The Whole Family Can Go for an Exploratory Dive and Encounter Sea Creatures

REDMOND, Washington · January 22, 2008 /PRNewswire/ — Nintendo invites you to dive into a new genre of video games. Launching this week for Wii™, Endless Ocean™ lets users discover a vast undersea adventure at their own pace. It’s like a virtual scuba vacation in the tropics that includes interaction with hundreds of different animal species, relaxing swims through brilliant coral reefs and exploratory dives on wrecks of ships and warplanes. With the game’s intuitive controls and beautiful underwater visuals, every member of the family will want a chance to dive in.

Endless Ocean contains everything you might find on a real ocean scuba dive. Divers can find dozens of different treasures, from gold bullion to ancient artifacts. The marine biology encyclopedia lets divers record the different animals they spot and learn facts about each one. Divers might encounter more than 230 types of creatures, including penguins, tropical fish, sharks, whales and trainable dolphins. The stunning visuals will make you feel like your TV has transformed into an undersea portal. Navigation is simple too: To swim, just point the Wii Remote™ and press the B Button; to examine an object, just point at it and press the A Button.

“Endless Ocean is a siren song for adventurers, family gamers and the just plain curious,” says Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of sales & marketing. “Kids will love meeting and cataloguing all the sea life they meet, while their parents can lose themselves in a seemingly unlimited underwater landscape.”

When connected to Nintendo® Wi-Fi Connection, Nintendo’s wireless gaming service, two divers who have exchanged Friend Codes can dive and explore their environment together. Divers can listen to diving music by international best-selling artist Hayley Westenra or play audio files from an SD card.

Endless Ocean is one of two games Nintendo is releasing this week that demonstrates the way the company continues to appeal to both core and casual gamers. While Endless Ocean for Wii invents a new casual-game genre, Advance Wars®: Days of Ruin for Nintendo DS™ is a turn-based strategy game that appeals to both existing fans of the series and newcomers to the strategy genre.

Remember that Wii features parental controls that let adults manage the content their children can access. For more information about this and other Wii features, visit Wii.com. For more information about Endless Ocean, visit EndlessOcean.com.

About Nintendo

The worldwide innovator in the creation of interactive entertainment, Nintendo Co., Ltd., of Kyoto, Japan, manufactures and markets hardware and software for its Wii™, Nintendo DS™, Game Boy® Advance and Nintendo GameCube™ systems. Since 1983, Nintendo has sold nearly 2.5 billion video games and more than 430 million hardware units globally, and has created industry icons like Mario™, Donkey Kong®, Metroid®, Zelda™ and Pokémon®. A wholly owned subsidiary, Nintendo of America Inc., based in Redmond, Wash., serves as headquarters for Nintendo’s operations in the Western Hemisphere. For more information about Nintendo, visit the company’s Web site at www.nintendo.com.

Note to editors: Nintendo press materials are available at press.nintendo.com, a password-protected site. To obtain a login, please contact Danny Beardsworth at 213-438-8835 or dbeardsworth@golinharris.com. Users can receive instant Nintendo information by subscribing to the site’s RSS feed. B-roll is available at www.thenewsmarket.com/Nintendo.

“By the end of 2007 we were sold out of virtually all hardware, and much of our stock of software and accessories was sold out as well, thanks to the broad appeal of Wii and Nintendo DS to core gamers, women, families, grandparents - and seemingly everyone in between,” said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of sales & marketing. “And that momentum continues here in the early weeks of 2008.”

Some additional facts about Nintendo’s 2007 performance in the United States (note: All figures are from NPD):

– Nintendo accounted for 52 percent of all video game hardware systems
sold in 2007 — more than all other manufacturers combined.
– Since their respective launches, Nintendo has sold more than
17.6 million Nintendo DS systems and nearly 7.4 million Wii systems in
the United States alone.
– Wii Play(TM), a collection of nine fun mini-games, finished 2007 with
4.1 million units sold.
– Super Mario Galaxy(TM) sold through more than 2.5 million copies since
it launched on Nov. 12.
– The two games in the Brain Age(R) series each sold about 1 million
copies in 2007.
– Half of the top 30 best-selling games of 2007 were made for Nintendo
systems, including Pokemon(R) Pearl, Pokemon(R) Diamond, Mario
Party(R) DS, Guitar Hero III(TM): Legends of Rock and Mario & Sonic at
the Olympic Games(TM).
– Nintendo continues to dominate the hand-held market: Of the top 30
best-selling portable games sold in 2007, 25 were made for Nintendo DS
and another two were made for Game Boy(R) Advance.
– Sales of Nintendo DS systems grew 60 percent over those from 2006.
– In 2007, the video game industry grew by 43 percent over 2006.
Nintendo is responsible for 60 percent of that growth.

The perfect gift for that gaming Grandma of yours?

“Mario features hand-stitched sideburns and mustache, yellow button suspenders and child-safe eyes. Pin your brooches on Mario, or wear them yourself!”

Buy It @ Etsy

It’s odd, fun, and creepy all at the same time. You don’t even need to fill it with food as Taito has put some plastic fruit and veggies in there for your enjoyment.

“…that, all we did for a while was create was we referred to as “Porno Miis”. It was quite challenging trying to come up with new and exciting ways of manipulating what Nintendo designers had meant as harmless facial features into horrid, lewd images of depravity and smut!”

http://nsfwii.blogspot.com/

“You don’t gain a lot from swinging an imaginary tennis racket,” Kanav Kohel, another researcher on the project, told New Scientist magazine. “The whole point about surgery is to execute small, finely controlled movements with your hands, and that is exactly what you get with the Wii.”

Via Guardian

Friends in the gaming press,

I present you with the great question… greater than musings about the Earth, the stars, or the universe… greater perhaps even than any inquiry or investigation into the meaning of life. The greatest question of all, I pose to you:

What is a Rondo?

No doubt, as soon as you read the subject line of this email, you were struck with this question, compelled by it, obsessed with it. In music, rondo form, first known as the ritornello form (derived from the Latin word ritornare meaning “to return”), indicates a return to the original theme or motif. In gaming, Rondo of Swords is an epic fantasy strategy RPG for the Nintendo DS coming to North America on April 15^th, 2008.

Rondo of Swords combines an epic narrative, complete with a branching story and multiple endings, with an innovative combat mechanic that takes advantage of the DS touch screen and forces you to add even more strategy and planning to your attacks. Route Maneuvers allow you to hit all enemies in your path and enhance your attack or defense, while managing your Momentum Counter to gain stat bonuses and control who your enemies target becomes critical to success! Challenging gameplay, a lengthy campaign, deep party management, and customizable skills all come together to make Rondo of Swords a compelling fantasy strategy RPG package. Cleanse the sacred blade, protect the princess, and vanquish the oppressing armies of your enemy on your quest to deliver the Kingdom of Bretwalde from tyranny!

For more information, please reference the attached Rondo of Swords announcement press release, and be sure to visit the official website: http://www.atlus.com/rondoofswords/

Via IGN

Speaking about the sales of No More Heroes in Japan, he told us, “Whilst the sales weren’t as high as I hoped, other titles for Wii aren’t selling so well either. Only Nintendo titles are doing well. This isn’t just because of the current situation in Japan, as this is happening outside Japan.”

Via CV&G

This time single player has tons of content. The adventure mode is quite long and fun. And the story presentation is amazing. As for the fights, with the strong unpredictable factor that comes with final smashes, more than ever we can be excited about matches not being related to skill. The controls and sound are also satisfying. Hats off to Nintendo.
Score: 10

The new unpredictable factor that is the final smash allows us to enjoy an amazing effect and refreshing feel from any character. The fights are even more intense. The single player modes are abundant and a plus. The Subspace Emissary Adventure mode movie and action tempo are good and you just forget time while playing. Im highly satisfied with the game.
Score: 10

The powerhouse cast and gimmicks! The dynamic and subtle character moves! The must see final smashes! There are tons of battle stages. The single player mode is also extremely satisfying. There is a stage edit, and you can browse through the detailed information in the game.
Score 10

The moves of the the all star roster of characters have been polished, and the addicting one player mode has been perfected. With its outstanding graphics and wonderful ambience, Brawl is an epic game in which you can feel the efforts that went into it. Every time you play it, you’ll discover something new, and you’ll savor both sweet joy and bitter loss when you battle.
Score: 10

http://brawlcentral.com/

(Yes you still have to blow on the carts)

Yes it’s called the Famulator Lite although there’s nothing lite about it. It’s a big hurkin clunky thing you strap on to the bottom of your DS and then plug in to the GBA slot of the phat DS. You can then fire up any NES/Famicom cart you want and either play on the DS or on a TV via the A/V cables included.

Via Game Watch

It’s a beauty ain’t it?

There it is. SSBB joins the ranks of a few Final Fantasies and Zelda games which all got a perfect score from the Japanese magazine. Only problem? They gave Nintendogs a 40/40…

“In Kitsap County, Washington, a man now faces stolen property charges after selling a broken Nintendo Wii, which was later confirmed as stolen, on Craigslist.

Earlier this month, two men, whose names were not released at the time of this writing, made arrangements via Craigslist and completed the transaction with an exchange of $250 for the Wii in a Park-n-Ride parking lot.

However, when the buyer returned home, the console didn’t work. The seller’s contact information proved to be fake, but luckily, the man’s wife had written down the license plate number of the car driven by the suspect.”

The Rest Here 

セガ = “SEGA”
バンダイ = “Bandai”
任天堂 = “Nintendo”
“SFC” = “Super Famicom”
“WS” = “WonderSwan”

Via GoNintendo

“I say, God bless the baby boomers!” laughed Tom Ziegler, a 57-year-old man who tries out video games for a market research firm in New York. He was playing “Guitar Hero III” when we caught up with him. “I mean, we have the time, we have the money, why not?”

Full Article @ ABC

Those Sega German PR people are full of the funnies.

See The List Here