Will you use your Wii as a DVD player?

There's some rumours that a dvd player software which could possibly enable dvd playback on the console is in the works. But it'd require more than firmware upgrade. So, I'd like to ask you - would you upgrade to the next version of Wii in order to watch movies (even if it'd be multizone) or you'd stick with the older version providing it'd be enough to play each and every game?

First MII editor for a PC is under development

Enjoy the convenient feeling of total control upon your Mii creation and handle it with ease using familiar tools - a keyboard and a mouse. Create and edit miis, backup and upload them never leaving your windows alone with a help of Mii editor for a PC - it's currently underdevelopment and though the version is 1.1.3 it's state could be described as deep alpha.
But you could grab some readily available miis (like Neo, Borat or Angelina Jolie) and have fun tweaking and customizing them. Or you'd create something completely different for an occasion and impress your friends with newly acquired Wii artist skill.

Third-party developers sniffing Wii air

Nintendo is famous for it's first-party game development support, but in order to have a solid market presence there should be a strong stream of games coming out of third-party and independent developers. Would Nintendo be up to that? It offer some unique perks - motion sensitive controller being the major one and there's a bunch of studios eager to squeeze all the juice they possibly can of it. Would that be good enough? GamesIndustry.biz put together an interview with Frontline Studios, where the developer discusses Wii and DS development, scheduled to be published tomorrow. Go and read it youself.

Turn you Wii remote into golf club for real

Well, sort of. If you're seriously thinking about strapping your precious wii remote to the grip of your favorite golf club with some duct tape to give somewhat more realistic feeling to Wii Sports golf round, think no more.
South-Korean manufacturer Brando would gladly ship to you its aptly called Wii Sports Pack - a kit complete with a tennis racket, baseball bat and a golf club grip combined with a slot to insert your wiimote into so you could practice your swing, backhand and all you like. For a modest charge of $22 you can pretend that your club handling skill is greater than that of Tiger Woods and your tennis racket is actually more stylish than those of Anna Kournikova. And hey, who said you couldn't get a caddy to carry your bag for you while you go out to play some golf in a friends living room.

Wii web search with Clusty

Clusty, the topical clusters based search engine, have just annonsed a Wii-friendly version of their search specially tailored to unique Wii capabilities.
Once you've entered your search term, just click "ok" - there's no need to pinpoint a "search" button with great accuracy. When the results are on the screen, you can use your Wii-mote to navigate between large clickable clusters gradually narrowing your search results while following nice roll-over effects and tooltips.
For example, suppose you'd like to have a walk-thru for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - just type "zelda strategy" and click on the "Twilight Princess" cluster and you're off and running.

Wii Remote belongs on the coffee table.

"I wanted to make the sort of games you could play with your grandmother. I had an image of games not feeling out of place in the living room." - says one of the Wii channels developers in a recent three-way interview published by Nintendo Wii official site.
Wii should be on around the clock or be a first device user switches on when he get ups in the morning. And voilà - there's News and Forecast channel with something fresh to display every day.
So the Wii was clearly designed not to be a hardcore gamer only love but a part of day-by-day life of every family member.

Is your Wii game 480p ready?

For now there's only one way to know for sure - connect your component cables, start the game and see which mode your TV would be operating in. What if you'd wish to know something like that prior to buying a bunch of rather expensive games?

Folks over AVS Forum have just started to put together a list of wii games for you to make sure money you'd spend aren't wasted. Check'em out here. And don't forget update it with games you own which are not on the list yet.

Preview: Fire Emblem for Wii

Looks like Intelligent Systems is at its again struggling with deadline to release new sequel to wildly popular Fire Emblem series - Goddess of Dawn.

The date of the release is 22nd February, 2007 in Japan.

What would we get?

• Screenrate of 60fps


• Better character models than the GameCube's Path of Radiance


• 3D terrain to influence battles differently


• Tutorial mode


• 3 main difficulty levels: Normal, Hard and Maniac.


• 40-50 hours of gameplay


• Use all three controllers - the GameCube, Classic and normal Wii remote.

And more.

Banned your kids from video games? Think again.

Wii sports Opera browser, which is capable not only of giving your access to various cool stuff on Wii Shop channel, but also of educating you children in fun and easy manner. If your kids tried some browser-based educational games before you would knew for sure how bored they'd become after awhile. Not so with wii remote, when kid have to point his wireless device to the right answer and click while watching a cute animation of a virtual character hurrying to beat a ticking away time counter.

Story continues here.

What kind of girlfriend your Wii is?

Two fellow journalists from asap was getting restless thinking about where their entanglement with video consoles was heading to. So they decided to take an eHarmony seven questions test treating their console as girlfriends. Looks like Wii is easy-going open-minded clue-less blonde. That's just really weird stuf!

Free video conversion application for Wii

Software developer Red Kawa have just released Wii Video 9 - a free video conversion application capable of converting your videos into wii internal format.
Now you can grab your avi, divx, mpeg files and watch it on your perfect TV. For adventurous mind there's more - you can pair Wii Video 9 with Videora (bittorrent and rss video grabber) to bring an endless stream of videos to the console for your viewing pleasure.

Wii Video 9 direct download link.

Wii game developer was chosen to compete for $2 million

A London video game development company Big Blue Bubble which is developing a game tentatively called Hobby Shop for Nintendo's hot new Wii game console was chosen from about 70 submissions to compete for $2 million in financing as part of the new competition sponsored by Telefilm Canada.

The finalists were selection by an industry panel that included Ron Moravek, a vice-president for Electronic Arts Canada, a major game publisher.

"I am fast becoming a big Wii fan and Hobby Shop is something that leverages the strengths of this platform," said Moravek.

Hobby Shop isn't the first game developed by Big Blue Bubble, but it's the first it has developed for the Wii game system.

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As seen at London Free Press

Wii is just a runner-up, isn't it?

IGN recently announced that the "Best new console '06" award goes to Sony Playstation 3 for its "outstanding" hardware achievement and perspectives of making a transition from a games-only device to a full-powered computer.
I won't discuss that decision but there's a question I really want to ask - how need a workstation plugged to a TV, even a HDTV one? I'd say - remember "Keep It Simple, Stupid" principle and don't even try to build an uberdevice to rule my media and entertainment needs alone.

New Wii games developer comes onboard

Playbox Games is a small UK based game developer which employs six full-time staff. After a trade mission to Japan it was added to a world-wide short list of companies approved by Nintendo to design games for its new Wii console.

Nintendo's Wii is the fastest selling games console and the company applies strict criteria before it places games developers on its approved list.

Those on the list, including Playbox, get privileged access to the software used on the console.

Playbox is also discussing projects with another of the video game world's biggest names. Capcom, which created the best-selling Street Fighter and Resident Evil games, has recently made a visit to see the studio after a successful meeting in Japan.

Five-floor rocket ship for your Wii

Ubisoft announced Cosmic Family, a Wii game aimed at kids who want to leave their Leapsters behind.

Described as “more like an interactive adventure than a traditional videogame,” Cosmic Family features a family living on a five-floor rocket ship. The game incorporates 15 early-learning minigames that let young players “create and color whimsical images, customize rooms, brush a monster’s teeth, play dress-up with various characters, nurture plants from seeds and more” using simple point-and-click controls.

Ubisoft says the game “is designed to improve children’s memory, hand-eye coordination, creativity and imagination.”

The game is in development by Ubisoft's Barcelona studio and will launch worldwide in mid-2007.

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Spotted at NEXTGeneration

Feed your Wii and entertain it too

Tamagotchis party game is in the works, says Namco Bandai. Four-player party Wii game to be released later this spring would be based upon popular digital pets.

As the Wii continues to sell out around the world, game publishers are getting over any trepidation they may have had in publishing games for the new system. The latest to announce a new title for the console is Namco Bandai, who today revealed that a game based on its Tamagotchi license is in the works.

Tamagotchi Party On! is currently on schedule for release in North America this spring. The party game features multiplayer support for up to four gamers, and takes full advantage of the Wii's motion-sensitive controller.

Players will engage in 15 different minigames, each of them requiring participants to "swing, shake, point, turn, and twist" their Wii Remotes. As gamers progress, they can spend earned Gotchi points to upgrade their characters and customize their very own campaign headquarters as they try to become president of Tamagotchi planet.

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Reported by Gamespot

Wii hacking - dump a disk

Use you PC to make a copy of a Wii disk. it could probably take you a couple of days but the result worth it! The dumping software uses debug instructions in the LG (Hitachi) firmware.

Requirements and software.

Elebits review by Cory Faller

To be honest, I wasn't expecting much from Elebits. I was kind of put off by the demo at last year's E3, in particular the long-winded movie of all of the Elebits dancing. It just looked like a bunch of overweight salarymen shuffling around in an embarrassing stupor. Not the best criteria to form an opinion of a game on, I know, but still. The game looked pretty simple in general, though, and I foresaw a quick and shallow excursion that suffered from the typical low quality of most titles that float, belly-up, in the quagmire that surrounds a hardware launch.

After I got my Wii, I found myself spending an inordinate amount of time in the photo channel's puzzle game. Not because I'm particularly enamored by that fashion of puzzlery, but because I found myself almost hypnotized by the novelty of "pointing at junk". Zelda was great and all, but it wasn't really a Wii game. I needed something that would let me revel in my primal need to point at junk. Elebits, as it turned out, was that something. My former disdain for the title was overridden by a marvelous new appetite for destruction, and the game entered my collection without delay.

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Read more.

John Carmack says "No" to Wii

As it goes, the current and next games and gaming technologies developed by idSoftware would be solely Microsoft-oriented. John Carmack respects Nintendo’s decision to take a new approach with input methods in gaming controllers but show no inclination to target the Wii sector of console game development.

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As seen at DailyTech

SEGA Genesis Library comes to Wii

SAN FRANCISCO (January 9, 2007) -- SEGA® of America, Inc. today announced the first round of titles from its SEGA Genesis™ library are available now on the Wii™ Shop Channel for download and play on the Wii™ Virtual Console. Prices to download the SEGA Genesis titles will start at 800 Wii™ Points. Wii Points can be purchased in the Wii Shop Channel or at retail outlets at an MSRP of $20.00 for 2,000 points. Spanning all the popular genres, the titles currently available are Sonic The Hedgehog™, Altered Beast™, Golden Axe™, Columns™, Ecco the Dolphin™, Gunstar Heroes™, Space Harrier II™, Toe Jam & Earl™, Ristar™ and Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine™.

Titles Currently Available:

• Sonic The Hedgehog - Rocket Sonic, the fastest blue hedgehog on earth, through hair-raising loop-de-loops and dizzying dives past bubbling lava, waterfalls and on as you gather up rings and stop Dr. "Ivo" Robotnik's schemes for world domination! (1991/© SEGA)

• Altered Beast - When Zeus, the legendary Greek God, brings you back to life, you set forth on a mission to rescue his daughter Athena from the underworld. Along the way, collect the Spirit Balls dropped by enemies to increase your strength and transform into a variety of mythical creatures with powerful attacks. (1989/© SEGA)

• Golden Axe - Three mighty heroes have a score to settle with the evil Death Adder in this classic action game. As a powerful fighter, a female amazon, or a mighty dwarf, you'll fight through Adder's henchmen with weapons and magic attacks or ride the fearsome, fire-breathing beasts to help in you combat. (1988/© SEGA)

• Columns - Test your hand at the ancient Phoenician game of Columns. Multi-colored gems drop from the top of the screen into a pit and it is up to you to quickly arrange the order of the jewels as they fall into lines of three or more. If your gems pile up and reach the top, the game is over. (1990/© SEGA)

• Ecco the Dolphin - Help Ecco the Dolphin find his missing friends by exploring his vast ocean world. You must surface for air and keep an eye out for enemies as you search the depths. Ecco's unique sonar ability will give you helpful information from other sea creatures. (1992/© SEGA)

• Gunstar Heroes - The Gunstar 9 planet was peaceful for many years until the vicious dictator, Colonel Red, kidnapped the Gunstar twins' older brother and used mind control to make him his slave. You'll face many different enemies and bosses as you battle to stop the dictator from unleashing "Golden Silver the Destructor" with apocalyptic consequences. (1993/© SEGA)

• Space Harrier II - Fantasyland has been taken over by destructive forces and a call for help comes from deep in the universe. Space Harrier is quick on the scene armed with his laser to defeat wave after wave of destructive forces through 12 thrilling stages, with a dangerous boss waiting at the end of each round. (1988/© SEGA)

• Toe Jam & Earl - Toe Jam & Earl are two fun-loving aliens who accidentally crash onto earth when their spaceship collides with a meteorite. They must find 10 pieces of the spaceship so they can get back home to Planet Funkotron, but not all levels have the pieces. Once you find a piece of the ship, you'll receive a hint as well. (1992/© ToeJam&Earl Productions, Inc. © SEGA)

• Ristar - Greedy, an evil space pirate, has corrupted the kings of Valdi System's seven planets and enslaved the people who live there. The plea for a hero is answered by Ristar who uses his amazing extendable arms and courage to save Valdi from Greedy. (1995/© SEGA)

• Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine - Dr. Robotnik is stamping out music and fun in Mobius with his giant, robotizing Mean Bean Steaming Machine. Before he turns all the citizens of Beanville into robots, you must save the day by gathering up beans in matching colors and defeating Robotnik's guards. (1993/© SEGA)

"Nintendo has offered a great gateway to bring classic SEGA titles such as Sonic The Hedgehog, Altered Beast and Toe Jam & Earl to Wii console owners," said Scott A. Steinberg, Vice President of Marketing, SEGA of America, Inc. "This is only the beginning though, as you can expect to see more announcements regarding other SEGA classic titles coming to the Wii Shop Channel in the coming months."

The Wii Shop Channel serves as the Wii's online storefront, where visitors can redeem Wii Points to download games and other items. Users need a high-speed Internet connection to access the Wii Shop Channel. More Virtual Console games will come available every Monday following launch and by year-end. Users buy Wii Points at retail or with a credit card online from the Wii Shop Channel and redeem their Wii Points to download the classic games.

For more information on upcoming Virtual Console titles from SEGA, please visit the official Web site at www.sega.com.

Start your GameCube games on Wii

Wii can play both Wii games and GameCube games, it seems like Wii will boot into different CPU/mode depending on what games/platform media is inserted. Playing Wii and resetting Wii games is easy, just "Home" then "Wii channel" or "Reset". However when playing GameCube games, it goes into GameCube mode which seems like it's a separate hardware bootup, and you're not longer in Wii "environment". So to reboot/reset the system, you'll have to physically press the "Reset" button on the Wii unit.

This brought the attention to my next few questions: Does this mean that Wii is essentially a hybrid of Wii and GameCube? How well is Wii's ATI "Hollywood" chipset when working with GameCube's ganes which is written for ATI "Dolphin" chipset? Is the GameCube's graphic much better in Wii or similar to on GameCube?

To me, my personal answer to the above questions saide: Yes it seems like a hybrid of two game systems into one unit, you get Wii and you also get GameCube hardware integrated. Better value for money! For this reason, I can see Nintendo will continue making some GameCube games still for at least few more years.

For second and third answers, I think Nintendo did very well with Wii's ATI "Hollywood" chip when rendering/processing "Dolphin" instructions. It could be that "Hollywood" extend the best of "Dolphin" further and made it more powerful when pushing those polygon and vertext and shading stuff... As how the GameCube's graphics look on Wii? MUCH NICER! I have read from other sites that it seems the GameCube games look great on Wii, and now that I've tried it, I agreed too.

I use component output from Wii, displaying at 480p and both Wii and GameCube games look great. However when I played GameCube games on GameCube itself, the graphics look so so and in some cases, it is harder to see some details when comparing with Wii's output.

I read that Wii's "Hollywood" has built in digital codec/chip for outputing in digital signals, as oppose to GameCube's external chip implementation for component output. Which is why there were difficulty to source GameCube's component cable (you can only get Nintendo's official cable), compare that to Wii's approach where you can choose between Nintendo's official, or 3rd party like MadKatz's. I got MadKatz's Wii component cable and works just as good and for $10 cheaper. :-)

Anyhow, I'm glad we have Wii, and we essentially have two consoles in one package with wide selection of games on both Wii and GameCube... all you need is GameCube's controller and memory card and the perseverence to track down last of the few popular GameCube games to purchase... Sadly though, GameCube isn't as widely popular in this part of the world when compare to Japan, USA or Europe.

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As seen at Geekzone

Use your remote to trow a ball in Madden NFL 07

The Madden franchise is quite simply one of the most successful video game franchises in the world. Every year Madden NFL XX is THE best seller in the USA, and this means that the game ends up on every console and handheld imaginable. Madden NFL 07 is no different, the game is available on ten platforms, including for the first time; the Wii. One of the greatest criticisms that we've had at PALGN is the fact that the franchise doesn't really evolve that much, with the Wii version EA have really had to go back to the drawing board and this has resulted in a more enjoyable game, Madden NFL 07 isn't without its flaws but it's a great game that will even appeal to those who don't enjoy American football.

One of the biggest differences for the Wii version of Madden NFL 07 is in the controls. You'll need both the nunchuck and the Wii remote for the game. Whether you've played a Madden title before or not you're best advised to go to the learn Madden mode. This mode takes you through what you'll need to do and how to execute every move. If you'd rather learn in game then you can actually start a game and press the 1 button when prompted to quickly learn the move you need to know immediately.

Madden uses the Wii remotes motion sensing capabilities extensively, you'll also use the nunchuck comprehensively as well. The nunchuck can be used to juke left or right, you'll also use the nunchuck to move your players. You'll use the Wii remote to aid you whilst kicking, to snap the ball and of course to throw the ball, you can bullet the ball to the receiver or lob it. There are plenty of options though and these are only the basics, whilst the controls are a little bit difficult to get to grips with initially, soon enough the controls become second nature.

The controls aren't perfect however. Kicking in particular takes a lot of getting used too. Sometimes you'll slice the ball when kicking even though you'd swear that the action you just did was exactly the same as a successful kick earlier. Every now and then the game also fails to register some of your movements, but this only happens very occasionally. Despite these concerns overall the game controls very well and is one of the best uses of the Wii remote yet.

Whilst the controls are sublime, Madden NFL 07 would fall apart without good gameplay modes and thankfully there is plenty of content to keep you occupied. Unfortunately the game doesn't support online play, unlike the PlayStation 3 and XBox 360 versions of Madden. This is a shame but not really something EA could help, considering no Wii titles are online compatible just yet.

The franchise mode and Superstar modes have both returned. In franchise mode you'll need to control a team and keep them on top for three decades. The franchise mode is relatively in-depth and has seen one minor improvement - a rookie scouting system. You're now able to play the college all-star game and take your rookies through a series of exercises to determine their abilities before deciding whether to recruit them or not, it's a small improvement but it certainly comes in handy. The superstar mode is still very similar to last year's effort (there is still a lot of filler material and there are consistency problems between what goes on in an interview and what actually happens in game). The superstar mode now requires you to focus on getting your player into the hall of fame, the game keeps track of your superstar progress as you go through the superstar mode.

The Wii version also features three exclusive multiplayer mini games. The best mini game by far is two-on-two which puts two players on offence and two players in defence. You'll need to try and score as many touchdowns as possible if your're in offence or try and stop any touchdowns if you're defending. If you're in defence you'll need to count off five Mississippi before you can blitz, though you can speed through the count. The offence is able to run immediately and you're even able to buzz your team mate if you're in offence. This works surprisingly well, as you can work out secret signals with a friend, say for example telling your friend to hang back when you buzz. The Y.A.C attack mini game awards you points for doing effective things, such as stopping a player if you're in defence. It's pleasing that the mini games appear to have been thoroughly thought out and don't feel tacked on.

The visuals in the Wii version of Madden NFL 07 let the game down a bit. The game supports 480p resolution and widescreen but the actual graphics engine looks dated. The animations are pretty poor and the players themselves don't look all that impressive. The Wii version looks much like a PlayStation 2 title, which is a little disappointing because we know the Wii is capable of much more. The soundtrack is okay and the commentary is satisfactory, but much like other Madden versions more lines should have been recorded, because you'll be hearing the same comments far too frequently. The Wii remote's speaker makes some clever noises at times too.

If you devote yourself to this game then there is plenty to come back to, even without online play. The superstar mode is engaging as you're now trying to get your player into the NFL hall of fame, the franchise mode is the same as before, which means that if you've played 06 then you're not likely to want to go through another thirty years managing a "dream team". The mini games really are the standouts because you'll come back to them rather frequently for a quick game.

Madden NFL 07 is one of the best uses of the Wii remote, this also means the Wii version is one of the best ways to play Madden NFL 07. With an indepth single player mode and some highly addictive multiplayer modes Madden NFL 07 is a thoroughly enjoyable game. Aside from some occasionally unresponsive controls it's difficult to fault Madden NFL 07 on the Wii.

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As seen at PALGN

Wii version of Rainbow Six Vegas is coming!

It all started a few days ago when Dutch game and toy retailer, Bart Smit (equivalent to a Toys R Us or KB Toys here in N.America - so fairly reputable), put up a listing for Rainbow Six Las Vegas preorders.

Months back, the game was "mistakenly" listed on one of Ubi's foreign sites as being in development for Wii, only to be taken down shortly after.

Since then, everyone seems to have forgotten the mixup, but this recent listing sparked more interest in our community... leading us to search out more Wii RSV preorder pages (even if they aren't the biggest name sites): test.factotus.it, www.1a-dvdshop.ch, www.2xgames.com, www.games.ine.ch, www.toppreise.ch, www.bestelspel.nl, www.dvd.it

The last of those is an Italian site with probably the best credibility, but more than that, it lists "Available: from 30-03-2007". Following this, a few of our members have contacted Bart Smit, garnering two responses to the situation... in Dutch (sorry for the poor babbelfish translations):

Dear lord/Ms,

We have received your e-mail and thank you for this.
The wii have been announced by our supplier, one expects the product January.

Kind regards,
Department customer service

and

Dear lord/Ms,

We have received your e-mail and thank you for this. The release date of the game has been postponed to March. You can reserve these by means of the web hops.

Kind regards,
Department customer service

P.S: Our ' many have already seen asked questions '? There you find the answers on much of your questions

So, if Bart Smit and the rest of these foreign retailers have anything to say on the matter, not to mention a potential slip up from Ubisoft themselves, Rainbow Six Vegas has a good shot of making it to the Wii by the end of this quarter. You can hold off on setting the money aside until the official announcement, but after looking into the matter, it's hard to not be at least a little curious as to why there are so many listings for a Wii version of the game.

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As seen at Play Nintendo

Gradius, Soldier Blade and Dungeon Explorer - three new Wii console games anonsed!

Three classic games go live at 9 a.m. Pacific time. Check your Wii channel every Monday - there gonna be more!

Gradius®: Across the galaxy, there exists a distant planet known as Gradius. Gradius' peaceful existence has been brought to an end by an intense space invasion by a race known as the Bacterion. To save the planet, the hyperspace fighter Vic Viper has been deployed to fight the Bacterion invasion. Players pilot the Vic Viper through seven stages, shooting and dodging through deadly obstacles, while using various power-ups, including missiles, lasers, options and shields. The Vic Viper's target is the enemy fortress, Xaerous. The only way to end the war is to plunge deep through the enemy forces and destroy its very core.

Soldier Blade®: A new shooter in the "Star Soldier" tradition. Players play as an SIA (Special Interception Airforce) pilot flying the heavy assault fighter "Soldier Blade." Players face the Zeograd invasion force with weapon attacks that change each time they grab a power-up item. Players can unleash three different kinds of attack depending on the color of the power-up item. New features, such as the "Gunbody" option for avoiding enemy attacks and the "Burst Out" system (which has a different effect depending on the power-up level), add a strategic element that requires players to make snap decisions about which items to grab and when to use special attacks. Awesome boss battles await players at the end of each operation. Playing in "CHALLENGE" mode requires players to try to get as many points as they can in a limited amount of time.

Dungeon Explorer™: Dungeon Explorer is a multiplayer action/role-playing game where up to five players can play at the same time. The story takes place in underground dungeons. Players can choose from eight different character types: Fighter, Thief, Warlock, Witch, Bishop, Elf, Bard or Knome. Depending on the character, the types of magic, attack strength and movement will all vary. To survive, players must know all about their enemies' weaknesses. Players also must know about the special attributes of each magic spell and use them to their greatest advantage. In team-play games, working together is the key to victory. Any combination of Wii Remotes and Nintendo GameCube™ controllers can be used in multiplayer games.

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As seen at Nintendo