Startin' To Feel A Lot Like E3...

Midway announces new entry in the "Cruis'n" racing series- exclusive to Nintendo Wii.

Quick- what were the first two games announced for Nintendo's "Ultra 64" back in 1994?
Answer: Killer Instinct and Cruis'n U.S.A.

CruisnUSA

Both these titles went on to enjoy tremendous success- Killer Instinct remains one of my all-time favorite games. Cruis'n U.S.A. became an instant classic when released a year later on the Nintendo 64 console. The game itself was unlike most other arcade racers of the period- such as Sega's Daytona USA, which had you racing in a loop. Cruis'n had you drive your way across the continenal United States- driving through (sometimes literally) several famous American landmarks and cities. It was more of a 'modern' take on another classic Sega series: Outrunner.

And now it appears the Cruis'n series is being revived after a several-year hiatus- exclusively on the Nintendo Wii. PUULEEEZE let the original titles be included on the same disc in their original arcade form (although, the N64 version was practically identical to the arcade version anyways).

This is a pretty big (yet unsurprizing- the game has been 'unofficially' listed on EBGames.com for a month or so now. Perhaps I should just pre-order and get it over with.

Red Steel

Also announced 'officially', today is a sequel to UBISoft's original Wii outting: Red Steel. This is another one of those unsurprizing announcements- it's just finally nice to actually hear the developer announce it to keep gamers from hanging in limbo. While I enjoyed the original Red Steel- it did little to really impress me with the control mechanism in the Wii controller. This was because the game was horribly rushed and published for launch. Red Steel 2 won't have such flaws (we hope)- given the developers have had wel over an entire additional year to work with the Wii hardware and enhance an already promising game engine. I'm sorry- 'gesture-based' swordfighting will not be acceptable this time around.

Finally, one of the other exciting of 'pre-E3' (it feels so strange to be saying that at the end of June) nuggets that has come up recently are details of Nintendo's WiiWare publishing platform for the Wii (obviously). In a nutshell- WiiWare is a way for small/budget developers to publish software (not just games?) on the Wii. Not much else is known beyond that- I imagine this will be explained in more detail over the coming weeks and months.