For the Wii, Nintendo has only two releases planned, both remakes of GameCube games designed to support the Wii Remote’s motion-sensing capabilities. The self-explanatory New Play Control Mario Power Tennis and New Play Control Pikmin will both launch in March.

Nintendo’s DS lineup is a little more robust, spearheaded by the March 22 launch of Pokemon Platinum. Platinum reuses characters and settings from Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl in a franchise tradition dating back to Pokemon Yellow for the original Game Boy, a pseudosequel that incorporated elements of the previously released Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue.

Beyond Diamond, Nintendo has two more DS games planned through March. Up first will be Personal Trainer: Math on January 12, an arithmetic addition to the practical game series that started with Personal Trainer: Cooking. Those looking for something a little more gamey can try Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon on February 16. The latest release in the turn-based strategy series will be a remake of the original NES Fire Emblem (which never made it to North America), with new touch-screen controls.

Wii

• Disney Sing It: High School Musical 3: Senior Year (Disney Interactive Studios)–Winter
• Neighborhood Games (THQ)–January 5
• Paws & Claws Pet Resort (THQ)–January 5
• Fishing Master World Tour (Hudson)–January 6
• Deer Drive (Mastiff)–January 20
• SimAnimals (Electronic Arts)–January 27
• Coraline (D3Publisher)–January
• Escape the Museum (Majesco)–January
• Word Jong Party (Destineer)–January
• NASCAR Kart Racing (Electronic Arts)–February 10
• Brave: A Warrior’s Tale (Southpeak)–February 17
• Little King’s Story (Marvelous)–February 17
• Roogoo Twisted Towers (Southpeak)–February 17
• Battle Rage (Destineer)–February
• Cradle of Rome (Destineer)–February
• House of the Dead: Overkill (Sega)–February
• Onechanbara Bikini Zombie Slayers (D3Publisher)–February
• Puzzle Challenges and More! (Crave)–February
• Solitaire & Mahjong (Crave)–February
• Tenchu: Shadow Assassins (Ubisoft)–February
• Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball (Southpeak)–March 17
• Monsters vs. Aliens (Activision)–March 24
• Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars Director’s Cut (Ubisoft)–March
• Burger Island (Destineer)–March
• Cate West: The Vanishing Files (Destineer)–March
• Crayola Colorful World (Crave)–March
• DanceDanceRevolution Disney Grooves (Konami)–March
• Madworld (Sega)–March
• Major Minor’s Majestic March (Majesco)–March
• Monster Pals (Crave)–March
• New Play Control! Mario Power Tennis (Nintendo)–March
• New Play Control! Pikmin (Nintendo)–March
• Play the World (Dreamcatcher)–March
• Rune Factory Frontier (Marvelous)–March
• Sonic and the Black Knight (Sega)–March
• We Ski & Snowboard (Namco Bandai)–March
• Super Pick Ups (XS Games)–Q1
• Trivial Pursuit (Electronic Arts)–Early spring
• Marble Saga Kororinpa (Hudson)–Spring

Nintendo DS

• Phineas and Ferb (Disney Interactive Studios)–Winter
• Paws & Claws Pampered Pets (THQ)–January 5
• Big Bang Mini (Southpeak)–January 6
• Retro Game Challenge (XSEED)–January 6
• Personal Trainer: Math (Nintendo)–January 12
• Moon (Mastiff)–January 13
• World Championship Games (The Game Factory)–January 19
• SimAnimals (Electronic Arts)–January 27
• Coraline (D3Publisher)–January
• Drivers’ Ed Portable (Dreamcatcher)–January
• Inkheart (Dreamcatcher)–January
• Jake Power Fireman (Ubisoft)–January
• Jake Power Policeman (Ubisoft)–January
• Learn Math (Dreamcatcher)–January
• Monster Band (Dreamcatcher)–January
• Powerbike (Majesco)–January
• USA Today Puzzle Craze (Destineer)–January
• Wonder World Amusement Park (Majesco)–January
• My World, My Way (Atlus)–February 3
• Legacy of Ys: Books I & II (Atlus)–February 10
• Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (Nintendo)–February 16
• Brave: Shaman’s Challenge (Southpeak)–February 17
• Jagged Alliance (Empire Interactive)–February 17
• My Fashion Studio Paris Collection (Ubisoft)–February 17
• Roogoo Attack (Southpeak)–February 17
• Avalon Code (Marvelous)–February
• Imagine Cheerleader (Ubisoft)–February
• Imagine Family Doctor (Ubisoft)–February
• JoJo’s Fashion Show (Ubisoft)–February
• Music Star: Pop Star (Dreamcatcher)–February
• My DoItAll (Tomy)–February
• My Personal Diary (Dreamcatcher)–February
• Petz Horseshoe Ranch (Ubisoft)–February
• Zoo Quest (Dreamcatcher)–February
• American Popstar – Road to Celebrity (Gameloft)–March 9
• Animal Planet (Activision)–March 10
• Chicken Hunter Star Karts (MumboJumbo)–March 10
• Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (Rockstar Games)–March 17
• Trackmania DS (Atlus)–March 17
• Pokemon Platinum (Nintendo)–March 22
• American Popstar – Road to Celebrity (Ubisoft)–March 24
• Monsters vs. Aliens (Activision)–March 24
• Pimp My Ride 2 (Activision)–March 24
• Broken Sword: Shadows of the Templars Director’s Cut (Ubisoft)–March
• DinoPets (Destineer)–March
• Dreamer: Top Model (Dreamcatcher)–March
• Flower, Sun, and Rain (Marvelous)–March
• Hot n’ Cold (Majesco)–March
• Imagine Ice Champions (Ubisoft)–March
• Jake Power Handyman (Ubisoft)–March
• Learn Chess (Dreamcatcher)–March
• Matchstick (Dreamcatcher)–March
• Monster Pals (Crave)–March
• Paint by DS (Dreamcatcher)–March
• Sarah: Keeper of the Unicorn (Dreamcatcher)–March
• Zubo (Electronic Arts)–March
• Elebits: The Adventures of Kai and Zero (Konami)–Q1
• Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure (Electronic Arts)–Q1
• Litlle Magician’s Magic Adventure (Konami)–Q1
• Our House (Majesco)–Q1
• Puzzle Quest: Galactrix (D3Publisher)–Q1
• Suikoden Tierkreis (Konami)–Q1
• Dragon Master (Dreamcatcher)–April
• Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time (Square Enix)–Spring

Wii Release Dates

DS Release Dates

At first glance, you might mistakenly believe Blue Dragon Plus to be a strategy game in the style of Final Fantasy Tactics, with little hand-drawn heroes and monsters arranged on an isometric 3D stage. But once the fight begins, everything starts happening in real time and you must feverishly put together your plan of attack, because those enemies aren’t waiting for your turn.

You command your units around the field with quick but simple controls that rely totally on the touch screen. You tell your units where to go, who to fight, when to heal, and when to move to special areas on the map. It seems like your attention is constantly needed everywhere at once, but the game gives you some room for error by providing a high number of healing items. Also, as you progress through each map, the game occasionally pauses to let some part of the story play out.

Speaking of the story, it picks up one year after the first game, as Shu and his pals journey to the center of their world to make sure everything is still OK where they defeated the ultimate evil. In a big twist, the nefarious Nene isn’t as vanquished as they thought, and trouble starts all over again. While it doesn’t have the console version’s voice acting or so-bad-it’s-good rockin’ battle music, it does have a big dose of 3D cutscenes. It’s possible that the game’s first couple of hours are just unusually heavy with them, though, seeing as we haven’t yet had a chance to spend more time with the game.

We’re interested to play more, especially after seeing Blue Dragon Plus attempting to shake things up compared to its more traditional predecessor. Hopefully it will give this franchise another chance at the big time. Expect to see more of its high-end presentation and simple but fast techniques when it releases early next year.

In my mailbox yesterday was a copy of 2005’s “Animal Crossing: Wild World” for the DS out of the shrinkwrap and accompanied with a letter on Nintendo stationery written in the voice of the game’s Mayor Tortimer, encouraging me to use this copy of the game to import all of its unlocked items and its character to “Animal Crossing: City Folk” on the Wii.

Nintendo must have known that I’m terrible at “Animal Crossing” and thought I’d need help. So they unlocked a lot of content for me. They appear to have quite accidentally gotten a bit hip-hop about all this. Whoever played this game for me back at Nintendo trained at least one of the characters to greet me with the line [censored here]: “How are you, N—a?”

A few things worth noting:

Players of “Animal Crossing” can teach other residents in their virtual towns all sort of words. You could teach a character to greet you with the words “Stephen is a champ” or “I like the PlayStation.” It’s pretty much open to anything. Nintendo blocks these kinds of content surprises from popping up in your copies of “Animal Crossing” by forcing you to exchange 16-digit Friend Codes, which guarantee that you won’t be getting unexpected content via strangers.

Unless you’re playing a copy of the DS game that a stranger mailed to you. Or you’re buying the game used.

What’s also notable here is that Nintendo has tried hard to build walls that safely protect its gamers from the kind of unexpected and sometimes unwelcome language that regularly flows through Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, to say nothing of any message board and blog comments section on the Internet. If anything, this shows that even the most careful company will miss something.

I’ve checked in with my main Nintendo rep for comment and will update if I hear back.

“Animal Crossing DS,” it should be noted, is E-rated, but it carries a note that mentions that “game exprience may change during online play.”

And then there’s the word in question. I didn’t expect a sheep named Baabara to walk up to me n the game and say “I almost forgot about you n—a.” (I confirmed that Kotaku editor Brian Crecente received a similar copy of the game with similar player-added lines.) But I can tell that it isn’t meant as an offense. It’s clearly meant more as a hip-hop slang greeting.

What about the content Nintendo did want me to see? My character has 37,019 Bells, which I think is a lot of virtual money. A letter in his inventory from the bank claims that he’s earned 75,740 Bells from 30 days of interest. The Happy Room Academy has rated his three story house with 272,492 points.

In his inventory he had a fishing pole, slingshot, hatchet, net and shovel. He also had a “stadiometer,” a fossil, a cabin wall, a coconut, gas mask, golden can, green cap, and a shirt. He had unopened letters notifying him that Wart Jr. and Kitt have moved out of his town. Bummer.

In his house he has an amazing array of objects, including a statue of a “Star Fox” Arwing, the “F-Zero” Blue Falcon, a “Zelda” Master Sword, and some planted Pikmin. There are fruit trees everywhere. Coconut trees lining the beach. Peach and apple trees all along the river. It’s a beautiful place and one that makes me want to try this import thing and bring this haul over.

Really, his town’s a lovely place. It just has that one element that I never saw coming.

When the evil witch Gruntilda discovers that Banjo’s sister Tooty is the most beautiful girl in all of Spiral Mountain, she kidnaps her to steal her youthful good looks. Banjo and his best friend Kazooie must team up in order to defeat Gruntilda and rescue Tooty from the witch’s grasp. At first, Banjo and Kazooie perform simple moves like running and jumping to collect jigsaw pieces, dubbed “Jiggys,” but as players progress, the bird and bear will learn new moves and abilities to help them fly, swim and fight to advance to new worlds and save Tooty.

Developed by Rare Ltd., “Banjo-Kazooie” will be available for 1200 Microsoft Points worldwide. The game is rated E10+ for Everyone over the age of 10 by the ESRB.

For more details on “Banjo-Kazooie” please visit: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/default.htm

Appealing to both casual gamers and Neopets fans, Neopets® Puzzle Adventure is the only multi-platform puzzle adventure game based on the popular virtual community. For the Neopets fan, Neopets® Puzzle Adventure is a must-have game with its intuitive “pick up and play” gameplay, new never-before-seen areas in the Neopets universe to explore and the opportunity to redeem codes for exclusive virtual items at Neopets.com.

Game Information

• Neopets® Puzzle Adventure will generate codes that can be redeemed for unique items on the Neopets.com website.
• Choose and customize one of 12 Neopets to be your central character in the story
• Travel through four lands of Neopia as you experience an epic story with more than 150 quests in the single-player game.
• “Head-to-Head” multiplayer matches.
• Collect 100 “PetPets” for extra abilities and earn 30 special Awards for completing missions.
• Exclusive drawing minigame included for the DS only!
• Collect over 100 items, recipes and treasures, many of which can be equipped on your pet to provide useful bonuses

Trade organization ELSPA has been counting the beans and both Wii titles have been selling like hot cakes made of chocolate-coated crack with porn sprinkles – making them eligible for ELSPA’s coveted Diamond sales award.

The two games join other Diamond-rated games such as Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training and New Super Mario Bros. Only platform-exclusives are eligible for Diamond status, so GTA IV had to make do with a mere Double-Platinum despite selling about a million copies in its first weekend.

It’s regrettable I don’t have a full page to praise the genius of Sony’s “Little Big Planet.” The game offers a unique platforming experience while honoring some of the best side scrollers in gaming. LBP is loaded with wonderful art direction, charming characters and a fully fleshed out gaming experience unlike any you’ve played before.

Its mantra is play, create and share. Players have the opportunity play as a two-inch Sackboy or Sackgirl. The characters are fully customizable and very personable. You can decide what they look like, even down to their facial expressions.

These characters are thrown into situations to perform different tasks or solve puzzles to complete levels. Repetition is minimal, and the game feels constantly fresh. It moves at a brisk pace but gives enough time for you to soak in the astonishing graphics and action.

This game is for any age, gender, or type of gamer. It incorporates social networking features that let you share your experiences online with other players. This gives the game extraordinary depth. There is no limit to what you can create, whether it be vehicles, tricky puzzles, evil henchmen and epic boss fights.

This is simply the most creative game available on any platform right now. It’s a needed change of pace from first-person shooters and action adventure games. I really believe that this game deserves to be the crown jewel of the PS3. It’s that good.

Jose Mercury News