Let the sharks loose! Ever on the cutting edge of class action lawsuits, American law firms in California, Washington and Texas have filed suit against Nintendo for providing “defective” remotes and straps to owners of the Nintendo Wii, ‘causing’ users to damage televisions, screens and even themselves. Seriously people, there are invisible rays floating through the air that are highly sensitive to your movements, you don’t have to flail around like a shark attack victim. Oh, funny, I said sharks again.

Read more: Nintendo hit with Wii class action lawsuit

Many, many, many, many many people are losing their shit in anticipation of World of Warcraft’s upcoming expansion, The Burning Crusade. Dropping January 16, 2007 in the US and EU, The Burning Crusade is increasing the level cap to 70, the killer feature will most certainly suck WoW’s certainly reverse WoW’s slowly increasing burnrate, along with many new spells and talents for each class and two new playable races (Blood Elves and Draenai), among many other additions.

Watch Blizzards somewhat recently released intro for The Burning Crusades after the jump..

Read more of “World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade intro video“

Nintendo has began a recall in the US for the spectacularly thin Wii controller straps, which over-excited Americans are blaming for broken television screens, laptop screens, PDAs and more. Nintendo reacted quietly, by including an improved and slightly thicker strap with later versions of the Wii, but with CNN and major news sources starting to pick up the story, Nintendo has gone into damage control mode. If you were lucky enough to have even gotten a Wii, you can follow the below link and request a new wrist strap, courtesy of Nintendo themselves.

Read more: Nintendo Wii strap recall

JoWooD has announced a new distribution agreement with Eidos Interactive, which we all know is one of the world’s leading developers/publishers. The agreement is for Eidos to cover the distribution of JoWooD’s titles in Southern Europe, territories which include Spain, France and Benelux., starting with the upcoming action-FPS “The Mark”.

Read more: JoWood | Eidos Interactive

Lost in the press bucket thanks to all the hype from Microsoft’s simultaneous release of Microsoft’s XNA Game Studio Express, Garage Games announced the beta release of their complimenting TorqueX games engine for the Xbox 360. Though an early beta, TorqueX does not support source or 3D yet, but it’s one of the most powerful 2D games engines on the market and hey, you can create small games (or prototypes) for the Xbox 360 making use of sprites, scrolling backgrounds, 3D objects, lighting, physics, and collision detection. I must admit, this is a great move on the part of Microsoft (and great for Garage Games), which I rarely give props to.

Read more: TorqeX product page | TorqueX beta goes live

Nintendo is going slap-happy congratulating itself on the “successful” European launch, with a reporting sell-through of over 325,000 consoles in 2 days. A great start, if this were say, the UK launch. This was for all of Europe, which as usual is being screwed by Nintendo. Don’t get me wrong, my heart beats Mario-red, but to hell if this is a successful launch when I can’t go out shopping in one of the major European capitals (Vienna, Austria) and even see evidence that a Wii launch occurred. No games, no accessories, no allocated shelf space, maybe signage if the store is really on the ball, but, little else. I can’t wait to see how much of a “success” the PS3 launch will be here in Europe.

Read more: Nintendo sells through 325,000 Wiis in 2 days

Legendary dungeon crawling arcade gone console disappointment, Dragon’s Lair, is quietly being ported to the Nintendo DS hand held by a very talented fan who happens to have quite some time on his hands. Currently only in a very early preview release (0.1.4), those of you who’ve setup your DS for homebrew games or have emulation running on your PCs can grab an early peak featuring the first 4 levels from the original arcade release.

Read more: Dragon’s Lair being ported to Nintendo DS

With all the hubub going around regarding Germany strengthening their already quite strict anti-violent video game laws, German developer Crytek has thrown their weight behind the issue by stating they would consider a move if such a law was put into place. With the recent teen rampages in Germany, politicians throughout the country are putting their support behind laws that would require jail time for those found guilty of creating and distributing games which depict realistic violence, a law which would basically destroy the already fragile German games development industry. With that, there are rumblings throughout the neighboring country of Austria that stricter measure must be put in place against violent video games. I’d put this forth to the Austrian government, before passing any Draconian laws, work together with your local games industry (or what’s left of it) while simultaneously approaching German developers who may be considering a move, offering them attractive packages for relocating to Vienna (the hub of Austria’s struggling games industry).

Read more: Germany moves to ban violent video games

Codemasters Online announced last-week that fantasy-based MMORPG Archlord will become free to play on January 4th, 2007 for all players, both old and new. Codemasters will continue support for the fledgling Korean massive multiplayer, which has been struggling with balancing issues and attracting an audience in the massively overrun fantasy MMO world. Archlord’s expansion to Episode II is still underway as planned and all players who buy the boxed copy will be able to access both Episode I and Episode II for free.

Read more: Archlord now free to play

Those of you lucky enough to own a modern pocket PC (like the Dell Axim x51v, Pocket Loox 720 or HP iPAQ h2210 for instance) will be happy to hear about Medieval, a new “Warcraft III clone” that is being ported to mobile devices by a handful of German programmers with lots of time on their hands. Though it looks to be more of a Warcraft II clone, I’m wondering how Blizzard will react if/when this comes to their attention, seeing as how copyright-conscious the Bliz are when it comes to their original IP. Medieval is currently available as an early alpha build for pocket PC mobile devices.

Read more: Warcraft III clone