2010 is drawing near and that means it's time to look at the best-selling games of the... uh, the 00's, I guess? Anyway, it looks like the #1 best seller of this decade is going to be a Wii game, with little chance of anything on any other system catching up.

The top-seller for the decade is going to be Wii Play, according to IGN, which most people snagged for the second Wii Remote and the $10 game attached to it. Even if you have issues with Wii Play as a game, it's 11.1 million copies sold speaks volumes about the popularity of the Wii. 

To put some perspective on that number, the second-best seller for the decade is Grand Theft Auto III: San Andreas at 8.25 million copies. Third best is Wii Fit at 7.9 million, then Grand Theft Auto III: Vice City at 6.9 million, then Mario Kart Wii at 6.7 million. 

Hmm, all PS2 and Wii games... maybe sales of high-definition games will take off in the next decade, when HDTVs and the HD consoles get even cheaper.

Wii Play screens on GamePro.com

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Market research firm Smarty Pants set out to measure which brands were most successful with kids with a study the company calls Young Love.  Over 4,700 kids aged 6 to 12 sat down with their parents and filled out a survey designed to measure just how much kids love roughly 260 different major consumer brands. Nintendo topped the list, with Nintendo Wii at #1 and Nintendo DS at #2.

Remember that this wasn't just a survey of gaming brands-- both Wii and DS beat out the likes of McDonald's, Nickelodeon, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, and Disney to reach the top spot. Other gaming brands that ranked high in the survey's Top 100: PlayStation at #14, PSP at #31, Xbox 360 at #42, Mario at #50, the iPhone at #54, the GameCube at #76 (!), and Nintendogs at #96. You can check out a .pdf of the survey's top 100 here. 

So if you ever wonder how the hell Nintendo gets along with so little recognition from the mainstream gaming press, well, here you go. While most gamers my age are all about 360 gaming, Nintendo rules the elementary school set with an iron fist. So really, not much has changed for Nintendo in the past 20 years. 

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It was always thought that the rarest of all of the original NES game cartridges were the gold plated ones made for the 1990 Nintendo World Championships. However, an even rarer one has surfaced and has been sold for an astounding amount.

Having a print run of only 50 cartridges, most of which were destroyed when the event ended, the Nintendo Campus Challenge 1991 is a collection of segments from Super Mario Bros 3, Pin-Bot and Dr. Mario. JJGames.com, the group that is the seller of the cart, describe the goal of the game as such:

You have 6 minutes to play through this game and get as many points as possible. Once you get 50 coins on Mario 3 you move onto Pin-Bot. Then when you get 100,000 points on Pin-Bot you move onto Dr. Mario. You play the remaining time on Dr. Mario. After 6 minutes you see a "Total Score" screen with you combined score from all three games.


That may not sound too exciting to most and the appearance of the cart itself is rather sloppy looking. However, its collectors value was enough that someone was willing to buy it for $20,100.

To put this in perspective, the highest that one of the Nintendo World Championships carts sold for was $21,400. While this means it does not dethrone the current champion, this does put Nintendo Campus Challenge 1991 into the same category.

Now, if it is worth it is another story entirely.

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One of the biggest questions that always surrounded Metroid Prime: Trilogy was how they fit two GameCube games and a full Wii game onto one disc. Keep in mind that extra data was also needed to program in the new controls for the two GameCube games so the question of space management becomes even more extreme.

It seems that part of the answer may be that corners were cut in other ways. As you can see from the video above, the Wii version of Metroid Prime, when compared to the GameCube version, is missing some graphical effects. Most notably, some water rippling effects are gone, as is the condensation that gathers around the mouth of the Ice Beam when it charges up.

Some also noticed in videos for the Japanese versions of Metroid Prime 1 and 2 for the Wii, which were released as separate games, also had these graphical pull-backs. While this may cause a storm of “Wii is not as powerful as GameCube” jokes, a more rational (but completely speculative) explanation may be that they were programmed for their inclusion into Trilogy first. Then, for whatever reason, Nintendo decided to release the first two Primes on their own, as part of the Japanese line of the New Play Control series. Instead of starting over from square one, they just took the code from the Trilogy version and broke it back into the separate games.

If this is true or not, however, does not change the fact that these minor changes are there and while it may disappoint some, it does not seem enough to take away from the overall experience.
 

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Starting right about now-ish, the Wii Internet Channel can be acquired at a reasonable price of precisely zero Wii Points. If you paid for the Internet Channel at some point over the course of the last couple of years, you won't be getting a refund. On the other hand, you will be getting a free game:

If you have previously used 500 Wii Points to download the Internet Channel, at the end of October we will be offering you the opportunity to download, at no cost, one NES game of your choice (valued at 500 Wii Points) from the Virtual Console catalog. Details of this download offer will be provided via the Wii Message Board and on Nintendo.com soon.

Fair enough, I suppose.

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If you own a Psyclone Essentials and React Wii 4-Dock Battery Recharge Station, then the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission has a warning for you.

A recall has been issued on the product because its battery pack has been reported to overheat and as a result the units are “posing a burn or fire hazard to the consumer”. After receiving six reported incidents of overheating, with two resulting in minor hand burns, the Commission recommends owners contact Griffon International, the company responsible for the product, for information on returns.

On July 23rd 2009, Nintendo took over a portion of Times Square to show off their new title: Wii Sports Resort.  OMGNintendo was lucky enough to have a reporter on scene to take photos of this special event.

To see more than this establishing shot of the Square itself, as well as see some comments on the event, head on beyond the jump.

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Looks we can dismiss all of those arguments about why The Conduit would sell better than MadWorld, because it really didn't. Probably the biggest disappointment from a month that was otherwise big news for Nintendo is much-hyped The Conduit pulling only 72,000 copies. Granted, it wasn't on sale for a terribly long time in June, but... well, clearly MadWorld's problem wasn't its M rating. A hardcore game for the 18-35 crowd with a T rating isn't doing much better.

There's good news underlying The Conduit's big disappointment (depending on your personal definition of "good"). Electronic Arts's two big Wii gambles have paid off. EA Sports Active pulled 289,000 copies to come in third place for the month while Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 sold 272,000. The top-selling game for the month, Prototype, sold 419,000 copies to give those numbers some perspective.


EA Sports Active screens on GamePro.com

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The controversial, at least to “hardcore gamers", Demo Play is going to make its first appearance in the upcoming New Super Mario Bros. Wii. For those who do not remember Demo Play, it is a system that will give players who become stuck in particularly hard segments of games the option to “fast forward” past those parts. They lose the ability to save after that point but it is there for those who get frustrated and just want to see what lies beyond.

At first, it was believed this function would be exclusive to Wii games. However, a recent article in the Japanese gaming magazine Nikkei revealed that some DS games may come with Demo Play in them as well. No specific titles have been mentioned yet, and are still a while off, but it will be interesting to finally see this function in action.

Hopefully, it will not cause the sky to fall, like some believe it will.

For those who have despaired over the lack of Mature-rated games on the Wii, take heart. Sega has not yet given up the fight and claims that they are profitable enough in the long run, to justify making more.

According to the MD of Sega’s European development team, Gary Dunn, the key may be due to the games selling better when their prices drop. When speaking of how the record-setting-for-curse-words House of the Dead: Overkill, was profitable for them, Gary explained:

"Whilst it had a rather sharp tail at full price, they do bubble away at a lower price point for a long time. You get your money back and a bit on full price, but over the years, if we do the final product return on investment, profits come from the lower price point."

Even when Mature-rated titles fail to meet sales expectations at all, such as with MadWorld, Dunn was still happy to take the risk. He also indicated that Sega is willing to take more in the future:

"You have to push boundaries and explore. I think whilst MadWorld commercially didn't sell what we were expecting I wouldn't say it's game over for mature Wii titles from Sega.

So are the keys for the success of Mature games on the Wii the willingness to experiment, combined with the patience to look at long-term sales? A lot of games are written off as failures if they do not sell at full-price in the first few weeks, but price drops exist for a reason. Perhaps, for the Wii audience, they need more time and a more affordable price, to decide giving an M-Rated game a try.

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