Wii Burger

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Nintendo’s regional limitations hindering Wii sales in Korea

Media limitations spawning from Nintendo’s regional lock controls are hindering the sales of the Nintendo Wii – that’s what a report streaming out of the region says. Nintendo’s division in Korea managed to sell short of the company’s expectations: only 40,000 units were sold in the first month.

The main complaint of most gamers in the country are targeted at Nintendo’s approach to software piracy. Most gamers who’ve adopted the Nintendo Wii in the first months were hardcore fans, and they’ve been looking forward to playing other Japanese-only titles on the next generation console.

The region lock mechanic prevents them from doing so. If the game disc was not meant for the console’s hardcoded region code, the loading of the game is halted. If not for region free hacks and exploits and dedicated Wii products serving similar purposes, this would have hindered sales in many other countries as well.

The Nintendo DS, however, has continued to attract customers since its release last year. To date, the portable console sold more than 1 million in the nation and has become Nintendo’s current pinnacle of success in Korea. More updates as we get them.

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Unity Engine now available for Wii

 It’s a no-brainer that the Wii and its first-party games are insanely popular to a wide audience, but there has always been this perception that Nintendo consoles are not too friendly to third-party game makers. Unity Technologies tries to break that stigma by introducing new tools to make life easier for developers.

The company has just announced that its Unity Engine is now available for licensing on the Wii. Unity Technologies promises a low-cost solution to Wii development that comes with all the necessary revisions and enhancements to come up with the best software in the least amount of time.

Also included in the Unity Engine package is a Wii Remote scripting class to allow third-party devs to maximize the potential of Nintendo’s innovative controller. An expanded ShaderLab toolkit is also there to take advantage of the Wiis graphics chip.

Unity says its engine’s edge comes from its quick iteration times which allow the software to communicate well with the Wii Remote’s motion-sensing capabilities.

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Quake Wii 20080601 – resolution up, FPS testing begins

Quake Wii 20080601 is the latest build to come out of homebrew coder Eluan’s crafty developer hands. Although much has improved since the initial WIP release, the author maintains that it’s still a work in progress project. Homebrew gamers who’ve tried their hand at Quake Wii back then will find it irresistible to update to this version.

Why? Because Brazilian homebrew developer Eluan re-tweaked the aiming mechanics. Remember how Quake Wii would handle once your Wiimote cursor touched the edge of the viewable screen? That’s been changed with Quake Wii 20080601. It will now behave really close to Retro Studio’s Metroid Prime 3: Corruption aiming mechanics.

With aim improved, you only have to contend with perceiving the enemy. Luckily, Eluan has that part covered, too. Quake Wii 20080601 has its resolution rendered a level higher than the previous WIP release (interlaced, and depends on your TV).

This way you’ll be able to see the enemies better, but the author asks that everyone keep a keen eye out for framerate issues to keep the Quake experience smooth. Other changes since the first WIP release include:

• Fix the reset [button] mistake.
• Fix off-screen-wiimote aiming issues.
• Exiting the game wii now return to the loader.
• [Re-enable] game and config saving/loading.
• Fixed bug when a wiimote disconnects during the game, better wiimote connection handling overall.
• Metroid Prime 3-style aiming and shooting.

Specific to 20080601:

• Rendering resolution increased to 480i/528i.
• Lots of input improvements/bug fixes (including a fix to the gamecube controller aiming)
• Basic netcode implemented (doesn’t work yet.) Most times net_sendto and net_recvfrom fail with error -81, which (as far as my limited knowledge goes) is undocumented. net_setsockopt also fails with error -81 when attempting to set SO_BROADCAST to a socket. However, sometimes I get some nice udp packets on my machine.
• All glquake references removed from code in preparation to the GX version.
• Lost all day researching GX, seems it will be a while until a playable version.

As with the previous WIP releases, players are responsible for supplying their own Quake game content paks.

And those users who’ve installed Quake Wii to the Homebrew Channel will have to be reminded that the game may not detect the Nunchuk properly. You may resolve the issue by re-synchronizing the Wii remote or reconnecting the Nunchuk to the Wiimote. Or you could try reloading the game, too.

Download: Quake Wii 20080601 (WIP)

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Skate It, Wii Trailer

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MarioKart Tournament Boss Fight

A bit late to the party reporting this one, but as far as I can tell, not a lot of people are noticing this.  There is a new Mario Kart Wii tournament that started yesterday (June 1st) and ends on June 9th… this isn’t just another one of the lame little race tournaments they were [...]

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RINWii Remake Beta 2 – Game Boy Color emulator for the Wii

Wii homebrew developer nullEX has released a second beta to RINWii Remake, an Game Boy Color emulator for the Wii. The program is based on the original RINWii code from developer mirakichi.

This build has several new features, including the ability to load from the Front SD, and a new control scheme. Note that you have to create new folders with specific names to make the program work.

Here’s the changelog from the readme:

Features:

• uses GRRLib for drawing
• uses the last cvs libogc
• compiled with devKitPPC r15 from cvs
• wiimote support using “wpad.h”
• frontsd load/save using libfat from cvs

Buttons:

• Menu

• move your wiimote and select by pressing A button.
• Home buttons exits from emulator.

• In Horizontal position
• 1 = B
• 2 = A
• - = select
• = start
• A = start
• HOME = Menu
• B = change screen size

Folders(you must create it):

• Roms – /roms/GB
• Saves – /savefiles/GB

Remember to read the documentation included in the download archive before installing the program.

Download: RINWii Remake Beta 2

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US VC and WiiWare update: Toki Tori, Protothea, Ninja Combat

Heads up, Wii gamers! It’s that time of the week once again to have your choice from an all new batch of games from WiiWare and the Virtual Console. Three new games are available this week for North America, including the long-awaited Toki Tori.

First up is, of course, Toki Tori. We’ve been expecting this for a while now. When news of it first came out, the release date for the game was on May 12. We don’t know what caused the delay, but we’re just glad that the game is finally here.

If you’re not familiar with the game, Toki Tori is a puzzle/platform game that was originally released on the Game Boy Color. In the game, players use a variety of tools to collect eggs, which are Toki Tori’s siblings. The game is worth 1,000 Wii Points.

The next game available on WiiWare is Protothea, worth 1,000 Wii Points. Protothea is a shooter game set in space. You have to traverse four different worlds and 10 missions to destroy the asteroid Maqno 01.

This week on the Virtual Console is Ninja Combat, a side-scrolling action game. Join Joe and Hayabusa in a battle against the evil ninjas of Kage Ichizoku. If the names sound familiar, it’s because they should be – this is one of the early Ninja Gaiden games. Ninja Combat is worth 900 Wii Points.

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Could Earth Bound (Mother) have been rated?

First off, let me explain some EarthBound lingo:
The series is called Mother in Japan. The Mother 1 in America was developed under the name Earth Bound (with a space). It was ultimately never marketed, but Nintendo auctioned off three prototype cartridges.
Later, Mother 2 was released as Earthbound in America. It did not sell well, [...]

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Protothea – first impressions

Protothea’s about as old-school as they get. It’s a space-set shooter which scrolls v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y across a set of fairly dull planets as you blast genero-enemies with your spaceship. But what’s your motivation? No idea. You’re not given any, but merely dumped into the action without so much as a mission briefing.
There’s a certain amount of inertia [...]

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Mario Kart Wii : info and video of newly-released DLC

Nintendo has released new downloadable content for their cute racing game, Mario Kart Wii. Taking some inspiration from another title in the Mario series, Super Mario Galaxy, the downloadable content they’ve put up has players fighting in the Galaxy Arena.

The Galaxy Arena is a circular, barrier-less ring set in outer space that carries some very straightforward gameplay objectives. In the Galaxy Arena DLC, you’ve got to push out Spiky Topmen as quickly as possible. Four of them, to be exact.

This downloadable stage is part of a new tournament , which means it’s only accessible in tournament mode. It’s some fun content, to be sure, though it’s a shame that it couldn’t be implemented in multiplayer. Still, when it comes to Mario Karting, we’ll take what we can get. In the meantime, feel free to check out a YouTube video we found of the tournament in action. Enjoy!