Nintendo has dropped the word about their Q1 and Q2 2009 release schedule, confirming some exciting releases coming up for both the Nintendo DS and Wii. What’s coming up? New Pikmin and a new Wii Sports, which seem to be using the new MotionPlus attachment!

Nintendo Wii

• New Play Control! Pikmin (Feb. 6 Europe, March US)
• New Play Control! Mario Power Tennis (March 3 Europe, March US)
• Punch Out!! (First half 2009, Europe and US)
• Wii Sports Resort (2009 Europe, first half 2009 US)
• Sin & Punishment 2 (2009, Europe and US)
• Another Code R and Endless Ocean 2 (2009 Europe)
• New Play Control! Pikmin 2 (First half 2009, Europe)

Nintendo DS

• Mystery Case Files: MillionHeir (Feb 2 Europe)
• Walk with me! Do you know your walking routine? (Feb 20 Europe, 2009 US as Personal Trainer: Walk with Me!)
• Pokemon Platinum (2009 Europe, March 22 US)
• Rhythm Paradise / Heaven (2009, Europe and US)
• Mario and Luigi RPG 3 (2009, Europe and US)
• Kirby Super Star Ultra (2009 Europe)
• Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (Feb 16 US)

Wow, if this doesn’t spell out who the champion of this gens console war is, I don’t know what will. Wii Sports, the title Nintendo bundles with every Wii console, has become the top selling game of all time with over 40 million sold, an indication of the amazing sales figures Nintendo is seeing of it’s casual-leaning console. A bit of a cop-out, we know, and certainly not worthy of toppling Mario from his #1 spot, but a great milestone for Nintendo nonetheless!

Campiness alert! The community-developed, live-action (with some CGI) movie based on the Legend of Zelda (And Ocarina of Time) games from Nintendo has made it past post-production! What this means is, as much of the campiness and cheese has been covered up with as many special effects as possible with Apple’s MovieMaker and we might see this years old production debut soon! In Atlanta we hear, in the “not so distant future”. Must watch, though will cringe during.

Well that wasn’t very exciting now was it? As we wrote about over a year ago, Vienna, Austria-based Bplus was working on Plaettchen, one of the first Wiiware titles for the Nintendo Wii’s virtual console. Well, seems a few weeks ago the game was released, to little press or fanfare whatsoever.

PLÄTTCHEN – twist ’n’ paint is a puzzle shooter with more than 100 hours and over 300 levels of gameplay for up to 8 players and available for around 1400 points via the Nintendo Wii virtual console shop.

Though only a moderate success for the Wii, having sold in the area of 350,000 copies worldwide, No More Heroes has grown to become a cult classic for the Nintendo Wii, giving Westerner’s a look at how talented Japanese developers view the mature action market over here, dominated by GTA.

Ah good old JavaScript. Not thought of too fondly by game developers, but, web developers sure like to put it to good use to recreate games within your browser. Case in point, Jacob Seidelin is a dedicated hacker who is putting his talent with JS to great use. How you ask? By hacking together a prototype version of Super Mario Kart in Javascript! Or, Super Mario Kart JS, if you will.

Complete with two courses (Mushroom Cup Round 1 and 2), opponents and soundtrack, SMKJS runs on FireFox 2 and 3, Opera 9.27+ and Safari 3.1.1+. IE users miss out, as they should for now upgrading to a real web browser. It uses the canvas element to do most of the rendering and the code (available here) weighs in at a nicely minimal 11 Kb.

At the moment, there is no lap count and the AI is a bit crude, but there is basic collision detection, which at least holds you back long enough to determine where you can cut corners.

With the announcement of Nintendo’s WiiWare, indie game developers around the world felt their extremities go numb, as the creative juices started flowing at the mere thought of being able to develop a title for this generation’s breakout console. Whether Nintendo will be as indie-friendly as everyone hopes remains to be seen, but, they certainly are taking an interesting first step, by featuring Plättchen - Twist and Paint as the first official WiiWare title. Developed by a relatively unknown firm named Bplus in the outskirts of Vienna, Austria and featuring a German name which will surely confuse the hell out of many in the west, but no doubt excite the German-obsessed Japanese market, Plättchen is described as a puzzle-shooter, whose concept was approved by Nintendo in April 2007. Hopefully some screenshots or videos will appear soon and more information on the upcoming Wii and DS titles Bplus have in development will come to light, which we’ll surely post here immediately.

Read more: Bplus | Interview with Bplus at Infendo

With everyone going mental over Ubisoft these days, I thought it would only be right to post up the Raving Rabbids 2 teaser trailer which Jeux France recently broke all over town. All CG, there is no gameplay footage anywhere to be found in this video, but naturally we’ll be seeing much much more over the coming weeks from these wacky bunnies.

Video and press release after the jump..

Read more of “Raving Rabbids 2 teaser trailer“

As a kid, there was nothing more exciting than having a new issue of Nintendo Power dropped into my mailbox. NP was the end all, be all of NES gaming, featuring articles, ads and photos of the hottest new games coming out for one of the hottest video game systems of all time. If rumors along the mill are to be believed, the once king of gaming magazines is set to shut it’s doors, at least on a print version, soon. No official word is available yet on the demise, but I certainly hope they go the portal route with Nintendo Power, creating a Nintendo-centered social networking news and blogging site that extended with Wii browsing support, including the long rumored e-versions of NP back issues.

In an exclusive interview with games.net, Miyamoto-san reveals some of his worries going into the US Wii launch, which ended up turning out to be a huge huge success, considering most can’t even find a Wii on the shelf, months after the launch of the console worldwide. In the interview, Miyamoto takes us on a stroll through his past, discussing how he started at Nintendo, his worries over the US Wii launch and some interesting tidbits of hype/information about the future of the Wii.

One of the many interesting quotes from the man himself

There are other enhancements to the Wii interface and developments being planned that are going to really make games for hardcore players a lot more fun and interesting.

Read more: Miyamoto discusses the Wii launch and his past