Japan Gaming Guide

Wii minigame-fest Mario Party 8 is about to hit Japanese stores – the game is coming out July 28th. A pretty nice official site is up, showing off some of the characters and games. It’s got fairly mixed reviews so far – people seem fairly unimpressed with the lack of variety and poor controls. Eurogamer point out that there are many better mini-game titles for the Wii, such as Rayman Raving Rabbids.

In the U.K. the game was pulled from the shelves after falling foul of the political correctness mafia. The word ‘spastic’ is considered too offensive for a video game. Nintendo issued a recall, citing ‘production issues’.

Well, if you’re not easily offended and you’ve finished all the other mini-game collections – pick this up.

[Japanese Teaser Site]
[UK Controversy]

A whole ton of Wii accessories have been unveiled lately. One of the more unusual is this – the Wii Party Station. The party station includes chilled beer cup holders, a chip holder, a hand drying fan and LCD score displays.

We weren’t sure about this – but a quick glance at the cans, chip packets and game controllers piled up on our table made us think again. This could be a surprise hit.

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Some new screens have gone up for Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games. The two rivals in the console wars of yesteryear will soon be competing, along with other characters from the Mario and Sonic series. The shots from ComputerandVideogames.com show a range of track and field events. Sonic should have the sprint events wrapped up, Luigi looks pretty good at the long jump, but what will Mario’s speciality be, we wonder?

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Those people who use the Wii as their only source of weather information may be in for a surprise this weekend. There’s an absolutely massive typhoon making it’s way across Japan at the moment – but no mention of it on the Weather channel.

The TV weather news over here features smiley faced clouds, a blue faced Samurai who appears when it’s cold and some sort of giant sausage thing that we don’t really understand, but suspect might be to do with air pressure, or something.

We were hoping, then, that the Weather channel might feature something interesting. A giant Bowser hovering menacingly over the ocean; a Lakatu throwing down spiky Koopas. Instead we have a picture of an umbrella. On the plus side, we are told that there’s a 100% chance of rain. The trouble is, anyone heading out with an umbrella tonight is going to find themselves flying rapidly through the air, similar to the way Mary Poppins would have done, if Mary Poppins had been directed by John Woo.

So, beware, there’s a storm coming.

Mario Kart is coming to Wii in 2008, and it’s going to come with a steering wheel. Nintendo’s President, Reggie Fils-Aime, announced the news at Nintendo’s E3 press conference. Mario Kart will also be playable online!

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A new Wii channel, ‘Check Mii Out’, is on its way to the Wii. The channel will allow you to show off your Miis, and view other people’s creations. You’ll also be able to download other people’s Miis.

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We knew it was coming, but now it’s official. Wii Fit is on the way. The game will come with a wireless balance board, capable of measuring your weight amongst other things. The title will feature over 40 activities. Much has been made of Wii Sports‘ ability to get us lazy gamer types of the couch, this looks like it will take things a step further. The game is expected in Japan at the end of the year, 2008 elsewhere.

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From time to time we’re going to post videos of new titles that appear on the Japanese Virtual Console, and we’ll focus on those of them that are exclusive to Japan, as information on those might be hard to come by. Today we’re looking at Star Soldier on the NES, available for 500 Wii Points.

Star Soldier is the second game in Hudson Soft’s Caravan shooting series. It’s pretty fast paced, with plenty going on on-screen and features the power-ups and bosses we’ve come to expect from the vertical shmup.

This game is a staggering 21 years old, and as you can imagine, it shows its age a little. The music is reasonably nice, although repetitive, while the sound effects are horrible. The graphics are pretty horrifying as well.

In gameplay terms things aren’t that bad. Star Soldier is pretty fun to play for ten minutes or so at least. It will take some serious perseverance to get anywhere with the game though. Like many games of the era, it’s very unforgiving. We were surprised to find ourselves taken back to the start of a level for not killing the boss quickly enough, for example.

It’s worth bearing in mind that some of the later games in the series, Super Star Soldier, Soldier Blade and Blazing Lasers are already available on the VC and are probably going to provide a lot more entertainment than this. Not a terrible game then, but not worth downloading unless you’re a serious genre fan.

Majesco have announced that Furu Furu Park will be getting a North American release this autumn. The collection of Wii minigames saw an April release in Japan.

Many of the games are based on old Taito hits like Arkanoid and Bubble Bobble. The original games include ‘Safe Cracking’ and ‘Love Challenge’ where players ‘compete to win female affection’. Sounds good to us.

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Beautiful Katamari, the forthcoming roll & collect em up from Namco Bandai, is rumoured to be coming to the Wii. In case you hadn’t noticed the Wii has been selling quite well in the land of the rising sun. Looks like Namco Bandai decided to go where the money is.

The rumour also says the game has been canned for PS3. That would be a shame, but understandable given the poor sales of the console so far. We’ll keep you posted if the rumour goes official.

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