This video clip is just way too funny. Check out the wrist flicking action in the Tether Ball mini game for the upcoming Nintendo Wii title EA Playground.

Yes, I know I know. I got a warped mind. But something is just odd how the video emphasizes on the wrist flicking…and one again, no offense to nobody who enjoys flicking their wrists :p…

Any NES gamer would remember Rygar from the 1980s. Originally an arcade game by Tecmo, it was brought to the NES console in 1986 as the arcade action side scroller in mythical ancient Greece (or Rome??) as Rygar : Legendary Warrior. An already tough guy among the other legions of growing game characters, Rygar possessed a special weapon element at the time, battling enemies by wielding his ”Diskarmor“, a unique weapon that can only be spawned in the 1980s, which was essentially a shield with a chain attached to it.  Then, 16 years Rygar returned on the PS2 as Rygar: The Legendary Adventure in full 3D fashion in the style of God of War, continuing his battles with the ever wondrous Diskarmor.

Then in May 2007, Rygar was announced to make an appearance on the Nintendo Wii as Rygar: The Battle of Argus (although I could of sworn the original spelling from the NES day was Argos). But a few days ago, Tecmo developer Keisuke Kikuchi has mentioned that an addition to this title would be ”Muscle Impact” for the Japanese title. Muscle Impact!?? Yes you heard it. Muscle Impact.

Why you might ask? Well according to an interview with Joystiq.com, Keisuke Kikuchi  states that they “want players to feel strong and tough in this installment of Rygar.”  Odd, could it mean that there’s a game development company out there that don’t want to cater to Nintendo’s family friendly girly-man side of gaming? Apparently so, he continues to state “we wanted to make it more strong and add a really “tough” word to it. We want you to really feel the toughness.” Hells yeah.

Even the newly designed main character is even more muscular and “tough” looking. When ask if it’ll make the Nintendo Wii gamers feel any tougher, Keisuke Kikuchi states :

“Well, take a look at my muscles! (Laughs.) Although, because we don’t have a playable ROM here yet, you can’t see how big they are yet! But, as you can see, we redesigned the main character accordingly with the concept. First of all, we wanted that powerful image — a very muscular image.”

Ok so we get the picture. This is no game for grandma to play. But how is the gameplay? What unique motion control feature can we expect from “Muscle Impact“? Keisuke Kikuchi gives us an insight as to why this game is only for tough gamers :

“So basically, there are two different modes in the game: Gladiator and Conquest Mode. In Gladiator Mode, there’s absolutely no way I want people to just sit down and play. It’s all about your strength and power and showing that on screen. Gladiator Mode is essentially your fighting mode, and I intend everyone to be standing up, swinging their arms, building their muscles.”

Note the emphasis on building muscles. No time for wrist flicking wimps here (…no offense to anyone….you know who!). You will have to be tough to play this game. Are you girly-men getting scared of becoming tough? Not to worry, there’s a softer side of Rygar for the weaker gamers in us.

“In Conquest Mode, you will be following the story, so there will be some ups and downs; it won’t be fight-fight-fight all the time….It might not be as strong and tough as Gladiator Mode, but I hope everyone will keep Wii Remote in hand and challenge themselves.”

So the big question is whether this is going to be another Nintendo Wii port or a new game, which is still unclear as of right now as well as a release date.  Keisuke Kikuchi hopes that this will be ready by the end of next year. In the mean time Nintendo fans, we all can continue to enjoy our family fun safe games - until Umbrella Chronicle arrives…

In a recent interview with Gamespot.com a few days ago, Perrin Kaplan of the famed “Gamers were bored before Wii” comment, gave some insights to what could be expected from Nintendo in the future. Here are some exerts that I found interesting.

On the question of “When will the Wii shortages end?”

“It will end when the demand ends. I mean, it’s really less a shortage issue and more of a demand issue. The system, this holiday season, and right now, it’s still being introduced to people who have not played in many, many years, who’ve never played video games before, and to those people who are hardcore gamers that have been waiting in line to get it. And I don’t think we see any sign of it slowing down. It’s a fabulous product, it’s bringing people immense joy, and we’ve got all these additional software items that are coming to it that are brand new and wonderful. I mean, Wii Fit is going to be a unique and different product like Wii Sports. “

Well, I think it ends when Nintendo quits messing around and ramp up their production line. But why bother? Keep the hype up by making it hard for people to get one. I sure as hell would…

On the question regarding the future of online and multiplayer gaming on the Wii, Kaplan responded :

“Well, there are two aspects to it. One is the Wi-Fi program, which is going to be a big part of our system. The other is the use of the channels and how that reaches the Internet and the different things that we’re doing with the channels, and there’s more to come on that as well.”

In other words, there isn’t any and she don’t know because she’s leaving the company anyways.

On the question regarding the limited storage space on the Wii and the potential for an add on hard drive, she responded :

“There’s nothing planned right at the minute. I know some people who really like to collect a lot are running into the storage issue. You pack rat, you! So, it’s something that I think we’re paying attention to, but it does force you to keep things cleaned up. “

In other words, nope. You’re stuck with what you have. Nintendo didn’t take that into serious consideration when they designed the Wii. Now enjoy it.

When asked how long she think the Wii console lifespan will last, she responded :

“..You know, it’s really hard to say. I mean, again, the Wii system is built to be flexible so how long the life of it is, is going to be anyone’s guess at this point. I think that we will continue to have a lot of robust things as part of that system, whether it’s channel additions, channel content, the software. It’s got a long life ahead of it. How many years? I guess I wouldn’t want to speculate at this juncture.”

Here, I’ll answer it for you. 4-5 years left. Simple as that.

And finally, is Nintendo gonna release any other colors than white for the Wii?

“The white has worked very, very well. We do spend time on colors and there’s nothing immediately planned, but stay tuned.”

Well at least she made sense that time. And I agree. It’s not like they’re gonna sell anymore Wiis with different colors, because they don’t even have enough of the white ones to go around yet :p.

One of the stranger things I’ve seen in a while. Turns out that one of the levels in the upcoming Super Smash Bros Brawl will feature a level based on the PictoChat communication program that came with the Nintendo DS. The level apparently starts out blank, and then a simply line drawing begins to trace in the background which then solidifies to allows you to actually interact with it.

The Level starts out with nothing.	After a short time, a background will be drawn.
After a short while, drawing solidifies. And you can jump on it.	You can even play the Mii Channel or Wii Shop Channel Music.

Reminds me a bit of that Line Rider flash game I played a while back…

These two monster hitters have been battling it out for months through blogs and message boards even before they were even released. Fan boys of all walks of life have thrown out their rants and raves on the both of these games about why they think one is better than the other. So now that the both of them are out and have made their impressions on the gaming world, will we finally be able to decide which is the more kick ass game? Not just yet. The battle still rages on because while Halo 3 has hit the entire world with a bang, Metroid Prime 3 : Corruption has yet tackle it’s position outside the United States (as of this writing).

What a lot of people are failing to understand is that while these two games are in a sense, first person shooters, they are way too different than one another to really make an easy comparison.  While the Halo series is well known and accepted as an FPS, the Metroid Prime series is considered more of a “first person adventure“.  The type of gamers that each of these games would appeal to would also be different, considering the gameplay itself is not very similar to one another. Not to mention certain features of each of these games are totally absence from the other. However, even with these differences, they both share a similar quality that appeals very much to the hardcore gamers. Which is why everyone loves to compare these two.

So whats the results of the battle so far? Well in terms of sales figure, Halo 3 totally mopped the floor before it was even release with an astounding 1.7 million pre-orders, then went on to dominate the rest of the world by making over $300 million by its first week. As of this writing, Halo 3 has currently sold over 5 million copies worldwide. Halo 3 had so much selling power that it even helped the Xbox 360 outsell the Wii during the month of September. Metroid Prime 3 on the other hand, is not even close by a margin. Currently only a little over 500k copies have been sold since it’s release in August 27 in the US alone. However, it should be known that aside from the Metroid Preview Channel, Nintendo decided to not make any effort to promote the game at all until over a week after it was release with one of their typical crappy “Wii would like to Play” commercials (making it seem like MP3 would make a great party game or something stupid like that). But even with the minimal advertising, MP3 managed to pull in a respectable 400k copies sold during its first week. Sales figures are still yet to be determined for the rest of the world until it releases on October 28 in the UK, November 8 in Australia, and unknown for Japan. So right now its quite safe to say, Halo 3 has won the battle.

With sales figures aside, lets get deep into the gritty details of each of these games and what makes them so awesome. After having a good first hand experiences with the both of them, I think I can make some “un-biased” comparison. Or at-least try to..

Main Character

Halo 3 has Master Chief. The quiet, 7-foot tall, SPARTAN Marine clad in a high tech green armour who spends his time kicking the Covenant’s ass throughout the galaxy. He is the epitome of what a hero is thought to be : big, strong, tough, fearless, and gallant. Ever since he made his first appearance in Halo : Combat Evolved in 2001, Master Chief has grown to become the new icon in video gaming media joining the ranks of famous characters like Mario, Sonic, and others. Because of this, he quite well known among all video gamers out there.

Metroid Prime 3 has Samus Aran, the silent protagonist in the Metroid Primeseries. And unlike most video game heroes, she is a female. With the usual cliches of todays girl-power-female-heroes aside, Samus sports a large shoulder sized body suit which allows her to perform super human abilities and kick Space Pirate’s ass as well as other strange creatures throughout the galaxy. She made her first appearance in the legendary Metroid game for the NES back in 1986 as the space Bounty Hunter, so one would think that she is quite well known by now - which is definitely not the case due to the large number of popular Nintendo video game heroes, and especially Mario..

• Winner : Master Chief - He has the slight edge in this one because of impact he made on the Xbox gaming community. Unfortunately, thanks to Nintendo’s relunctant to promote Samus any more than whats already done, she’s just one of the many faces of Nintendo.

Gameplay

Halo 3 is your typical first person shooter. It follows the same schematics of all the other FPS out there. You run and fight your way past check points until you reach your goal. Occasionally encountering enemies and bosses along the way and cut scenes to introduce the next area. Gameplay is very linear and you usually have an idea of what you’re suppose to be doing at all times. Most of the time you are on your own, but certain areas you will be aided by other characters in the game. The point of the game is clear and simple : shoot them before they shoot you, then keep going. One of the cool things about Halo 3 however is it’s multitude of weapons and the ability to fire from two weapons at the same time - a gameplay feature not present in many FPS games.

Metroid Prime 3 takes it’s gameplay style from all the previous Metroid games. And that is Metroid games are not all about action and fighting, but rather exploration and information gathering, thus many would refer to Metroid Prime 3 as a “first person adventure”. With that said, MP3 does have the same FPS perspective and you do your fair share of fighting, FPS style. However, while a general idea of the objective is given, how to do it is not exactly defined. Because of this, MP3 is slightly more linear than other Metroid games - which many people liked and others did not. There are a lot of puzzles along the way and you do some serious backtracking in the game - which of course is one of the aspects of the Metroid genre. A new gameplay feature allows you to lock on to an enemy and still maneuver around them. And you know those annoying shields that certain Covenants carries around in the Halo series? Well the Space Pirates have them too, except that you can actually rip them off in Metroid Prime 3.

• Winner: Metroid Prime 3 - I feel that MP3has the better gameplay of the two because it actually combines the typical FPS style of gaming with problem solvingin the process. A lot of people may not agree with me on this and would prefer mindless button mashing, but that’s their decision.

Controls

This one is a no brainer. While I do agree that the Xbox 360 does have a very well design control pad that works well for FPS games, you just simply can not compete against the Wii-mote - when done right.  From my poor experiences with other FPS games on the Wii, I was beginning to think that the Wii-mote probably isn’t suited for this type of game. Metroid Prime 3 changed all of that. I won’t go into anymore details. You have to experience it on your own if you haven’t already in order to really understand.

• Clear Winner: Metroid Prime 3

Game Features

Now I thought the single player gameplay for Halo 3 was pretty good. Nothing mind blowing, but pretty good. But Halo 3 is also come with other feature which makes the entire package so appealing. Such as the Forge, which allows players to add and move objects around the game world during gameplay, Save Films which allows players to save multiplayer gameplay to hard drive and view it again from any angle, and File Share which allows players to exchange screenshots, Forge files, game films, among each other or uploaded to a central server for public download. Of course the biggest feature and selling point for Halo 3 is it’s multiplayer aspects. You can play, co-op with a friend, locally against other players via split screen, and online against players from around the world. Not to mention, there are also different kinds of multiplayer games you can play such as free for all and a tag-like game.

Metroid Prime 3 has well…not much in terms of features. The only thing that actually comes close is this “extras” features in which you can use special tokens gained during gameplay which you can use to unlock special content like original design drawings and game music. Tokens can also be sent to other players via the Wii Connect 24. Other than that, that’s just about it…

• Clear Winner : Halo 3.  Many people was hoping that MP3would have some kind of multiplayer feature, while others thought MP3 didn’t really need all of that. I personally thought that it would have definitely enhanced that game had it did. But you can’t always get want you want.

Graphics

This is probably going to be a bad comparison, but I think it’s well worth mentioning. Obviously the Xbox 360 has superior graphics capabilities than the Wii, but how each is made use in the games is what actually matters. Halo 3’s graphics were definitely improved from their earlier released beta demo. However, since we’re all so use to seeing what the Xbox 360 is capable of, the graphics for Halo 3 is still nothing to be excited for. Now it wasn’t bad by any means and it was actually quite good, but I was expecting a lot more from it. It didn’t disappoints or excites, but rather it warrants a big “meh” from me.

The graphics for Metroid Prime 3 is visibly stunning and a true testament of what the Wii can do when it makes use of it’s graphics power. Granted it’s not pulling any serious next-gen card with it (though it comes very close to it), but the developers did an incredible job on it and I definitely think its one of the better games to actually look at. Now if only all Wii games can have graphics like this…

• Winner: Metroid Prime 3 - Even if Halo 3’s graphics wasn’t its main priority, I thought it could of use some work especially for a game of this caliber.

Overall

So now that we’ve been through a bit of comparisons with both games, which one do I believe is the better of the two? Well, it’s a tough one. Both games has it’s pros and cons and certain aspects may be more important to different people. I think that the overall better game as a whole would lean a bit towards Halo 3 - but that’s because if you don’t like the single player campaign, you can always switch to multiplayer and blast it out against other people. But with Metroid Prime 3, if you don’t like the single player campaign, then well, you just don’t like the game. But if I were to base it on the actual game itself, I would definitely have to go with Metroid Prime 3. But then again, it all comes down to the gamers themselves and which game they enjoy most - or perhaps which console they actually own (yeah you know what I mean). Both games are great and both kick some serious ass. If you have the option, I reccomend everyone to play both of them.

So there you have it. A run down of the two biggest games in recent month on the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii. Now go play some games!

I know a lot of you out there are doing your best to avoid watching any more trailers or screenshots of Super Mario Galaxy for fear of spoilers. Well, I don’t do that stuff and this particular one is way too good to pass up. A quote from a fellow forum user at CVG.com said it best with this quote :

“those who want to be Mario Galaxy virgins when the game arrives get the f**k out now. Resisting this link will be like a Monk on months of chastity resisting desperate sex with Angelina Jolie and Kelly Brook.”

Super Mario Galaxy is slated to be released on November 12, 2007.