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With us being wrapped-up firmly in summer, there’s very
little movement in the industry right now. Very few new releases,
very few new pieces of information to fit in our pie. However, 
that’s not to say that we haven’t been listening. Listening and,
more importantly, reading between the lines. So what news do we have
to bring you on today’s Wii Day? Plenty.
Firstly, our ever-lovable Reggie Fils-Aime, President and
Chief Operating Officer, Nintendo of America, hit-back at Peter
Moore’s seemingly agreeable nature towards Wii, after all, there
are no friends in love-and-war; “I'd much rather have the consumer
buy a Wii, some accessories, and a ton of games, versus buying any
of my competitor's products.” Maybe the love is simply unrequited.
Maybe Reggie wants to make enemies, or, maybe Nintendo
actually do believe that their market is entirely different
to that of the PlayStation3 and Xbox360. Maybe…
Next on the list is the issue of Backwards Compatibility.
Won’t it be great to be able to play all your old fantastic
GameCube games on Wii again? Sure it will, but, yes, the will be exactly
the same. However, this could all change, thanks to comments
released from Shigeru Miyamoto today. “The machine is based on
GameCube,” said Miyamoto. “We'll be upgrading the development
tools, but GameCube code can be used for the most part as is. In
that sense, I believe that it would be good to remake GameCube games
for Wii, and that some titles would become better with the change to
the Wii remote controller.” Surely, though, Nintendo can’t
expect their loyal fanbase who bought a game within the last few
years to buy it again at full price? Apparently, not, “Even
now,” continued Miyamoto, “[GameCube titles] are sold at used
shops, so we don't feel we could sell them for full price. However,
development costs have been taken care of, so we could probably sell
them at a more accessible price. If we make it so that such GameCube
to Wii remakes can be produced quickly, it's possible that many
titles will also be released from Third-Parties.” Could this all
be deemed as back-treading on the promised continued GameCube
support? Probably, but we’ll just have to wait and see if that Game
Boy Evolution ever decides to rear it’s unseen head.
Finally, we have a whole heap of news concerning the Control
System integrated into The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
By now, most of you will surely have learnt that no support for the
GameCube Controller is to be included in the Wii release, and the
Bow and Arrow and  Hookshot controls have been modified so that,
while aiming remains a precise measurement of moving the Wii Remote,
are now fired using the B Button. However, this may confuse a few
adept readers following our coverage of the title from E3
2006. The
button that was previously assigned for using the titles’
principle weapon – Link’s sword – is now reserved for the use
of alternative weaponry. The reason? It’s the one we’d all been
hoping for, and the one many of the Electronic Articles
writing team debated at length with Nintendo at E3 2006: the value
of utilising the Wii Remote’s motion-sensing technology to enable
the player to swing the controller as if it were Link’s sword.
Well, now we know that Nintendo did too value this opportunity and,
in particular, the series creator – seemingly now more of a
Nintendo spokesperson than a videogame design guru – Shigeru
Miyamoto, who commented, “Upon actually playing it, it's more
interesting this way.” We’re sure it is…
So, that’s pretty much that. All the titbits of Wii
information we’ve managed to sneak in the last week, minus, of
course, THQ’s Spongebob Squarepants: Creature From The Krusty
Krab ramblings from New York, but then, you’re probably not
missing that much. For now, though, I’m sure that any die hard Wii
fan will be happy with at least the following presentation, for at
least a short while…
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