Once again, many games just don’t get the attention they deserve. Although these games may not have suffered completely from poor sales, I believe they could have received more love if they were only released on a different console.

Flow
If you have played the Flash version of the Flow, you’ll know where I’m coming from. This game screams Wii controller. You can also add newer features to the game by adding extra motion gestures. Additionally, you could elaborate and create a four person multi-player feature.

Viva Piñata
Isn’t it obvious? The majority of the XBox community shunned this poor title based on it’s bright colors and happy-go-lucky feel. The idea of Viva Pinata is to raise and attract many new pinatas in your garden. You spend time feeding them, breeding them and watching them fight. Sound familiar? Putting this game on a Nintendo system would have been a natural choice if it weren’t for the disputes between Rare and Nintendo. There are already millions of people familiar with this kind of game, who just “gotta catch ‘em all!” Lastly, Nintendo fans aren’t afraid of bright colors, rainbows, and fluffy things that just don’t make any sense whatsoever. (more…)

Many games just don’t get the attention they deserve. Although these games may not have suffered completely from poor sales, I believe they could have received more love if they were only released on a different console.

Manhunt 2
Manhunt 2 wasn’t accepted to well for the Wii. The Wii version was edited by far more than the PS2 version. The media has such a tight eye on Nintendo maintaining a clean image, it’s hard for any Nintendo game to get away with even saying the word ‘Damn’ in it. Manhunt originally received a Rated A and was banned for a short time. Manhunt 2 was no worse than Manhunt one on the PSone. The media didn’t seem to lift a finger to complain about its gruesome nature back then. If this game were on the PS3 and had high quality life-like graphics, I still don’t think it would have been banned. Nintendo gets the “you should know better” attitude.

Crysis
If any console right now could handle the technical requirements for this game, it would be the PS3. There are barely any PC’s that can run this game well. Putting Crysis on the PS3 could give Crysis more exposure simply because people can actually run it. That is, if it could even run on the PS3 in the first place! At least on a console you wont have to run out and upgrade any parts. (more…)

Nintendo announced the first Mario Kart Wii Online Tournament. Every few weeks, a new tournament will appear on the Mario Kart Channel. Different tournaments will have different rules. The official press release mentions some might ask players to race a certain course as fast as they can with specific characters, or to collect a number of coins on a course using the Wii Wheel or another certain control setup. You can attempt the test as many times as you like however, you will only be able to participate in this tournament till May 9th.

Sounds pretty interesting. Seems like they are handling this similar to the way they handle the Mii Channel, where Mii contests are posted occasionally.

I get my copy of Grand Theft Auto IV for the Xbox 360 today. I will be back in a few days to post my impressions about it. I never really played the previous versions of the game. However, I did own GTA Vice City (just like the rest of the world) but I spent all my time just driving around and listening to the really great soundtrack. I’m looking forward to playing Grand Theft Auto IV online. I imagine this is what will convert me to the series. I consider myself more of a “casual gamer” so this will be interesting.

There will be no new Xbox Live Arcade game this week (probably due to the GTA IV release). Lost Cities was released last week. So if you haven’t already, perhaps you can give Lost Cities a shot this week. It is a 2-player card game I’m finding quite addictive. The premise is that you are an archeologist set to begin expeditions to lost cities. It costs money for each expedition so the idea is to come out in the end with a nice profit higher than the opponent.

A ranter at techradar.com tends to sound dumbfounded in his article, by success of the Wii and why roughly 25 million people have purchased one. If you read many game site rants towards the Wii you can see the same pattern. Traditional gamers just don’t seem to understand the Wii’s success. In my opinion Nintendo has come up with an amazing business plan and it worked! As long ago as 2005, Satoru Iwata made it clear that they would focus on nontraditional gamers and go after the non-gamers or the parents of that gamer. Well turns out, Nintendo did Just that!

What does it take to attract a non-gamer? Well take a look at the Wii games current gamers are calling crap on the Wii. Take a hard look at their ugly faces and realize this is the face of success. Nintendo has found out what non-gamers like and are creating games to cater to them. This doesn’t mean Nintendo developers are not creating traditional games. However, It appears the “Hard-core gamer” doesn’t want to see these casual games at all. It seems in retaliation, game reviewers give these casual games very low rating scores and horrible reviews. There is enough evidence in sales to show how ineffective game reviews are on these casual games. For instance, look at the reviews or rankings of Carnival Games, Mario Vs Sonic, and Wii Play. These games have been very successful in sales.

The Nintendo bashing article here.