Nintendo Weekend Warrior – E3 build-up and an expo of quality homebrew

You can read it, you can already breathe it – E3 anticipation is quickly building up, teaser after teaser, bit by bit of every chunk of info we get. We’ve got all sorts of pre-E3 news on the Nintendo side this week. And as if they were holding their own homebrew-E3 this week, Tantric and the other Wiibrewers have rolled out some pretty cool updates and releases for their projects. The gist? We all win. The details? Read on.

You can read it, you can already breathe it – E3 anticipation is quickly building up, teaser after teaser, bit by bit of every chunk of info we get. We’ve got all sorts of pre-E3 news on the Nintendo side this week. And as if they were holding their own homebrew-E3 this week, Tantric and the other Wiibrewers have rolled out some pretty cool updates and releases for their projects. The gist? We all win. The details? Read on.

---

The Games

• Here’s an interesting one. The latest trailer for Grand Slam Tennis shows the courts and prime stages of every grand slam event in the ATP and WTA tours – Australian, French, Wimbledon, US – with each court featuring a high-profile matchup. The most interesting bit here is that the trailer shows a Federer victory over Nadal in the clip for the French Open, which is on-going as we speak. You all know the story around the Pacquiao-Hatton Fight Night Round 4 trailer right? Go figure. Link
• I say they look like Homer Simpson, Mabie says they’re cute. Following this ill-formulated logic, we might say that Homer Simpson is cute. As for the dentally-challenged critters of Rabbids Go Home, you can catch more of them and less of their teeth in this E3-exclusive trailer. Link
• Whether you’re a wannabe med student or simply a kid that loves to play doctor, you might be interested in Atlus’ new project – Hospital. This Wiixclusive puts you in a white coat and through all the endoscopic and completely invasive parts of the job. Link
• As promised by Square Enix, they’re gonna bump up WiiWare and DS with more Taito classics this year. It’s a short list, but if it has one of your oldschool favorites, it certainly won’t matter. Link
• Conduit developer High Voltage Software unveiled the first of its two new projects earlier this week and they talked about bringing intense Roman brutality to the Wii. in Gladiator A.D. Link. Days later, they handed out the game’s first vid. Link
• Take it off!!! – and so they did. What I’m talking about is that Australia has taken the Wii strip-poker game, Sexy Poker, off the good games list, keeping the family-friendly console ever-so-nipple-free. Link
• Lucky Square Enix didn’t wait for E3 to let this one loose. They’ve announced that Roxas’ turn at the spotlight in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days is gonna have a European release in Autumn. Link
• The flurry of mini-details continues for Blood of Bahamut with its new story trailer. Might’ve been more informative, if only we can understand Japanese. Link
  

Nintendo

• The Nintendo delegation at E3 has been confirmed earlier this week, and the attendees include the big boys themselves: Iwata-san, Reggie, and Cammie Dunaway. Well they do have a conference to address and a bunch rumor-denying (or confirming) to do in the expo, so maybe that’s why they have to come in full-force.  Link

Homebrew

• Team Twiizers handed out the second Beta of BootMii. This version has improved SD card performance, so the boot and NAND backup and restore time is reduced. Of course that’s not the only new feature, hit the link and find out more. Link
• Another unofficial SVN build for Dolphin hits the scene. The new version for the Gamecube-Wii emulator can now compress Wii games, load custom textures, and NetPlay support, among many other changes. Link
• Another emulator got an update this week – it’s Tantric’s FCE Ultra GX, an emulator for the NES. This version boasts improved stability, as well as a bunch of other fixes to keep the emulator running smoothly. Link
• Here’s yet another emulator, this time, an SNES emulator, also by the hands of Tantric. The latest version for Snes9x GX is now up, carrying with it a rather notable bugfix. Link
• Don’t look now, it’s another emulator with an update – Visual Boy Advance GX. This one also came out of Tantric’s workbench, and it’s got new tweaks and features added to make the emulator more stable. Link
• Wiibrewers Scip, Rodries and company have created a fork of the Team Twiizers’ MPlayer port, adding in elements of the MPlayerWii and GeeXboX to make their own touch. If you just came across this app, MPlayer basically turns your Wii into a media player. Link