Late Night Consoling

Earlier this year, Nintendo of America VP George Harrison stated that Wii will likely launch with about twenty games, a third or so of which will be first party offerings. The latest issue of Nintendo Power has confirmation of six of the system's launch titles, and in line with Harrison's estimated proportions, a third of them are Nintendo-published. There are also two games from Ubisoft, one from Sega, and one from Square Enix:

- Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors (Square Enix, Square Enix)
- The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Nintendo EAD, Nintendo)
- Metroid Prime 3 (Retro Studios, Nintendo)
- Rayman Raving Rabbids (Ubisoft Montpellier, Ubisoft)
- Red Steel (Ubisoft Paris, Ubisoft)
- Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz (Sega, Sega)

Various other publishers have also stated that they expect to ship Wii launch titles, though only these six were confirmed by Nintendo Power.

Namco Bandai has unveiled the first details of an upcoming Xbox 360 RPG entitled Trusty Bell: Chopin's Dream. The game features, of all people, timeless Romantic composer Frederic Chopin. Like all the best composers of the Romantic era, Chopin died fairly young, at the age of 39, in fact. In the world of Trusty Bell, Chopin had a dream in the last hours of his life, about a world where people with terminal illnesses--such as he--have special powers. That dream world is the setting of the RPG, which follows a girl named Polka, a young thief named Alegretto, as well as Chopin himself.

The game has a colorful cell-shaded, heavily anime-oriented, visual style that seems to come closer to replicating the look of 2D animation more convincingly than most prior attempts. The game's Chopin piano music will be performed by noted Russian pianist Stanislav Bunin. Development is being handled by tri-Crescendo, a studio that split off from Star Ocean developer tri-Ace.

Note to developers: somebody please, please, please take this graphical approach and make a game that looks like classical Western animation. PLEASE.

Grasshopper Manufacture's RPG Contact (NDS) was recently shipped in Japan, but is still some months away from Atlus' September release of the game in North America. Still, that hasn't stopped notorious studio head Goichi Suda from commenting that a sequel is already been planned. Speaking to Nintendo Power, Suda stated, "We'll be making a Contact 2 for...um, a Nintendo platform to be announced." Realistically, the game is likely in development for either Nintendo DS or Wii, seeing as GameCube is on the way out and Grasshopper noted one reason for developing Contact on DS over GBA as the increased exposure the game would receive. The odd wording of Suda's response also seems to imply that the sequel may not be on DS, which would otherwise have been the obvious choice. So is Contact 2 coming to Wii? Wii'll have to wait and see.

At time of posting, there's less than an hour left until the PC demo of Human Head's Prey (X360, PC) is released, but a news item on the 3D Realms website reveals that the Xbox 360 version of the demo won't be available via Xbox Live tonight. "We do not want 360 people waiting up for the demo or having false expectations. The 360 demo will not appear on Marketplace tonight," explained company president George Broussard. "I'm still waiting for specifcs, but I'm being told that it's still in testing at Microsoft."

3D Realms is hopeful that the demo will surface on Xbox Live within the next few days.

Major League Gaming (MLG) today announced that it has finalized two lucrative exclusivity contracts, one with a four-man Halo 2 (Xbox) team and one with an individual Halo 2 player, stipulating that the players in question will compete only in MLG events. Player Tsquared will receive $250,000 and team Final Boss will receive $1M as per the agreement. The announcement did not specify a duration for the multi-year contracts, which it claims are the largest exclusive signings to date for professional gamers. "Having a true professional league requires that you be able to identify, scout and sign the best players in the world," said MLG co-founder Sundance DiGiovanni. "We're constantly on the lookout for the next big stars. Our Pro Circuit competitions give millions of gamers a chance to qualify to compete for their opportunity to make big money and gain recognition on the world stage as a pro gamer."

This fall, MLG will televise its upcoming season of Halo 2 and Super Smash Bros. (GCN) on USA Network.

LucasArts sends over a vehicles and creatures preview on Traveller's Tales' upcoming LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy (PS2, Xbox, GCN, X360, NDS, PSP, GBA, PC) - Screenshots.

GameSpot has a translated summary of an ID Media +D Games interview with Konami's Elebits (Wii) producer Shingo Mukaitouge, speaking on the planned launch title.

GameSpot also has a translated summary of a Sega internal interview with Toshifumi Nabeshima, a From Softawre producer on Chromehounds (X360).

Pro-G chats with Pandemic about the upcoming Destroy All Humans! 2 (PS2, Xbox).