What a wild weekend we had here at the fort! Starting with a visit from a father in law from California and ending on Sunday with a day full of fun spent with our close friends Robb and Tammy. Those two are huge Nintendo fans as well so after some swimming and BBQ, I got to check out the Nintendo DS browser (which is available in stores now for about $30) and Mario Party 8 for the first time.

I found Mario Party 8 to be a blast and the browser on the DS not only very simple to get working, but also very handy to have when you need to check on some stats or emails. You can’t watch videos on the browser, but it will display pictures and text like there’s no tomorrow. It was also much easier to get browsing than the PSP’s and the touchscreen lends itself very well to the experience and ease of use. Mario Party 8 was exactly what I expected and then some as I went into it with a few negative reviews going through my head. I enjoyed the various boards, new games, twists, and motion control that was added to the game. I may be spending more time with it in the near future and writing up a review with my thoughts on it, but it’s in line behind a few other projects at the moment.

Ok here’s some Nintendo Wii news, I hope you guys had a great weekend!

- Kotaku has word straight from Reggie claiming that 40% of the people working for Nintendo of America will make the move to New York or San Francisco when the time comes. That means 60% will not be going with them and not 90% as reported by outlets earlier. He doesn’t get into the rumors of the top 3 execs not going along with Nintendo for the ride.

- Bloomberg.com has an article up that is focused mainly on the XBOX situation, but also mentions a few stats concerning the Wii. According to the article, Nintendo has sold 56% of it’s systems to buyers over the age of 18 and is expected to sell 16.1 million units in 2007, putting it way ahead of the competition. Check out the article for the the whole story as it’s got many more figures to rummage through covering all 3 of this generations systems.

- Was the Wii remote a copycat of an old Dreamcast prototype controller? GWN certainly thinks so, click on over to read their article, complete with pictures of the DC prototype controller. It even had a lightgun attachment that plugged into the controller.

- And finally, check out this cool video showing off every NES title screen: