Bob was a big guy. Manly. Six foot four and full of muscles, or so the song goes. He doesn’t really “get” what Nintendo is trying to do with the whole “Blue Ocean” strategy. He owns a Wii, though, and has enjoyed it so far. When he saw the shrinking stack of WiiFit boxes at a local retailer Wednesday, he plunked down some money to buy one.

Bob and I got to talking at a pub last night before a screening of the atrociously, almost offensively awful Indiana Jones: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and eventually the conversation drifted away from local microbrews and onto WiiFit.

“You know what? It kinda just works,” he told me. He said the line like he was shocked his mouth uttered the words so openly. He and his wife, both mid to late 20’s, had spent the previous evening going through the initial set up of Wii Fit, and ended up “playing” the title well past whatever hour they had arbitrarily deemed acceptable for a video game.

I’ve also spent the last 48 hours “playing” and dissecting WiiFit. Amazon dropped it off on Wednesday, and being the geek that I am I had it torn open and battery-packed before I got through the door. I did some yoga. I balanced myself *almost* perfectly. I noticed a little sweat starting to form on my brow.

And you know what? I was also surprised. WiiFit and the Balance Board works, it turns out, just fine indeed. (more…)

It’s not as good as a DS redesign, I suppose, but it’s close: new DS colors are arriving in Europe!

Nintendo has confirmed that three new DS models will go on sale in Europe on June 13. The SKUs are simply different colours – red, turquoise and green – and will be priced at GBP 99. [GameIndustry.biz]

On another note, Wii Fit’s should be arriving at your doorsteps today (or at GameStop, et all).

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 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.

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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…)

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Type /nick “nickname” to use a specific user name.

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Welcome to Infendo IRC!

Type /nick “nickname” to use a specific user name.

If you want to use this IRC channel with your favorite IRC application, just point it to irc.mibbit.com and channel #infendo

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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