Let’s Hitchhike from NIS (actually, Let’s Zenryoku Hitchhike!!!!!!!!!, but we’ll stick to Let’s Hitchhike) is one of the weirdest games on WiiWare — a board game with a hitchhiking mechanic and an angry restaurant owner as the primary antagonist. It might not be Muscle March weird, but it’s quirky enough to get our attention.
According to a new ESRB listing, NIS is planning to localize Let’s Hitchhike as Full Blast Hitchhike. The content description offers two examples of the English version’s “tongue in cheek humor”: “What are the two sexiest farm animals? Brownchickenbrowncow!” and “Japanese girls are great! W-well…not as great as YOU, my pet.” If you enjoyed those, be sure to give Full Blast Hitchhike a ride whenever it actually, you know, is announced and released for real.
Also found via ESRB: the Wii version of Geon, now published by UFO Interactive and called Geon Cube — not to be confused with Technos’s Geom Cube.
It wouldn’t be Monday without new games to download across Nintendo platforms. This week’s highlight is definitely Hudson’s first-person soaker, Water Warfare. It’s a neat concept, but we really think Hudson could’ve spent some time tightening up the graphics in level three.
This week in Europe, Hudson Soft has one release on all three Wii download services. That’s a pretty impressive feat, even if the individual games don’t seem that exciting. We suppose 50 sudoku puzzles for 200 points is nice, and SimEarth is a good game.
The Hudson releases are joined by Taito’s Puzzle Bobble/Bust a Move update and by Altered Beast. Now, we love Altered Beast more than most people (by which we mean we love it some), but 900 points for the arcade version? What’s that about?
WiiWare:
Puzzle Bobble Plus! (1-2 players, 800 Wii Points)
Water Warfare (1-2 players offline, 2-8 online, 800 Wii Points)
A brand new episodic Monkey Island adventure is heading to PC and WiiWare this summer. While some are weary of the game’s new 3D look, series co-creator Dave Grossman reassures players that the upcoming adventure is a true sequel. “The series takes place a couple of years after the end of the last game. The characters are a little bit older, but haven’t really learned anything,” he says in this exclusive video.
The episodic format is giving Telltale an opportunity to create a grander adventure for the upcoming game. “It’s going to come out one chapter at a time over the period of five months, and the story’s going to be told that way. So, it’s more of an epic saga,” Grossman says.
The first episode of Tales of Monkey Island will be available on PC in July, with the Wii release to follow shortly thereafter. To check out this video on your Wii, check out the Nintendo Update channel next Monday.
This week, the European Wii Shop is granted with a somewhat anticipated new title, and one we’re glad is launching there before it does here. We’re intensely curious about the platform action title Icarian: Kindred Spirits, and the fact that it’s coming out in Europe first means we’ll get to read reviews. We hope those 100 soundtrack downloads are claimed by now, by the way!
Also available for download this week: Let’s Catch on WiiWare, and some more Brain Training on DSiWare.
We were all set to gush over Super Mario Kart and the promise of some charmingly retro party gaming (for two players at a time, of course, which we suppose is part of the retro charm), but Gust disrupted our plans by releasing something on WiiWare that is weird and ill-advised enough to demand our attention. Game Sound Station is a subscription-based music streaming service available on WiiWare — almost exclusively for listening to Gust game soundtracks. If you’d like to pay for a week of unlimited Atelier and Ar Tonelico game music, here’s your chance!
The other WiiWare game, peakvox escape virus, is sort of a Snake crossed with Geometry Wars experience. As a DNA codon, you pick up other DNA around a level to form a chain, carefully navigating your increasingly long chain around enemy viruses. The game has a variety of other modes, including one that turns it into a shooter.
Oh good — we hadn’t “pulled a Samuel Taylor Coleridge” when we wrote this morning’s post about Namco’s new WiiWare game, Muscle March. It wasn’t a dream and it’s even weirder in action than we could have imagined. Namco: please make a US release of this game happen, ‘kay? Thanks.
The sequel to the very fun (yet, very punishing) Bit.Trip: Beat has been revealed in Bit.Trip: Core, GameSpot reports. If you thought it was tough keeping track of rogue pixels assaulting you from one direction, then you’re going to have an even tougher time with Core, as the player must now defend against attacking pixels from fourdifferent directions.
Another big change comes in the controls department. The first game featured motion-based controls, but in Core you’re stuck in the middle of the screen, pushing directions on the d-pad to shine a beam of light toward rushing pixels. It’s essentially the same type of gameplay, combining rhythm and shmup elements, so if you liked Bit.Trip: Beat, then you’ll likely find value in this. The game also adds a progress meter showing you how far you’ve made it into a stage, as well as a screen clearing ability that will hopefully ease the experience up a bit.
Bit.Trip: Core is due for release on WiiWare sometime this summer.
Sigh. Enjoy playing Adventure Island: The Beginning this week, PAL Wii owners. We know we’ll see it in the US eventually, but it’s not today. We’ve waited so long for a new Master Higgins/Takahashi Meijin game, and we guess we can wait a little longer, but it’s pretty painful. Just thinking about rolling around in the jungle on a skateboard, with the wind against our grass skirt and a stone axe in our hand …
One week after the launch of the DSi Shop, Nintendo already appears to be ignoring it, but that may be because Europe could turn out to use a (basically) monthly schedule like Japan. Anyway, that doesn’t matter. What matters is Bubble Bobble Plus!
Taito’s fantastic-looking Bubble Bobble sequel/remake arrives in the West today, and we are super jealous. Enjoy your four-player Bubble Bobble, PALs. We’re just going to be over here in North America, playing NES Bubble Bobble like total chumps.
Let’s Hitchhike from NIS (actually, Let’s Zenryoku Hitchhike!!!!!!!!!, but we’ll stick to Let’s Hitchhike) is one of the weirdest games on WiiWare — a board game with a hitchhiking mechanic and an angry restaurant owner as the primary antagonist. It might not be Muscle March weird, but it’s quirky enough to get our attention.
ESRB reveals localization plan for Let’s Hitchhike originally appeared on Joystiq Nintendo on Sat, 01 Aug 2009 17:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
One week after the launch of the DSi Shop, Nintendo already appears to be ignoring it, but that may be because Europe could turn out to use a (basically) monthly schedule like Japan. Anyway, that doesn’t matter. What matters is 
