Recently stumbled upon some screenshots for the upcoming Bomberman Land N64 Wii from Japan, which don’t paint a pretty picture for Bomberman fans. With Bomberman on the VC, does anyone get the feeling this is anything more than filler? Come on Nintendo, get some 3rd party support but at least make ‘em work for it a little. Sheesh. Bomberman Land for the Nintendo Wii is out in Japan March 8th.

Take a peek after the jump..

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A few days old, but hey, even old news is post-worthy when it points out how badly the PS3 is doing in the market. Over in Japan, the sales figures for January have rolled in and boy was it a surprise. Nintendo sold through around 405,000 units of their Wii console in comparison to the Sony PS3′s paltry 148,000 units. These are sold, in the homes, not ‘shipped’ which Sony (and to a degree Microsoft) are so often touting as their sales figures. The key for Nintendo’s success is to stretch their current lead throughout the rest of the year, with solid first and third party new releases and some real expansions in their online service, which is a bit weak to say the least. Online Wii Sports anyone? Yes please!

For the PS3? Sony can probably just hope their marketing team and execs don’t completely alienate the Europeans, who are their last hope of reclaiming market dominance. Though it’s starting to seem quite clear that mainstream games and consumers are replacing their PS2s as this generation’s console of choice with the Nintendo Wii, leaving the PS3 battling it out with the Xbox 360 for the fickle hardcore gamers market.

Read more: Wii outselling PS3 by 3 to 1 in Japan

In what can not be considered a good thing, the Playstation 3 has posted it’s worst week of sales since it’s launch in Japan. The Media Create sales numbers for the week ending January 14th show an overall slump in sales all around, yet still paint an unflattering picture for the Playstation 3, showing sales at 25,531 units, not a particularly strong showing for console so recently launched. Nintendo Wii sales were also down, posting it’s second-worst week of sales since it’s launch, with 93,708 units sold, though it’s unclear if anyone can consider selling almost 100,000 units a week a bad thing. Media Create takes sales data from around 3,000 retail stores across Japan, extrapolating them into national sales estimates.

See the Japanese software sales charts for the week ending January 14th after the jump..

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Legendary Japanese developer and publisher Square Enix will begin distributing four PopCap titles for the Japanese market, via Square’s online web portal. Bejeweled 2, Chuzzle, Insaniquarium, and Heavy Weapon all will be localized and made available to Japan’s large casual games market, providing a huge boost to PopCap and a possibly lucrative doorway into the much sought-after Japanese market. Additional titles will be coming in the future, at first starting as free trials through Square’s download service. Popcap is one of the largest and well-known casual games makers, with Bejeweled selling over 10 million copies, in addition to other hits in the casual, downloadable, mobile, online casino and console markets achieving successful sales numbers.

Read more: Square Enix to distribute PopCap titles in Japan | PopCap Games

I have absolutely no clue what Afrika for the PS3 is about, but it looks amazing as one would expect for a next-gen title. The only problem is I’ve not found much information on what exactly the game will be like, if a game at all. At first look, I’d take an uneducated guess and state that it looks to be similar to Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa for the PC/Mac, which is an interesting concept for a next-gen console. Anyone able to shed more light on this?

Watch the trailer after the jump and be impressed..

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The recently released Japanese sales charts for hardware and software sales have been released and it shows Nintendo having amazing week. The software sales charts treat us to a unique sight this week, with the top ten titles in sales belonging all to the same platform, the Nintento DS handheld. Unless the same happened with the NES (which it probably did, but there aren’t sales charts available) this is the first time one platform holder has dominated the top 10 software sales charts. As much as everyone likes to bash Nintendo, I can see great things for the Wii over in Japan (and in the west!), with the gaming market maturing and PC gaming slowly dying, the market for pick up and play, casual AND entertaining games are on the rise and the DS sales only prove this. Wii60 FTW!

01 NDS Final Fantasy III – 503,051 / NEW
02 NDS New Super Mario Bros. – 65,556 / 2,901,264
03 NDS Rune Factory – 42,210 / NEW
04 NDS Brain Training 2 – 41,784 / 3,073,195
05 NDS DS Cookbook – 37,326 / 384,045
06 NDS Tamagotchi 2 – 30,504 / 430,934
07 NDS Mario Hoops 3on3 – 30,355 / 233,762
08 NDS Animal Crossing: Wild World – 30,023 / 3,149,130
09 NDS Brain Training – 22,866 / 2,736,150
10 NDS English Training DS – 17,465 / 1,401,669