Former President of Nintendo, Hiroshi Yamauchi has moved up to the number 1 spot for the richest man of Japan. Mr.Yamauchi gained the title when his net worth boosted 3 billion just last year. This brings his total worth to 7.7 billion dollars! Much has been increased due to his very successful shares in the Nintendo’s current Wii and DS platforms. This feat comes 2 years after Mr.Yamauchi donated $60 million to the Kyoto University Hospital.

Hiroshi Yamauchi served as Nintendo’s president from 1949 to 2002. He brought evolved Nintendo from a simple playing card company to the video game giant of today. Mr.Yamauchi stepped down from his duty in 2002 and was succeeded by current president, Satoru Iwata. Hiroshi Yamauchi is 80 years old.

Bloomberg

Sure it’s a Nintendo Europe game release list, but it’s still an interesting first look at what we can expect from Nintendo for the rest of the year.

See anything you like?

[GameExplore (Norway) via GoNintendo]

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Great news from Nintendo today regarding the user-generated content-heavy Nintendo Channel: it’s coming to the U.S. complete with DS downloads and user created reviews of WiiWare downloads.

Game|Life’s got the scoop:

if a user has played a WiiWare game for at least an hour, they will be able to review the game on the Nintendo Channel, said Cammie Dunaway (pictured, below), Nintendo of America’s executive vice president, during a meeting with Wired.com editors Wednesday afternoon. The reviews will be available for other Wii owners to read.

Since Nintendo won’t provide free demo versions of WiiWare games, the Nintendo Channel is how customers will be able to get a feel for games to help them make purchasing decisions, said Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime.

The Japanese version allows DS demo downloads, which we should not only anticipate, but demand from Nintendo when this launches alongside WiiWare next month.

Before I started home from work today my bu-chou (head of planning) told me her father had bought her daughter a new Wii game and she wanted me to go up and see it before I went home (bu-chou and sha-chou (CEO)) live upstairs from the company office).

Not to get into the complex family dynamics of my employment situation, let’s just say I got to sit down and watch a 6th-grader take the Wii wheel for a spin, and then played one course myself. Obviously not enough play-time for a review, but I can definitely list some things I’m looking forward to, and somethings that I’m not. (more…)

At the end of the day, there were two requests to review “Dr. Mario” and four for “Everybody’s Pokémon Ranch” — so I’ve decided everybody wins! Tonight I picked up the Pokémon title, and tomorrow I’ll be looking at Dr. Mario.

To be honest, though — even though I too was more curious about the Pokémon title than any other, I have to concede that its definitely a rather shallow “game.” (more…)

No I’m not trying to sell you a used car at a low-low price point, but if you would like some free coffee and donuts they’re over in the corner.
In my last Wii Ware post, I commented that I couldn’t buy Wii points on the fly due to a lack of a Japanese credit card. But since I promised I would review at least one Wii Ware title tonight I was planning to pick up a point card on the way home from work… that is until I found this barcode. (more…)

Yesterday was the big WiiWare release day, but since I don’t have a Japanese credit card (yet) I didn’t have time to pick up points to snag any new games.

But that’s okay because I found this slick shockwave demo of Kotoba no Pazuru Moji Pittan that faithfully recreates the entire game-experience right there in your browser, and its free of course.

What does that tell you about Mojipittan? Well it’s certainly not a very technically complex game (it’s kind of like Scrabble), but maybe the simple fun is what’s needed for the initial WiiWare release? The demo certainly made me want to pick it up.

Since I can’t get every WiiWare release after work today I’d like to ask you, the readers, what games do you want to know more about? The majority vote will get purchased and reviewed at the end of the day!

Taken at Millennium Bridge, London for “The Largest Gathering of Games Characters” event which was to be included into Guinness World Records Gamer’s Edition. 80 people showed up to participate including Sonic, Lara Croft, Gordon Freeman, and others. Though they didn’t break the record, it looks like they had some fun. Hit the link to check out more pics.

Link

First a little back story. The glory years of the N64 were short, but sweet thanks to many titles by respected developer, Rare. Acquired by Nintendo in the early 90’s, Rare acted as one of Nintendo’s top second party developers which produced many high quality games for the N64 during 1997-2001. Known best for developing Ninty-like, polished titles which took full advantage of the current hardware to improve both gameplay and graphics.

You know the games…Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo Tooie, Blast Corps, Perfect Dark, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Diddy Kong Racing, Donkey Kong 64, Jet Force Gemini, and the famed GoldenEye 007. Rare’s line of excellent game developing was stopped abruptly during the end of 2001 when Microsoft began making offers for the dev. By 2002 Microsoft had bought Rare from Nintendo for $377 million and immediately put them to work on their new Xbox system. IPs were split: Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, and Star Fox stayed with Nintendo, while Banjo, Conker and others went to Rare and Microsoft. Though Rare continued to develop new titles for the Xbox, Xbox360, and even the GBA and DS they never did quite get their stride back.

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First of all, thanks to the Infendo readers that handed me my hat, ass and ego last night in Brawl. A few of you have some skillz, that’s for sure. Additionally, I officially feel pity for those of you who lost to “JBLFT” (David, my friend, I’m looking at you!). Also, is it so wrong that I love the Ice Climbers?

Anyway, since I’m pretty Brawled out, I thought the morning would do well with the infamous NPD numbers. If you’re a fan of Nintendo, prepare for more of the same (HONESTLY, who is left to buy all these hundreds of thousands of DS’s anymore?!) … (more…)

Remember when the Wii was first announced and you heard about Japanese club Nintendo subscribers getting dummy remotes that simply had TV remote functionality? Do you remember wishing you could have one of those to? Well now Japanese Wii owners can!

When I got back from LA this week I was delighted to find a new TV Guide channel available on the Wii shop (free as always) that gives you a guide to all the channels and shows in your local. Not only that, but you can use your Wii’s to “stamp” the shows you are interested in so the rest of the family knows when your TV time is. Oh and you can also use it to tell friends (or Nintendo corporate) what you’ve been watching.

As an added bonus the new channel can actually let you switch TV channels using the Wii remote and even control the volume, but only if you have a fancy Japanese brand-name TV (which I don’t).

However, as someone without real cable, digital channels or a fancy satellite system, it’s great that I can have just as functional a TV guide as would come with a much pricier system!

While watching a morning exercise program (okay I won’t lie it was actually part of the Hello Kitty show) that involved a bunch of tired looking children and someone dressed as Hello Kitty dancing and running in place, there was an unexpected commercial break to talk about some new attractions at Puroland (the Hello Kitty theme-park). The gist of the commercial was that there were to be a number of attractions featuring kid-detective Conan from his well known anime series (often called “Case Closed” in the states.”) One of the attractions listed in the commercial featured a DS and so I thought it would be something along the lines of Nintendo’s Shigureden Museum, where patrons are handed a special DS to be used for a certain portion of the exhibit. At the end of the commercial, however, a person in a Conan suit pointed at the me, and demanded that I bring my very own DS to Puroland.
I tried to tell him I’d left the DS in LA last week and was waiting for my parents to mail it to me, but the commercial had ended. I decided to look online for more information and while scant on the actual game content, the official site does say you will be able to download the game “Detective Conan: Kitty no Namida wo Sagase! (Find Kitty’s Tears!)” if you bring your DS. Not only that, but if you don’t have a DS and the Puroland commercial didn’t convince you to immediately run out and buy one, then you can borrow one from the park for free as long as you leave your credit-card as collateral. Of course free download or not, you still have to pay the park ¥4,400 just to get in, so unless you’re a big Conan and/or Kitty fan, you might want to save the money and buy yourself a DS game that doesn’t delete itself when you turn off the system!

…In more ways than one!
So far trying to get into a Super Smash Bros. Brawl online match has, for me, been a complete coin toss. Once I had people ready to join a battle, the rest of the times no one joined, and before anyone could I was booted. Though the waiting room (where you get to beat up on the punching bag for a few minutes before the match) is lots of idle fun- my rigorous training never came to fruition! Frustrated, I tried to see if the watching-mode worked and surprisingly it does! (more…)

I was tasked with comparing Wii, 360, and PS3 battery performance for a GamePro feature that was published today. I say tasked because it was required that I played more than 110 hours of video games in a short period of time, the most I’ve ever played since high school. But I digress, the Wii Remote lasted longer than expected, and as you know, is highly customizable for even better performance. Check it.

EDISON, N.J., Jan. 31 — March to the beat of your own drum as Majesco Entertainment Company, an innovative provider of video games for the mass market, today announced Major Minor’s Majestic March for the Wii(TM) home video game console. Developed by NanaOn-Sha, Major Minor’s Majestic March marks the return of the creative team behind the renowned PaRappa the Rapper franchise — legendary game designer and multimedia musician Masaya Matsuura and famed New York artist Rodney Alan Greenblat.

“There’s something magical about marching bands that truly captures the imagination. The concept of leading a virtual band that’s reliant on your musicianship is a perfect fit for the interactive capabilities of Wii,” said Gui Karyo, Executive Vice President of Operations, Majesco. “The combined musical and artistic superiority of Matsuura and Greenblat make them a natural choice to deliver this innovative title exclusively to the Wii audience.”

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