Nintendo Channel: Now Showing

TGAM gives you the low down on the Nintendo Channel, Nintendo's sometimes under-used promotional channel available for free download on your Nintendo Wii. This third of team TGAM is a big ol' Nintendo fanboy and is keen to evangelise the rather good comunity stuff that is on offer for the Nintendo Wii.

Another two weeks of Weekly Downloads Trailer On Wiiware, DSiWare and Virtual Console, round-ups of the latest new content on the Nintendo Shop. Pearl Harbor [sic.] Trilogy- 1941 Red Sun Rising actually looks quite good. Kung Fu Funk looks like fun in short bursts if you've never played Warioware. The mental Toribash is given a bit of love although even we wouldn't buy it from the weird ten seconds of footage. Zenquaria: Virtual Aquarium is yet another virtual aquarium for your Wii except this one had Mii compatability. And looks rubbish. DSiWare has the rather shambling new line up including Steamworld Tower Defense (yet another tower defense game!), Hair Salon Pocket Stylist (yet another hair, clothes and make up game) and yet another Solitaire game with 5 in 1 Solitaire. Soul of Darkness from Gameloft is more than a little reminiscent of Castlevania, superficially at least. We're being cynical about DSiWare though, the addition of 'puzzle' game 2Pizzlelt-Fantasy, what-the-hell 16 Shot! Shooting Watch (????), 4 TRAVELLERS- Play French (their capitalisation) and Crazy Golf (have you heard of any of these?) really pushes the DSiWare format. Sadly it seems nothing new of note is up on the VC.

The Official Nintendo Magazine continue to spam add valuable content to the Nintendo Channel. Nintendo TV Episode 5 is a Zelda special. We aren't fans of LoZ at all but we love the chance to see Miyamoto awkwardly flailing around on stage yet again. More exposition of the new Zelda using the same stuff hat was at E3. The show draws some nice little references to the series' previous games but falls down with a nonsense "which kind of Link are you?" rubbish quiz thing. Recently ONM did a really excellent article in their magazine about the 'true' LoZ timeline and we couldn't shake the feeling whilst watching this epsiode of Nintendo TV that we would have rather watched that in video for seven and a half minutes than this guff. We imagine that this episode may inspire Zelda fans to dig out some of their favourite older titles either through the virtual console or in real life but it left us wanting to dig out our malleus and our corneas.

Nintendo TV Episode 6 is a DQ IX special. The episode opens with the obligatory "famous in Japan" rhetoric but amicably goes on to try to sell the series to newcomers. Initally this is accomplished by drawing a weird parallel with the LoZ series. From the footage shown here there's no doubt about it, it is looking good. ONM's Simon Bramble fails to hide his sheer fanboy excitement at playing the game in an interview at a recent preview. Which is nice. Even Seth Green has been roped in to hawk the series. It seems that Nintendo are really upping the ante when it comes to pushing interesting third party series.

The Game and Watch series has recently been released on DSiWare and there's a quick trailer for them on the Nintendo Channel. Even though the games do look nice, the graphics have been retro-fitted to give the appearence of the old G+W LCD screens, at 200 points a pop for each individual game, we'd much prefer to see a slightly more costly bundle or better still we'd wish someone would buy us that gorgeous looking Game and Watch Collection for the DS.

The E3 trailer for Pokepark Wii: Pikachu's Adventure is up on the channel. We are huge fans of the main Pokemon series and a few of the side games were worth a purchase- Mystery Dungeon, Snap!, Stadium and the mental Channel. Some of the side games weren't worth a purchase- Ranger, Colloseum, Battle Revolution. The latest title looks very much geared towards the young ´uns so we'll definitely be giving it a miss. Maybe. Probably.

As ever, if you are on the channels then do check out the latest Competitions on the Mii Channel either to; submit a Mii- someone who is good at taking care of plants, judge a contest- A TV chat show host (there is an excellent Jonathon Ross Mii that we voted for), or view some recent competition results. Make sure you swing by the Everybody Votes Channel to vote on the key isues of the day- Do you walk under ladders? and get your latest forecast on the Today and Tomorrow Channel. Our Care hints advice today was to "moderately clean" "Around the TV". Which is very uncanny as it did need doing. We weren't too sure about the advice for dinner though "big servings" of "seafood" "soup".

Lastly, there's a new competition up on the Mario Kart Wii Channel, it is a 5 lap time trial race around the DS track, Twilight House. Our best time is 54 seconds, the world leader is at a broken cheaty cheaty 21 seconds which is literally impossible without some heavy exploiting going on. We've only been doing the competitions since May this year so they are all new to us but sadly a lot of them are repeats from older competitions. Come on Ninty more new uns please.

Until next time, nanu nanu.