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A15

Nelson Hum

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After rampant demands, flaming effigies, and severed Yoshi heads in executives' beds, Nintendo has finally revealed their solution to the pesky "OMG, I'm out of memory" problem that's been plaguing Wii owners since the virtual console and WiiWare opened their virtual doors. The company will be releasing a software update next spring that'll allow players to download and open games directly from an SD Card. According to Nostradamus, this will be the first time anyone will have used that slot for any practical purpose (come look at my vacation photos on the Wii!) This is great news for Wii owners, who long-suffered the problem of having too much stuff to play, but nowhere to put it (I can't wait for the impending memory card war between dedicated Wii gamers and snap-happy photogs.)

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It's not the best solution as you may have to buy multiple cards if you're a dedicated downloader (no word on how large a card it can take) but it sure beats the moral dilemma of deciding whether you're going to have to nuke Super Mario World off your hard drive in order to play SimCity. Another bonus: Rock Band 2 players will now know how they're going to store all of their downloadable songs. I was afraid some egghead was going to off himself when a Boston song pack would cause his jury-rigged Wii hard drive to explode into a ball of flame.

Still, the fact that a storage problem existed in the first place still has me wagging my finger at the Mario Money Machine. As much as a salvation this may be for memory-starved gamers, the fact is you need to invest more money into Wii to even make it memory-comparable to the other systems. Wow"¦that low initial pricetag of the Wii was quite the penny-saver wasn't it? Nunchuck attachments, batteries, and now memory cards "" how come no one else is calling shenanigans on Nintendo? Couple that with their overall anemic lineup over the past year and the Wii is still the top system?

I don't have anything against Nintendo, but I'll call a spade a spade. However, things seem to be getting a bit brighter as we head into the holiday months. Nintendo recently announced the DSi, an upgraded version of the DS that features a 0.3 megapixel camera, a slightly bigger screen, music playback (off of an SD card), and some funky audio editing features. Players will also be able to download games off of the new DSi shop service. Street date should be sometime in the later half of 2009.

Also, in an announcement that tickled me fancy, a new Punch-Out game is on its way as well. The original Punch-Out was a gem and Super Punch-Out is a classic. It was great to see the return of Little Mac and the classic fight music! The game is done in a very bright, anime-type style. Hopefully it will control better than boxing on Wii Sports!

And finally, after many muffled cries and voodoo incantations, a mature game is finally heading over to the Wii. MadWorld, brought to you by the same reality-challenged maniacs that created Killer 7, is a violent action game with only three colours in its visual palette: black, white, and blood red. If you need a visual style to chew on, think Frank Miller's Sin City meets Gears of War. An action game where you play a rampaging killer with a chainsaw for an arm? Did the quality assurance department at Nintendo see this game?

In all seriousness, I'm just glad to see a mature action game on the Wii. They've been so focused on the kiddy market that they left normal people like me, who crave violence and bloodshed, a little cold. We have feelings too you know.

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