Arguably one of the biggest announcements at Nintendo’s media briefing, Animal Crossing: City Folk will be heading to the Wii November 16th. Two special features which have not been asked about (if they are in the game) are DLC and DS to Wii connectivity. Fortunately, Katsuya Eguchi confirmed (and discussed) that both functions will be available in the game.
“Addressing the connectivity between the DS and the Wii, if you have Animal Crossing on DS, we’re assuming you spent lots of time with that character and might be attached to him – his name, outfits, look – so you’ll be able to load that character into the Wii version and use that same character as you did in the DS game. Another thing we can do is use the DS as a means to help people who maybe don’t have Wi-Fi. We’ve talked about Wi-Fi and how neat it is to travel from town to town and interact with friends, but if you don’t have an internet connection you can take your character data and send it to your DS, bring your DS to a friend’s house, and upload your character to play around in his town and interact in the same way you would if you had a direct connection t them in Wi-Fi. The third thing we’ve done is add the ability to download new content as they become available online – which will help expand the universe with new furniture and things like that. Now if you don’t have Wi-Fi, you can take your DS to – at this point it’s still being determined exactly how – but an out of house destination where you can download the new content, and then bring it back to your home town and upload it. That way everyone can stay connected to the Animal Crossing world. When you take your character data over via the DS, you’re not using the DS to do any of the controlling. You can use that mode to explore the other player’s town independently, but you can’t play at the same time. To do that, you’ll need to connect via Wi-Fi and run around with one, or two, or three of your friends as we showed earlier.”
E3 trudges on with more conferences and information. The latest from Konami’s press conference includes a vague Castlevania Judgement release date. Koji Igarashi confirmed that the game will be releasing in Fall 2008. Furthermore, he provided the information that 14 playable characters will be available and a brief synopsis of the game’s “storyline.” Castlevania Judgement spans 1000s of years; Dracula is fighting the “forces of good” and one particular character is attempting to destroy the timeline. As a result of magical forces, numerous characters from the series are brought together. Lastly, expect subweapons, classic moves, typical environmental objects to use to your advantage, NPCs that can change the outcome of battles, and powerful moves that require timing.
Dragon Quest V (NDS, Square Enix): 9 / 9 / 9 / 9 – (36/40)
Hello Kitty no Panda Sport Stadium (NDS, Dorart): 6 / 7 / 7 / 6 – (26/40)
Speed Racer (NDS, Activision): 5 / 7 / 6 / 6 – (24/40)
New International Hyper Sports DS (NDS, Konami): 6 / 7 / 5 / 7 – (25/40)
Kuwagata Tsumami: Kuttsuke! Tsumami Hako (NDS, Success): 6 / 6 / 6 / 6 – (24/40)
Touch de Taikyaku! Yawaraka Sensha (NDS, Success): 7 / 8 / 7 / 7 – (29/40)
Kung Fu Panda (Wii, Activision): 6 / 7 / 6 / 6 – (25/40)
Kung Fu Panda (Wii, Activision): 7 / 7 / 7 / 7 – (28/40)
Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu 15 (Wii/PS2, Konami): 9 / 9 / 8 / 9 – (35/40)
Wario Land Shake (Wii, Nintendo): 8 / 8 / 7 / 8 – (31/40)
Mesaze! Tsuri Master: Sekai ni Challenge! Hen (Wii, Hudson): 7 / 7 / 7 / 5 – (26/40)
Siren (PS3, Sony): 9 / 9 / 9 / 9 – (36/40)
Bully (PS2, Rockstar): 8 / 8 / 8 / 8 – (32/40)
Bully (Xbox 360, Rockstar): 8 / 9 / 8 / 8 – (33/40)
Activision
* Call of Duty 5
* Guitar Hero World Tour
* Madagascar Escape 2 Africa
* Quantum of Solace: The Game
* Spider-Man®: Web of Shadows
Agetec
* LOL™
* Touch Darts
American Game Factory
* Bratz Kidz™ – Slumber Party
* Bratz Ponyz™ 2
* Build-A-Bear Workshop A Friend Fur All Seasons
* Rubik’s World
* Zenses™ – Ocean Edition and Zenses™ – Rainforest Edition
Capcom’s E3 conference was a bust of sorts, but here’s some great news: Dead Rising will be coming to the Wii. In spite of Christian Svensson’s comments on the game moving to other platforms, Famitsu confirmed in its latest issue that the break-out hit which landed on the Xbox 360 will be coming to the Wii. Is as the case with nearly all Wii ports, the game will feature waggle attack controls. Capcom is trying to replicate the graphics as close to the 360 as they can, too. No release date has been set at this time.
Pikmin Wii
“There isn’t anything that we can announce right now, but I’m sure we’ll probably do something with it. The Pikmin team is, of course, still there and maybe we’ll have something to talk about before too long.”
Mario DS
“That team is also working hard. The thing that’s difficult is that, as you know, the way we handle our announcement is we work on product and once the product is at a state where we feel it’s ready to show to people, then that’s when we’re willing to talk about it. Which is why it’s difficult for me to talk about different projects in interviews. I have a lot of different teams and those teams are all at different points in their experiments or development, so it’s typically once they’ve finalized something that we’re able to talk about it. But for me to go into too much detail would be a little bit irresponsible in an interview. All that I can say is that that team is also working. Maybe the best thing for you to understand is that all of the leaders of those teams — of the Mario team, of the Zelda team and of the Pikmin team — all sit within 150 feet of my desk. The Galaxy team is the only one that’s farther away — they’re in Tokyo. But I do have video conferencing with them.”
Responding to a question asking for a Super Mario Galaxy sequel…
“Leave it to me.”
The father of Zelda, Shigeru Miyamoto already spoke on a number of key issues surrounding the Wii and its games. Just recently, however, Miyamoto continued to answer questions and elaborated on Satoru Iwata’s comment this morning in which it was explained that the Zelda team is “hard at work.” Said Miyamoto, “The Zelda team in particular always works on Zelda titles. The core members of the Zelda team have for a very long time now been focused on Zelda games, and continue to focus on Zelda games, so they are hard at work and working away. And then, of course, we have the DS Zelda team as well, so even there we’re having some switching of people in and out where the DS team is mixing in with the Wii team and working on the Wii version. I don’t necessarily think it will change that drastically, but I think that Zelda is a franchise that does need some big new unique ideas,” he said. “And so the team right now is very focused on trying to find those ideas.”
