For your enjoyment: WiiCade
by Kevin Kelly 
{ Nov 17th 2006 at 7:55PM }
Artist/designer David Stubbs and two partners are launching an ambitious site on November 19th, to coincide with the arrival of the Wii, called WiiCade.
The site features Flash games that you can play on the Wii through the Opera browser, and also access via your PC to upload new games or try your hand at designing your own. They should have 15 Flash games up at launch, including two exclusives that feature unique use the Wiimote. Games will auto-fit on all TV screens and are vector based, which should mean no jaggies.
This is one of the first homebrew efforts we've seen for the Wii, and we hope to see a lot more in the coming months. The Opera browser and the Wiimote will hopefully make this an attractive target for homebrewers, and hackers as well.
So bring on the Wiimote FlyS.W.A.T. Flash game, already.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
RocketMBA @ Nov 17th 2006 7:58PM
Fantastic idea. Wonder how much they want for it?...
Drew @ Nov 17th 2006 7:59PM
The Wiil?
"This is one of the first homebrew efforts we've seen for the Wiil"
Xeno @ Nov 17th 2006 8:02PM
That's great... you know... assuming Opera is up on release...
Cosmos @ Nov 17th 2006 8:12PM
Xeno has a point. The recent news I've been reading indicates that the Opera browser will likely not be available on launch day.
Patryk @ Nov 17th 2006 8:13PM
Good luck in your efforts, David. You have my support. :)
omg.kittens @ Nov 17th 2006 8:19PM
SWEEEET. I'm glad this is happening sooner rather than later... Can't wait to give it a shot.
SpexFox @ Nov 17th 2006 8:22PM
NOOO!!! NO NO NO!! I came up with this idea a little while ago, but damn it, they beat me to it!
Oro @ Nov 17th 2006 8:28PM
Nice to see someone organizing this :) There's been a lot of games I've played on sites like AddictingGames.com and thought "This kind of sucks with a mouse... but if I were playing with the Wii remote, it might be alright."
Sponge @ Nov 17th 2006 8:36PM
What do they mean my unique uses of the Wiimote?
thrillho @ Nov 17th 2006 8:41PM
guys, wii.nintendo.com has been updated, and answers the questions about most vc things, and says that opera will be announced in the coming weeks, which should be before christmas, id assume.
ghosttoaster @ Nov 17th 2006 8:42PM
If the wiimote is going to used exactly like a mouse then this is going to be kinda lame. Now if they have some sort of wiimote api that they can actually get velocity feedback and nunchuck info then that might be cool.
I guess we'll see tomorrow
Nintendo_Fanboy @ Nov 17th 2006 9:08PM
@ SpexFox
NO, they stole MY idea! Actually, no, I have a better one now. Go to newgrounds and ask Tom to make a Wii collection. Then, more people will submit work there, because it's a site that's already known about!
TeddyN @ Nov 17th 2006 9:06PM
If it's any consolation spexfox, I promise to only use yours if you create a rival site :D
In exchange, please make a game involving nukes.
Commie Mario @ Nov 17th 2006 9:19PM
Hey, theres one problem with this, theres no wii internet untill a few weeks later, so no one can acces this anyway
Cassius @ Nov 17th 2006 9:53PM
Mmmmh, if this WiiCade takes off, you can expect paying versions of this popping up everywhere within a few months.
I must add that I was sad when I learned that Wii News, Wii Forecast and Wii Opera are all delayed.
I also came up with some sort of issue;
You Wii card will come with 2000wii points and 1 N64 game is 1000wii points meaning that with a Wii card you can buy up to two N64 games max.
Now, those Wii Points have all of a sudden become very precious since we can not really foresee what will come out on the Wii Shop Channel so I will retain myself from buying "cool" old titles only to buy the "awesome" old titles for fear or wasting my points only to find out the week after that an even cooler game came out which will leave me to buy more points. Bottom line is, it would be nice to have some sort of channel which would list what is coming soon.
VC Soon:
Week of XX December 2006
-Game 1 | System
-Game 2 | System
etc.
That way you can plan ahead with your points or buy more points for the coming week...
I truly hope this feature will be integrated or is already present for it would generate alot more profit.
I am pretty sure I am speaking for everyone when I say we just can't wait until GoldenEye, Perfect Dark and Ocarina of Time come out on the VC. Well wouldn't it be nice to get a date 3 weeks in advance?
Colin @ Nov 17th 2006 10:36PM
Using the Wii name and close font will get this shut down by the Nintendo Lawyers ASAP (Do the lawyers for Nintendo dress like Luigi?).
Nintendo has taken a very iPod approach to the Wii and I think that will include ALOT of stern letters to those sites trampling on property rights to the name and look.
BTW...I mentioned this type of thing earlier too when question why you would buy games at VC when you can just get very good flash emulation of old Nintendo games....
Goober @ Nov 18th 2006 1:32AM
Has no one but me thought to consider how wrong the "are vector based, which should mean no jaggies." comment is? It's all dependant on the rendering engine, it doesn't matter how the lines get on the screen. Turn Flash animatiosn to Low Quality and you'll see plenty of jaggies, you just wont' see any more than normal if you zoom in on them.
Brandon @ Nov 18th 2006 2:30AM
If this guy is an artist/designer and that's the best logo he could come up with, I think he's using the title very loosely. I mean look at the Wii. The shape looks wrong. His games could be good though, and I am definitely rooting for him. The Wii has great potential for independent designers and I would really like to see one of the first attempts take off and attract more.
And yes, give us Flyswat. In fact, give us all of Mario Paint with the flyswatting game.
Brandon @ Nov 18th 2006 2:30AM
Ok, after going to the guys other site, it's apparent he is a good artist/designer. I still have to wonder why that logo looks they just tried to get by with little effort.
epobirs @ Nov 18th 2006 3:55AM
Rendering as vectors is no guard against jaggies if it shown on a raster display. it just makes it simpler to scale 2D games for different resolutions. Within the severe limitations of a NTSC screen, keeping diagonal lines looking good is a job for anti-aliasing.
Us old farts remember why Ballblazer was so remarkable when it first appeared on the Atari 800 and imposible to properly port to other systems of the era that had far more limited color palettes. It was the first serious use of real-time anti-aliasing in a consumer app. Back then, the guys producing the first Lucas games were the same crew producing animation like the Genesis Sequence from Star Trek II. (The other early Lucas game, Rescue on Fractalus, was title in early versions as Behind Jaggi Lines.)
Joe @ Nov 18th 2006 5:17AM
I have the best idea out of anyone here for a Wii related website, but I don't know coding enough to do it. It would be a gallery of different Mii characters submitted by users and it would show you which options to pick to make them. I even came up with what I think is the perfect name for it. www.see-mii.com So if anyone takes my idea, at least give me credit or something lol.
Mat @ Nov 23rd 2006 5:49AM
I think you will find that most flash games sites (including ourselves) have thought about about doing this already but are holding off until they actually get a system to test content with. I think these guys are jumping the gun a little but good luck to them.
Charron @ Nov 18th 2006 8:08AM
Cassius: Since they have to resubmit the games to the ESRB before they go on the shop, you can always watch IGN or whatever site puts up their latest findings (wink wink, Joystiq). We already know games that won't be up until next year, and I don't see why this trend won't continue- it has to, really.
Mr, Objectional @ Nov 18th 2006 9:51AM
I had this idea too! Glad to see it implemented, but didn't the browser get pushed back?
Techokami @ Nov 18th 2006 1:08PM
Uh, FYI, that's not really homebrew.
If someone was to make Wii homebrew, they would have to write the game using the same (or extremely close to the same) APIs that real developers use. That means programming in C++. That also means dealing with PowerPC's flipped endians. Then you have the problem of running the code on the Wii. If someone finds a hole that allows unsigned code to be run, Nintendo will patch it rather swiftly and silently using WiiConnect24.
Unless Nintendo is planning to take the same route Microsoft is, and create a special SDK for independent developers, it's going to be tough to get REAL homebrew running on the Wii.
Matt Rix @ Nov 18th 2006 10:16PM
They're assuming that the Wii will be able to run Flash well enough to play games on it... I *really* doubt that it'll be good enough to play games on... And there's no way for Flash to use the remote as anything but a pointer... So I really don't think it'll be that cool.
mgroves @ Nov 20th 2006 3:30PM
"Uh, FYI, that's not really homebrew."
Yes it is. They are in flash, but they are designed with the Wii in mind. Yeah, they work on a PC too. That doesn't mean they aren't homebrew.
"APIs that real developers use. That means programming in C++."
Flash programmers aren't "real" developers because they don't use C++? What if I use C# or Java, I'm not a real developer?
"That also means dealing with PowerPC's flipped endians."
Looks like you have no idea what you are talking about and are just tossing in a buzzword to make yourself look authoritative. If you are using C++ then "flipped" (whatever that means) endians do not matter, as C/C++ encapsulates the data types. Endians would only matter if you are programming in assembly (and they would'nt still wouldn't be a constraint).
Brian @ Nov 24th 2006 7:35PM
"If you are using C++ then "flipped" (whatever that means) endians do not matter, as C/C++ encapsulates the data types. Endians would only matter if you are programming in assembly (and they would'nt still wouldn't be a constraint)."
To be fair, endianness also impacts reading and writing data - to disk, to network packets, etc. So it's something multiplatform developers (typically just at the C-level and below) sometimes need to keep in mind. To also be fair, it's not exactly a superhuge issue anyways and doesn't really bear any relevance to the topics of "real programmers" or "homebrew".