This post over at kuro5hin describes the latest Wii peripheral driving Nintendo fanboys and fangirls wild in Japan … the WiiLove.

Of course, this is just a rip-off of an idea already released years ago with Rez on the Sega Dreamcast, but it’s nice to see this style of peripheral being introduced to a new audience.

No info on release dates in North America, Europe and Australia yet.

(ah, it’s a joke, Joyce).

“The first big secret is, the bad news is for storytellers is that nobody cares about your stupid story… no matter how detailed or lovingly you craft it.” — Kevin Levine, creative director on BioShock.

Then there is Cory Barlog’s blog post from a few months back:

I mean, the freaking princess is abducted…again. I have to go after her captor, Bowser, again. [...] Oh wait…the game sells millions even with the vapid story. As it has been pointed out to me every time I say it, the game is not about the story. It is about the platforming and crazy new mechanics and worlds. — Cory Barlog, director on God of War and God of War 2

The Wired GameLife blog highlighted Cory’s comments, and before you know it, the Nintendo gaming press was plastered with the headlines “God of War Director calls Super Mario Galaxy’s story ‘vapid’”. Despite the minor fanboy-furor generated, Cory’s post indicates he still appreciated the level design, art and graphics and sound, and realizes that the game is not supposed to be about story … he just didn’t get hooked.

It’s pretty clear that many games benefit, and are even driven by, a rich, engaging storyline … but when it comes to the classic Mario platformers … nobody cares about the stupid story !!

Alternatively, has BigW just got it plain wrong ?

Watch this space … according to BigW the release date is Feb 14th, 2008

I ignored most news about Super Mario Galaxy when I was first released (except for the overall ratings), so as to avoid spoiling the surprise elements of the game … well,  this certainly is a surprise … a glitch in an otherwise pretty polished first-party Nintendo game. Don’t see that often.

There’s a video of the glitch here at NintendoWiiFanboy … I’m just hoping this doesn’t happen next time I work my way back though the level and meet Bowser …

If you update your Photo Channel you will lose MP3 support for background music during slideshows, and instead have it replaced with AAC format support. Sure, AAC sounds better, but most of my (and many other peoples) CD collection has been ripped to MP3 years ago … I don’t exactly want to have to go back and re-rip all that music again. Maybe this is because Nintendo doesn’t want to pay the 75 cents per device licensing fee for using MP3 … if so that is pretty tight. If they remove MP3 support, they may as well replace it with the royalty free OGG format, since if the Photo Channel won’t support MP3 most people are going to have to convert their music to some new format to use it on the Wii anyway ….

I certainly won’t be updating my Photo Channel if MP3 support is removed, unless there is some compelling must-have new feature that I feel really outweighs what is otherwise a serious backward step.

 For the record, here is my comment on Digg on the topic:

This is the one major thing I HATE about the Wii (and new consoles generally) … I don’t have full control over the software running on the hardware that I own. It’s a great example of how the customer get’s screwed by technologies like DRM and “Trusted Computing” (or whatever it’s called these days to escape the bad PR).

I love my Wii, but I simultaneously feel like a retard for buying one and continually getting screwed by Nintendo with things like this impending update. I really don’t like supporting companies who do this kind of thing, and I’ll think very hard before buying the next Nintendo console (I bought a Wii on the basis that it was supposed to be ‘region free’ for first-party games, a decision I still don’t regret, but it annoys me that this ’feature’ turned out to be a widely reported lie by a Nintendo employee prior to the release date).

The sooner this console is hacked wide open for homebrew software the better.

Aaron produced a convincing report detailing the significant lag times between the Australian and North American release dates. After discussions with Nintendo, he was asked to submit questions for Nintendo Australia to address. You can see his questions relating to localization, release delays and region locking on his site. And the response from Nintendo, after requesting said questions ?

“Nintendo Australia has no comment; Nintendo Australia does not comment on these issues.“

Beyond lame, refusing to comment is just insulting to their customers.

<rant>

Nintendo, we love your product, but don’t treat your customers with such disrespect.

While I’m drawing a long bow (maybe a long crossbow ?) here, I think the slow releases will probably drive some hardcore Wii fans to piracy.

Nintendo, if you are going to region lock your console, at least don’t give your customers a good reason to bypass that locking with a modchip, just so they can import games and avoid waiting months for a local release. Essentially, your slow release cycle is going to drive more Wii owners to install modchips to gain access to new release import games … and hell, once the thing is modded why not copy a few games as well ?

</rant>

I encourage everyone to Digg Aarons latest effort … I think Nintendo Australia believe that giving “no comment” will just make the issue go away. Let’s make sure this doesn’t just disappear, and see how they respond.

“So stop porting all your shit games to the Wii;they don’t work, they look like shit, and it’s a waste of everybody’s time.”

The tone of the article makes me think it could be a joke or satire, but even if it is a joke, Splosion has a real point. There are far too many developers porting games from previous gen consoles to the Wii. Sure, there are some real gems worth tweaking and relaunching on the Wii … take for instance Resident Evil 4. But there are also a bunch of games being ported to the Wii that were not even considered all that great ‘in their time’. Take a B-grade game, rush to port it to the Wii, tack-on a Wiimote control scheme, and you end up with what amounts to a bunch of fairly dubious releases over the past year. One that comes to mind is Rampage: Total Destruction (I own this game. I’ll review it some time and try try try to be forgiving).

My feeling is simply that game developers and publishers have been taken by surprise. I suspect many of them were gearing up to focus on the Xbox 360 and PS3, and expected the Wii to have a lacklustre reception, similar to that of the disappointing sales of the Gamecube. Now that the Wii is selling like hotcakes (and faster than Nintendo can make ‘dem hotcakes), they are scrambling to get releases in the pipeline so they can grab a piece of the market. What’s the fastest and easiest way to get a game to market for the Wii ? That’s right … port one from the Gamecube. There is also some talk that Nintendo didn’t give third party game developers enough support in the lead up to the release of the Wii, which could explain some things.

I’m almost certain things will improve in the future, once these development houses get their acts together. In the meantime …. don’t encourage them … stop buying shitty ports to the Wii !!