Well, I’m one year older thanks to yesterday being my birthday. I had a great time with the family and ended up getting Resident Evil 4 for the Wii which was a very nice surprise! I haven’t had time to check it out yet, but just looking at the box has been a blast so far and it looks awesome. A real delight was the fact the game was only $30, which is fantastic as it’s going to kick more butt than alot of Wii games that cost $50. It makes me wonder how much more successful Wii game sales could be if they dropped them all to $30. The Wii system is a great impulse buy system as it’s priced nicely at $250, it would be great to have video games once again be impulse buys at the $30 price point. It would help increase the sales of the individual games and possibly assist in broadening the market of people that play video games as the price would be much more acceptable as an entry fee. Ahh, we can only dream..

In other Nintendo related news, how about that Manhunt 2 drama? A costly mistake by Rockstar and Take Two or a carefully orchestrated public relations stunt? There’s no doubt Rockstar has been in the hot seat in the past with the”Hot Coffee” mods and all so why would they develop a game so over the top with violence knowing it would get an AO rating and thus kill itself off? This is a case of either someone didn’t quite know what they were getting into and were ignorant to the ratings board scrutiny or someone thought it would be good for the game to cause such a scene and turn out to be so controversial. Perhaps they’ve been developing various versions of the game, some high in violence and another that is a bit safer and they knowingly sent off the more violent version to cause a scene? Who knows, I’m only theorizing but the whole thing is just silly from all angles and reeks of, “Duh..” How could they not know the game was going to get rated this way? I only hope we do get to see the game on the Wii and hopefully, somehow in it’s intended and complete state.

Ok I’ve got the latest issue of Nintendo Power I am going to cover shortly, in the meantime here’s some Wii Bits!

- Bloomberg.com has an article up discussing Nintendo’s decision to move offices in the US and in it they speak with Nintendo’s spokesman Ken Toyoda who makes a few interesting comments. Namely that the Nintendo Wii sales in the United States have not “reached their potential” which I can agree with but I would fault Nintendo and their supply issues more than I would the consumer by far. The consumers are eating up the Wii here in the States and I still have yet to walk into a shop and consistently see Wii’s on the shelf. Toyoda also made comments regarding total sales of the Wii hitting right around 6 million for all territories, which seems a little low as well. Maybe Nintendo will have a follow up announcement regarding these statements to clear things up.

- Fishing buffs, have we got something exciting for you. Check out the Hooked! Real motion Fishing game over at EB Games. Sure it’s $60, but it comes with a whole fishing rod attachment device for your Nintendo Wii Remote and Nunchuk to really immerse you in the game. The Remote slides into the bottom of the rod and the Nunchuk snaps into the reel area making this the best fishing game device made since the Dreamcast fishing controller.

- According to the ESRB listing, Super Turrican 1 and 2 are coming to the Virtual Console from Factor 5, we’re just not sure when. Both of these games were great Super Nintendo games and it will be a blast to play through them again on the Wii. Here’s a screen from the ESRB showing their listings:

- As far as the VC goes, we also have China Warrior coming next Monday (June 25) according to Hudson’s own website. There is also a list of mentioned, but unreleased games for the VC here at the Nintendo forums and Breath of Fire II has been added to the PEGI (Euopean Game Information site) meaning we just might see it coming to the US shortly as well.

- And lastly, let’s get a good chuckle out over this guy dressed as a Wii Remote at a Fanime 2007 convention:

More news to come throughout the day! I’m off to checkout RE4!