but makes playing those older games a lot easier.

Don’t forget you can plug your old gamecube controllers straight into the Wii, but that’s, like, sooo going to destroy your colour scheme. Now where’s that dusty copy of Mario Sunshine?

[Joystiq, via Engadget]