Mario spin-offs fill the gaps between AAA titles. For example you'd seen one pop up between Metroid and Mario Galaxy. They don't carry a console through possible post-launch drought. Either way, it looks like Metroid is still on track and Mario will follow at the appropriate time. So no worries.

Depends how good they are, everyone called Smash Bros a spinoff fill-in title. I'm really looking forward to seeing how Mario Smash Football uses the Wii controls, considering the basic game has already been made the controls are what they would be spending the most time working on now.

Well, I went to Dixons at 10:00 this morning, picked it up, then went to look around for some other stuff I wanted, and finally made my way home with my Wii, Zelda TP, Wii Play + remote, Nunchuk, AND Classic Controller. SCORE!

I've been playing around with the games and the channels all day since then and I FUCKING LOVE THIS THING. Period.

Ugh...day 32 since my Classic controller was promised to me and still nothing. :(

Smash is an AAA title now. Yeah, it can be considered a spin-off, but it's proven itself as a series. The sports and party games have not. The party games have been getting progressively worse, while the sports games hover around average to decent.

Mario Kart is actually a pretty successful series for a sports game that's "average to decent".

Ahaha, my brother and his friend were just playing ExciteTruck to Bananaphone, read off an SD card. I didn't know any Wii games could do that just yet.

If only the game had four player multiplayer and cpu controlled trucks in multiplayer, it would be the apex of awesome. =/

Mario Smash Football? Man i bet thats gonna be cool. Wish i sure can get a Nintendo Wii.

Meh, I haven't played a Mario Party game since 4 so I dunno about that. But from what I've heard, each one has been adding new stuff to the formula for distinctly different play. I wouldn't say it's a bad game. The sports games (or at least Tennis) have been awesome. I can't wait for the new Tennis game to come out. Mario Kart has been kicking ass at every iteration, but that's already been pointed out.

Oh yeah... Mario Kart. Hopefully MKWii is better than DD!


Yeah, you'd think that would make for a better game. Turns out, not so much.

Hey guys and girls Merry Christmas. Hope you all enjoy yourselves today and hopefully some will find a wii under your tree unlike me.

Today marks the 15th anniversary of me getting my first nintendo!!!
Merry Christmas!!

Has anyone yet contacted Nintendo for what concerns 50hz output for PAL VC games?
You know, I now realize how unnerving it is to play Sonic with borders and slowdown, given that they could easily overcome the problem with a firmware revision.
I'd be curious to hear what's their response in regards to such flaw.

They answered that most PAL games were directly ported (so "porting" means letting you download ROMs, ah) and thus don't support 60Hz.
I suggested them to either provide PAL and NTSC versions of the ROMs or to implement a "force to 60Hz mode" (at least for SNES and NES games) option. They wrote that they'd transfer it to the people in charge.

Wait a minute, PAL VC games don't have modes to change to 60Hz? Time to import the japanese Sonic Mega Collection and wait for the fucking Wii Freeloader, then.

I can tolerate a few games in 50Hz, but things like Gunstar Heroes and/or any action paced games shouldn't be allowed to be run in that mode. Especially Gunstar Heroes.

Unfortunately that seems to be the case.
By the way, it's absurd that we have to play the original Zelda in 50Hz, while the GameCube Zelda Collector's Edition disc ran at 60Hz only.
There's some blatant (and severe) incongruency on their part.

EDIT: By the way, I have a question for US Wii users. Can your Virtual Console games be output at 480p?

It's hardly a severe incongruency. They didn't want a game which came with the GC, to be ran at 50Hz. That makes sense when they're trying to sell a console, but Wii Sports runs at 60Hz in PAL, as does the channels. I guess VC really is just a huge rom database.

That Wii Freeloader needs to hurry itself up.

Exactly. The Virtual Console is so far the only section of the system which does not accept any other video mode besides 50Hz. I *suppose* it could be easily fixed, though. It would just require to "calibrate" every game to the internal setup of the system, so that, if it's configured to run at 60Hz, it will respect that frequency in all of its parts.

Even if we consider it as a mere Rom database, emulators can render PAL Roms in NTSC mode, if the option to do so is activated. They should really implement a similar feature.

Haven't tried it yet, but I can when I get home on Friday. My roomie will have Toejam and Earl by then, and we have component cables hooked to HDTV. Will let you know if it is truly progressive output.

Am I the only one who pre-ordered the classic controller and still have not recieved one?

Why don't you just cancel it and buy one in a store? They're becoming more readily available now.

There were five fucking thousand of them at Gamestop and EB when I went looking for Castlevania today. Tritoch offers sagacious advice.

I'm in an ongoing war with the store manager. I guess I can call the district manager and complain if I can get an employee there to say they've recieved them and sold them (he always tells me they never got any) and I've yet to recieve a phone call. He is the only one working there these days, I swears. :(

He's the same guy who never gives me the freebies when I get games that have them. :(

The manager at my EB store kept telling me that they were sold out so I just kept going to the store and a different employee said that I should have received mine a long time ago. This employee called me personally to let me know that they had gotten a classic controller in and he held it for me until I got to the store that day. You just can't trust some of the EB employees to hold your preorders for you. Just keep going into the store and letting them know that your fed up (which I'm pretty sure you have already). I was just lucky enough to get a hold of a guy who actually cared about me receiving what I actually preordered.

I'm on the good side of a specific employee, but the manager is the only one there when I call/show up. Not worth the trip there to the mall this time of year, so I need to just call instead.

(Yes, I have a Wavebird to use, but I should still have this controller)

EDIT:

Elebits is so freaking sweet. Unfortunately rooms are too small or there are too many objects in them, but the music is great and the use of the Wiimote is absolutely perfect!

has anybody else tried that wii media center program?

http://www.redkawa.com/mediacenters/wiimediacenterx/

not a bad atempt to make a media center for the wii
the picture works great for manga scanlation.