I must admit that I haven’t played Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles yet; perhaps I’ll rent it this 4th of July weekend. Even with my lack of ‘Chronicles’ experience, I’m still stoked about Darkside Chronicles. This trailer shows off the reason why I’m excited. It looks really gorgeous, and luckily most of the trailer is actual gameplay or in-game at least.

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With Wii Sports Resort there are a ton of activities I’m excited about. Sword fighting, archery, skydiving to name a few. While others I’m left scratching my head about. Those being basketball, dog frisbee toss, and cycling.

This video shows off one of the activities I have my doubts about, basketball. I still question how the Wii Remote will detect your shot, but these dudes sure look like they’re having fun.

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During a closed door round table event at E3, Miyamoto dropped the news of development on the next Zelda game for the Nintendo Wii. Later on, a piece of concept art was released that led to many speculations across the interwebs.

Now, there is a report coming from website Aeropause that Miyamoto has made another statement concerning the development of Zelda. The statement was made in the latest issue of Nintendo Power, so you can double check its validity when it hits newsstands.

Oh, and about that new Legend of Zelda for Wii? Great quote from the master: “I don’t think it’s going to be that radically different.” Have fun with that one, gang.

Something to take away from this is that “radically different” is a highly subjective term. Miyamoto could have just meant that there won’t be any zombie Tingles running around biting at your ankles. Or that Princess Zelda decides to quit her monarchy driven life to become a stripper. See, ‘radically different’ could mean all sorts of things.

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One of the most beloved games on the Nintendo Wii is the famed No More Heroes. I’m sure there are many reading this who are anticipating some dual wielding beam katana action. While the sequel to No More Heroes is safely coming to the Wii, the third installment might find a home elsewhere.

Grasshopper CEO, Goichi Suda, spoke with Edge Magazine and mentioned that there’s a good possibility the third NMH game will be on another system.

“I think this is the last NMH that is going to be developed on Wii,” he added. “To expand NMH to new possibilities, we need a new platform. Wii is a great platform, but we’ve done everything we can with it now.”

All you Wii owning No More Heroes lovers, sound off in the comment section below.

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If you’ve been patiently waiting for the sequel to Red Steel since its release during the Wii’s hardware launch — then you still have awhile to wait. While waiting though, Ubisoft was kind enough to take questions from fans on their website forum. There’s a good amount of information to soak in. If you’d like to read the entire Q&A, click here.

Here are a few of the more interesting questions I found…

Why did you not continue the game where the Red Steel ended?

Well, it was certainly a tough call. The fans and the team had a lot of affection for the setting and characters of the first Red Steel, and it was certainly tempting to pick up where the first game left off.

However, as we developed our gameplay and art style for Red Steel 2, it became clear that what we were doing would work much better in a new setting: a setting that was built around this new type of combat we had built, and a setting that better fit what we wanted to do with the game visually.

So, we took a good hard look at what was really cool about the first Red Steel (guided by a mix of our own gaming tastes and our quite passionate feedback from the fanbase). From this, it became clear that the strong Asian-style setting and the mix of modern action gun combat plus katana-based sword fighting is something that resonates with a lot of people, us included, but that there was room to take the franchise in a new direction while still keeping that “Red Steel” core.

So, we started there. Then, we began to build what would become an entirely new world, story, characters, and visual style around those core concepts. What you see is the result.

What is more important to the dev team: smoother controls or better graphics/art style?

This is less a question of what is more important to the team than it is a question of what is important to the game. A first-person game with quick, exciting melee-attacks and precise shooting gameplay simply must run at 60fps, and that’s what we have. Thus, every decision we make is colored by the requirement to keep the gameplay smooth and responsive.

But, of course, we all also want the game to look spectacular. Paradoxically, by having agreement about the 60fps principle from the beginning has liberated the art team: it has allowed them to focus 100% of their effort on getting the absolute most they can out of that 1/60th of a second, instead of looking for other compromises. As a result, Stephane Bachelet and his team have developed a look that is exciting, suits our gameplay, runs very well on the Wii.

So, to the team, both are important. But we all know that for a first-person action title, gameplay comes first.

In the E3 video interview when Jason talks about the difficulty settings he says that beating the game on Ninja difficulty is going to be an achievement, does that mean that there’s going to be an achievement system like on the Xbox or is it just unlocking something in-game?

Well, in that specific case, I was using the word “achievement” in its literal sense of “having done something incredibly challenging”. I was trying to convey the idea that I want give players who can beat this game on the hardest setting a sense of real accomplishment, both in the sense of gaming and in the sense of physical motion and dexterity. Being able to swing a sword around with skill and accuracy is something a lot of people think is pretty cool, and I want our best players to have something to be proud of.

As far as an actual system of achievement goes, we like the concept of rewarding the player for pushing themselves to attain difficult goals, so you never know what you might see. Stay tuned for more info on that.

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Back before GB’s of RAM were commonplace in computers, and CRT monitors ruled the landscape there was a series of games called Monkey Island. Actually, they were some of the first games I ever played on the PC so my nostalgia bone was tickled while watching this trailer.

It’s an adventure/puzzle game where in order to advance you generally have to solve a set of puzzles to see the story unfold. It’s a simple formula that banks on the quality of the puzzles, and the humor of the writing. Here’s hoping that TellTale Games can pull it off.

The game is set for release on WiiWare and PC on July 7th, so be sure you have plenty of Wii Points saved up.

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