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First of all, Japan; go to check in our Japan Weekly section what happened to F-Zero GX in its first week sale.
And now the United Kingdom, with the latest top 20:
01- Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut
02- The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
03- Wario World
04- WWE Wrestlemania X8
05- Medal of Honor: Frontline
06- Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions
07- Sonic Mega Collection
08- Enter the Matrix
09- Hulk
10- Super Smash Bros. Melee
11- Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell
12- Turok Evolution
13- James Bond 007: Nightfire
14- Bomberman Generation
15- Star Wars: Rogue Leader
16- Hitman 2: Silent Assassin
17- Burnout 2: Point of Impact
18- Super Mario Sunshine
19- Star Wars Bounty Hunter
20- Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4
Watch out, from now on, Samurai Nintendo has only one e-mail address. Send your comments, questions and all mail there.
(e-mail removed because it's changed since)
Ah, bad me, I missed yesterday update. Today's game is a rather special fighting game, nothing like Soul Calibur 2 or Wrestlemania XIX, you don't control sexy fighters or brutal wrestlers but celebrities. It's from the famous and entertaining MTV's clay program. Hopefully the game will deliver an interesting content as well. I will add the list of wrestlers later tonight.
» Preview of MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch
We talked about it earlier this month, it's Pikachu Channel and it's back in a cool preview. Pretty cool indeed, we got 22 rather big screenshots, given to me personally by Satoshi Tajiri himself (nah, just kidding, or... ??).
>>Preview of Pokemon Channel
I added comments to the pictures of Charinko Hero. Big deal, huh ?
Our daily preview. Today, the freshly announced Baten Kaitos developed by Monolith Software, which has a very impressive bunch of talents, and produced by Namco, which is really kind to Nintendo lately with another nice RPG following Tales of Symphonia. Swell, really swell, just check the screenshots to be convinced. The only problem is that the game uses a card-battle system; that sucks, we got too many of these types of RPG lately (why not some tactical ones instead, huh ?): Lost Kingdoms 1&2, PSO 3 and now this one. Yet, Baten Kaitos seems extremely promising, so we'll look forward to it and maybe our impatience level will soon raise.
» Preview of Baten Kaitos
The ranking in Japan Weekly has been updated. Still 8 games in the top including 3 new titles (Charinko Hero, Pokemon Channel and Live Power Pro Baseball 10). Bad sales of the latest GC games in Japan inspired us a reflection about one major problem Nintendo is going through, related to their new policy of game making.
This is the first of a series of preview: 5 new previews plus 2 updates (some new screenshots), one everyday. There seems to be a strong interest in the sequel to Wrestlemania X8 so we start with this one. This time around, Yukes and THQ take time to polish the game and add some interesting features like a story mode which allows to fight outside the ring in various missions. You can even beat up some civilians, some human beings, huh, whatever, some non-wrestlers, you got it. That sounds good, let's just hope it's not too ambitious for a wrestling game. Wait and see... and to make the wait less long enjoy the 11 screenshots from our preview.
» Preview of WWE Wrestlemania XIX
It's 1 am actually. Release dates and memory card information have been updated for most of the games. The dates should be quite accurate in most of the case. The remaining blanks will be filled in the coming days.
Tomorrow, July 18, Nintendo will release a new Pokemon game in Japan. It's surprisingly early for a title which has been obviously under promoted. Usually, such a discretion indicates a bad or not so interesting game. It might indeed be the case, Pokemon Channel seems to be targeted to young children and hardcore fans of Pikachu.
This games appears to be a click and play, like Magical Mirror, you move a hand icon and Pikachu moves where you show. However, the main part of the game takes place in front of a TV, the player and Pikachu watch different programs and interact with them. These programs can be some mini-games but mostly look like some simple interactive shows. There's a TV shopping, a quiz show, some short cartoons (inlucing a secret Pokemon anime called Pichu's Brothers), some news on PNNN channel hosted by Psyduck, weather broadcast and more. Among the different games, there's a paint program called Do-buru's Paint System (Smeargle's Paint System) where you color pictures with a palette of 20 colors and patterns, you can put them in a gallery and Smeargle comments and scores your work.
It's also possible to play Pokemon mini on full screen among a selection of 10 Pokemon mini trial edition games, including a brand new one. As we could expect, there are also cards to collect, 100 this time, they make sounds and can be seen in 3D. You can change your TV as well among a selection of 20 sets. Too much television will make you dumb, so you'd better take a walk out. No problemo, bring Pikachu outdoors that he can play with his friends. The game uses the GameCube clock so that night and day are similar as in real life. The weather changes too. Finally, fans will have to look for the rare Pokemon Jirachi who makes a special appearance.
After Pokemon Box, an uninteresting management software, the next Pokemon game for GameCube is likely to be one more disappointement. Pokemon Snap on Nintendo 64 was an entertaining soft if you enjoyed taking pictures, Pokemon Channel doesn't even seem to target so high. It really looks like a simplistic title for children with as much depth as Magical Mirror. However the latter one was enjoyable (for me at least), so who knows, Nintendo might make it less bad than it sounds.
Tokyo Game Show. You thought Nintendo would attend the Tokyo Game Show because there's no Spaceworld this year again ? You got it all wrong. Nintendo won't come to the TGS, well, almost. Satoru Iwata, Nintendo's president, will come to deliver a keynote entitled "Twenty Years after the Famicom - the Current Conditions and Future of the Videogames Industry". Hopefully some third parties will also have some interesting GameCube games on display.
Kirby vs Captain Falcon. And the winner is... Kirby ! This is not a match from Super Smash Bros. Melee but a surprise from Famitsu magazine. The famous Japanese magazine gave a higher score to Kirby Air Ride (34/40) than to F-Zero GX (32/40). This might be explained because the F-Zero series is not so popular in Japan while Kirby definitely is.
Baiten Kaitos. Discreetly introduced at last E3, Baiten Kaitos is a new exclusive RPG for GameCube edited by Monolith Software and published by Namco. Has an editor finally understood that the GameCube is in need of RPGs and that there's some easy money around the corner ?
Don't skip. The Japanese studio Skip, makers of GIFTPIA and actually developping Chibirobo, another exclusive GC title, announced that a third exclusive title is on the way ! The development is very early but some info might be released soon.
Mikami to leave Capcom ? According to a rumor, Shinji Mikami might be leaving the company soon to start his own development studio. If true, it could be a good news for Nintendo fans, the famous director of Resident Evil has often showed lot of enthusiasm for Nintendo's consoles and high disdain for Sony.
FF: GBAs and nothing else. Speculations were running high on whether or not it will be necessary to use several Game Boy Advance to enjoy Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles' multiplayer mode. Although everything seemed to hint that indeed there would be necessary, nobody wanted to believe Nintendo would take such a stupid decision. Well, they did. According to the displays in the recent section opened in Nintendo Japan's site, it's not possible to play Final Fantasy with 1 or 3 other persons if they don't use Game Boy Advance. Yep, that's seriously crappy.
Pretty quiet this week in the UK top 20:
01- Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut
02- The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
03- Wario World
04- WWE Wrestlemania X8
05- Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions
06- Enter the Matrix
07- Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell
08- Super Smash Bros. Melee
09- Sonic Mega Collection
10- Hulk
11- Hitman 2: Silent Assassin
12- Resident Evil Zero
13- Star Wars: Rogue Leader
14- Skies of Arcadia Legends
15- Super Mario Sunshine
16- Burnout 2: Point of Impact
17- Resident Evil
18- James Bond 007: Nightfire
19- Metroid Prime
20- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Hurry to check our Japan Weekly section to see how well the latest GameCube softwares did in the Japanese charts last week.
I improved this section a little, all the official accessories (not including picture cables) are now listed with their prices in Japan, USA, Europe and United Kingdom ! Hope it'll be useful to our world wide visitors. ^O^
There is also an advertisement for a cool joystick, if you're not satisfied with the GC controller in fighting games or if you need to get on GameCube the feeling of the arcade: try it out !
Nintendo unveiled for the first time today a strange new toy called Pokemotion. It's a short thick stick (looks quite much like a bludgeon...) which seems to have the ability to display picture in the air when you shake it. You can use a number of keys (8 ?) to play some Pokemon related games, some sort of quizz and puzzle. 250 pictures, including Japanese characters can "appear" out of this. It's kind of magic, huh. Maybe this toy is related to a deal last year between Nintendo and a motion captor company. Pokemotion is an elctronic toy for one player and is seemingly not compatible to any other Nintendo systems. We just thought this weird gadget was worth mentioning. Here 2 pictures:
 
The best selling GameCube games in UK for the week ending on July 5.
01- Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut
02- The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
03- Wario World
04- Enter the Matrix
05- Hitman 2: Silent Assassin
06- Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell
07- Bomberman Generation
08- WWE Wrestlemania X8
09- Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions
10- Hulk
11- Star Wars: Rogue Leader
12- Sonic Mega Collection
13- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
14- Super Smash Bros. Melee
15- Super Mario Sunshine
16- James Bond 007: Nightfire
17- Burnout 2: Point of Impact
18- Resident Evil
19- Pikmin
20- Metroid Prime
Sorry for not updating anything else but the ranking and the planning, I just have no time at the moment. Soon things will improve. Promised.
Want to know how well did Viewtiful Joe sell in its first week ? Want to see what happened to Enter the Matrix ? Want to have a little surprise ? Well, please come in and check the freshly updated GameCube ranking in Japan.
With a few release dates including Mario Golf and Zoids VS 2.
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Best Selling GameCube Titles in Japan and UK
New e-mail address
Daily Preview: MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch
GameCube in Japan
Latest News
New Toy: Pokemotion !
