Soul Bubbles (DS) – 7/7/7/7
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (DS) – 6/6/4/6
Mame Goma (DS) – 8/6/6/7
Pro Yakyuu Spirits 6 (PS3) – 10/9/9/9
Pro Yakyuu Spirits 6 (PS2) – 9/8/8/8

Update: Details below

Famitsu has the first scans for and information for yet another Wii horror title. You may remember that there were some leaked videos released a number of months ago for The Calling, a game that was rumored to be developed by Hudson. Now the game has finally resurfaced. While we wait for more details, scans can be seen below.

– Horror (survival) game
– uses a phone in the game, you can receive text message, record audio and video
– 70% complete
– mystery girl, mystery old man and high school girls trio

“In the wake of this year’s fantastic E3, we’ll take a closer look at some of the big Wii and DS titles slated for the rest of 2009. That includes an in-depth investigation of the long-awaited Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box. We’ll also review Wii Sports Resort and maybe even unveil a couple of cool surprises. Not every cat was let out of the bag at E3…”

Nintendo Power has been absolutely great with unveiling new games over the past few months. We don’t have much to go on, but does anyone want to start guessing which game(s) they’ll feature next month?

Party with Starfy at a Nintendo World Store Event for The Legendary Starfy Video Game for Nintendo DS

–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Nintendo:

WHAT:
Already beloved by gaming fans around the world, the charming and powerful Starfy will celebrate the launch of his first game in the United States, The Legendary Starfy for Nintendo DS, at a unique retail event inside New York’s Nintendo World store. Making his debut appearance at the Nintendo World store, Starfy himself will be available for photo opportunities with fans of all ages in a special underwater-themed area. The July 11 celebration will also feature face painting and chance for attendees to play The Legendary Starfy and win fun Starfy prizes.

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Upending tea tables and kidnapping employees are just some of the actions that Shigeru Miyamoto has been known for during development cycles. Even with that in mind, however, one might be surprised as to how Miyamoto interacts with other members of a team. Check out this blurb below, which discusses development of Wii Sports Resort:

Iwata: Okay, while taking that into account, could you tell me what the harshest thing was that Miyamoto-san said to you?

Shimamura: The harshest thing was…

Iwata: Given that he makes no allowances for planners…

Shimamura:
It came as quite a shock when he said “Make another mode!” He would also constantly tell us things like: “You can’t do this!” He’d say things like: “If you carry on like this, we’re never going to get this finished!” He would always be kind enough to give us this kind of “advice”.

All: (laughter)

Iwata: I see – “advice”. (laughs) How about you, Yamashita-san?

Yamashita: I worked on a cycling race about which Miyamoto-san said: “This is incredibly dull!”

Iwata: He doesn’t pull any punches, does he? (laughs)

Yamashita:
He said: “What’s fun about this?” I had no choice but to respond by saying “Ah, okay. I see…” but actually it was really harsh.

Iwata: Calling something “incredibly dull” is indeed harsh. There’s nothing positive you can take away from that.

I don’t think he’s really a bully or anything, but it is interesting to see that he would call someone else’s work “incredibly dull.” But hey, it’s Miyamoto! I think that in these instances, he is striving to create a quality game, which is evident in the snippet below.

Shimamura: Anyway, as H-san was overseeing archery, he was incredibly good at it. Normally he would have no problem in hitting the bulls-eye time after time.

Yamashita: But during the progress report meeting, when he was demonstrating archery, he was shaking really badly.

Shimamura: If you looked at the screen, you could see that he wasn’t able to hold it steady at all. I’d never seen anyone shaking so bad before when playing the game so I said: “You’re shaking!” He replied: ”It’s nerves!” (laughs)

All: (laughter)

Yamashita: Then after having it pointed it out to him, the shaking got even worse.

Shimamura: The arrows were flying all over the place. I wonder if the Wii MotionPlus is the world’s first device that’s able to detect whether someone is nervous.

Iwata: (laughs) So did he get through that nerve-wracking presentation without Miyamoto-san giving him the thumbs down?

Shimamura: On that occasion…

Yamashita: As you might be able to guess, Miyamoto-san did indeed give him the thumbs down!

All: (laughter)

Yamashita: But following that, it improved greatly.

Source 1, Source 2

Even though Red Steel 2 is considerably different than its predecessor, the development team that created the first title is comprised of many members who worked on the original title. Creative director Jason Vandenberghe spoke about this with the press last week, in addition to the fact there was a goal in mind to make Red Steel 2 “really killer, really awesome.”

“The game has actually been worked on in one way or another pretty much since the end of Red Steel 1. The core team for Red Steel 2 is made up of largely the same people that did Red Steel 1. So there’s a lot of continuity there.

There was a lot of work being done in terms of research [and] about gameplay. What are we going to do? How can we make it great? The team wanted to make the next one really killer, really awesome. So we spent a lot of time really looking at the core mechanics, looking at the technologies, rebuilding that from the ground up. Making sure we can get the absolute most we could out of the Wii. There was a lot of questions amongst the team about can we really make this work with the basic Wiimote.

We tried a lot of things and certainly we got a long way. But when the Wii MotionPlus showed up, it was like “Oh okay. Well, [laughs] this is how this game should work!” was pretty much our response. When we plugged it in and tried that, wham! What happened is that [Red Steel 2] went from a shooter with a sword in it, to a sword game with guns in it. We really shifted the focus and that let us sort of go down and take our setting apart and look at it again. We created this new hero from the inside out based on that gameplay.”

Source