Zelda Wii on Wuhu Island?

Not sure if I'm the only one who caught this or if I just missed all the news and prediction threads about it but I found this very interesting. In the newest Iwata Aks interview Miyamoto has some very interesting things to say about the island in which Wii Sports Resort (and Wii Fit for that matter) takes place on.

Miyamoto:

It’s called Wuhu Island, but the concept is more or less the same. We really polished up the island, turned it into a resort and actually made the location into a kind of character. This will then lead to a range of island series…

Iwata:

So you’ll be releasing a range of series?

Miyamoto:

You could have adventure games, role-playing games, city-building simulation games... It will be fun to see all the ideas that we can come up with, won’t it?

Iwata:

So the idea is basically to use the same island as the location and then afterwards develop games covering all sorts of genres. Shimamura-san, how did you react when you first heard about the “Island Concept"? Did you have any reservations about it?

Shimamura:

Well, I was really taken aback. In fact, I was at a loss for words! (laughs)

Iwata:

Well, that's not surprising considering you’d just heard someone suggest turning an island into a character and then licensing it out! (laughs) Having just heard the explanation, I understand the concept but under normal circumstances, I think anyone would find themselves thinking: ”What on earth is this person talking about?”

Shimamura:

Absolutely! (laughs) Using an island as the setting for a game is very common, but the idea of turning it into a franchise...

Iwata:

So how did you end up coming round to the idea?

Shimamura:

Well, I heard an explanation that really made everything fall into place. If you see a street on TV that you’ve been to before, even if it was just the once, you’ll always say: “Hey! I know that place!”

Miyamoto:

We thought it would be a fun idea to have a location that everyone knows and then have all sorts of stuff going on there. It would mean that players would already know the town like the back of their hands by the time they came to buy the next adventure game.

See that in the bolded sentences above? Aren't those all a little telling about the next adventure game (i.e. Zelda) that Nintendo is going to be making? Unless they have some brand new adventure game in the works that none of us know about it seems to me like they may be making Wuhu Island the new setting for Hyrule.

And let's not forget this very obvious addition to the Wuhu Island.

Do you think Nintendo would use Wuhu Island as the location for the new Wii Zelda or do you think they have a new adventure game in the works that will use Wuhu Island?

2009 Gaming Predictions

Seeing as how it's 2009 now and I did this last year I thought I would make some gaming predictions. Below you will see 5 things that are likely to happen this year. Please feel free to argue with me on any of these predictions. Think I'm wrong? Well we'll just have to wait and see.

1) PSP2 will be released this Holiday and will not have a UMD drive

This one is a little bit out there but I think Sony will announce their next handheld device at either this year's E3 event or some event soon after. The system will have the ability, much like the DSi or the iPhone, to download games directly to them using a wireless signal. Also, the UMD drive will be gone since it drains batteries like a mother.

2) A new Zelda for Wii will release in the holiday of 2008

With Nintendo's new concept of holding onto game information much longer than in the past there is a good chance this prediction will not be proven true until after E3. And I don't mean we will hear about it at E3, I mean we will seriously not hear anything about it until maybe August for a November or December release.

3) Voice chat will be standard on all online-enabled Wii games released in November and December

As a new owner of the Wii Speak peripheral this could be more of a hope than a prediction. Sometimes it's hard to determine if my predictions aren't being driven by lust and the desire that they may become true. The only real way for this to be determined "Right" or "Wrong" later is if I give more details. For this prediction I mean that every Wii game released in the November and December months that has an online mode (simultaneous play with or against other humans over a network) will have voice chat available using either Wii Speak or a third party peripheral.

4) Again we will see a price drop for PS3 and Xbox 360 but not for Wii

We will, sometime before the end of 2009, see new Wii SKUs but not in the sense that you may think. The system will continue to sell well but a slight drop in sales during the summer will lead to a few different color options for the Wii. One will most certainly be black and I will be extremely tempted to buy one. I hate you Nintendo.

5) A new Resident Evil and GTA will be released for the Wii in 2009

This is my grand prediction that has the highest percentage of being wrong. Like last year's stupid prediction of Saints Row getting higher reviews on average than GTA IV this is my "out on a limb" prediction. I personally think 2009 will be the year that will start seeing some serious "hardcore" games released on the system. Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition sold over a million copies so it's obvious there's a market for it on Wii. As for a GTA game being made, I see it being made by the same team at Rockstar that made the PSP Grand Theft Auto games. Let's see how close I am on that one.

Let the games of 2009 begin.

Zelda Cake Like None Other

Last week I touched on the multiplayer aspect of Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, but today is a whole different Zelda ballgame. You may have seen cakes created for weddings, birthdays, or any other occasion decorated with a videogame theme, but I bet you have never seen one like this. This has got to be the most incredibly detailed cake I have ever seen. This isn't the type of cake I would actually ever eat though, I would feel too bad for destroying something so brilliant.

If you can't tell by the close view, that is Link and Tetra from the Zelda games The Wind Waker (Gamecube) and The Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo DS). But the close up view on the top of the cake still just doesn't do this cake justice. No, no, no. Look below for even more beauty.

Multiplayer > Single Player in Phantom Hourglass

Is it a bad thing that I am more interested to play the mulitplayer portion of a game that has, in the past, been strictly a single player fare? I have successfully completed the first dungeon in the Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for the DS and I was mildy impressed, but it's the multiplayer portion that really gets me wanting to pick the game up again. The single-player seems like a watered-down version of The Wind Waker for the Gamecube with a stylus covering parts of the screen at all times. That may be an unfair comparison because the game seems to do a lot of neat things like writing notes on maps and drawing the path of a boomerang.

The multiplayer in Hourglass is a first for the Zelda franchise, at least competitively. Four Swords was a multiplayer Zelda game but that was more of a co-operative event using the Gameboy Advance and the Link Cables. The thing about Hourglass' multiplayer is that it actually has more in common with Pacman VS, another game that used the Link Cables, than it does any other Zelda game.

The way Pacman VS works is one person gets the top down view of typical Pacman games while three other players control the ghosts in a more constricted 3-D view. Hourglass is similar with only a few changes in the design. First of all, it's Link (Pacman) that has the contricted view and not the Statues (Ghosts). Secondly, it is only a two-player game with the defensive player, the one controlling the Statues, controlling all three at once using the stylus. This player draws paths for the Statues using the top-down map and can see Link's location on the map at all times. Link runs around the map trying to grab Triforce pieces and bring them back to his base without getting sliced by the Statues. There are six rounds, three for each person, and you get scored based on the size and number of Triforce pieces in your base at the end of the final round.

To top it all off, the game allows you to play multiplayer over the WiFi Connection against both strangers and friends. Due to the crappy nature of Nintendo's friend codes playing with friends is pointless other than knowing you are playing against someone you know. As you play the game you get points that upgrade your rank. There are also various "achievements" in the multiplayer that allow you to unlock little things in the single player mode. Completing a game without ever dropping a Triforce piece, shutting out the opponent, and winning without power-ups will all earn you different unlocks.

My opinion may change as I get further along in the single player mode but as of right now, multiplayer is the bell of the Phantom Hourglass ball.

Hidden Bosses in Zelda: Twilight Princess

There is a sweet video over at NWiiZone showcasing some hidden boss-type characters in the Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Using the Action Replay, available on the Gamecube, they discovered some way to make these characters appear in the game. I know stuff gets left on the cutting board all the time during development, especially in massive adventures like Zelda, but why couldn't the second boss character be added to the game somewhere, I would have loved to battle that guy.