FYI, 30 million is a lot. It’s also the number of Wii’s that have been sold in the United States alone. Worldwide the number is closer to 45 million. Yeah, those are crazy bonkers numbers. Nintendo is killing it this generation, and it’s only a matter of time before Wii surpasses Sony’s PlayStation 2 as the top selling console of all time. Don’t sleep, it’ll happen.

In other news, I was the lucky recipient of POWER A’s Pro Pack Mini Wiimote & Nunchuck combination recently, and I’ve got the full unboxing just for you guys. I’m not gonna lie, it was one of the most original, and thought out packages I’ve ever received from a company. The box containing the goodies had a letter attached to it that was from my Wii. It was basically my Wii saying that I neglect it, and that hopefully with the Mini’s included I’ll give it the attention it deserves.

Inside the box I was the Pro Pack Mini, some Swedish Fish, two movie tickets, and a picture frame with a picture of my Wii on vacation with someone that would be me once I glued my face into the picture. Told you it was original. I haven’t had enough time to review the Wiimote and Nunchuck yet, so expect that by Friday. I will say that they are definitely smaller, but they don’t feel too small. I have small hands, so I think they may actually work for what I need. The one problem so far is with WiiMotionPlus; it looks HUGE when attached. I’m sure WMP is fairly proprietary, but hopefully POWER A figures out a way to make a mini version of the peripheral. Once they get that sorted, I can’t imagine they’d have problem selling plenty of Wiimotes. I mean, there are 30 million Wii’s out there… Check the jump for more pictures, as well as the full press release from Nintendo about the sales numbers. Enjoy, and stay thirsty my friends.
Continue reading ‘30 Million Wii’s & Mini Wiimote Unboxing!!’

Anyone looking for a major update for WiiWare or the Virtual Console will be disappointed this week, sorry. Well, I’m not sorry because it’s not on me, it’s on Nintendo. Unfortunately, I can’t “officially” offer apologies for Nintendo. I should be able to though, they would be some totally kick-ass apologies…

“On behalf on Nintendo I would like to make a statement on the lack of a satisfying update to our WiiWare and Virtual Console sections. I know many of you have been waiting for Pit Fighter to arrive, but it’s not going to. Even though we’d like to have a game that BadAss arrive to the VC, it just ain’t happenin’. Oh, and for those of you out there who are going to whine about any number of other issues, you can go suck it, gingers. Get to playing Pokemon and leave us alone!”

Seriously, I’d be such a BadAss PR person. Maybe it should be my new goal in life. If your goal in life is to read a real official press release, follow the jump for all the details on this week’s Nintendo Downloads. If you want something a bit more awesome, check out the new GoldenEye trailer below. Enjoy, and stay thirsty my friends.

Continue reading ‘GoldenEye Trailer & Nintendo Downloads!!!’

Right, so I still haven’t tried out the Wii2HDMI. I know, there’s really no reason I haven’t except that I’ve been a bit tired. This weekend I should for sure though, so we’ll talk more about it next week. In the meantime, did you know Super Mario Galaxy 2 has sold more than 1 million copies already? No, well it has. When you think about it, that’s an insane amount of games sold in less than two months. But that’s what Nintendo does, sell an ass-ton of games. The Big N is dominating the monthly sales charts, with 6 of the top 10 titles being from Nintendo according to NPD. And if you didn’t know, five of those are Wii titles. Yeah, that shit is crazy!!!

Another thing that’s crazy is the Old Spice guy. Homey blew up on Twitter the other day posting something like 100 video responses to people’s tweets. I’m going to post a couple of my favorites, because I can’t find a Ninty related video worth posting today. Those will be just below, and you can follow the jump after them for the full press release on SMG2 killing the competition. Enjoy, and stay thirsty my friends.

Continue reading ‘Mario Galaxy 2 Passes The 1 Million Sold Mark!’

During E3 I mentioned the Wii2HDMI peripheral from Neoya, and today I’ve got my hands on the adapter. If you don’t recall, the Wii2HDMI is an adapter that plugs into the Wii’s AV port and allows you to connect to your TV via an HDMI cable. It’s still plugged into a Wii, so if you’re expecting solid HD graphics you’ll be disappointed. The Wii is only capable of outputting 480p, so the Wii2HDMI is simply something to get if you haven’t already converted to the component cables or if you want to replace them for a streamlined bit of sexy HDMI lovin’.

I haven’t tested Wii2HDMI in-game yet, so let’s talk about the device itself. First off, it sticks out of the back of the Wii by at least three inches or so. If you have your Wii setup somewhere with limited space in the back, you may have issues, especially considering you still need to have room for the HDMI cable to plug straight in. My other issue with the adapter so far is that it was fairly difficult getting my HDMI cable connected. I’m not talking about due to space, this is just plugging the male end of my cable into the female port. It was definitely a bit tight and almost needed to be forced in. The problem with that is it’s just a plastic adapter, so I worried I might mess it up. That could have just been my paranoia though, because it went in and nothing broke.

Notice how the Wii is upside down here?

The final small gripe I have, and this is all me being particular in my own special way, but the the way it’s setup seems backwards. With it plugged into the Wii, and the Wii laying flat (the way I have mine set) the text on the adapter are facing down. This is made more evident when you realize that the HDMI plug is also facing down at that point; the narrowest end faces down and that forced me to kind of twist my cable to get it in. If you have your Wii standing vertically, it probably doesn’t matter as there’s always going to be one side without text on it. Maybe they only had those who stood their Wii’s up in mind, hell, maybe in China it’s meant to face down. I’ll try to get some game time in tonight, if not, I’ll give my full review of how well the device works tomorrow. Honestly, all that really matters is how it performs when playing games, so we’ll see. This post is loaded with pics, so we’ll skip a video today. Enjoy, and stay thirsty my friends.

If you've got room for this beast, find out tomorrow if it's worth it!

You know what really sucks? Realizing that you can’t depend on other people. Don’t worry, I’m not going all emo on you; I’m not in danger of becoming a cutter or doing myself other bodily harm, like befriending a ginger. This isn’t about some childhood friend abandoning me in an hour of need. I’m talking about the sucky realization that, for the most part, you can’t depend on other people to do what they say. Let’s take contractors, for instance. I used to think was that unless you were Tim Taylor or Wilson, and you wanted to get some work done on your home, you had two routes you could take. You could either hire each individual person to do their one specific job, or you could hire a general contractor to deal with all the headaches and hiring for you. Well, when Mrs. Mike and I decided to redo our kitchen, we hired a GenCon; more specifically, we hired one that was recommended to us and that we had met several times before. We trusted that they wouldn’t ruin our shit. We were wrong, it’s been a total pain in the ass. In fact, it’s basically at the point where if I have to talk to them much more it’s going to be all cussing and yelling and shaking and crying, so I’m forcing myself to accept shoddy half-finished work instead. It’s stupid, right? I mean, how hard is it to make sure that the tile guys who took off a backdoor in order to cut it to fit in with the new flooring didn’t somehow mess up so bad that the door won’t even open anymore? And, if you’re the tile guys who cut said door, why would you put it back like that? Did you think I wouldn’t open my back door ever again?? What I’m trying to say is, if you’re in the Atlanta area, don’t use Callaway Homes to do any work you may need done.

Alright, sorry about that. I had to vent as that’s what I’ve been dealing with since the middle of last week. I feel like I’ve aged about 10 years in that time, which means I’m now almost 40. That fact was driven home today when I discovered something called the “Misquito Ringtone”. Apparently, only young’uns can hear certain pitches and my range ends at 14khz, which is for the 49-years-old and younger crowd. I wish I could look on the bright side and say that 29 is there, but I can’t hear past the 39 and younger setting. Yeah, apparently my ears are in their 40’s. Wow, this post actually is kinda emo. If I see a ginger later I’m freaking the eff out…

Before things go full cutter mode around here, let’s have some Wii news. Nothing like 450+ words into a post before the Wii is even mentioned. Maybe I should put the Wii stuff first and ramblings second? It shall be considered… Anyway, yesterday I posted the Japanese trailer for Lost in Shadow, the Wii-exclusive game from the creator of Final Fantasy. Well, today we have more of the game, and it looks freaking beautiful. Our dear friends at IGN have a nice little direct feed gameplay video that they put up, and I’m gonna share it with you guys. Lost in Shadow is set to launch “Q3 2010″; yeah, that means it should be here some time soon. Enjoy, and stay thirsty my friends.

If any of you are lucky enough to be reading this in a part of the country, or world, that isn’t hot as balls, I hate you. Seriously, it’s ridiculously hot here in Atlanta. The grass in my front yard has taken on a healthy brown hue to them; I think it may be some sort of defense mechanism to aid in the battle against The Sun. I wish I had a defense system like that, or, at the very least, a pool. It would be freaking awesome if we had a pool; but, we don’t. Well, Mrs. Mike and I did buy a freaking awesome inflatable pool on the Fourth. It would have been even more awesome had we planned properly and given the water time to warm up a bit once we filled it so that we wouldn’t have had to sit in freezing cold water as the sun set. But who the eff plans ahead like that?

I’m not Japanese, but I do like the song, “I Think I’m Turning Japanese.” It’s so choice. Something else that is equally choice is the NESBuckle. You know the ones, the belt buckle that got a heaping dose of BadAssery from an old-school NES controller. As it turns out, the owner of NESBuckle.com has decided to pass the reigns of his empire to the highest bidder. If you’ve got a price that is right (and the reserve is set at somet like $6500), then you can be the new CEO of NESBuckle. It may not be that glamorous, but he does hook you up with the domain and everything you need to keep the “official” NESBuckle alive and kicking.

While you’re waiting to see if you have a winning bid or not, why don’t you check out the videos below. There’s an awesome behind the scenes video for the Queen of Badass’ next adventure, Metroid: Other M. We’re gonna follow that up with the premiere trailer for Mistwalker’s upcoming title, The Last Story. In case you’re not in the know, The Last Story is being made by the creator of Final Fantasy, so it’ll probably be all types of epic. BTW, once you hit play and realize that the videos are in Japanese, you’ll be amazed that my “turning Japanese” statement above wasn’t totally random. Yeah, I planned that shit out son!! Enjoy, and stay thirsty my friends.

If you were someone who started getting excited at the prospect of the Mini Wiimote & Nunchuck from POWER A announced at E3, then you need to hold onto your pants ‘cuz it’s about to get Mini-Crazy in this bitch!!! GAMEON, the gaming division of Impact Global Solutions, announced a full line of Minii Wii accessories that they are marketing directly towards kids. They are in fact calling them “kid-sized”, so if you’re adult-sized stay the eff away!! They are going a step further than POWER A by releasing the full gamut of Wii accessories, including a Resort Pack which includes an oar, golf club, bow, and any other accessory you may need in WiiSports Resort. I’m interested in seeing how these look and feel; but I’m more interested in the battle for the Mini Wii market that GAMEON and POWER A are about to engage. Is there enough room for both sets on store shelves? I guess that depends on how “mini” they really are. (Side-note: Yes, I know how lame that joke was, I’m the one who wrote it. You don’t think I’m ashamed of it?? I could have deleted it, but I keeps it real with you guys…)

This post is going to be a bit short since I’m still recovering from the stressful past couple of weeks, so right up there I’m giving you some pictures of GAMEON’s line of Minii Accessories. If you’re the kind of person who likes their pictures to move and make sounds, which are what I call “videos”, then check out this featurette on upcoming family party game Guilty Party. It’s a mystery game from Disney owned Wideload Games, and it actually looks pretty fun. Enjoy, and stay thirsty my friends.

Yeah, I know the title of this post doesn’t sound like it’s the running diary that I promised you yesterday. That’s because it isn’t. As I’m sure you can tell, this is the highly anticipated Part 2 of TheSpin’s Official Wii E3 Media Blowout aka The “Nintendo Murdered E3″ Media Blowout Pt. 2!!!

Before we get into the massive bowl of deliciousness I have planned for you today, I’ve got another new product to tell you about. While I’m still waiting to hear more about POWER A’s Pro Pack Mini, including details of perhaps trying them out for myself, those are certainly not the only new devices coming out of E3. Today I was contacted by a gentleman by the name of Tiger, whose name alone makes him my hero, about Wii2HDMI, pictured up there, from Neoya. That’s right, another device I had no clue I needed until I heard about it suddenly materializes out of thin air. E3 week is so magical…

Any way, Wii2HDMI apparently does exactly what it sounds like it does: allow you to connect your Wii to your HDMI capable TV or monitor. Don’t sleep, this doesn’t magically enable graphics on par with the HDC’s, Wii will do no greater than 480p and Neoya points this out on their FAQ, which you’ll find on the product’s page. It’s basically a dongle that fits into the Wii’s slot for the A/V cables you’re already using. The end that sticks out acts as an HDMI port. After that, it’s the exact same functionality of every HDMI cable, and the same compatibility with your Wii as the component cables you can buy for your Wii to upgrade from the composite.

I’ll be honest with you, I still use the composite cables for my Wii. This is mainly because I don’t need any other cables from Monoprice. So this is great news to me, especially since I’ve got a few extra HDMI cables collecting dust. If I manage to get my hands on Wii2HDMI you know I’ll tell you all about its glory!! If you’re impatient, you can pick one up now at Neoya.com for $39.95.

Speaking of glory, I can’t believe I didn’t put up one of the most amazing and badass trailers from E3, Donkey Kong Country Returns, so you’ll be getting that first today. After that you’re gonna get all the Samus you can handle with the new Metroid:Other M trailer. Finally, we’ll end this parade of La Familia Nintendo with a bit of Mario Sports Mix. Enjoy, and stay thirsty my friends.