God it's been a long time since I posted here...

Remember that Japanese guy? The one who works for Nintendo and made Mario, Donkey Kong, Wii Fit,
Nintendogs and Wii Music? His name is Shigeru Miyamoto for those who have short (or is it long?) term
memory loss. Anyways, promoting his latest game, Wii Music, Miyamoto-san took a visit to a kindergarten
class.

Watch as the small Japanese children play a virtual piano!

http://us.wii.com/viewer_wiimusic.jsp?vid=4

Wii Menu Update 3.3


Nintendo released a Wii Menu update yesterday. Unfortunately, you can no longer use homebrew. But at least they didn't brick your system. Besides, if you want to play ScummVM, use your computer (sorry, no Putt-Putt on your Wii). I'm sure Nintendo wouldn't have minded homebrew on the Wii if they hadn't used it to play VC and WiiWare games for free. No business will be fine with people taking money from them - especially Nintendo. But that's not the only thing it has done. You now move Miis from the Plaza to the Parade. But to me, that seems rather pointless because that happens anyways.

My Pokemon Ranch


My Pokemon Ranch was released June 9 and of course, being a Pokemon maniac, I had to download it. It's simplified art style is nice, and fits the theme of a ranch very well. You can store 1000 Pokemon on your ranch. You can even get Pokemon from Hayley, the Mii you meet when you travel to the ranch. If you transfer 250 Pokemon to your ranch, you get a Phione and if you transfer 999 Pokemon, you get a Mew. My favorite feature of My Pokemon Ranch is the Wanted Pokemon feature. It makes me want to catch 'em all as Nintendo likes to say.

Free Deoxys From GameStop


GameStop will be giving away Deoxys for your Pokemon Diamond and Pearl games this weekend and the next. They'll probably give it out through Mystery Gift. So if you haven't already, set it up. Go to the Jubilife TV station, find a man on the 3rd (?) floor and tell him "Everyone Happy". He'll then ask you to tell him more. Tell him: "Wi-Fi Connection". When you save and go to the main menu you'll find the Mystery Gift option. Just pick up your gift in the nearest Pokemart. I'm going to get one, but I've heard you can get more than one with some kind of trick. How is that possible?

Oh, and remember to download Firefox 3. :)

Wii Fit DVD
You can get a free promo DVD for Wii Fit from stores now. It looks like Nintendo is really pushing this one, knowing how heavy Americans are. I got two discs from GameStop - one to watch and another to sell on eBay in 10 years (LOL). Anyways, there isn't much to it. It's basically an advertisement for Wii and Wii Fit. You can probably get the same info from http://www.wiifit.com and the few pages inside the case. So pick one (or two) up, it's free after all.



Wiimote Wrist Strap Replacements
I finally gave in and decided to replace my Wiimote wrist straps with the better ones. I don't know why I didn't earlier, but I ordered them and they were soon at my door. They were a bit of a hassle to get on, but any intelligent creature can manage it (that means YOU might need some help). I suggest any one who was too lazy to get them to get them now before Nintendo ends the promotion. You can go to http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/strapreplace.jsp to order some (a maximum of 4).



Wiimote Jacket
Another thing I was too lazy to order even though it was free were the Wiimote Jackets. They serve almost no point, since if you're stupid enough to let go of your Wiimote in the middle of Wii Sports, you probably shouldn't be playing. But again, it's free. So get them if you haven't already. Order them here: http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/jacket/jacketrequest.jsp.

My brother and I are saving up for it. I'm not a fan of Aerosmith (but I must admit, "Love In An Elevator" is catchy and "Amazing" is well... amazing) but I'm a fan of Guitar Hero. So we are planning on trading in a few games, mostly crappy GameCube titles like The Simpsons Road Rage and Tonka Rescue Patrol (don't ask), but I'm planning on selling Sonic and The Secret Rings for the Wii (an average game, better than most 3D Sonic games but not even close to the original 2D games and other games like Sonic Rush which I'm keeping), Animal Crossing: Wild World (I have another copy, don't worry) and Children of Mana (worse than S&TSR).

Hopefully I'll get a bit of money, but I'll never reach my goal of $99.99 even with the possible 30% trade-in bonus from GameStop (20% from a promotion towards a certain game like GH:A and I have an EDGE Card). Yeah, even though I have Guitar Hero III, my brother and I are getting the full bundle with the extra guitar and Aerosmith faceplate, stickers, etc. because of the guitar, seeing as it's a much better deal than getting just the game and a crappy third-party guitar for $50. Though my brother will definitely need some practicing.

So, who plans on getting this game and what platform? I'm just hoping it has online multiplayer on the Wii like GH3, "Amazing" (I already know it has "Love In An Elevator") and maybe linking to guitarhero.com, but I can live without that feature (but it's always nice to track my stats, even if they do suck).

Does anyone have any idea how a track pack disc for the PS2 and Wii versions of Rock Band could work? It can't copy the songs over to anything, seeing as the two consoles have very little storage space (the fat PS2 had a HDD and the Wii has 512MB of storage) and that was the reason why Harmonix is releasing these $30 discs.

You'll obviously be switching discs, but how will the game know you have a track pack disc?

Found this piece of Japanese New Super Mario Bros. merchandise at Newbury Comics. There's were some other things, like giant Marios and Koopa shells, but this was cheapest - I do remember a pen that made Mario sounds though which also doubled as a DS stylus. The 1-Up Mushroom I got came in this awesome block box, so here's some pictures I took of it:







I only wish I could read what it says on the bottom, but I can't read Japanese.