Westerners should count themselves lucky that the World Ends With You managed to make it out of Japan. As recently as five years ago, Square-Enix’s quirky RPG starring a typically angst-y teenage protagonist playing a bizarre game in the middle of Shibuya might have been deemed too bizarre for western audiences. And who knows, they might have been right. But times change, and it looks like we’re the better for it. Read more…

Go ahead, make fun of the wheel. Nintendo doesn’t care. In fact, it took only about ten minutes of playing Mario Kart Wii in an apartment common room for the first wide-eyed passerby to stop and ask if they could try. The wheel, like the balance board and the Wii’s other knick-knacks, are practically free advertising. Read more…

Mario Kart has dropped in Japan, with modest lines waiting to greet the next iteration of go-cart racing at the Shibuya Bic Camera. Supply didn’t seem to be a problem, with several large boxes still waiting to be emptied once the lines had subsided, which meant that everybody walked away happy. Read more…

Last week we said that Monster Hunter Portable G would probably skew this week’s hardware rankings in favor of the PSP. In retrospect, that might have been an understatement.  Read more…

Expect this game to put the PSP at the top next week.

Is anybody else impressed that the Wii has managed to hang with gaming’s portable darlings for so long? Neither of Nintendo’s next-generation competitors have managed to even come close. Read more…

Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword is the kind of game that can only come out well into in a system’s life cycle. Like many launch titles, early Nintendo DS games were generally ugly, clunky games that featured tacked on stylus support. But, as Dragon Sword demonstrates, the difference between games like the hand-cramping Super Mario 64 DS and latter day titles can be startling. Read more…

Think that North America has the market cornered on blaming games for heinously violent acts? Think again! Read more…

Ask anybody who had a hand in developing the original Super Smash Brothers for the N64 back in 1999, and they would have told you that they thought that the quirky brawler was destined for the bargain bin. Who knew that a game featuring a battle to the death between all of Nintendo’s famed mascots would become such a sensation? Nintendo fans, that’s who. Read more…

Tables continue to be turned this week as the formerly dead-in-the-water PSP fended off all contenders for this week’s sales crown. Most people will point out that the PSP was never exactly a failure, it just hasn’t had the monstrous success that the DS has enjoyed. Read more…

While Americans await the chance to download DS demos and Nintendo commercials into their very own home via Everybody’s Nintendo, the Japanese have moved on to bigger and better things—Wii TV. Read more…