Japan Gaming Guide

The Virtual Console is all well and good, but if there’s one thing that could be improved about it, it’s the controller. The classic controller is decent enough, but doesn’t quite have that authentic, mid 90’s feel that reminds us of our misspent youth. Now club Nintendo are giving Club Nintendo members a chance to order this fantastic replica SNES pad. It looks like just the thing for revisiting those great games of yesteryear.

It comes out next April in Japan, and will be available to those with enough Club Nintendo points.

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We really like Lego here at JGG. It’s only the harsh financial realities of the world that stop us from building our entire homes out of the fantastic bricks and living there chuckling evilly to ourselves. We liked Lego Star Wars too, and are pretty chuffed about this Lego Batman game that’s coming out.
Edit: Trailer is no longer there, sadly!
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The Wii Photo Channel is getting an update soon, according to Nintendo of America. The update will allow you to use one of your pics as the channel’s background, and, er, remove mp3 support.

So you get a bit and lose bit.

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The expected DVD playing version of the Wii will not be released this year, according to Nintendo. It seems they are too busy just keeping up with demand to think about updates. The new version of the system has not been cancelled, we expect to see it sometime next year.

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Mii fans will soon be able to get their hands on the new Check Mii Out channel for the Wii. The new channel is expected to launch in the next few days, and will let you share your finest creations with everyone else, and see what other people have made.

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Jenga is on the way for Wii, and some new pics are out. Follow the link to see more!

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Real weather will be visible in parts of Nights: Journey of Dreams, according to Sega Japan. The title will be able to interact with the Wii Weather Channel, and display in-game conditions that reflect those outside the player’s window.

Only the Artificial Life section of the game will include the feature, but the creatures will change their behaviour according to the weather. That means players might end up having to keep an eye on the real weather to make sure their artificial creations can take advantage of the best conditions possible.

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This game is looking better every time we see it. Soda 51’s ultra-violent free roaming assassin simulator is hard to pigeonhole – but looks full of originality, and will provide something stylistically very different to what we’re used to on the Wii.

Famitsu just posted some new screens and info, mostly concerning the skills you’ll be learning as you progress through the game. Travis, the game’s hero, has to consult his drunken bar-fly father for details of the new skills, which he’ll then have to go out into the free-roaming world to acquire.

The screenshots below show off some of these abilities, including the ‘Memory of Demon’ attack and the super speedy ‘Memory of Child’. Naturally a lot of them are going to be activated using some kind of Wiimote movement, and will be needed to progress past the ten rival assassins that stand between Travis and his goal of being the number one hitman in California.

Click through for the screens

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Battalion Wars 2 arrived on the Wii last week. Kuju’s game is an unusual action-strategy hybrid, and doesn’t attract much in the way of hype – but it’s a worthy purchase in a genre that isn’t exactly saturated on the Wii at present.

The game is a distant cousin of the fantastic advance wars series, and lets you get your hands on land, air and sea based units.

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Super Mario Galaxy went on sale today in Japan. We went along to Osaka’s Yodobashi camera store to get our copy. hoping there might be some kind of promotional stuff going on, but although there were a couple of Galaxy displays, Ace Combat 6 seemed to be getting more attention from the public.

A quick non-scientific survey of the people in our queue showed 4 people buying Ace Combat 6 for Xbox 360, and only us and the guy behind us buying Super Mario Galaxy. We were pretty surprised by that. It could be that it was lunchtime on a weekday, so there were more salaryman types than usual about. It could even be that the local planespotting group came along together, but we were pretty surprised by it, and will be interested to see the sales figures for the games when they come out next week.

We’ll also be posting some more on Mario Galaxy if we can tear ourselves away long enough.