There’s no Star Fox announced for Wii yet, but at least the Nintendo Wii Virtual Console will get the classic Star Fox 64 today, along with two titles.

From latest three, courtesy of Nintendo:

Star Fox 64 (Nintendo 64, 1-4 players, 1,000 Points): Players take the controls of their Arwing and complete 15 missions to reach the final objective: a showdown on Venom, the home planet of the interplanetary tyrant, Andross. Throughout the adventure, players have to accomplish challenging objectives in order to reach and conquer every mission. Skim over the surface of an alien sea, weave through the concrete canyons of a futuristic metropolis or dodge planetoids the size of mountains. Between missions, players will be treated to real-time 3-D movies that progress the story of the Star Fox team of space mercenaries in their struggle against the evil ape emperor, Andross.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES, 1 player, 600 Points): Cowabunga! Players take control of the turtles in a half shell and rescue reporter April O’Neil from the clutches of the evil Shredder. Battle against the Foot Ninja Clan as Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Donatello and Raphael with their trademark weapons and ninja abilities. Search through five stages and dozens of areas throughout the New York City sewers, rooftops and ultimately Shredder’s Technodrome to save April. Players must scarf down some pizza to keep up their energy, as they’ll need it to defeat Shredder. Turtle Power!

Dragon’s Curse (TurboGrafx16, 1 player, 600 Wii Points): After defeating the Mecha Dragon in the depths of the Dragon Castle, the wounded beast casts a spell on the hero, turning him into an ugly creature. To return to human form, he must find the Salamander Cross, which can break any curse. This side-scrolling action role-playing game is nonlinear, allowing players to venture freely. Collect gold and items while upgrading equipment and powering up stats. The hero starts as Lizard-Man but, upon defeating the dragon bosses, is changed into other creatures such as Mouse-Man, Piranha-Man,Tiger-Man and Hawk-Man. Each creature possesses distinct abilities such as the ability to fly, swim, walk on ceilings or cling to walls. Players use each creature’s special skills to widen your search for the Salamander Cross and bring the hero back to his human form!

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A first in the modding scene – TCNiSO Corporation has developed an open source modchip for the Nintendo Wii. With a slogan of “A Wii modchip without the bullshit” the are making it possible for DIY’rs to fabricate this chip by their own means. They estimate it will cost a mere $10 to build this chip from common place electrical hardware. For those not so ‘Hands On’, they are making it available for purchase for only $20 (includes shipping). They are taking mod chip development to a new lever by keeping the price incredibly low as well as releasing the source code, schmatics, and tutorials to build this from scratch.

The current features of Wiip are:

• Actually upgradeable! Device is bundled with an easy to use programming cable
• 20 MHz AVR microcontroller with 2KB of EEPROM (SMD type)
• Customizable (via open source code)
• Boots Wii games (DVD+R / DVD-R media)
• Boots GC games and homebrew
• AudioFix (naturally)
• On board DIP switch (enable/disable mod, enable/disable stealth)
• Works on DMS / D2A chipsets (sorry, we haven’t worked on D2B yet)

About:

Wiip is a hardware mod for the Wii system that allows you to boot backup discs. This mod works by utilizing a cheap and simple microcontroller that communicates with the serial port of the Wii’s hybrid DVD drive and overrides certain parts of the media’s data stream. Allowing you to do all sorts of wonderful things (like boot backup discs).

The most important part of this project, is that it is open source! In addition to releasing the Wiip chip, on this page you will soon be able to download the PCB schematics, Wiip firmware and documentation! We hope by creating this project, other users will make modifications to our code for newer updates in the future (if needed).

Pleae visit HERE for more information.

Nintendo recently added a few new old school games to their collection. They have added The Legend of Kage, Donkey Kong Country, Streets of Rage and Adventure Island to the Wii. Any Wii owner can use his/her Wii points to download the game and play on their Wii console.

These four games are:

Donkey Kong Country (Super NES, 1-2 players, 800 Wii Points)
Donkey Kong Country (Super Donkey Kong in Japan) is a video game developed by Rare and Nintendo, featuring the popular arcade character, Donkey Kong. It was released for the SNES and Super Famicom in 1994. It was ported to the Virtual Console on the Nintendo Wii on February 19, 2007.

It was produced by Tim Stamper. This was the first Donkey Kong game that was not produced or directed by Shigeru Miyamoto .

The Legend of Kage (NES, 1-2 players, 500 Wii Points)
The Legend of Kage (Kage no Densetsu in Japan) is an 1985 arcade game by Taito and was released for several contemporary home computer systems the year after. The NES version was re-released on the Wii Virtual Console in Japan on December 19, 2006, and in the United States on February 19, 2007. The object is for a ninja named Kage to rescue Princess Kiri from mystical villains. Kage must fight his way through the forest, along the secret passageway, up the fortress wall and through the castle, rescuing her two times in order to win the game. Each time she is rescued, the seasons change. The player is armed with swords and star knives. Grabbing a scroll causes Kage to stand still and meditate for several seconds while approaching enemies drop to the ground dead.

New Adventure Island (TurboGrafx16, 1 player, 600 Wii Points)
New Adventure Island is a platform game by Hudson Soft for the TurboGrafx-16. It was released soon after Super Adventure Island in Japan, under the Takahashi Meijin name (All Adventure Island games are called Takahashi Meijin in Japan, as the main character is based on him). The game was released the same year in North America and Europe. It is the fourth game in the Adventure Island series, and was quickly followed by Adventure Island 3 for the NES, and later, Super Adventure Island II for the SNES and Adventure Island 4, a Japanese exclusive for the Famicom.

Streets of Rage (Sega Genesis, 1-2 players, 800 Wii Points)
Streets of Rage is a side-scrolling beat’em up video game released by Sega in 1991. It is the first part of the Streets of Rage series, a trilogy of games released for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. The game was released when Nintendo’s SNES was imminent, and Sega needed exclusive games to rival the SNES. They needed a game similar to Capcom’s Final Fight, a successful and popular arcade game. As such, Streets of Rage is very similar to Final Fight. A key selling points was that it supported 2 players, a feature omitted from the SNES port of Final Fight.

Original Article can be found here.

Nintendo Co.’s Wii was the top video-game console in the U.S. in January, outselling Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360 and each of Sony Corp.’s current PlayStation consoles, according to newly released market research.

Sales of the Nintendo console came in at 436,000 units, followed by Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360 at 294,000 units, and Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3 at 244,000 units, according to preliminary NPD Group data cited by Microsoft.

Sony’s seven-year-old PlayStation 2 remained a formidable competitor, selling slightly less than 300,000 units in the U.S., according to the data.

The Wii, released in November, benefits in part from a lower price than its rivals. But the console — which uses a unique, motion-sensitive controller — has also been able to attract an audience beyond hard-core video gamers, said Perrin Kaplan, vice president of marketing with Redmond-based Nintendo of America.

“I do think that we’re selling to additional and different customers,” compared with the Microsoft and Sony consoles, Kaplan said. “We’ve had an incredibly healthy start and we think there’s going to be a pretty long tail on this product.”

Microsoft considered the Xbox 360 results a “fantastic January,” said spokeswoman Molly O’Donnell. In addition to topping the PlayStation 3 in sales, the Xbox 360 saw strong game sales, including “Lost Planet” for Xbox 360, from Capcom Co., the top-selling game for the month, according to NPD.

However, the January results won’t reflect a long-term trend, predicted Michael Pachter, analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities. He said he expects the PlayStation 3, with its embedded Blu-ray Disc player, to win the long-term race for market share, as the prices for all three consoles decline.

Nintendo’s Wii currently sells for $250, compared with $300 and $400 for the two versions of the Xbox 360, and $500 and $600 for the PlayStation 3.

Both the PlayStation 3 and Wii experienced shortages following their November launches in the United States.

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 was launched in November 2005, and the company benefited from the ability to supply more of its consoles over the recent holidays. However, Microsoft recently reduced its short-term sales projections for the Xbox 360, saying it wanted to focus on making the money-losing business profitable.

Microsoft, which sold a cumulative total of 10.4 million Xbox 360s through the end of 2006, had previously been expecting to reach 13 million to 15 million by June 30, the end of the 2007 fiscal year. Now, it’s projecting 12 million.

Nintendo’s Kaplan said the company would have been able to sell more Wiis in January had it been able to manufacture enough. Pachter said he was surprised Nintendo wasn’t able to supply more than it did. The Wii has continued to experience shortages, but Nintendo says shipments are ongoing and continuous.

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