WiiCade is pleased to announce that we have collaborated with longtime WiiCade member Zachary Hinchliffe to bring the mind-bending puzzle title More Nifty to Wii’s and PCs around the world.

This title will not only challenge your intellect, but it will impress you with its professional “retro” graphics, excellent dialog, and enjoyable gameplay. If you have not yet played More Nifty, boot up your Wii and play it today!

Click Here to Play

WiiNode is back online and so are the forums! You should also be able to log into WiiCade now. WiiMedia is being brought back online as I’m typing this, so it should become available shortly.

Apologies from the entire WiiNode/WiiCade/WiiMedia team for the extended outage. But we’re back online now and ready to rock! Expect cool things to happen over the next week.

–jbanes

As an update to my previous post, it looks like it’s going to be slightly longer until WiiNode is back up. The current ETA is Tuesday night, so hang in there guys!

In other news, it looks like WiiWare has been causing quite a stir! Reactions to the new service have generally been positive, with nearly every game well liked by the Nintendo fanbase. Amazingly, the Flash title cum Wiiware game called Defend Your Castle turned out to be a sleeper hit. According to the “Popular Titles” section of the Wii Shop Channel, the game has managed to move from #3 at the release of the WiiWare service, all the way to #1! It has even managed to edge out the odds-on favorites Lost Winds and Final Fantasy: My Life as a King!

While I’m sure the guys over at XGen are in a state of catatonic shock due to the unexpected success, we here at WiiCade would like to offer our congratulations on a job well done. XGen managed to offer a title with a great look, fun gameplay, and a ton of hidden depth. Congrats guys! You earned it!

In other news, the long awaited Star Soldier R was released today. I know all of you sh’mup fans have been eagerly awaiting this title. The good news is that it has been getting positive reviews. The graphics are flashy, the sound is good, and the gameplay is tight. Everything you would expect from an entry into the Star Soldier series.

The catch-22 is that the game really is only two levels. While it’s a lot of fun competing for the high score in your region (I’m #32 in the North East region of the US!), the lack of levels is rather jarring. I honestly can say that this game should have been 500 points instead of 800. However, as a commenter over on WiiWare World mentioned, money toward this title will likely go into a full sequel in the Star Soldier series. So if you’re a fan of these games (and yes, Blazing Lazers counts!), support Hudson by grabbing your copy today!

Hi All,

You may have noticed that WiiNode has been down since Friday. This is due to a server move that ended up taking longer than expected. NGPixel and the WiiMedia gang are hard at work on getting the server moved over. If all goes well, it should be available by end of day tomorrow.

I’ll post more information if as it is available.

–jbanes

After a week of arguing, namecalling, and a little hairpulling, WiiCade staff has finally come to a unanimous decision for the 2008 WiiCade Promotional Contest!

First of all, I want to stress how hard of a decision this was. All the entries, starting with Wiifanatic, Andreasw, and Schlofendein, and later joined by tezzla, thecool1168, and chucki233 were fantastic and helped get word out about WiiCade.

However, we had to settle on one… And after giving it some serious thought we decided that the winner would be…

THECOOL1168!

…congradulations Mr. Cool, your video showed that no amount of corny-ness is too much, and that acting doesn’t need to be good to be effective. We will be contacting you shortly to arrange a reward for your awesomeness.
Thanks to everyone who participated, take time to enjoy the other contest videos below:

Wiifanatic - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHiv5bypeVg
Andreasw - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPtxvG5XYjs
Schlofendein - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBVXNVwYULg

tezzla - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hfp3ebH0wK8
thecool1168 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GV2Zpn1o_zQ
chucki233 - http://youtube.com/watch?v=NfdgX4LNWjo

DrDredle and the WiiCade staff

That’s right, due to popular demand (And SSBB’s barely legal addictivity) we are extending the WiiCade promotional contest by 2 more weeks until April 6th. That means all you slouches and SSBB addicts have another chance to get off the couch and into a chair to make a video promoting WiiCade to the public. Submit your entry to Youtube with a WiiCade tag, and you could win Guitar Hero 3, a combination of SSBB and Galaxy, or a combination of other Wii game(s) of equal or lesser value!

Good Luck to all!

DrDredle

So you’re sitting at your computer with your video editor open, all ready to win the promotional video contest. All you need to do is whip something awesome together and you got it made. But then you realize, exactly how are you going to get videos of your favorite WiiCade games?

Not to worry! Realizing your plight, I have spent hours compiling raw footage of WiiCade’s games in action! If the only thing holding you back is video of games, then follow the link below for some cool vids:

http://www.wiicade.com/gamemovies/

All the movies are high-quality captures in MPEG2 format. What that means is that some of the files might be a little large. I didn’t do any editing or post-processing on these, so you have as much as 20 minutes or so per game of gameplay footage to work with.

If your favorite video editing tool doesn’t support MPEG2 (*gasp!*), you can find free transcoder software at this link:

http://ffdshow.faireal.net/mirror/ffmpeg/ffmpeg.rev11870.7z

You’ll need to have WinRAR or 7Zip installed to unzip that file. Inside is a command-line utility that will take nearly any movie format and convert it to any other format. Documentation for how to use the utility can be found here:

http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/documentation.html

So far we’ve seen two great entries. (Though one is pending approval until it is uploaded to YouTube.) Let’s see how many more you guys come up with now that you have some video to work with!

I’ll try to add more videos of games as I get the opportunity. If there is any game in specific you’d like me to give priority to, feel free to ask in the comments. Good luck!

–jbanes

WiiCadets,

With the recent improvements to the Wii, and the continuing awesomeness of WiiCade and it’s memebers, we have decided make a YouTube promotional contest. Here’s how it works:

1. Create a video about WiiCade. It can be to-the-point, artsy, dramatic, documentary style, film noir, erc… it’s completely up to you how you make it, as long as it shows the outside world what Wiicade is and why they should check it out. A good example of a good promotional video is this.

2. Upload it to YouTube with the tag “wiicade”. If you don’t upload under the same handle as you have on WiiCade, let us know another way which one is yours. Post a link to your video is this thread. The contest closes at 11:59 Sunday, March 23rd, so make sure you get those videos in before that.

3. Wait anxiously until Neg, JBanes, DKJ, and myself announce the big winners. We will be judging the videos based on quality, creativity, effectiveness, and reach. The big winners will be announced on Wednesday March 26th.

And now the best part: The winner will receive their choice of Guitar Hero 3, a combination of SSBB and Galaxy, or a combination of other Wii game(s) of equal or lesser value!

We have seen you guys do some pretty amazing stuff before, so lets crank out some great videos and let the world know about WiiCade!!

Happy Directing,

DrD and the WiiCade staff

Thats right, it seems that the newest update for your beloved Nintendo Wii comes with some hidden awesomeness. Mr jbanes is reporting that now *most* games are running at full speed. Oh yes, my pants are now wet. Using Newgrounds Rumble as the test subject, he noted you can now play 4 player [simultaneously OR computer controlled] with next to ZERO Lag, Insanity right?? About time Nintendo/Opera has heard our cries to make Flash performance better; and this one’s a good’un!

So…Go! Go play games  and enjoy them more and faster.  (Yes you can enjoy things faster, think about it.) =)

//dkj

Our maverick radar technician jbanes spotted this gem 24 miles off the coast of… new submissions to WiiCade. A neat game called Aquarotation Wii By DevilishFree. You are a submarine, and your duty is to plug holes with your super cork. The challenge is that you have to navigate around a seaweed (?) maze without touching the walls; sounds easy right? No, because you are constantly spinning in a circle, making fancy maneuvers much fancier. Enjoy!

-davekilljoy