Popstar Guitar Wii Controller & Screens

XS Game's arriviste rhythm game for the PS2 & Wii PopStar Guitar will come with yet another funny-looking WiiMote add-on, the AirGâ„¢. (PS2 owners can use something a bit more Guitar shaped - the game is compatible with Guitar Hero peripherals)

XS have released some new PSG screens, together with a pic of the new AirGâ„¢ sleeve. It looks like it might be a bit cramped unless you twin it with the Nunchuk - more of a Popstar Ukelele.

Wii Speak Channel Euro Dated

Sure the Wii Speak Channel launches in North America on November 16th, but when will we be able to speak with our European friends over our tiny white box? I mean, sure...we could use a computer to do it, but who has one of those anymore? Well luckily for us non-computer people the Europeans don't have long to wait, as Nintendo announces the launch of the Wii Speak Channel Europe on December 5th, coinciding with the release of Animal Crossing: Same Old Game and the Wii Speak microphone, required to use the service.

The specifics are the same as the NA version, up to four friends anywhere in the world talking to each other while their Miis wildly gesticulate all over the screen, only this time they do it in French, German, Italian, or any number of languages you may or may not be familiar with.

A Rare, Collectible, Plush Squirrel

Look! It's a rare, collectible, plush squirrel! Do you even need me to tell you what game this an Amazon-exclusive pre-order goody for? No, of course you don't, not because it's obvious, but because you will buy ANYTHING to get your hands on a rare, collectible....did we mention collectible? A rare, collectible, plush squirrel. This isn't just some average, run-of-the-mill, mass-production plush squirrel. You don't give a squirrel like this to a baby and let it chew on it for hours. No. This is a vacuum-sealed in a glass case squirrel. *drools*

Where was I? Oh yes! This is a pre-order bonus for Rune Factory 2: A Fantasy Harvest Moon for the Nintendo DS, and you can only get it at Amazon.com. You might want to set up your order now before this baby winds up on eBay's ridiculously inflated rare, collectible, plush squirrel aftermarket.

Weekly Wii Update - Shining Force and Mario Golf

Great news! Shining Force II for the Genesis (800 points) has made the leap from last week's Euro Virtual Console releases to this week's North American ones, but where's Earthworm Jim? They left together...what happened? Knocked out of the air over the Atlantic by an errant golf ball, no doubt. Stealing EWJ's spot this week is Mario Golf, one of those rare Nintendo 64 releases for the VC (1,000 points), which is nice and all, but I'd still prefer Earthworm platforming. Oh well, maybe next week?

Not only are there two new games on the VC this week, WiiWare gets double the love as well, with Gameloft's Midnight Bowling (800 points), which includes an "immersive career mode", and the falling block puzzler MadStone from Riverman Media (800 points).

Getting a Look at The Conduit's Visuals

This 90 second clip highlights the effort put into The Conduit's visual detail, no mean feat considering it's working on a Wii and that's not exactly a PS3. My visual palate is about like my wine palate, I pretty much like everything, and it's gotta be offensively wrong for me to pan it. That said, you guys are more sophisticated judges of a game's graphical chops, so I'm interested in what you have to say. Does The Conduit earn core-game bonafides with things like bump-mapping, the projected texture lights and depth of field focus changes?

The Conduit - Tech Highlight Trailer [Gametrailers.com]

Marvelous and XSEED are bringing Vanillaware's Wii-exclusive ninja RPG to North America in 2009, and calling it Muramasa: The Demon Blade. Joystiq mentions that this is the second title coming out of a co-publishing deal signed in May, the first being Valhalla Knights 2 for the PSP.

The game is a 2D side-scroller featuring hand-drawn art, probably in the mode of Vanillaware's Odin Sphere. It will be shown at Tokyo Game Show 08, according to Marvelous' lineup, as Oboro Muramasa Youtouden

Muramasa: The Demon Blade is an action RPG and according to its news release, it's set in Genroku-era Japan. Players will inhabit the lives of ninja warriors in a storyline involving a set of cursed "Demon Blades," powerful weapons that exact a terrible price on those who use them. In this case, the blades also summon evil spirits and powerful foes from the netherworld, providing you with your adversaries and the game's world with its existential crisis.

The full text is on the jump.

Nintendo Everything reports Capcom's Christian Svensson, VP of Business Development, says earlier reports of Mega Man 9 doing 140,000 US downloads in one week for the Wii are incorrect. "Any numbers you've seen or quoted are not correct," Svensson said. "That said, I think we're cautiously optimistic about MM9's performance."

For the record, VGChartz seems to be the source of the 140,000 figure, which it says would make Mega Man 9 No. 3 for lifetime sales and revenue on WiiWare. Sounds like good enough news to me, considering it doesn't include any PS3 or 360 sales, but it ain't true, says Capcom.

Capcom "Cautiously Optimistic" with Mega Man 9 Sales So Far [Nintendo Everything]

The Monster Hunter 3 Trailer from Nintendo's Presser

Someone attending Nintendo's fall presser snapped up this video-of-video of the Monster Hunter 3 trailer, which Bash alluded to in his liveblog. So the image quality is necessarily poor but, for those interested in the franchise, you can get a look at some underwater encounters with familiar, seafaring beasts, and then some surface-world hack-n-slash against dinos and way more exotic foes. Monster Hunter 3 by Capcom for the Wii, has no release date more specific than "early 2009" for Japan and North America.

Monster Hunter 3 Trailer by raven1221 [Gametrailers, thanks reader Gloom]

DSi Won't Replace The DS Lite (At Least Not In The US)

The DS Lite was a replacement for the DS. Came in, took over the place, you never saw the DS Phat again. So will the DSi do the same thing to the DS Lite? Not in the US, says Nintendo Smile Machine Cammie Dunaway:

Right now we’re still working through what the strategy's going to be here. But we think that there's huge untapped potential for the DS Lite. Because when you’ve got only one in every five households in the U.S., compared to one in every two in Japan, it says there's potential.

You’ve seen some of the work we’ve done this year with celebrities, that we're bringing a lot of new consumers in to the DS. So I think there’s opportunity for both of them to coexist for some period of time.

You know, I still have nothing but a DS Phat. And when I see statements like this, I feel like the world's just passing me by...

Q&A: Nintendo's Cammie Dunaway Talks DSi, Club Nintendo [Wired]

Who Are Japan's Biggest DS Users?