When recording your favorite episodes of Smallville, The Office, or Wizards of Waverly Place, it’s good to have the TV listings available so that you know when everything airs. Now, you won’t have to pull out the TV Guide book, check Yahoo! TV, or even flip to the TV Guide channel. With Nintendo’s newly announced TV Program Schedule Channel for the Wii, the Japanese will be able to turn on the Wii and search for their favorite shows on the same machine they’ll be playing Wii Fit with.

No word on whether or not the channel will be available outside of Japan, but all it would take is a little bit of cooperation from the TV stations. Throw in some kind of deal and attachment involving TiVo, and I’d be set.

Codename Revolution

On November 19th, North Americans will be able to purchase the Wii Zapper shell and a copy of Link’s Crossbow Training for a mere $19.99. Some would argue that $20 for a piece of plastic with no real technology is a rip-off, but the game demo makes the price a little easier to swallow.

Those of you in Europe? Well, I can feel your pain already. The Wii Zapper will ship on December 8th, retailing for €30, or a little over US$43. Ouch.

Wii Fanboy

The Tanooki is pleased to welcome our newest writer, Drew, to the Tanooki family. Drew will be gracing our front page with his weekly Nintendo banter and analysis. Welcome, Drew!

Like many west coast Nintendo diehards, I find myself lingering around my computer come midnight. I type in the URL for the Super Smash Bros. Brawl development blog with geeky anticipation of what bit of nostalgia Masahiro Sakurai has in store for me. Brawl’s director and the personality behind the nightly updates, Sakurai has evolved from a mere name in the end-of-game credits — indistinguishably Japanese to my American eyes — to someone I feel like I nearly know since the blog debuted in May. Best of all, the guy seems to share my love of video games. Who else would describe the music accompanying the Brawl’s Yoshi’s Story-themed stage with “It’s enough to make a guy cry at the end”?

That’s the power of blogs, I guess.
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Picking up Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock for the Wii? Haven’t pre-ordered yet? Good luck.

If you’ve got dibs on a copy at GameStop, however, you’ll probably be able to pick it up at midnight tonight. Thousands of stores will be opening their doors at 12:00am as gamers everywhere will finally be able to get their hands on Activision’s first Guitar Hero game. The listing below has the list of stores that are joining in on the midnight festivities. If you’re planning on going to the Clark St. store in Chicago, be on the look out for Matt. Those of you at the Green St. store in Champaign, IL, I’ll be checking out the line as well.

Be sure to try the game out, and then brag about your scores on our forums!

GameStop

We’ve been waiting several years for Will Wright’s latest and greatest creation, Spore, for the PC and Nintendo DS. It’s now been confirmed, by Will Wright himself, for at least one home console, and it’s the one with the controller that makes the most sense.

“We’re doing Spore on the Wii, and we did MySims.”

Of course, this leaves us all with the question of which version (or versions) to eventually buy. With Wii Fit and Super Smash Bros. Brawl already lined up for early next year, how’s your budget looking?

Guardian Unlimited

We know it’s getting into the crazy time of year. Trust us, we know, and we can feel the effects on our own lives. Unfortunately, it’s also gotten to our forums. They’re on track for their easily worst month on record.

Why? Because the majority of you don’t realize it’s there or you know it’s there but figure it’s plenty busy. Yeah, it was busy before, but it was probably only a half a dozen or so individuals that kept things fresh and alive. When they get busy, things come to a stand still. That’s where all of us come in.

If you haven’t already checked out the forums, signed up, and kept up conversation all over the place with our many members, do so. It’s a great community when it’s active, and there are some interesting people around the boards, some knowledgeable about things that could be of interest to you. Head on over to the forums and join in!

The Tanooki Forums

All the Super Smash Bros. Brawl info is starting to pile up - it has been over five months now since the official site started daily weekday updates. After I post about each update, the very next thing I do is add the update(s) to a list I keep handy, which up until last week I’ve posted on a monthly basis. I’m going ahead and posting the entire list of Brawl updates from Masahiro Sakurai’s daily blog on a weekly basis. This week’s new entries are shown below. You can find the entire list after the break. Remember to check back every weekday after 2am CDT for the latest updates!

This week saw the minimum number of updates, which included:

• Pictochat stage (10/22)
• Video! Donkey Kong Makes His Stand (10/23)
• Game Modes: Target Smash (10/24)
• Brawler: King Dedede (10/25)
• King Dedede’s Special Moves (10/26)

As usual, you can find the ENTIRE list after the break for your viewing pleasure. Predictions on the next week of updates?

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Looks like Spore might actually available in the foreseeable future. In an interview with Radio 5 Live, Spore creator Will Wright explain that they “have the game fully playable at this point and it’s in final testing.” The game is expected to be released within six months.

“We’ve had to do a lot of testing to make sure that the game is accessible by a wide group of people. I want the people who have played The Sims to be able to play Spore - I don’t want it to be some thing just hardcore gamers play,” explained Wright. It’s a good thing too, with the ambitious god-simulator game coming to the Nintendo DS and its varied userbase. It’s been ages since a huge, original Will Wright masterpiece, and this one couldn’t come soon enough.

CVG

Those Virtual Console games are expensive! You work for all that money, and it feels like an accomplishment when you can afford a new game. In a press conference in Japan on Friday, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata revealed that you’ll soon be able to give away your purchased VC and WiiWare games to your friends.

“We think this will be a breakthrough in encouraging customers to spread news of fun games word of mouth,” Iwata said. “We also hope to spur more users to connect their Wiis to the Internet.”

Basically, you’ll purchase the game online as a gift and then choose a recipient for the game. Your friend will accept the gift and the Wii Shop Channel will automatically launch and download their new game. Will you be giving digital presents this holiday season?

Associated Press
via Kotaku

We get the it. Super Smash Bros. Brawl was delayed to give the developers more time to make it absolutely perfect. After all, it could very well be Masahiro Sakurai’s final Smash Bros. project, at least with this level of involvement. Nintendo of America’s outgoing VP of Marketing and Corporate Affairs, Perrin Kaplan, talks about the two month delay, instead calling it a “perfection program.”

Multiplayer: Nobody really releases big games in February. Should we really believe February 10, a Sunday no less?

Kaplan: Why not? Sunday is actually a really good launch day of the week for products. And I think we’re actually starting to look at the annual calendar differently. The first two quarters of the year tend to be more quiet. But now we’ve seen some evidence of sales in that period. Other than the holiday quarter, I think the traditional way of viewing it is not necessarily a slam dunk. I think a really good product can be a slam dunk any time of the year.

I’m most of us don’t mind the game being delayed so long as it’s to make it better in the end. At the same time, it’d be nice if our favorite games could go through the Perfection Program during development.

MTV Multiplayer