These are some new images of the game Guitar Hero World Tour for Nintendo Wii featuring and exclusive Game Mode with Miis

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More About: Guitar Hero World Tour, Miis

New Wii Channel Check Mii Out

Allows people to put Miis up and have people vote on their favorites. also with conterst, promotions

More About: Wii Channel, Check Mii Out

This is an excerpt from the Preview of the Nintendo Wii game Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree by AMN

Then there’s the WiiConnect24 action. Wii Degree tracks players’ brain data in a student record book. Link up with a Wii Degree-playing friend to exchange these books, allowing players to compare scores and compete against a simulated “brain” based on others’ data. The popular Miis even play a role, as Miis from other players arrive with their record books and appear in the background of various challenges. Updated records will need to be transfered frequently for maximum efficiency, as the process is not automatic.

On the whole, Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree looks to be another intriguing brain game packed with rapid fire mini-game challenges. AMN will have more on the title when it hits stores in mid-June.

Full Preview

More About: Preview, Nintendo, Wii, Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree

Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree updated fact sheet:

Big Brain Academy™: Wii Degree
Format: Wii™
Launch Date: 06/11/07
ESRB: E (Everyone)
Game Type: Brain Training
Players: 1-8
Developer: Nintendo
Game Information

KEY INFORMATION

* The Wii sequel to Big Brain Academy™ for Nintendo DS™ includes three multiplayer modes for up to eight players. Players also can exchange student-record books with other players over WiiConnect24™ and compete against their save data.

* With 15 new activities that challenge the brain in single-player Test and Practice modes, Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree sees how players measure up in five categories: Identify, Memorize, Analyze, Compute and Visualize.

* All activities are designed around the Wii Remote’s pointer. Players can play solo with one Wii Remote™, or pass it around like a relay baton in group competitions.

Sample activities: The activities in Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree are fun minigames with a ton of variety, and they’re meant to be played rapid-fire for a short time as players push their brains to do more than they did the day before. Here are three of the activities included in the game:

* Art Parts: In this Visualize activity, players must complete the sample painting by stamping the missing pieces onto an unfinished scene. When it becomes more difficult, Art Parts flips the unfinished scene sideways or flips it upside-down.

* Balloon Burst: In this Compute activity, players must pop balloons in rising numerical order. At its easiest, there are few balloons shown at once. On a higher difficulty level, Balloon Burst sends in more balloons, including some with negative numbers.

* Fast Focus: In this Identify activity, players see a distorted image that slowly returns to normal. Players must select what it is as soon as they figure it out. As it grows more difficult, Fast Focus starts with a more heavily distorted image, so it takes longer to identify what it is.

How to progress through the game: When players start a new game, they’ll meet the whimsical Dr. Lobe, who will suggest that they take on the Test mode challenge: playing all 15 activities that span the five brainy categories. He’ll tell players how big their brain is based on how well they did and how fast they did it. He’ll encourage players to take the Test often and to use Practice mode to beef up their skills in all 15 of the activities. Practice mode also offers three difficulty levels for each activity, and Dr. Lobe will award several medals for high achievement in each one.

Special powers/weapons/moves/features:
Multiplayer: Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree offers three ways for groups to play:

* Mental Marathon: Speed through activities to buy more time to stay in the game. Go it solo or as a team, but if anyone botches an activity, the game is done (1-8 players, one Wii Remote).

* Mind Sprint: Form a team to compete against a system-controlled competitor that “thinks” like a selected student record (1-4 players with one Wii Remote). Or separate into two teams (2-8 players with two Wii Remotes). The first side to complete a set number of problems wins.

* Brain Quiz: Play game-show style with up to four teams that compete in a total of 20 activities, since five extra activities are available in this mode. (1-8 players, one Wii Remote)

Mii compatibility: Everyone who enrolls in the academy will choose a Mii™, which will walk down the school’s hallway and pop up during Wii Remote handoffs to help explain which teammate goes next in multiplayer matches.

Wii Remote audio: Players will get encouragement and hear color commentary from a “Wii Remote Coach” who speaks to the player through the Wii Remote speakers.

WiiConnect24: In Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree, players can send and receive student-record books full of brainy data. By establishing WiiConnect24 ties with Wii Friends who own the game, players can all see their academies affected in several fun ways:

* Compare distant students’ test scores with those of the local student body on the Student Scores board. Distant students’ records are shown as books.

* Compete against distant students’ brains in Mind Sprint. Players actually play against game-controlled competitors that “think” based on brainy strengths and weaknesses in their student records.

* The distant player’s “Mii student” will walk the hallways with the player’s own student body. Players can make WiiConnect24 connections with many students, adding many Miis to their crowd.

Players are encouraged to send and receive each others’ records frequently, so that their academies have up-to-date results for competition and comparison. In this way, individual academies can join a personal network of schools and push each other to develop their brains further.

More About: Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree, Wii

The Japanese webpage for Wii’s “Big Brain Academy,” called Yawaraka Atama Jyuku, or “Soft Brain Cram-School” in Japan, has a section highlighting the game’s online features. The online component of the game allows you to compare your game grades with those of all your Wii friends, as well as race towards better scores. Big Brain will also be taking advantage of your system’s Miis to use as custom avitars in the game. Think these add-ons will make the game as popular as its DS counterpart? How about More so?Source

Shigeru Miyamoto said that he was working on a new Wii channel. Apparently, the new channel will allow users to compare their Miis with others around the world and hold popularity contests to see which Miis are the favorites.

Source 

More About: Wii channel

Wii Play press release

Less than 12 weeks ago, people around the world first picked up a Wii Remote™ and realized Nintendo is changing video games forever.

The realistic game play of Wii Sports™ turned parents and grandparents into gamers, and launched a new Wii-based party and fitness craze. Today Nintendo builds on the momentum with the arrival of Wii Play™, a collection of nine new games in the Wii Sports style that lets players fish, play pool or shoot targets with the motion-sensitive Wii Remote. Wii Play joins Wii Sports as the party-game centerpiece at family get-togethers and grown-up game nights. To emphasize the multiplayer nature of the game, Wii Play comes packaged with a Wii Remote. The combo could also be a great way to show your valentine how much you’d like to play together!

Wii Play includes games like Fishing, which uses the Wii Remote like a fishing rod; Billiards, which uses the Wii Remote as a pool cue; and Shooting Range, a target practice game played in the style of the classic Duck Hunt® game from the Nintendo Entertainment System®. Other games include Table Tennis (use paddles to rally for points), Charge! (control a charging cow), Tanks! (a tank battle) and Laser Hockey (use the Wii Remote as an air hockey paddle). Two games make extensive use of players’ Mii™ caricatures. Pose Mii asks players to orient their Miis in a variety of different positions to match silhouettes, while Find Mii requires them to locate specific Miis within an ever-growing crowd.

“Wii Play builds on the types of games and experiences people have come to love in Wii Sports,” says George Harrison, Nintendo of America’s senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications. “Millions of people around the world are recognizing Wii as the future of gaming. We are changing how people play games, who plays and how many play.”

All the games in Wii Play are easy to learn and difficult to put down. Veterans and newcomers alike will discover fun and entertaining challenges that will have friends and family competing for hours on end. Core gamers can invite their non-gaming friends and relatives to give Wii Play a try, thereby bridging the gap between the two groups and expanding the world of video games to new audiences.

Wii software typically retails around $50, while the MSRP for Wii Remotes is $39.99. Wii Play, which comes packaged with a Wii Remote controller, is available at an MSRP of just $49.99. Wii Play, Rated E for Everyone, is available now. For more information about Wii Play, visit Wii.Nintendo.com.

Source: Nintendo press release

Official press release - Everybody Votes channel

A brand new channel launches today for the Wii Menu providing a quick, easy and fun way to cast your answers to a multitude of different questions. The Everybody Votes Channel allows you to compare and contrast your opinions with those of friends, family and people from across the globe. With a regularly updated supply of new questions to ponder, this is a great way to discover not only differences between you and your family, but also between your country and others!

?If you have ever wondered whether many other people share the same opinions, preferences, likes or dislikes as you, then the Everybody Votes Channel is a quick and easy way to quell those curiosities? says Laurent Fischer, Marketing Director, Nintendo of Europe. ?From whether people believe in aliens to what they would do if they had 1 million Euros, this quirky but addictive channel lets you find out what others think as well as being a great discussion starter with family and friends!?

Cast Your Vote

This latest addition to the Wii Menu features different general poll questions for users to answer. Three questions will always be offered. These will then closed after a week and updated with new ones. When accessing the main page of the Everybody Votes Channel, users will be greeted with the current polls open and can then register their votes by clicking on their chosen one.

Within hours of the poll closing, the latest regional results of the poll will be made available and will be displayed for each region of the relevant country. Vote ratios for each question will be displayed on the Channel using hundreds of Miis to represent the different votes.

The previous twelve polls that a player has voted on are archived so they can check back on them after they have closed. Each time a new poll closes, if the user has voted on it, it is added to the archive and the oldest one on there is deleted.

In addition to casting a vote, users can also predict the outcome of the poll. Every correct prediction will be added to the player’s profile and used to calculate how tuned in they are with general public opinion, which is shown in the ?How Tuned In Are You? ? section.

Fun For the Entire Family

Users are able to register a total of six different players on each Wii console using Mii data and names from the Mii Channel, meaning that each member of the household can have their own say on a poll. The Everybody Votes Channel records all of the votes cast by a player and allows them to check their opinions against those of their family using vote results as well as their ?How Tuned In Are You?? results. This allows users to compare numbers of consecutive wins and overall wins versus losses recorded.

Worldwide Polls

As well as providing three different sets of general poll questions each week, the ‘Everybody Votes Channel’ also features worldwide poll questions. These are set twice a month and run for approximately two weeks, with live result updates appearing just hours after the vote closes.

Miis illustrate the global vote ratio and a bar graph shows the results for each different country globally. Players can sort these results by vote percentage, country or in order of prediction accuracy.

Have Your Say

An additional feature of this channel is the ?Suggest a Question? section, which allows players to suggest a poll topic they would like to see on the service. Each player is allowed to make up to one suggestion a day, the best of which may be converted into a poll question by Nintendo.

Everybody Votes Channel is the latest addition to the Wii Menu and can be downloaded for free from the Wii Shop Channel. The Wii Menu is the starting point for all of the console’s functions and offers a gateway to a rich variety of entertainment options. When connected to a TV, the Wii Menu offers a simple interface letting users pick games to play, receive news and weather reports, view and send photos or even create playable caricatures of themselves to use in actual games. Additional functions allow users to download classic games to Wii’s Virtual Console.

Source: Nintendo press release email

This is an Excerpt of the Gamespy interview with Perrin Kaplan about the Wii Online

“I think you’re asking why we’re not following the other guys. And we feel that everyone has developed their own niche of expertise…We aren’t giving up on online games at all…massively multiplayer online gaming is probably not a direction that Nintendo will be going. I think that’s a niche area that other companies have more expertise in.”

“…worldwide online play is a priority for Nintendo and you will see it…I think if we had just taken the whole package, here are all the channels, here are all the online games, here are the Miis, the news, the weather, I just think it would have overloaded the mass consumer. So instead we began rolling everything out in a fashion where people can really understand it.”

“We expect for third-party games to get better and better, just like they are for the Nintendo DS. Now that the developers have more experience with the system, they have the ability to create something truly original…(regarding Wii Browser) I know that if you download the trial version, the full version will be free. So your readers should definitely make sure to get the trial version…(regarding Smash Bros) I can tell you that you’ll absolutely love it. There are some neat surprises.”

Full Interview

More About: Wii Online

Wii Play™
Format: Wii™
Launch Date: 02/14/07
ESRB: E (Everyone): Mild Cartoon Violence
Game Type: Minigame Collection – package includes Wii Remote™
Players: 1-2
Developer: Nintendo (more…)