Results tagged “wii” from The Gameshelf
Do you remember the game Battletoads? It is one of the most difficult games I ever played in my life, and like Contra, you need a second player if you want to get through it without cheating or dying excessively.
The reason why I am mentioning it is because there has been a sudden explosion of rumors regarding a new Battletoads game for the Wii. The second I saw the YouTube trailer, I immediately suspected it was false. At first, I noticed that their fake trailer is simply composed of other Wii-related video clips and stolen 3D videos slapped together, with a announcer talking as if he was a monster truck derby. Also, they took clips from a Red Steel trailer, so a player is slashing the Wii remote like a sword, then they show a clip of one of the Battletoads jumping in the air. This makes no sense. They even mentioned that Battletoads would be on Virtual Console soon, which also made it seem more like a scam.
Battletoads was developed by Rare, who has left Nintendo, and is now making games for Microsoft! There was talk of having GoldenEye 007 on Virtual Console some time ago, however there are many legal rights between Microsoft owning Rare, Nintendo owning the game made by Rare, and Activision now owning the James Bond franchise itself. So in order for Nintendo to get GoldenEye 007 on Virtual Console, Microsoft, Rare, Nintendo and Activision must come to an agreement which they must all abide to. This is no different than if it was the Battletoads game, or even Banjo-Kazooie or Perfect Dark. They even made Perfect Dark Zero and currently working on a new Banjo-Kazooie game for Xbox 360 with no legal issues since Rare owns all the characters and they are both new games and not remakes or ports.
On the fake preorder website, there is a phone number that changes randomly every time it is refreshed. Each number is a Church of Scientology in multiple cities. The idea is that the unsuspecting person calls their church, and when they say "Thank you for calling the Church of Scientology", the person would say "Scientology? I thought this is the number for preordering Battletoads" Can Scientology still operate if they get all these calls about Battletoads? Yes they can! Scientology.org survived a wave of Denial of Service attacks and they'll survive this wave of annoying calls.
I decided to write about this because this actually brought back good memories of when I used to play Battletoads & Double Dragon on SNES. I loved the soundtrack and it was cool to have more players to choose in this one. The giant toad fist that finishes off an enemy is always entertaining and never gets boring. The beat-em-up style and weird punk-style characters made the game stand out very well in an already-crowded video game market.
In summary, I don't believe a single word until Nintendo or Rare makes a statement proving otherwise.
I remembered Mushroom Men since its first teaser trailer released in February 2007. They never really released any information other than the fact that it's a third-person action/adventure, it will be for the Wii and DS and it involves mushrooms.
The basic plot is that a green comet flew above Earth, raining green radioactive dust. While the radiation was rendered harmless to humans, nobody noticed the mushrooms and other plants gaining sentience and starting an all-out war! What caught my attention to this game was the first trailer. It didn't show any type of gameplay or cinematics. It was a high-resolution video with a kickass heavy metal riff in the background, showing very high-quality colorful artwork of backgrounds, houses, and the toughest mutant mushrooms I have ever seen in my life. The trailer proved that this game is in fact, an IP game: Intellectual Property. Red Fly Studio came up with this concept by themselves, it is original and not a rip-off of a franchise on TV or movies.
After a few months, they released another trailer, explaining the storyline a bit more, and showed some in-development gameplay videos. A nice feature is the ability to collect objects such as toothpicks, bolts, dental floss, razor blades and even corncob holders which can be combined together to create weapons to fight against enemies. For the DS version, they revealed that it would be a 2.5D sidescroller that will be a prequel to the Wii version.
What made me think about this game was the talk about Super Smash Bros. Melee being released next month. I thought about other good Wii games that are worth buying and I realized that I completely forgot about Mushroom Men. It's been so long since I've heard about anything else, because their website didn't reveal anything new. No videos, articles, or any information about the different types of mushrooms. I thought about Battalion Wars 2 for a moment, yet I like the idea of Mushroom Men better because it doesn't seem to have those thick over-exaggerated voices that Battalion Wars 2 has. Unfortunately, Mushroom Men doesn't seem like a game that will have any online play of any kind. I really wish that more games would make more use of Nintendo WiFi Connection, I still play Picross online and its always fun. There hasn't been any new puzzles released yet for Professor Layton either. I also suck at Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass online, so it's just an offline adventure for me.
I like Intellectual Property games. It's hard to describe what makes a game an IP title. When a developer creates a game, the publishers own the rights to the name, characters and plot; there are game publishers out there who will allow the developers to keep the rights to the game that they have made, meaning that they have full control over what they can do with their game, and if they work with another publisher, they still keep the rights to that game, and can basically do whatever they want with their title. The people who will publish Mushroom Men, Gamecock Media Group, have also published Dementium: The Ward for the DS, a scary game with lots of dark shadows and annoying regenerating monsters. It was described as "Doom meets Silent Hill".
Mushroom Men is scheduled to be released some time in 2008. The Wii really needs some good games that are original, and not based on any movie licenses or mini-games. The idea of combining small household items to build weapons, the deep storyline behind the botanical war, colorful visuals and different characters will make this game stand out, and looks like a war worth taking part in. There's a lot of stuff behind this game that haven't been revealed yet, with a lot of potential of becoming a fast-paced and extremely fun game. With the freedom that Gamecock Media Group has been known for, what Mushroom Men becomes is completely up to the developers, Red Fly Studio.
