Hey, remember when we told you about Mega Man 9 coming out as a downloadable game for the Wii (oh, and some other consoles with online capabilities, too). Well, it’s finally happened: Mega Man 9 is out today for the Wii (it comes out later for the other systems) for your downloading pleasure.

Now, you’re probably wondering why you should play Mega Man 9 when you could just go run over pedestrians in GTA IV or even download something well-worn and time-tested for your virtual console (like, say, Mario 64). Mega Man is a classic franchise, and the newest installment offers the same platform hopping, laser shooting, and enemy power stealing that made the originals great.

Many classic franchises have floundered in the wake of the 3D revolution (for example: has anyone ever raved about a new PAC-MAN game?), so Capcom have made a bold move to render the newest installment of the main Mega Man series in the NES side-scrolling style that made the original games a hit. Sure, it’s “simplistic” compared to 3D platformers, but that’s part of its charm: figuring out the patterns that allow your little blue helmeted midget to easily defeat the robot masters. Also, having played the originals, they don’t get any easier no matter how much the medium advances. The series will always provide a challenge for the willing gamer.

With such a bold move comes a wise decision: to price it at 1000 Wii Points (or $9.99), making it incredibly affordable for a new game from a major franchise.

Article written for the Wiitards by Danny Djeljosevic

Here’s the truth: I’ve never heard of Monster Hunter. I’m usually up on this sort of thing, but somehow it slipped through the cracks. Maybe I assumed they had renamed Monster Rancher. I’d continue believing that if I hadn’t found out that Tecmo did “Rancher” and Capcom made “Hunter.” Knowing that it is an action RPG by Capcom certainly makes me want to play it now.

Now that we’ve got that all figured out, the actual news: Monster Hunter (not Rancher) 3 is going to be Wii exclusive (yay?) but a total revamp of the franchise to fit the specifications of the system (promising!).

The infinite replay value that comes with a good online multiplayer mode is the best reason to buy a game (worked for every first person shooter ever), and Monster Hunter is no exception. Monster Hunter’s online mode (form a group with real players, trot around, kill monsters) is similar to other RPGs like Final Fantasy XI or Phantasy Star Online, the main difference being you could play through the story offline (the lack of which being the sole reason I never bothered with FFXI or PSO), but the online version offered more content. We can certainly expect that tradition to hold, as the online mode features an entire section of the game’s city devoted to being a meeting area for players to meet up. And let’s not forget: a Wii-exclusive game with a good online multiplayer can only help the Wii’s sales.

The most interesting thing to me, however, is that they’re revamping the franchise for the Wii. Too often are there multi-platform games that just fail on the Wii due to it being a game that was just meant for the traditional game controller (though we can all agree that Resident Evil 4 was born to be played on the Wii before the Wii even existed, right?), so it’s nice to see a developer (originally it was on the PS2) make the most of their platform of choice instead of just forcing the Wiimote controls onto a game it wasn’t meant for.

Trailer:

A few weeks ago we talked about Nintendo Wii’s hard drive problem. If you’re too lazy to click on that link, let me sum it up: the Nintendo Wii has a 512 MB of storage, and this is not enough for a system with an ever-expanding library of downloadable games and a long history of old games one would want to download.

Nintendo of America’s President and Chief Operating Officer Reggie Fils-Aime has said Nintendo is working on the hard drive problem. He was unwilling to specify what the solution would be, but that players would have a better way of storing their games than the Wii’s tiny storage space.

What could it be? Some people are speculating that it’s some sort of online storage system, but that sounds like it defeats the purpose of downloading games. This would only work if it were like those item boxes in Resident Evil where you traded stored items for items you want to use at the moment only to find out later that you forgot the Jade Key and now have to walk back through miles of ominous pre-rendered backgrounds to get it back. But that would be stupid.

Also, let’s keep the idea of streaming games completely out of the conversation, as I want to be able to play Mario: The Lost Levels without any lag.

Enough guessing. If Nintendo is smart, it will release some sort of affordable external hard drive to hook up via the Wii’s USB ports. It’s the most obvious solution.

Either that or carve a path into the 4th Dimension so we can have a physical place to store our downloads of Excitebike.

Written for thewiitards.com by Danny Djeljosevic

Steve Purcell’s Sam & Max: Freelance Police is the definition of underrated. They started out as an underrated indie comic. Then they became an underrated LucasArts point-and-click graphic adventure (a criminally underrated genre). Then they became an underrated Fox Kids cartoon. Then they became an underrated episodic video game series by Telltale Games that, thankfully, is still going strong on Gametap.

Now the first “season” is being ported to the Nintendo Wii, due for release on November 3rd.

It never occurred to me before, but the Wii, with its point-and-shoot interface, is perfect for the graphic adventure genre. I played the last Monkey Island game on the PS2 and it just wasn’t the same. These games were made for a mouse, not the average video game controller (which is also why I had so much trouble playing Grim Fandango on the PC).

The graphic adventure is a deceptively difficult genre. While only need to point and click to move your character around, the games require that you almost exclusively use your brains to figure out how to use acquired items to advance the story, which is something that most console games don’t stress in favor of the blissful simplicity of punching/kicking/shooting/jumping on top of the bad guys to win. To complicate matters, most of these games are comedic, which means that the items and solutions are often unconventional, silly, and sometimes even nonsensical. The reward isn’t the gameplay, but the engrossing and often hilarious story that ensues.

What does that mean for the Wii? Well, considering that the biggest criticism of the Wii coming from the hardcore gamer crowd is the kid-oriented fare, a bit of advanced problem solving will do the console (and its players) good.

That is, if they have the patience.

With any luck, the hopeful success of Sam & Max on the Wii will help get the fifth and final Monkey Island game greenlit.

Please?

Written for thewiitards.com by Danny Djeljosevic

Patrick Goss, a freelance writer for MSN UK, has responded to 4 Reasons Mario Should Never Retire. This post was a response to his article about why Mario should retire. Here is his comment:

Patrick Goss here; nice to see you read the article.
Just for the record - I’m a freelancer who does one weekly column for MSN on gaming, so the disclaimer is fairly accurate. They don’t tell me what I can’t write or what they think I should be saying. If they did it would be no fun and I wouldn’t do it.
I used to be the tech editor at MSN but now I work full time at Future and the gaming column is just a side project
So how can I comment on Nintendo and Mario? Because I write opinion pieces and this is an opinion. Do I think your response is valid? Absolutely.
Although “like saying an effing Bill Murray cameo would get old”. It did.
I love Mario - and I’d like to keep loving him - which is the gist of what I was saying.
Anyway - enjoyed the response :)
Yours
‘douche’ aka Gaming Goss

Now that we disagree on two major things in life, Mario and Bill Murray, I would like to say that it is super cool that he took the time to respond, and that he signed his name ‘douche’. I will officially retract the ‘douche’ because of this. MSN is still the wrong platform for a Mario commentary (opinion writer or not, something still stings about it coming from an Microsoft outlet). All in all, epic article and we love the controversy.