Monday. The majority of us have to worry about school, work, meetings, rehearsals, and what have you. Once that’s all out of the way, however, we can all come home to a brand new set of additions to the North American Virtual Console. It’s a themed update this week, with Nintendo celebrating the Hallo-Wii-n holiday through three specific titles, available in about 45 minutes from this post.

WII-KLY UPDATE: THREE NEW CLASSIC GAMES ANNOUNCED FOR WII SHOP CHANNEL
Oct. 29, 2007

This Halloween, you needn’t leave your own living room to encounter spooky spirits and creepy creatures from mysterious otherworlds. The Wii Shop Channel is celebrating the year’s most frightfully fun holiday by offering a mix of eerie games that’ll keep players’ spines tingling. Mash with monsters in a classic Castlevania sequel, tangle with supernatural samurai or battle as a powerful magician-you’re bound to discover cool tricks and visual treats no matter which titles you choose. Happy Hallo-Wii!

Today Nintendo adds three new classic games to the popular Wii™ video game system’s Wii Shop Channel. The games go live at 9 a.m. Pacific time. Nintendo adds new games to the channel every Monday. Wii owners with a high-speed Internet connection can redeem Wii Points™ to download the games. Wii Points can be purchased in the Wii Shop Channel or at retail outlets. This week’s new games are:

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Yesterday, Sunday, saw a new record high for the number of users online using our forums at the same time. Topping the previous mark of 69 users at the same time was yesterday’s high of 76, sometime during the evening. Sure, most of them were probably webcrawlers, but the vast majority were actual visitors. Not bad, in terms of visitation.

The problem? Visitors can’t post. The solution? You all should register forum accounts and join in on the festivities. Seriously, drktrpr1 is getting lonely in the Wii forums!

The Tanooki Forums

You can build your own stages.

That’s really all that needs to be said. You’re probably jumping up and down in your seat right now, realizing what Sakurai points out: you’ll be able to play this game forever. (Or maybe it’s his way of getting out of another future Smash Bros. game… heh.) You start by choosing your stage’s size, background scenery, and in-game music for your stage (only from the game’s music…sorry SD card owners). Then, you’ll pick and choose from a healthy selection of stage parts to build your stages and try them out as you go.

Here’s the juicy stuff. You can save your stages to SD cards, so you can make as many as you want. You can also send your custom stages to your friends and battle it out on each other’s stages. If that isn’t enough, you can submit your stage to Nintendo. Nintendo will then choose what’s essentially a “Stage of the Day” where every Brawl owner choosing to play on a random custom stage each day will be offered a different fan-made stage every single time! Maybe I’ll be playing on one you make some day?

Smash Bros. DOJO!!

While many people up to this point were disappointed by the fact that NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams hasn’t shown any sign of motion control (and thus hasn’t distinguished itself from its predecessor at all in terms of control innovation), there may be hope. The official North American site for the game has launched, and it reveals the following control options:

Play NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams with the Wii Remote, Wii Remote and Nunchuk, Classic Controller, or Nintendo GameCube Controller.

Could this be just like Super Smash Bros. Brawl where controls are simply mapped to different buttons, or could simpler control schemes that involve motion control exist with the Wii Remote configurations? Unless we get an official announcement from Sega, we’ll have to wait until December 18th to find out.

Of course, if we don’t get motion control and I got all your hopes up for nothing, well… my bad.

NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams - Official Site

The San Francisco Chronicle recently interviewed Reggie on the usual - Nintendo’s strategy and philosophy, the success of the Wii worldwide and across a broad demographic, future hardware/software/downloads, and even Reggie’s coronation as Brandweek’s Grand Marketer of the Year. He also talks about his favorite game, and what happened during his first crack at the game.

Q: Is there a game you go back to and say, “This is what started all the madness for me.” Is there a game that really hooked you in? How far back do you go?

A: I go back to Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past. I stayed up very late at night playing that game and this is when I was working for Pizza Hut

For me, it was a defining moment in terms of my own personal gaming experience. It was a defining moment in terms of my gaming experience with my children. My oldest son, who is 15, would play the levels after they were beaten and the funny part of this story is that when it came to beating the final boss, it was 3:30 a.m., and I had to get up to go to work the next morning, so I saved the game and said, “I’m going to go tackle this tomorrow.”

All day at work I was consumed with beating Zelda. When I got home, that saved file wasn’t there. I asked my son David what happened and he said, “I beat the game.” He went back into that file and beat the game and deprived me of the glory.

Ohhhhhh, Reggie, I believe your ass was kicked and your name was taken. By your own son.

San Francisco Chronicle

With the way those coins are floating all around the Mushroom Kingdom, you’d figure they’d be easy to come by. When Nintendo decides to mint a special coin in commemoration of Super Mario Galaxy’s launch, however, things get a little more complicated.

Word on the street is that production issues with Galaxy’s pre-order bonus may delay the distribution of the coins. It’s rumor for now, but rest assured - you’re probably still getting your coins… even if they’re a little late.

QJ.net

In other parts of the world, fans get register their games, systems, or other products and earn points, with which they can collect and buy cool stuff with. Here in North America, we don’t get points. We register Brain Age 2 and get 7 DS styluses. Whoop-de-freakin-doo. Why no points system? Outgoing Nintendo of America VP of Marketing and Corporate Affairs, Perrin Kaplan, explains:

Kaplan: You know we’ve taken a really close look at what they’re doing in Europe and what they’re doing in Japan. You have to remember that, geographically, we’re much bigger here and cost-wise, it is much more expensive to run a program like that. We try to do pre-sale with our retailers as often as possible. You’re talking about a scale that is much larger. But we do look at the differences in markets and what consumers are liking. It’s just a difference in scale.

Multiplayer: You’re looking at it. Do you have any plans to change it?

Kaplan: We don’t have anything right this minute. But let me just say that we continue to look at those kinds of programs and ways to reward consumers for their loyalty and for continuing to enjoy our products.

Alright, so they have a legitimate reason - it costs money. But didn’t they recently spend millions on offering to ship Wii Remote Jackets to all Wii owners? And aren’t they rolling in dough right now? Anyway, the link below has the full second-half of MTV’s interview with Kaplan, where she talks about the Nintendo Seal of Quality, Nintendo Power, and - my favorite part - some of her memories and best experiences during her tenure at Nintendo of America.

MTV Multiplayer

If the golden, Zelda-themed 360 faceplate wasn’t enough for you, perhaps this “Super Mario World NES” faceplate is more up your alley. Nevermind the fact that it’s actually based on Super Mario Bros., this faceplate is made by the same person that did the Zelda faceplate.

Unfortunately, bidding has already ended, and the item has sold on eBay for $60.00, roughly double what the Zelda faceplate pulled in. You won’t be able to bid on it, but maybe it’ll give some of you ideas for creating 360 faceplates or Wii case mods of your own.

eBay Auction (ended)
via Wii Fanboy

A total of six Wii titles have reached at least 7 digits in worldwide sales, despite the platform being less than a year old. Wii Sports, bundled with the console everywhere but Japan, top the list at 11.1 million sold. Wii Play comes in second with 6.3 million units sold, followed by Mario Party 8 at 2.9 million, Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree (a.k.a. Big Brain Academy for Wii) at 1.8 million, and Mario Strikers Charged at 1.3 million sold. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is the other title to have passed the million mark, but Nintendo has not released actual numbers for the game.

This is just the list of first party published titles that have surpassed the million mark. You can expect to see Metroid Prime 3: Corruption on it eventually, though that game was only released in Europe and has yet to see release in Australia. Any guesses as to how quickly Galaxy will pass the million mark? Perhaps days after release in Japan and before it even reaches America? Here’s hoping!

IGN Wii

I love midnight launches. While the rest of Chicago is out in their slutty nurse outfits and “I’m Dr. Dre from the 80s!” costumes, I got my jollies tonight by hitting up my local GameStop for their Guitar Hero launch party (they had Dr. Pepper!). I was the fourth person in the store upon my arrival at 11:14, but after settling in with a Guitar Hero 2 session, I became the tenth person in line when midnight finally struck.

Fortunately, I was home by 12:15 (traffic and all!) and before I become a hero of the guitar, I wanted to snap a few photos for you guys. If anybody needs me, I’ll be rocking some early carpal tunnel syndrome for the next 18 hours.

One last note: the GameStop clerk was pressuring me into reserving Rock Band. No big deal, except that he was trying to get me to put money down for the Wii version because “it’s officially coming.” Start the presses!

UPDATE: I just defeated Tom Morello in a guitar battle. I feel like a million dollars. Oh wait, now I have to play a Killers song. Rats.

SUPER UPDATE: I unfortunately had to go into work tonight, but I am on the final set of songs (on expert, of course). Sleep will not be enjoyed until completetion. I will be working on some video and a full review for later this week. How are you enjoying the game so far?