OMG Nintendo

Wii Fit is one of the best-selling video games of all time, with over 18 million copies sold in a little under a year on the market. Crazy? Yes. Depressing? Well, that's a matter of opinion.

Not even Nintendo is going to leave such a successful product with no follow-up and we're starting to see signs of what the Wii Fit sequel might be. Last month it appears Nintendo registered both a trademark and logo with the Japanese trademark office for something called Wii Fit Plus. A similar registration happened in the European trademark offices at around the same time.

Analyst group Macquarie Research has announced that they expect to see Wii Fit Plus officially announced at this year's E3. The firm states that they expect the product to be sold separately from the Balance Board but also "in a bundle," which makes it sound like the potential Wii Fit sequel may have some sort of new peripheral all its own.

Of course, analysts like Macquarie are wrong about their game industry predictions all the time. Even the existence of the logo you see above doesn't mean that something called Wii Fit Plus is necessarily going to be announced at E3 or will ever exist at all. Still, Wii Fit Plus is looking possible enough that we'll have our eyes peeled for it at the show this year. 

We've got another mysterious sighting of Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box out there, this time from Amazon. The site is currently listing the game for an August 24th release with Nintendo as publisher. This release date would square with statements made by Layton producer Akihiro Hino at GDC regarding the second game being on the way in during the second half of 2009.

Of course, the game isn't officially announced yet so there's no reason to treat the Amazon date as something set in stone. Even after Rhythm Heaven was officially announced, its release date slid all over the place until it finally escaped into stores last month. Still, heading into E3, I have to say that our chances of seeing Diabolical Box announced before the show's end are starting to look pretty good.

The above scan was provided to Kotaku after an interesting thread popped up at neoGAF. Some context for all of this is that Capcom was keeping two of the games it promised to reveal at its E3 line-up a secret. Tatsunoko vs. Capcom was widely theorized to be one of the "secret" games, since throughout 2008 Capcom USA had said they were doing everything they could to get the game cleared for North American release.

So the question remains: is the scan legit? It certianly looks like Nintendo Power's current layout style, but the picture is blurry and much of the page text is unreadable. There's also the question of how someone would have hold of a print copy of Nintendo Power's next issue just a few weeks after the original shipped. Let's just say that at this point I won't be surprised if I see Tatsunoko vs. Capcom at E3, but I don't consider it a done deal yet.

You might've missed it, but earlier today Telltale Games announced they'd passed the major milestone of 1 million episodes sold across their two Sam & Max games, Strong Bad, Bone, and Wallace & Gromit. To celebrate that announcement, they promised they'd reveal a new episodic game series at E3. No word on what the series will be, what license it's based on, or what platform it's coming to.

This is where we get into rumor mill territory. I put my nose to the grindstone and made a few calls. I can't reveal my sources here under pain of execution by ninja death squad, but after what I've heard I'd be willing to bet upwards of perhaps $10 that the new project is coming to WiiWare and is going to feature a brand-new license. As we get closer to E3, I'm sure we'll find out more concrete details-- and of course, remember that my sources here could be dead wrong. Word on the street before the release of Wallace & Gromit was that it was going to be a WiiWare game, too.

I'm plopping this into Speculation for now, but a slip-up like this is usually a sign we're at least 80% of the way to an official press release on the subject. Right now Capcom's press FTP is listing Monster Hunter 3 for the US. The release date is a vague "TBA," but there'd be no reason to add it to the list of Capcom's upcoming games unless the company intended to do something with the game.

As far as the Japanese market is concerned, Monster Hunter 3 is probably the first highly-anticipated hardcore RPG for the system. Of course, Monster Hunter is already huge in Japan thanks to successful PSP and PS2 titles. The PSP Monster Hunters haven't been huge blockbusters in the US, but Capcom has blamed that on bad promotion. It'll be interesting to see if Capcom USA's crack PR team can turn the US perception of Monster Hunter around with the Wii version.

I've been pretty grouchy about the whereabouts of the second Layton game, since the manual to the first game gave the impression it was already in the works. Now a little tidbit of new info has surfaced suggesting that the second Professor Layton game may be on its way to North America after some time in localization hell, complete with a new title.

At one of Layton developer Akihiro Hino's talks at GDC today, a big slide popped up behind him rattling off the names of his company Level-5's English language releases. On that list was, of course, Professor Layton and the Curious Village... and the second game was called Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box. Previously, official materials had been referring to that game as Professor Layton and Pandora's Box. The new title fits the content of the game a lot better, though.

Someone flat-out asked Hino what was up with Layton series at the talk, and Hino says that he intends to release all six games in the series (three to date, and the three just announced for Japan) in English. Hino stated that localization work on the second Layton title was currently being done and that he hopes to see it released in the US in about six months.

Nintendo certainly didn't announce a second Layton game at their GDC talk today, so... are we going to hear something at E3? A delay-fest like Rhythm Heaven's if we do hear about it by the end of the week? Or is Level-5 going with a publisher other than Nintendo? Remember that in Japan, Level-5 published the Layton series and it could possibly do the same here.

Remember those Club Nintendo DSi preview events I told you about? Kombo happened to get a reporter into one. The results allegedly aren't too interesting (although they confirm what Target had to say about the DSi shipping with 1000 Nintendo Points), but apparently one major information bomb was dropped that could turn the DSi from a who-cares into a must-buy for a lot of people.

Unless I missed it previously, then the big piece of good news to surface from this event is that downloadable Game Boy and Game Boy Advance titles are coming. I'll just let that soak in for a minute. Finally, we may have a shot at playing some portable classics again, and without the hassle of gambling with eBay's counterfeits or peeling stickers off of GameStop's cartridges... which could also sometimes be counterfeits.

While a portable Virtual Console for the DS has been rumored since... well, since the Wii Virtual Console became successful, this is the first possible confirmation we have from Nintendo itself of when and how they're going to get a portable Virtual Console equivalent running. The DSi solves all the logistical problems posed by previous theories about how to get retro game downloads working on the DS.

Although Kombo is usually a very solid source, I do urge people to consider this a "strong rumor" until we see a bunch of other reports online from folks at preview events to corroborate, or until Nintendo announces their plans through an official source. Maybe that GDC keynote Iwata's giving later this week? 

One of the features of the New Xbox Experience that drew an unexpectedly intense response from fans was the Netflix streaming service. People loved it so much it became a selling point for NXE almost overnight. Now it looks like Netflix may be planning to bring a similar service to Wii.

The source for this hot (and very plausible) rumor is the snippet of Netflix customer survey you see above. The service would require purchase of an "Instant Streaming Disc" that would sit in the Wii while you streamed movies and allow users to pick from a selection of 12,000 titles. Sources elsewhere suggest that any possible Netflix streaming service on Wii would be a long way off, but that the company is legitimately looking into the possibilities.

I'm enough of a fundamentally lazy person to completely understand the appeal of streaming movies and TV eps through a console. Having to fool with the streaming disc would be a minor hassle compared to the current in-house ritual of disconnecting the Wii whenever it's time to watch movies instead of play games.

Tatsunoko VS Capcom is one of those games that seemed like it would be impossible to see released in America. The reason for this is not really anything wrong with the game itself but the fact that a lot of the characters from the Tatsunoko side are from anime series which have their US distribution rights held by different companies. Science Ninja Team Gatchaman in particular, with its various incarnations over the years (such as Battle of the Planets and G-Force and does anyone know what the state of ADV's rights are anymore?), would probably require a fair amount of legal work to figure out.

Just as all hope seemed lost for those of us who have always loved Capcom's VS games but don't want to mod their systems to play imports, an unexpected ray of new light suddenly came down in the form of a quote from Capcom's strategic planning VP Christian Svensson:

"Do not rule [a Western release] out. That is all I can say right now," adding, "We are still actively working on having that happen. I can't say it's happening definitively. I couldn't give you a time frame, but as badly as the fans want it, we want to bring it."

He also makes mention of the fact that the development team for it is now working on a different title and would need to be reassembled for any localization issues that may come up including, "any changes needed to get through those licensing issues."

Would a company representative say anything like this if they didn't have some plan in motion to bring this game to our shores? If they do, will it be with some characters altered/removed/replaced to deal with licensing issue problems?

Of course, the biggest question of them all is: If they get around to it, will there still be enough interest left for anyone to want to buy it?