You know the drill! It’s summer, you’ve got time to ask questions, and the staff’s got time to answer them. I think. Actually, the staff has so much time, they’ve all gone and disappeared. Quick, someone ask where everyone went!

Though, normal mailbag questions would be nice, too. Stuff about Mario Kart, Wii Fit, unreleased games later this year, whether or not each of us has actually up and bought a DS game since Zelda, or even summer/future plans for The Tanooki. Ask away!

Write the Mailbag!

Wii Fit is officially available in North America… and apparently, that includes Canada. How do we know? Because some Canadians have found out that Wii Fit doesn’t let them use a measurement system they’re familiar with!

The English option in Wii Fit only allows for Imperial measurements of height and weight. Feet, inches, and pounds. According to Nintendo’s support forums, if any Canadians wish to use metric units in the game, the console needs to be switched to either Spanish or French settings.

I don’t recall hearing about any similar problems with the Australian or UK releases, so it’s interesting that optional metric measurements were left out in only this version. Or maybe they American localization team just has a little too much pride.

Nintendo Tech Support
via 4colorrebellion

There are very few video compositions that I might even consider more beautiful than this piece right here. Uematsu’s “Theme of Love” from the Super Nintendo’s Final Fantasy IV remains one of the series’ most popular compositions to date, even making its way into some Japanese schools’ music curricula.

This particular performance is from 2004’s Tour de Japon, based on the 20020220 soundtrack released a couple of years prior. Taiz? Takemoto conducts the orchestra you see above as they make their stop in Yokohama. Enjoy!

YouTube

If you’re like me, you’re excited for what BioWare might be able to do with the Sonic franchise and can’t wait for Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood to arrive later this summer. Unfortuntely, it’s technically not even summer yet, so you’ll have to restrain yourself for the time being. In the meantime, you can check out about 25 new screenshots of the Blue Blur’s arrival onto the RPG scene after the break. Enjoy!

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It looks like their won’t be any news from the show in Germany later this year, from Nintendo anyway. It’s kind of sad, because the last few years this has been a pretty good venue for the Japanese giant.

Nintendo’s E3 showing better be the best thing since wireless controllers if they are skipping other events. If not, I’m going to be really sad, and probably gorge on peanut butter ice cream to drown my woes in sugar. The worst part is Wii Fit will know about it and yell at me…

NeoGAF

Sega and Gearbox Software’s Samba de Amigo for the Wii is on track for a release later this summer, and yet it’s still not on most of our radars. Surprised? You shouldn’t be, since most of Sega’s recent franchise revivals have been backed by lackluster marketing campaigns.

Hopefully this trailer will be the start of a decent line of promotions for the game. Samba’s going to need all the support it can get, since it’s a music game going up against the likes of at least four other music games this fall.

I haven’t promoted the forums in a while, mostly because I haven’t had to. They’ve been doing just fine in terms of activity. So why now? Well, there’s nothing wrong with it, but I find it odd that the majority of new discussions are all Xbox 360-related and not Nintendo-related. So maybe this will get the rest of you gamers that actually like the Wii and DS to start chatting it up in our very own forum community! Check it out!

The Tanooki Forums

There’s a single game for the PAL Virtual Console this week, and I’ve never played it before. Luckily, I’ve heard nothing but good things about this game, so if you’re still looking for something to play this week, you might want to try this one out.

• Paradroid (Commodore 64, 500 Wii Points) 

Hardware drops all-around compared to last week, with the Wii taking the biggest hit (and the 360 showing the only improvement). Mario Kart Wii drops to 2nd place in the software charts for the first time, trailing not a new game, but an older one. As usual, Super Mario Galaxy fails to attract buyers in Japan.

• PSP: 70,536 (-19,548)
• Wii: 41,572 (-25,736)
• DSL: 34,905 (16,323)
• PS3: 7,701 (-353)
• PS2: 7,022 (-442)
• X360: 1,474 (+176)

Full software sales rankings can be found after the break.

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Nintendo Europe has revealed that three new DS colors as well as Cooking Guide: Can’t Decide What to Eat? will be sprouting up in Europe on June 13 and 20 respectively.

The face lifts for the DS go in a much more vibrant direction than most of the color redesigns in the past, and I think that I like it. Cooking Guide is basically a talking cookbook that is designed to guide chefs of all levels around the kitchen, and controls via touch screen as well an the user’s voice. Photo of the new colors after the break.

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