Wii Gaming News

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For us hardcore gamers — who are wont to hold Castlevania: Symphony of the Night in almost legendary esteem — it might be kinda galling to see that classic title transmogrified into a puzzle game, let alone one for the iPhone. But, come on, don’t be a closed-minded douche. Castlevania Puzzle: Encore of the Night is an innovative, entertaining, and actually pretty dang faithful gloss on one of the best of the best.

In terms of story, characters, and setting, EotN is essentially identical to its console granddaddy. Alucard, Dracula’s half-human son goes into his father’s castle to pursue vampire hunter Richter Belmont who seems to have been possessed by the spirit of evil and? okay, whatever. Suffice it to say that if you’re familiar with the original’s story, you’ll experience plenty of nostalgia playing through this game. And if you aren’t, you’ll be just as confused as the rest of us, so have no fear. Whatever you’ve played before, you’ll be playing EotN for a while, because ? like SotN ? it requires a lot of backtracking and teleporting around.

The Wii, PSP and Nintendo DS have dominated the charts for another week in Japan. Nintendo’s Wii Party returned to the #1 spot according to the Media Create rankings ending July 25, displacing the recently released Fire Emblem remake (via Gamasutra).

Wii Party was announced in May, and launched in Japan earlier this month. The gameplay is similar to that of a boardgame, with Miis serving as game pieces. It sold 230,000 units when it launched, and will be arriving in North America this fall.

The other games to make the cut are all mainstays on the Japanese Top 10, with the only newcomers being the dungeon crawler Fate/Extra and the curiously named Katekyoo Hitman Reborn! DS Flame Rumble XX – Kessen! Shin 6 Chouka. Super Mario Galaxy 2 is one notable game that has return to the Top 10 after dropping to #11 last week.

A friend of mine introduced me to the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels four or five years ago, way before anyone had ever really heard of them, and certainly before there was talk of a major motion picture adaptation. I mention this fact not for any sort of indier-than-thou street cred but rather to make it clear that when I read the first volume, I had no idea what to expect. I certainly didn’t expect a comic that didn’t just drop liberal, casual references to cult classic Nintendo 8-bit games but actually made them integral to its story. But there it was: A comic tale of love and relationships whose narrative owed as much to River City Ransom as to Marvel Romance.

Now that the comic is being made into a movie, it’s fitting and appropriate that the resulting videogame tie-in also draws obvious inspiration from River City Ransom as well. Honestly, anything else would have been missing the point. But this? This seems like an absolutely perfect way to bring the comic to life.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed executive producer and and writer Haden Blackman has resigned from LucasArts. Blackman announced that he is moving on after a 13 year career with the studio (via IGN).

In a statement, Blackman thanked LucasArts and said that he’s “really grateful for their ongoing support.”

“While the decision to leave LucasArts did not happen overnight or come easily, I really feel that now is the best time for me to move on and explore new creative challenges and I look forward to the next phase of my career,” he said.

With the beta testing phase having ended, Worms Reloaded now has a release date. The newest game in the franchise will be launching in August on the PC and Mac.

Worms Reloaded marks the franchise’s first 2D appearance on the PC since 2001, when Worms World Party was released. More recent Worms games have been developed for consoles and downloadable services like Xbox Live Arcade.

Worms Reloaded is based on Worms 2 Armageddon, which was originally released for the Xbox 360, but is being billed as an “extended edition.” It’s currently available for pre-order on Steam.

Following Nintendo’s disappointing financial results, Capcom have also reported “sluggish” results, with a 90% decrease in profit down from the same time last year — though the company still managed a profit; admittedly a mere 213 million yen, or roughly 2.4 million dollars.

As with Nintendo, Capcom blamed an unfavourable exchange rate, particularly as a result of “US and European markets shrinking under the stagnating economy.” However, the poor results may have some wide-ranging results for Capcom’s future release schedule. The company recently announced that they intend to increase the output of releases in their most popular franchises, and their financial report squarely places the “drastic decline” in profitability on the “increase of new flagship titles release from the same term of the previous year, when most sales were made of repeat titles.” This “resulted in higher game development costs.”

Get Lamp, The latest documentary from Jason Scott, known for his BBS: The Documentary mini-series (or, perhaps, his cat, the most-followed animal on Twitter) is now available on DVD direct from the Get Lamp website.

Featuring over four hours of footage (including bonus features) the documentary comes in a two disc special edition. The film covers the history of the text adventure form, and is composed from over eighty interviews with text adventure luminaries such as Steven Meretzky, Dave Lebling and Brian Moriarty.

A car accident claimed the life of professional Counter-Strike player Antonio “cyx” Daniloski yesterday.

According to a statement released by his team, mousesports, 19-year-old Daniloski was on his way home from the Frankfurt airport when a flat tire caused a fatal car accident.

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