From time to time, we’ll take a few well-written, intelligent and objective reviews from the Infendo Forums and throw them up on the main page for the whole world to enjoy. Here’s a review of a Wii launch title, Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz, by Abras.

The little, strange looking monkeys in bubbles are back for some more fun. The first game in the series made quite a splash during the Game Cube’s release. It was so popular in fact, that it spawned a plethora of sequels and spin offs (see picture after the jump for my opinion on that). It’s back in as a launch title for Nintendo, but this time with big launches from Nintendo like Zelda and Wii Sports, it hasn’t quite made the same impression as the first one. It sticks to basically the same formula, but makes some changes like the addition of a ton of mini games, the ability to jump, and the use of the Wiimote, as well as some graphical tweaks in the form of cell shading. (more…)

Note to self: Don’t cross the Wii or its loyal fan base. Ever. I say this because today we learn that misguided Sega executive Scott Steinberg is probably in the doghouse this morning thanks to his comments from last week.As a refresher know this: Steinberg, using graphics and horsepower as his rationale, said the Wii would be dated in a few years. It seems he may have been drunk; with spirits or power, we may never know. What we do know is Sega has since fired off a press release to basically protect its ass. It was written, conveniently, by Steinberg himself..

“It’s a shared responsibility and opportunity for the whole industry to take advantage of the possibilities of the Wii. If we don’t realize its true potential, we will have missed a great opportunity to expand creatively and that is what I was cautioning against in the Reuters interview [...] I’m not just putting the responsibility of innovation on Nintendo. It’s on SEGA and all the publishers and developers as well to carry that flag.”

I haven’t seen that much backpedaling since I got a bit tipsy at my college graduation party and tried to ride my old bike “back in time.” I didn’t get very far and neither, it seems, did Scott Steinberg.

If the news about sales numbers seem to be getting a little stale, then so too are the stream of executives and analysts who continue to hark on the Wii for having inferior graphics and hardware.

Sega’s Scott Steinberg, vice president of marketing for SEGA US, is the latest guy to “just not get it”:

Steinberg, vice president of marketing for SEGA US, has said he is “concerned” about the future of the Wii - suggesting that PS3 is more likely to be the market leader in this console cycle. “I am a little concerned about the creative depth of the Wii pool,” he told Reuters. “I’m not sure if they will top out in 2008 or 2007.”

For now, we’ll conveniently forget that some of Sega’s own IP has already topped out (ahem *Sonic* cough cough). Instead, I once again have to reiterate the most obvious point about the Wii: it’s not a hardware powerhouse; it was never marketed as such; and to say silly little things like this is both indicative of an industry that has still not come to grips with the disruptive strategy behind the Wii and another exec who has been so confused by the Wii’s current success that he has digressed into making a apples to oranges comparisons. And since when is “creative depth” tied to graphics and horsepower?! WTF?!

Newsflash: The Wii already looks dated! This would certainly be an issue if Iwata got up on that stage two years ago and said “Nintendo is entering the next generation full steam ahead. We will deliver a superior graphics chipset and a true HD gaming experience.” But…. he didn’. Not even close.
The Wii’s success or failure will be based on the merits of its software; on game play and fresh ideas. Attempting to group it in with these hardware behemoths like the PS3 and Xbox is like comparing an airplane to a blender. Sega, apparently, is still trying to figure that out.

Like my Friday night Chinese food, NiGHTS will allegedly arrive on the Wii in two styles.

Takashi Iizuka, lead game designer on the original and heading up the newly announced Wii game:

We’re currently designing the game to be played with two control configurations. Our main focus is to design the game to be played with the Wii remote but for those gamers that are more comfortable using a more “traditional-style” controller configuration, they will able to plug the nunchuk into the Wii remote as well.

Does that translate into “bolted on motion controls?” I’m not sure, but it’s not promising. As the PS3/PSP has proven, you need to do one thing well first before you start thinking about doing EVERYTHING well at the same time. My personal opinion is they should focus on one or the other so they can really make it pop, as opposed to trying to appease gamers of all types.

[NGamer, via 1up.com]

Sega issued a press release today detailing the… details of the sequel to Sonic Rush on the Nintendo DS - Sonic Rush Adventure. Excerpt!

“Sonic Rush Adventure will seamlessly utilise both screens of the Nintendo DS to navigate the high seas in search of pirate treasure, delivering Sonic’s classic high-speed 2D gameplay in the ultimate Sonic handheld experience.”

So, more of the same. Which if you ask me, is a GOOD thing. Sonic Rush was the first breath of fresh air the franchise had had in a long while and, well, delivered pretty much what the press release up there said (which in itself is an accomplishment). Some - including Kotaku’s McWhertor - feel that Sega’s failure to reinvent the franchise for the millionth time heralds an end of days for Sonic. In my opinion, the less they screw with the formula, the better.

[via Sega's press release, Kotaku]

4cr gives us some more dirt on NiGHTS:

• Masks allow NiGHTS to shape-shift into a dragon, a dolphin (Ecco, anyone?), and a rocket
• Change scenery according to real-world seasons with the Forecast Channel
• Seven dream worlds to explore
• Exchange items via WiiConnect 24

A personal aside: With NiGHTS incoming, as well as the mature fare in Godfather and Manhunt 2 on the way, AND all the first party IP coming down the pipeline as early as next week (Super Paper Mario is the second coming of Mario, apparently), this Wii thing is starting to look like its smaller, portable cousin the DS, which was also a late bloomer as the industry woke up to its capabilities.

Game|Life confirms what many of you may have already known, but I remained skeptical about until today (April 2): NiGHTS returns as a Wii-exclusive title sometime “this winter.”

Official word from Sega early this morning is that the Wii-exclusive sequel to 1996’s Nights Into Dreams will be titled Nights: Journey of Dreams, and be released “this winter.” That’s the Japan date, but Sega tends to ship games like this nearly simultaneously, so we can keep our fingers crossed for a Holiday ‘07 date.

No real information in the Japanese articles other than some recapping of the first game’s play mechanics (flying about doing loop-the-loops in the sky) and plot info (the dream kingdom of Nightopia is once again under siege by evil monsters).

Here’s rooting for Sega, as the success of this title will not only give them a boost, it will also entice other developers to create some Wii-exclusive titles of their own.

O, Blake. You are wise beyond your years, but on the upcoming Mario & Sonic at the Olympics title you are just out to lunch. And I thought Denver, not Salt Lake, was the Mile High City. But I digress…

Here’s why you’re wrong (and I’m going to go to the dark side and have Matt Casamassina help me on this one):

1. It’s not 1995, but it is 2007. Times have changed, that’s for sure. Mario is arguably on the up-and-up, while Sonic is on life support. But the blue guy’s eyes are fluttering with a little life after the Secret Rings. Mario alone makes this game a profitable one, Sonic just ices the cake (as long as he has no speaking roles whatsoever).

2. SEGA, in its twilight, is the developer. True, SEGA is the automobile in this development relationship, but Shigeru Miyamoto is the driver, and Mario is not the kind of icon I can honestly see Nintendo throwing to the wolves simply for SEGA’s sake. I imagine Miyamoto and his staff will have the ultimate say in what stays or goes in this title. The character reputations at stake here are too important to sacrifice for a quick buck. It’s also SEGA’s sports division, NOT Team Sonic.

3. Timing is RIGHT. Like the Wii launch itself, the release of this title during a maelstrom of competitor activity (Halo 3, Metal Gear Solid 4) is precisely what needs to happen. Did the PS3 impact Wii sales at all? Its games? Not really. That’s because, as is with all of Nintendo’s strategic decisions from here on out, the competition doesn’t matter because it is irrelevant. It’s the blender competing with the airplane analogy I made the other day. People buying Halo 3 are of no concern to Nintendo or SEGA with this title. People who are of concern are guys like me who got a Nintendo in 1986 and lived through the infamous SEGA-Nintendo wars of the 1990’s. This game will succeed or fail based on its own merits, unaffected by the wild success of Halo or Metal Gear.

4. Game mascots are here for-ev-er. New Super Mario Bros., Mario Kart DS, and the veritable orgy of media hype surrounding Super Mario Galaxy beg to differ with Blake’s point that mascots are pale shadows of their former selves. And while Zelda is losing popularity in Japan, I’d never have considered Link and company as much of a *true* mascot as Mario — because you can really have only one mascot. Today, when something Mario ships, Nintendo can almost predict to within 100 units how many units are going to sell (as long as it’s first party developed — what the heck happened with 3v3 basketball!?).

5. People cared about who was faster until the fatter guy kicked the blue guy’s ass. True, Miyamoto was doing his marketing best to sell units when he said ““Now that [Mario and Sonic] have been given the perfect opportunity to meet at the Olympic Games, we may finally learn who is actually faster.” But, people don’t care about who’s faster today because Mario already won the race. And handily. It’s fair to say people don’t care who’s faster, but it’s not fair to say they won’t care about this game. I think people will start to care very much so when they see a Wii Sports-Olympic Games mash up starring Mario and Sonic. That level of interaction, combined with two very memorable and nostalgic characters? GOLD, Jerry, gold.

6. BONUS ROUND: “Some gamers also seem to have missed out on the significance of this announcement. Nintendo and SEGA are actively working together on a cross-license product. Do you honestly believe that Sonic won’t be in Super Smash Bros. Brawl at this point? Of course he will! It would be an injustice if the mascot wasn’t.” (Matt Casamassina)

While I can’t say the title they chose is very exciting, this announcement is pretty big.

SEGA® Corporation and Nintendo Co. Ltd. today made a historical announcement that two of the biggest icons in the entertainment industry, Mario™ and Sonic™, are joining forces to star in Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games. Developed for the Wii™ video game system and the Nintendo DS™ system, this momentous agreement marks the first time these two renowned stars have appeared together in a game.

Published by SEGA across Europe and North America, and published by Nintendo in the Japanese market, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games will be available for Holiday 2007 and is licensed through a worldwide partnership with International Sports Multimedia (ISM), the exclusive interactive entertainment software licensee of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

An official Olympics game with Nintendo and SEGA characters sounds like a gold medal idea to me. How can they avoid screwing up this title?

[Update: added link to official site for the game.]

If by “confirmed” you mean maybe, the NiGHTS is already in development for Wii and is coming soon!

Spong, via Cubed:

Quick News - Following years of speculation, it has finally been confirmed that a brand new NiGHTS from Sega is coming to Nintendo’s Wii. Whilst both companies refuse to comment at present, Spong has it on good word that is definitely in progress right now.

Spong and “fact” go together like oil and water, so let’s see what happens. This and the Official Nintendo Magazine teaser lead me to believe this rumor has more weight than most, but again, ONM is the Perrin Kaplan of game magazines, or so I’ve heard.

And no, none of them star or even cameo David Bowie, and I apologize for misleading you. Three labyrinth-style games are featured in April’s issue of Nintendo Power magazine, and all of them are due for release this year.

The first is a Konami (publisher of Elebits) release with the working title “Dewy’s Adventure,” a game that “stars a small droplet of water tasked with eliminating a terrible scourge that has befallen the forest.”

You’ll tilt and twist the Wii remote to move the diminutive protagonist around his environment, and use gesture-based controls to unleash special elemental power - Dewy can shoot bolts of lightning, create earthquakes, and more to vanquish foes.

That thermometer on the side also indicates when Dewy will turn into vapor or crystallize into ice, both forms being key to solving the various puzzles. It should be on shelves by the second half of 2007.

Second is Hudson Soft’s “Kororinpa: Marble Mania” - also distributed by Konami - which is due by the end of this month (theoretically) and promises to more or less be your next-gen Marble Madness fix.

Looks maddening. Hopefully we’ll see a return of the evil black marble, as he was always my favorite antagonist on the NES. Third and final is “Mercury Meltdown Revolution”, developed and published by Ignition Entertainment, and scheduled for release in April.

I believe the distinction between this game and the one above it boils down to a matter of preference between consumers - Specifically, those who like their marbles wobbly and amorphous, and those who do not.

All of these games behave in similar fashion - tilt the Wii remote around to move the game world, add in some physics, and fun is scientifically produced. It’s hard to say how much direct influence Sega’s first foray into the Wii market has had on software developers, but let’s hope they aim to improve on the formula instead of producing clones; I don’t think my heart could take another Monkey Ball.

Click the image and you will see an ad in which Sega once claimed “Nintendon’t” do Sword Of Vermilion. Now it do. Sega has announced “SoV” and three more classic Genesis games are coming to Wii’s Virtual Console. Also announced: Vectorman, Sonic Spinball, and Beyond Oasis.

From Chris Kohler at Game|Life:

In an interview with Nikkei Shimbun, Sega managing director Hideki Okamura says the company is shifting its focus from PSP to Nintendo DS, pointing out that there is a title they will release this year that will “surprise absolutely everyone.”

And remember that point I made about competing with Nintendo on first party titles and seeing it as a challenge rather than a dead end? I think Sega’s got it (for the obvious reason that they already have some head-to-head competition with Nintendo under their belts):

We have to do a lot of thinking about titles for Nintendo’s hardware, because Nintendo’s own titles are extremely strong. It really is difficult to sell a title as a third party. What that means is that we’ve got to go after it with force: “heave-ho!”

Start with Sonic, Sega, and we’ll see where this relationship goes from there.

A quick confession: I don’t think I’ve played a Sonic title since the days of Game Gear. Well, strike that, I asked for Sonic Rush for Christmas in 2005, played it once and never progressed past the first stage.

Some may think that’s a act of gross negligence (Sonic is a gaming icon, right?), but I see it as a silver lining of sorts — by not playing Sonic for so long, I missed out on all those stinkers that have dropped in the blue hedgehog’s name over the past decade or so. This includes the painful transition from 2D to 3D; a transition, if you’ll remember, that has garnered some intense debate amongst Infendo writers and readers in the past month.

But now there’s this Wii title coming out, Sonic and the Secret Rings. What’s the secret? Might be that this is the first Sonic title in a while that will not go belly up on the poopsky meter. The reason, I think, is that this title represents what Sonic should have looked like when Sonic made the jump to 3D. It’s the rails. Early Sonic’s were on a 2D rail, and it worked. It allowed the game to progress at a lightning pace. It was simple. In my opinion, 3D fully explorable environments just mucked everything up (the plethora of crappy secondary playable characters didn’t help much either). Mario, on the other hand, works in 3D because he’s a slow, chubby little plumber with a bit more character (and a better development team). Sonic, for all his fans and titles, really is a character with a one track mind: race to the finish as fast as is humanly hedgehogly possible. Of course, this could lead into a similar, but different debate altogether: Do games in this day and age *need* to be 3D to succeed, or can the side scrolling days of old make a comeback? But I won’t go into that one today.

By putting the hedgehog back on rails in a pseudo 3D environment, I think Sonic Team might have a winner on its hands. What say you, too constrictive or just right?

According to Kotaku, Sonic and the Super Rings for Wii got bumped up to February 20. Let’s hope this thing ain’t a stinker…