The famed RPG series goes handheld in a surprise announcement.

Square-Enix held a press conference today in Japan to discuss the future of their twenty year old Dragon Quest franchise. Subtitled "Hoshizora no Mamori Hito," which translates to "One Who Protects the Starry Sky," the game was speculated to be released on PlayStation 3 or Nintendo Wii. It turns out that the next Dragon Quest game, number nine in the main series, is under development for Nintendo DS.

Nintendo of Europe provides a free Flash platformer to promote their products.

Mission in Snowdriftland is a Flash-based platformer starring a snowman named Chubby Snow made available thanks to Nintendo of Europe. A Nintendo-sponsored game on a non-Nintendo platform is a nice surprise. Developed by German media company Extra Toxic, the game includes 24 full levels. Levels are selected from an Advent calendar, with one new level made available each day from Dec 1st to 24th.

NOE reveals their Virtual Console release schedule for the rest of the year.

Nintendo of Europe has announced their Virtual Console release schedule for the rest of the year. Besides the fifteen previously announced games, two SNES games and three TurboGrafx games have been newly revealed. Europeans can expect six to eight games each week.

The pair of new SNES games... Read more...

Gunstar Heroes, Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, and Alien Crush confirmed so far. Update: You can add Ice Hockey for NES to that list.

Update: Nintendo has also added Ice Hockey for NES to this week's new releases.

Both Sega and Hudson have spilled the mean beans about their contributions to tomorrow's Virtual Console update. Hudson's website lists just Alien Crush so far, but Sega's Virtual Console page not only lists Gunstar Heroes and Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine as tomorrow's releases, but also details their Virtual Console schedule through the end of the year:

The first wrestling game for Wii is based on the Spike TV show.

A Midway PR Rep confirmed to us today that TNA iMPACT, a wrestling game based on the TNA Wrestling show on Spike TV, will be coming to all next-gen consoles, including Wii. A trailer for the game will be featured at SpikeTV's upcoming Video Game Awards show, aired Wednesday, December 13th, although this trailer will most likely not focus on the Wii version. It will be available for viewing on Thursday night at http://www.tnawrestling.com.

Stars can be gained by registering Nintendo products online and purchasing a Wii.

Eurogamer reported yesterday that European Wii players will be able to use Stars to redeem Wii Points for Virtual Console use. Stars are points that accumulate on a Nintendo-Europe.com account when a player purchases Nintendo products and registers them online. EuroGamer says that Stars even come with your purchase of a Wii, and can be gained by purchasing Virtual Console games and taking a short survey.

It's time! Find out what happened at the Nintendo sponsored midnight launch in London early this morning.

I've been writing for what used to be PGC since before the GameCube was launched. That time around I saw all of the pre-release material but didn't actually make it to the launch. That made this Wii launch my first, so it was exciting to go to cover the event even though I won't be buying one yet, mainly due to time constraints in the coming year.

Wii sells "nearly" half-a-million; DS "almost" a million. New Zelda game sells to "nearly" 9 in 10 Wii buyers. CORRECTED.

UPDATE: The following day, Nintendo corrected this press release by deleting one sentence. We have struck through it but left in the text so you can compare the original and corrected versions.

Wii-MARKABLE! November Sales Show Nintendo Hardware Systems Outsell All Others Combined

REDMOND,... Read more...

A magazine advertisement reveals the official title for the game and announces that it will be playable at Jump Festa 2007.

While we have known that a Crystal Chronicles game for DS has existed for quite a while, there has been very limited information revealed about the title. That will all change next weekend at Jump Festa 2007 in Tokyo, December 16-17.

The Game|Life blog over at Wired has a scan of a magazine... Read more...

Publisher of game Lifesigns: Hospital Affairs announces focus on casual gamers.

In a notice sent to press today, Austrian game publisher Jowood Productions revealed that previously announced DS game Lifesigns: Hospital Affairs would be a flagship title for its new "G-Stars" casual gaming line. The publisher has created the G-Stars brand as a way of reaching out to female and family-oriented audiences. Their method is to release games in three categories: fun, action, and sports.

Get them while they're hot, and available! UPDATE: The masses have swarmed and the cables are now backordered.

All over the country, people have been trying to get their hands on component cables for their brand spanking new Wiis. Nintendo's online store has them in occasionally, but they're typically backordered. For those of you still looking, Mad Catz is now selling their own Wii component cables via their online store. They are retailing for $19.99. Shipping will set you back $7.50.

December 23rd, at least in Sweden.

Nintendo.se, the official Nintendo website of Sweden, posted a short announcement today stating that the Wii Internet Channel will go live on December 23rd. The Internet Channel is powered by the Opera web browser and will be available for download from the Wii Shop Channel (free until June 2007).

Now up to 16 games for Europe and 11 for Australia and New Zealand.

With just a day before the Wii launches in Australia, and two days before Europe's, the Wii Shop has been updated again with a wider selection of titles.

Adding to the initial NES selection of Donkey Kong, Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, and Wario's Woods, four Sega Mega Drive, two Super Nintendo,... Read more...

There is no joy in Rossville.

We all thought it was an April Fools' joke when Bob Ross Inc. and developer AGFRAG announced that a Wii and DS game based on the late Bob Ross's The Joy of Painting public television show. It turned out not to be, and there was much rejoicing.

The status of the game has taken a turn for the worse, though. Developer AGFRAG has posted a notice on their website stating the following:

Feature accessed via passwords and in no way involves WiiConnect24.

BECOME THE WORLD'S GREATEST CARROT JUICE SPLASHER

Ubisoft launches Rayman Raving Rabbids(TM) Hall of Fame feature on raymanzone.com

SAN FRANCISCO – December 5, 2006 – Today Ubisoft, one of the world's largest video game publishers announced the launch of the Rayman Raving Rabbids(TM)... Read more...

You know you're in a good position if people think your biggest competition is your own product.

The Reuters news service recently interviewed Nintendo Co. President Satoru Iwata, who said that there is "an emerging possibility" that Nintendo will exceed their DS sales forecast of 20 million units by the time their fiscal year ends in March. (Nintendo had previously raised the figure from 17... Read more...

It should come as no surprise that the Japanese love the Wii...but damn.

Everyone expected the Wii to take Japan by storm as much as the Nintendo DS has, and if the first sales figures are any indication, Nintendo is well on their way to installing their white boxes of fun in every Japanese household.

Japanese magazine Famitsu calculates that in the first two days... Read more...

Through the magic of Bluetooth you can use your Wii remote as a PC game controller.

Thanks in part to information provided by WiiLi researchers, clever programmer Carl Kenner has begun incorporating the Wii Remote into his input emulator software, GlovePIE. Since the Wii remote and console uses Bluetooth to communicate, the Wii remote is also able to pair up with other Bluetooth devices…such as a Bluetooth adapter running on Windows XP.

Though game sales are still strong, declining review scores could be a sign that EA needs to shape up.

Electronic Arts gets a lot of flak for releasing the "same old game" every year. While that's not completely true, critics have said that EA could be doing a lot more with innovation and bringing new IPs to the table. Whether or not the publisher has listened to these outcries is up for debate, but now that someone that can affect EA's bottom line—a financial analyst—has spoken out, there might be changes on the horizon.

Even more games are in the pipeline for Japan.

Nintendo has posted their Virtual Console release list for December. Besides the 38 launch games, new games will be made available every Tuesday (or Wednesday for PC Engine titles). 12 more games are scheduled for December. The full list follows below.

In addition, Nintendo and Hudson are... Read more...