This week, the long-awaited remake of Hudson's Military Madness is available on WiiWare in Japan. Do you like ... war? Do you like hexagons? This is for you! Japanese gamers with no interest in playing updated versions of classic games can play a faithfully emulated version of Mega Man 4 instead.

DSi owners have a wide selection of games this week, including Q-Games's Starship Defense/Starship Patrol (now under a third name!), a new G.G. Series game, a Gameloft pet sim, and a dungeon crawler based on Sonic Powered's From the Abyss.

• Rockman 4 (Famicom, 1 player, 500 Wii Points)
• Nectaris (WiiWare, 1-4 players, 1,000 Wii Points)
• Anonymous Notes: From the Abyss (DSiWare, 1 player, 200 DSi Points)
• Uchimakure! Touch Pen Wars (DSiWare, 1 player, 200 DSi Points)
• G.G. Series Assault Buster (DSiWare, 1 player, 200 DSi Points)
• Uso Hakkenki: Kokoro no Naka o Nozo Ichao (DSiWare, 1-2 players, 500 DSi Points)
• Starship Defender (DSiWare, 1 player, 500 DSi Points)
• Wanko to Issho (DSiWare, 1 player, 800 DSi Points)

Though you could just buy a Chiquita banana and call it authentic Super Monkey Ball: Step & Roll merchandise, Sega Europe has created some new swag that won't rot and won't result in any comedic pratfalls. The publisher has printed up some replica shirts as worn by AiAi, complete with printed backpack, as a promotional item for Step & Roll.

The only known way to get hold of one of these delightful items is through Sega's Free Stuff Friday contest (follow @sega on Twitter and message back key phrases at the right time on Fridays). Just add some cinnamon roll ears and a giant plastic bubble, and you'll be all set for Halloween!

Capcom originally planned to release its WiiWare ports of the Phoenix Wright games every other month. However, the publisher today announced that the court date for the second game, Justice For All, has been moved up a month, and will now be available on WiiWare in North America on February 15 (February 19 in Europe).

If you're playing through the series for the first time on WiiWare, this will be your first opportunity to meet Franziska von Karma, a brilliant young prosecutor who attacks every person she meets with a whip. Somehow, she missed out on the whole "assault = illegal" thing in law school.

Excitebike World Rally, having just been released in Japan this week, is now available in Europe, ready to delight players with online, tilt-controlled classic motorcycle racing. Final Fight 3 is also out in Europe this week, with classic dude-punching. We're starting to wonder -- is the worldwide Virtual Console release of Final Fight 3 some kind of abstract promotion for Super Street Fighter IV, which features characters and locales that originated in the Final Fight series? Or is it the Wii's equivalent of Final Fight Double Impact?

• Final Fight 3 (Virtual Console: SNES, 1-2 players, 800 Wii Points)
• "Aha! I Found It!" Hidden Object Game (WiiWare, 1-4 players, 500 Wii Points)
• Excitebike World Challenge (WiiWare, 1-4 players, 1,000 Wii Points)
• Snakenoid (DSiWare, 1 player, 500 DSi Points)

Prope and publisher Bandai Namco sent out the first screens and footage (after the break) of the new Wii and DS versions of the once-Windows Mobile exclusive Ivy the Kiwi?, thus forcing us to fill another post with question marks? Okay, we didn't need that one.

The presentation on the console versions of the game is identical to the original, with the unusual sepia-tone color scheme and hand-drawn backgrounds. Both new versions double the number of levels, bringing the game up to a total of 100. And both new versions have multiplayer: local download play on DS and splitscreen on Wii. And, of course, the DS has a map screen. Why not?

Continued →

Ghostfire Games' Rage of the Gladiator is on the way to WiiWare, and now we have word of another first-person, MotionPlus-enhanced WiiWare game involving ghosts: Ghost Slayer, by Gevo Entertainment.

Ghost Slayer uses the Wiimote (with optional MotionPlus) to simulate a sword as you fight howling, glowing ghouls in first person. According to the backstory, ghosts (led by a Ghost Queen) are pouring out of a dry well, and it's up to you, as a Ghost Slayer, to hit them a bunch of times with your sword!

The North American release date is currently TBA. In the meantime, you can be creeped the hell out by the trailer after the break.

[Via Nintendo Life]

Continued →

In November, Yuji Naka's studio, Prope, revealed a new original IP, Ivy the Kiwi? ... for Windows Mobile. The latest Famitsu reveals that the developer is porting the game to some game consoles! Namely, DS and Wii. Namco Bandai will release Ivy the Kiwi in Japan on April 22 -- it's the first Prope game to be published by someone other than Sega or (in the case of the Windows Mobile version) Prope itself.

However, despite its origins as a mobile game, and its simple pick-up-and-play gameplay (which involves stretching and bouncing drawn lines to move a bird through a maze), Ivy the Kiwi is destined for retail on consoles, at a price of ¥3,990 ($43).

If you're hoping to play a cute DS game starring a young witch, but not NIS's A Witch's Tale, Natsume has you covered. The publisher just announced Witch's Wish, a new game joining its DS lineup of extraordinarily quirky stuff.

Witch's Wish stars "Vicky," a girl who wants to go to Hogwarts witch school, and has to help save her town from some kind of "dark force" while simultaneously learning how to do magic. The ESRB reveals a bit more about the gameplay, describing "comical duel sequences" -- rock-paper-scissors style duels in which "buckets of water are dumped, little tornadoes may twirl, and bursts of cloud-and-fire are sent." Precious!

(Retailer orders for) Witch's Wish will be fulfilled this spring.

We'll be in the waiting room a bit longer before we're allowed to meet with the Trauma Team. Atlus announced a delay from the game's original April 20 date to May 18.

In the meantime, in lieu of an old magazine, why not watch this video about Trauma Team's orthopedics mode? It's all about bones -- setting broken bones, drilling into bones, setting pins, and all manner of extremely methodical work to fix broken Day-Glo bones, all represented in-game as movements within precise guidelines. Even without the Trauma Center time limit or malevolent viruses, it seems stressful.

Japanese gamers get to experience the joy of Excitebike with a different camera angle and online play today, with the release of Excitebike World Rally (as "Excitebike World Race"). It's a pretty faithful adaptation of the original, something that can't be said for Tecmo's Are? DS ga Sakasa Desu Kedo: Gyaku Shooting, a shooter with elements of its own Star Force, but played from the other side -- and with the DS upside down. Using the DS's touch screen, players control the enemies firing downward at what is usually the player ship. DS ga Sakasa Desu Kedo: Sakasa Drops takes the same approach and applies it to a falling-block puzzle game. Check out a trailer for Shooting after the break.

• Quarth (MSX, 1-2 players, 800 Wii Points)
• Contra (MSX, 1-2 players, 800 Wii Points)
• Excitebike World Race (WiiWare, 1-4 players, 1,000 Wii Points)
• Are? DS ga Sakasa Desu Kedo: Gyaku Shooting (DSiWare, 1 player, 200 DSi Points)
• Are? DS ga Sakasa Desu Kedo: Sakasa Drops (DSiWare, 1 player, 200 DSi Points)
• Artist ni Narou! Minna no Nurikai Museum Hen (DSiWare, 1-2 players, 500 DSi Points)
• Hobonichi Rosenzu 2010 (DSiWare, 1 player, 500 DSi Points)
• Renjuku Kanji: Shougaku Sannensei (DSiWare, 1 player, 500 DSi Points)

Continued →

It's likely that The Last Story, Mistwalker's new Wii RPG, is the project Hironobu Sakaguchi has been hinting at for a while. In a new blog post, the Final Fantasy creator said that the new RPG is "my only project because I am concentrating on this particular one right now." And then, because that didn't meet the appropriate level of creepiness, he described the game as "raised like a only daughter, but sometimes she was forcedly pushed into the abyss of ravine ... She's sturdy, beautiful and I'd like to nurture her gently."

Yikes. Anyway, the point is that Mistwalker has been at work on the game for a while, and Sakaguchi is working on it directly.

Since The Last Story is Sakaguchi's "only project" right now (except for the Lego creation above, of course), that means that either another team within Mistwalker is working on the iPhone game or it's been put aside until the The Last Story is all grown up.

With Dragon Quest VI in stores in Japan for almost one whole week, Square Enix wasted no time in announcing another upcoming Dragon Quest game for DS. The latest new announcement is Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 2, a sequel to the Pokemon-like DS Dragon Quest spinoff from 2007.

The new sequel, out April 28 in Japan, will feature over 300 catchable monsters and online multiplayer for up to eight people. And in a post-Dragon Quest IX Japan, with millions of people happily playing online, this game would seem to have a built-in audience.

[Via Andriasang]

February's Japanese Virtual Console lineup is exceptionally small -- four games in all -- but all four games are high-quality. In advance of Mega Man 10, Capcom offers Mega Man 4, which, while one of the weaker games in the series, is still a real Mega Man game and thus pretty good. A never-localized (and probably still not to be localized) SNES Advance Wars game will be available sometime in the month, and MSX versions of the familiar Contra and the delightful scrolling puzzle game Quarth.

Of course, we've seen zero of these MSX games outside of Japan. Oh, we just made ourselves sad.

Famicom:

• Rockman 4

Super Famicom:

• Super Famicom Wars

MSX:

• Quarth (Feb. 2)
• Contra (Feb. 2)

If you desperately need a somewhat nicer Classic Controller, but can't wait for the Classic Controller Pro's April release -- and you demand free Super Saver shipping -- head to Amazon right away. The retailer is offering the Japanese version of the Pro for $34.99 in black and white. Quantities are currently severely limited, but the item listing promises that more are on the way.

Sure, you pay a hefty premium over the $19.99 a Pro will cost when it's officially released in North America, but that's the price you pay for being the envy of all of your friends during Bomberman '93 sessions. And if you're not having weekly multiplayer Bomberman '93 sessions, don't you want to now? That sounds great.

[Via GoNintendo]

It's time to show those ... animated ... cans ... who's boss. Intelligent Systems's patently odd shooting game 530 Eco Shooter arrives on WiiWare this week, aiming to fill you with terror at the sight of any preserved vegetable. For those among you who shun can combat, Street Fighter Alpha 2 is also available, in a surprisingly competent SNES port.

On DSiWare, Gameloft has released Legends of Exidia, which is reportedly a port of its mobile game Might and Magic II (not to be confused with the real Might and Magic II) with all the license stuff excised. That's pretty weird.

• 530 Eco Shooter (WiiWare, 1 player, 1,000 Wii Points)
• Street Fighter Alpha 2 (SNES, 1-2 players, 800 Wii Points)
• Electroplankton: Luminarrow (DSiWare, 1 player, 200 DSi Points)
• Electroplankton: Sun-animalcule (DSiWare, 1 player, 200 DSi Points)
• Legends of Exidia (DSiWare, 1 player, 800 DSi Points)