Why can't I see Mii in my Wii games?

Some interesting news recently came out of gaming pub Next Generation about the use of Miis in third-party Wii titles. Apparently the big N hasn't supplied other companies with the information needed to allow them access the characters for use in games. Also, the mag reports, there's no telling if and when Nintendo will put this information in the hands of third parties.

Unfortunately, the news isn't all that shocking to me. Ninty always has held information close to its chest, even when it seemingly damaged relationships with other companies (and, in effect, harmed its own consoles and company). We've already seen this with the Wii, in fact, with Nintendo only recently providing third parties with the information needed to add WiFi connectivity to their games.

I understand a lot of games that just wouldn't work with Miis replacing the main characters, but I'd like to see more of it nonetheless. Here's hoping Nintendo can work something out so it will happen to some extent in the future.

SimCity DS has designs on America

I don't know why, but I've been looking forward to this announcement--that the previously Japan-only SimCity DS will make its way to U.S. gamers this summer. It's probably because I put a lot of hours into an earlier version of the game (this one's based on SimCity 3000 on the PC) while I was in high school).

Some of the Japanese-ness (I know that's not a word) will be removed from the version we see, no doubt, but everything important should remain, including the cute little DS-only additions (sign proclamations with the stylus and blow into the microphone to put out fires).

As Arnold once said, "I'll be back" (and soon!)

In case any of you have come to enjoy my news updates, reviews and other quippy commentary and have missed it the past few days, I just wanted to let you know that my husband and I are in the process of moving across country (from Madison, Wis., to Seattle) and I'm unable to do any substantive posts. I'll be back in action on Friday, though, so in the meantime why not check out some of the great sites mentioned on the right side of the screen?

PS3 to lose backwards compatibility?

Strange things seem to be brewing in the land of doom and gloom surrounding Sony's PS3. According to recent reports, the version of the system due to be released soon in Europe won't feature the hardware (included in Japanese and American systems) that emulates PS2 and PS1 games. Instead, "limited" emulation of the systems' games will be made possible through software.

When queried by 1up.com, the bigwigs at Sony responded with the following quip:

"This move is a part of our cost saving measures, similar to the wide variety of cost saving measures we have applied with both the original PlayStation and with PS2. In time this leads to a reduction in the cost of manufacture and over time allows us to reduce the cost of the PS3 to consumers."

It isn't all that shocking to hear Sony's looking at ways to make its monolithic system cheaper, though it's a bit of a head-scratcher that the change hasn't created a price cut for European gamers (it's going to be just as expensive as ever when it's released on that side of the pond).

American and Japanese fans of Sony's latest attempt to take over the world shouldn't get too cocky--word on the street is the hardware-to-software switch eventually will be coming to our shores as well. All of which means I won't be tossing away my slimline PS2 anytime soon...

Ocarina of Time heads up list of upcoming VC offerings

Nintendo graciously gave U.S. gamers an early preview of this Monday's VC update in the form of a press release announcing imminent availability of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (originally developed for the N64).

Hopefully Nintendo doesn't follow the footsteps it took when it released The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past a month or so ago (the SNES classic was the only VC release that week). Even if that's the case, though, you can hardly go wrong by purchasing Ocarina of Time, arguably Link's best video game adventure to date.

In other VC news, the folks at GoNintendo claim two TurboGrafx-16 games will be showing up on a Wii Shop Channel near you sooner rather than later: the seminal Splatterhouse and the mediocre Double Dungeons. GoNintendo didn't specify whether they're due for release in Japan, Europe or the U.S. Here's hoping at least Splatterhouse comes to the States eventually.