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Marvelous Entertainment, faced with low sales and financial trouble, is turning to a relatively low-cost source of new material to publish: Western WiiWare games. The publisher just started a new label, World Game Parade, to release localized Japanese versions of some WiiWare games originally developed and published outside of Japan.

In March, World Game Parade will release Zombie in Wonderland (called Zombie Panic in Wonderland outside of Japan) and Bit Man!! (Bplus's Bit Boy!!). Katamuki Spirits (Equilibrio) and Rakugaki Hero (Max & the Magic Marker) will follow in April. WiiWare sales figures aren't normally released, so we may have to wait until Marvelous's next earnings report to determine the effectiveness of the plan. We can confirm right now that the logo is adorable.

[Via Andriasang]

This week, the long-awaited remake of Hudson's Military Madness is available on WiiWare in Japan. Do you like ... war? Do you like hexagons? This is for you! Japanese gamers with no interest in playing updated versions of classic games can play a faithfully emulated version of Mega Man 4 instead.

DSi owners have a wide selection of games this week, including Q-Games's Starship Defense/Starship Patrol (now under a third name!), a new G.G. Series game, a Gameloft pet sim, and a dungeon crawler based on Sonic Powered's From the Abyss.

• Rockman 4 (Famicom, 1 player, 500 Wii Points)
• Nectaris (WiiWare, 1-4 players, 1,000 Wii Points)
• Anonymous Notes: From the Abyss (DSiWare, 1 player, 200 DSi Points)
• Uchimakure! Touch Pen Wars (DSiWare, 1 player, 200 DSi Points)
• G.G. Series Assault Buster (DSiWare, 1 player, 200 DSi Points)
• Uso Hakkenki: Kokoro no Naka o Nozo Ichao (DSiWare, 1-2 players, 500 DSi Points)
• Starship Defender (DSiWare, 1 player, 500 DSi Points)
• Wanko to Issho (DSiWare, 1 player, 800 DSi Points)

Danish developer Press Play would like to draw everyone's attention to Max & the Magic Marker's US release on WiiWare this March. The game released late last month on European WiiWare for 1,000 Wii Points. M&TMM is currently available in the US, directly from Press Play and digital distributors, for PC and Mac at a suggested price of $20.

With a WiiWare demo for the game uncertain, we suggest you try it over on the official website. We're also drawing a direct link to some gameplay videos here.

There's a wide selection of downloads available on Wii and DSi this week -- including stuff that people might have heard of before and/or be interested in! Two days after its reveal, the new Blaster Master game is available on WiiWare, along with Hudson's Princess Tomato, a somewhat forgotten NES oddity. And DSiWare has the iPhone hit Fieldrunners and a new puzzle game by Intelligent Systems. Read about all ten (!) new games after the break.

Oh, Sunsoft, you shouldn't have. Here we were, thinking no news from this day would cause our hearts to swell in our chests, sending us into fits of nostalgic joy. Then you come along and announce that a new installment in the long-dormant Blaster Master franchise not only exists, but is coming out in two days.

Yes, according to a recent Sunsoft press release, Monday's WiiWare update will see the addition of Blaster Master: Overdrive, a sequel to the NES classic, priced at 1000 Wii Points. Like the original, Overdrive features both side-scrolling and top-down action sequences. Looking at the images posted on Sunsoft's official site, it certainly seems to retain the same charm of the first game -- if it also preserves the original Blaster Master's completely awesome theme song, we might not be able to stop ourselves from purchasing the game two or three times over.

Update: We've added the trailer after the break in all it's YouTube glory.

Capcom originally planned to release its WiiWare ports of the Phoenix Wright games every other month. However, the publisher today announced that the court date for the second game, Justice For All, has been moved up a month, and will now be available on WiiWare in North America on February 15 (February 19 in Europe).

If you're playing through the series for the first time on WiiWare, this will be your first opportunity to meet Franziska von Karma, a brilliant young prosecutor who attacks every person she meets with a whip. Somehow, she missed out on the whole "assault = illegal" thing in law school.

Excitebike World Rally, having just been released in Japan this week, is now available in Europe, ready to delight players with online, tilt-controlled classic motorcycle racing. Final Fight 3 is also out in Europe this week, with classic dude-punching. We're starting to wonder -- is the worldwide Virtual Console release of Final Fight 3 some kind of abstract promotion for Super Street Fighter IV, which features characters and locales that originated in the Final Fight series? Or is it the Wii's equivalent of Final Fight Double Impact?

• Final Fight 3 (Virtual Console: SNES, 1-2 players, 800 Wii Points)
• "Aha! I Found It!" Hidden Object Game (WiiWare, 1-4 players, 500 Wii Points)
• Excitebike World Challenge (WiiWare, 1-4 players, 1,000 Wii Points)
• Snakenoid (DSiWare, 1 player, 500 DSi Points)

Ghostfire Games' Rage of the Gladiator is on the way to WiiWare, and now we have word of another first-person, MotionPlus-enhanced WiiWare game involving ghosts: Ghost Slayer, by Gevo Entertainment.

Ghost Slayer uses the Wiimote (with optional MotionPlus) to simulate a sword as you fight howling, glowing ghouls in first person. According to the backstory, ghosts (led by a Ghost Queen) are pouring out of a dry well, and it's up to you, as a Ghost Slayer, to hit them a bunch of times with your sword!

The North American release date is currently TBA. In the meantime, you can be creeped the hell out by the trailer after the break.

[Via Nintendo Life]

Australia's OFLC classification of Mega Man 4 has us wondering if the blue bomber's fourth adventure will become a western Virtual Console offering. Already slated for release in Japan, this would be the first indication that the game is being offered via VC off the island. The android's first three missions are already available on the VC outside of Japan. Mega Man IV is when things started getting campy with the baddies, as we were introduced to that light bulb guy and the one with a vacuum on his head.

Of course, instead of picking up this series bit by bit on Virtual Console, if there's any chance of finding the Mega Man Anniversary Collection, you should definitely do that. It includes Mega Man 1-8, but can end up costing a pretty penny now.

It's long been known that "Project Needlemouse," announced by Sega last September, was the codename for a new 2D, console Sonic the Hedgehog title. It was subsequently revealed (much to our delight) that Sonic would be its only playable character, and we now know that the game will be, in fact, a direct sequel to 1994's Sonic & Knuckles on Sega Genesis. Not only that -- it'll be (wait for it) episodic.

We also know that the officially titled Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 looks like a proper Sonic game -- i.e., there's hope for it yet.

GameSpot, which has a first look at the blue bolt's new downloadable XBLA, PSN and WiiWare adventure, reports that "episode 1" will be available on all three platforms "this summer." Additionally, Sega confirmed to the site that the game will support online leaderboards and motion control on Wii and PS3 (Sixaxis for the latter; sorry, "Arc").

You can watch the first trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 after the break. What do you think?

Yep, it says it all right there in the headline, folks. Gameloft swiftly took $122 million from consumers in 2009, roughly equating to 15 million digital copies of DSiWare Oregon Trail. Alright, alright, the digital distribution-based publishers probably sold some of its other games too, we guess -- mobile games (in general) represented a whopping 94 percent of the company's sales in 2009. And despite our voracious habit for mobile games here at Joystiq, North Americans were second place in terms of worldwide sales at 32 percent, with Europeans leading at 39 percent and the rest of the world trailing at 27 percent. Good luck catching up, rest of the world!

And yes, even amidst the global economic recession, Gameloft predicted "further growth in 2010 in terms of revenue and profitability." The publisher also pointed out its strong position in the long term, saying it will "benefit from the rapid emergence of digitally distributed video games on mobile phones, tablets, consoles, and from major technological innovations." You catch that tablet reference in there? Yeah, we did too. Hey, it's 2010, right? The future. We're in it.

Japanese gamers get to experience the joy of Excitebike with a different camera angle and online play today, with the release of Excitebike World Rally (as "Excitebike World Race"). It's a pretty faithful adaptation of the original, something that can't be said for Tecmo's Are? DS ga Sakasa Desu Kedo: Gyaku Shooting, a shooter with elements of its own Star Force, but played from the other side -- and with the DS upside down. Using the DS's touch screen, players control the enemies firing downward at what is usually the player ship. DS ga Sakasa Desu Kedo: Sakasa Drops takes the same approach and applies it to a falling-block puzzle game. Check out a trailer for Shooting after the break.

• Quarth (MSX, 1-2 players, 800 Wii Points)
• Contra (MSX, 1-2 players, 800 Wii Points)
• Excitebike World Race (WiiWare, 1-4 players, 1,000 Wii Points)
• Are? DS ga Sakasa Desu Kedo: Gyaku Shooting (DSiWare, 1 player, 200 DSi Points)
• Are? DS ga Sakasa Desu Kedo: Sakasa Drops (DSiWare, 1 player, 200 DSi Points)
• Artist ni Narou! Minna no Nurikai Museum Hen (DSiWare, 1-2 players, 500 DSi Points)
• Hobonichi Rosenzu 2010 (DSiWare, 1 player, 500 DSi Points)
• Renjuku Kanji: Shougaku Sannensei (DSiWare, 1 player, 500 DSi Points)

There are a couple of interesting games hidden in an unusually crowded lineup of new Nintendo downloads. The Tales of Monkey Island series concludes, Alex Kidd appears in a weird crossover game, and DSiWare features a game that uses the camera for motion controls. And somehow, Digital Leisure released the same game twice! Find out how that happened (and what all the other new games are) after the break.

It's time to show those ... animated ... cans ... who's boss. Intelligent Systems's patently odd shooting game 530 Eco Shooter arrives on WiiWare this week, aiming to fill you with terror at the sight of any preserved vegetable. For those among you who shun can combat, Street Fighter Alpha 2 is also available, in a surprisingly competent SNES port.

On DSiWare, Gameloft has released Legends of Exidia, which is reportedly a port of its mobile game Might and Magic II (not to be confused with the real Might and Magic II) with all the license stuff excised. That's pretty weird.

• 530 Eco Shooter (WiiWare, 1 player, 1,000 Wii Points)
• Street Fighter Alpha 2 (SNES, 1-2 players, 800 Wii Points)
• Electroplankton: Luminarrow (DSiWare, 1 player, 200 DSi Points)
• Electroplankton: Sun-animalcule (DSiWare, 1 player, 200 DSi Points)
• Legends of Exidia (DSiWare, 1 player, 800 DSi Points)

Ogre Battle 64 is a rare release on the Japanese Wii Shop, in that it's an N64 game. Remember those? It's also a good one! It's the sole new game on the Virtual Console this week, with the lineup bolstered a bit by Phoenix Wright's sequel and a rock-paper-scissors game.

The weird (but cute) Blazblue DSiWare fighter is out this week, ready to delight all the, uh, DSi owners looking for a four-player online fighting game. They're out there somewhere! Also on DSiWare: Burning Puzzle Flame Tail, a very odd, but interesting-looking vertically scrolling puzzle game from Mindware. Essentially, you control a structure with (of course) a flaming tail, snaking through rectangular structures and burning them.

• Ogre Battle 64 (Nintendo 64, 1 player, 1,000 Wii Points)
• Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Justice for All (WiiWare, 1 player, 1,000 Wii Points)
• Janken Party Paradise (WiiWare, 1-2 players, 500 Wii Points)
• ACT Series: English translator (DSiWare, 1 player, 500 DSi Points)
• ACT Series: Korean translator (DSiWare, 1 player, 500 DSi Points)
• Nari-chara Hitman Begins (DSiWare, 1 player, 500 DSi Points)
• Blazblue Battle x Battle (DSiWare, 1-4 players, 500 DSi Points)
• Burning Puzzle Flame Tail (DSiWare, 1 player, 500 DSi Points)