After bursting onto the scene with 34 titles in the Wii's first two months, Nintendo today announced they would "continue the flow of fun" with ... 12 new Wii games through March. Wait, what?
We understand that things tend to slow down a little in the months after Christmas, but even accounting for that the Wii's first quarter line up is kind of lacking. A few potential standouts like SSX Blur and Sonic and the Secret Rings are left to flounder among the usual mess of licensed crap (TMNT, Bionicle Heroes, Meet the Robinsons) and warmed-over third party games reworked for the Wii controller (Tiger Woods 07, The Godfather, and Blazing Angels, which was originally listed as a launch window title). What's more, Nintendo's Wii Play (a game which hit Europe and Japan in early December) is both the only first party game on the Wii's Q1 list and the only game we're likely to see for the system in all of February.
It might be a little early to declare Reggie's "no game drought" promise a failure, but this faint trickle of early games is, frankly, not that inspiring. Keep reading for a complete breakdown of the Wii's amazing "flow" for the next few months.
Feb. 14 Wii Play with Wii Remote Nintendo
March 27 Disney's Meet the Robinsons Buena Vista
March Bust-A-Move Bash Majesco
March Prince of Persia Rival Swords Ubisoft
March TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) Ubisoft
March Bionicle Heroes Eidos
March Blazing Angels Squadrons of WWII Ubisoft
Q1 Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 EA
Q1 SSX Blur EA
Q1 The Godfather Blackhand Edition EA
Q1 Medal of Honor Vanguard EA
Q1 Sonic and the Secret Rings Sega
(Page 1) Reader Comments
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Hope this is a sign of things to soon come. Third party support ftw!
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Jan - WarioWare
Feb - Wii Play
Mar - Mario Party 8
Apr - Super Paper Mario
Not to mention I'm still working on Zelda:TP and Virtual Console titles. It may be a drought to you, but I've got more games on my plate than I do time and money. Then again, I am easily amused and distracted... Ooh, look, a string!!
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On a side note... can we get a post revealing the other two systems Q1 releases...?
Narf!
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games i'm looking forward to:
- Wii Play with Wii Remote Nintendo
- Bust-A-Move Bash
- Prince of Persia Rival Swords,
- Blazing Angels Squadrons of WWII,
- Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07,
- SSX Blur
- The Godfather Blackhand Edition
- Medal of Honor Vanguard
Then again i don't own a 360.
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Half an hour ago I opened a text editor and stacked up all the Wii games I want to play this year (including GC titles I missed or haven't finished) against all the 360 games I want to play. Then I marked the ones that were already available, or would be available in Q1.
Wii60 is the end goal for me, but I'm seriously considering selling my Wii now, putting the money into a 360, and repurchasing a Wii in a year or so.
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Still, not what I'd call an "amazing flow" but it's better than what the Gamecube got, which was better than what the N64 got. Maybe the next system will be completely droughtless (yeah, right!) :P
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I'm fairly convinced that Reggie's "no draught" statement is referring to an average of one Nintendo released title every month. (Obviously he will think all Nintendo releases are great, so bitching that certain games suck won't really affect that logic). Observe.
November: Zelda
December: Excitetruck (I split the launch titles since November was only a half month for the Wii)
January: Warioware
Feb: Wii Play (I'll be the first to say that this barely qualifies as a release)
March: Mario Party 8
April: Super Paper Mario
Thus, I declare Reggie technically correct, but we all need to realize that our tastes won't perfectly match what Nintendo serves up at all times. Also, I don't think SSX or Sonic should be underestimated (We really need a decent Sonic game after that 360 abomination).
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But is this the entire list? I thought Heatseeker was coming out next month? Normally two games (Heatseeker and Sonic) in 3 months would be well more than enough console games for me, but I'm having so much damn fun with my new Wii that I've been buying games much faster than normal.
Hopefully this drought will be softened by a lot of great VC releases.
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~PEACE
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Sure, February is a slow month, but in March we get Tiger Woods, SSX Blur, Sonic, Mario Party 8, Prince of Persia, the Godfather, and TMNT... obviously we'll have to wait for reviews to see the quality of the games, but of those, only one is a first party game... which is good news to see third party developers releasing games.
Then in April we get Super Paper Mario...
Just how many games per month do you guys want?
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Does PS3 have a better line up? Did the 360 when it was first released?
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PS3(16):
Sonic the Hedgehog
College Hoops 2K7
Virtua Fighter 5
Formula One Championship Edition
Major League Baseball 2K7
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
NBA Street Homecourt
Def Jam: Icon
Enchanted Arms
F.E.A.R.
Armored Core 4
Virtua Tennis 3
Godfather: The Don's Edition, The
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas
MotorStorm
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Double Agent
**Lair
360(32):
Battlestations: Midway
Darkness, The
Rapala Tournament Fishing
Winning Eleven: Pro Evolution Soccer 2007
NBA Street Homecourt
Crackdown
Bullet Witch
Dance Dance Revolution Universe
Samurai Warriors 2 Empires
Major League Baseball 2K7
Def Jam: Icon
Rayman Raving Rabbids
Castle Crashers
Forza Motorsport 2
John Woo Presents Stranglehold
UEFA Champions League 2006-2007
Captain Blood
Medal of Honor: Airborne
Mobile Ops: The One Year War
Disney's Meet the Robinsons
Rapala Trophies
Earth Defense Force 2017, The
Sensible World of Soccer
Alone in the Dark
Half-Life 2: Orange Box
GTR
Culdcept Saga
Two Worlds
Haze
Theseis
Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway
Guitar Hero II
*I counted Q1 as now through the end of March
**Lair's release date, though not listed on IGN as March is said to be in march(not included in the count)
I thought some of those games were confirmed cross platform between 360 and PS3, especially Half-life 2: Orange
... whatever
/PS3 fan
//bored
///farker
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12 isn't a bad number of games, nor is it great. But even if all 12 of those games were B- or A- or higher-rated games, how many of them would you even buy?! You can only stretch your gaming dollar and time so far (though, I guess when game journalism is your job, you've got all the time to play games, eh?).
Plus, we still have old games to look forward to on Virtual Console. Mario Kart 64 may be the first VC title I download (I've yet to get any Wii Points). My two rules for VC downloads is:
1) I haven't played it before (Super Castlevania IV and Gunstar Heroes falls under this category, so I'll be downloading them eventually)
2) Great multiplayer (Mario Kart 64 and Bomberman '93 fall here, though I haven't played Bomberman '93 before, either!)
Given the newness of the Wii interface, it may be a while before we start seeing top-tier games for it (a la DS).
Developing visuals and audio for Wii games will be relatively easy, given its the same architecture as GameCube, but twice as powerful. But the player interface is the real trouble here.
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Hardly. The 360, barren as it was at launch, had Fight Night, Oblivion, and GRAW by March. Both Nintendo and Sony need to get their asses in gear and start putting out some good games for their systems. Relying in Twilight Princess and Resistance to carry them to summer just isn't going to cut it. For Nintendo not to have a single quality title lined up for Q1 is worrisome indeed.
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I just bought both Sonic Mega Collection and Sonic Gems Collection yesterday at GameStop. Both copies used, with the 10% off from the membership card, and then after tax, was $27. If I unlock all the secret games, that's 20 games for $27. And yes, most of them suck, but it was worth it just for Sonic 2 and Sonic Spinball. And as soon as I find a used Mega Man Anniversary Collection (10 games for about $10), I'll be set until Mario Strikers: Charged comes out.
It's not like I have time to play any of these games anyway, as every time friends come over it's Wii Sports tennis until the sun comes up. My skill's at 2199 biyatches.
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I don't have a wii yet, and while I'd love to play some tp, wii sports, warioware, and a couple more standouts, unfortunately, nothing on that list impulses me to buy it any quicker.
I rate the 360 #1, but it had a HUGE drought, so all wii owners should be excited your getting 12(or 15?) first quarter games. I mean, god, 360 early adopters lived through about one game a month until when.....September? The 1st quarter was especially rough w/ the quantity, although the quality was AWESOME (scrolls, fight night, graw, anyone?).
Here's hoping that Wii Play doesn't suck as bad as the reviews GameInformer gave it. (Average was abotu a 6 or 6.5)
Go wii60
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Just admit you guys are screwed for a couple quarters. It'll all be ok when you finally get to play smash brothers, metroid prime, and super mario galaxy. But thats about 6 months off.
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It's certainly better than the GC, where nothing good came out until May with a remake of Resident Evil.
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Anywhos, Sheppy, you're an idiot. There IS no drought for EITHER system. THEY BOTH JUST CAME OUT.
If you're looking for AAA titles this soon within a console's life, you're an idiot in your own right.
And last I checked, only 2 posts were about the PS3 'drought'... leave a fanbot like you to blow it out of proportion.
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ITS BEEN 4 MONTHS.
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Also there will be a lot of VC releases and quite frankly a lot of people have not played those turbografx games.
Also this is not all the games that are coming out till March it's just some of the titles.
Wii play is like wii sports meant to lure in the nongamers. It's another weapon in the arsenal to increase wii sales.
All game consoles in their first six months have what people complain about not enough games.
PS3 is no different, PS2 was no different.
Heck Wii with it's 30 titles in the launch period till March beat most game consoles of the past and of the future.
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If Nintendo can sell 4 million consoles in the span of two months off of the strength of a so-called "gimmicky remote," why in the hell would they exit the hardware industry? The Wii is the fastest selling game console in Australia, (not to mention the DS is the fastest system to 10 million in Europe.)People (including you and me) are paying to play Nintendo's game. So just drop the 'quit the industry' argument, it's tired. Sell your system for a loss if you must, but don't be a sore loser.
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The only title in that bunch I'm interested in is Sonic.
However- I think that Nintendo is going to now be bringing out their top VC titles. What we'll probably see each year is the best VC titles being released in Q1-Q2 on a much more regular basis than Q3-Q4.
The Wii's Q1 games are worse than PS3's IMO. Gmaes like Oblivion are just awesome. Thats also a problem I suppose one could argue for PS3- where are the original titles? Then again, Wii is suffering that fate too (Prince of Persia is the worst offender here)
Mario Party 8 being pushed back is surprising- that was one of Q1's biggest games- and now its not there. Perhaps as one person said, they are going to be adding online functionality to it? (We can only dream...) Now THAT would be TOTALLY AWESOME.
I think Reggie didn't fail- didn't he mention something about VC games being able to tide us over? Well, that sounds like what they're doing. But the actual Wii games lineup is really dissapointing and flat-out boring.
Makes me glad I'm waiting until at least mid this year to get it (6 months after launch we'll see a price drop- and there will be plenty of good games by July. People should have waited)
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Wii Play with Wii Remote... lame throw away game; dont take my word for it, just read the reviews.
Disney's Meet the Robinsons... interesting only if you're 5 years old or less.
March Bust-A-Move Bash... old concept with new wiimote controls. After the novelty of using a new control wears off, you'll realise that its just not that interesting and probably not worth $50. Better puzzle concepts have come since bustamove.
Prince of Persia Rival Swords... last gen game with tacked on wiimote controls. All of Ubi's Wii launch has been shit. Why anyone would give them the benefit of doubt is beyond me. This game will be shit... just watch.
TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)... its from Ubi and its on the wii.. its going to be shit.
Bionicle Heroes... game for kids.
Blazing Angels Squadrons of WWII... see other ubisoft comments.
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Jan - WarioWare
Feb - Wii Play
Mar - Mario Party 8
Apr - Super Paper Mario
Not to mention I'm still working on Zelda:TP and Virtual Console titles. It may be a drought to you, but I've got more games on my plate than I do time and money. Then again, I am easily amused and distracted... Ooh, look, a string!!
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