A Yoshi's Island 2 packshot unearthed by Kotaku suggests that the forthcoming platform sequel will support Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection multiplayer.

In Yoshi's Island, the titular dino and his pals had to carry baby Mario and Luigi to safety, and the sequel already promises babies Mario, Donkey Kong and Peach - each of with imbues Yoshi with unique powers - but the box-art also quite clearly shows Wario and Bowser too.

Quite what role those two will play (the press bumf only mentions Yoshi and "three young superstars") and what form the multiplayer will take remains to be seen, but not for long, since the game's due out on November 13th in the US and on December 1st in the UK.

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via Eurogamer ...

News from Eurogamer

Clearly concerned that we haven't seen a new unlikely-heroes-go-off-to-fight-evil game in the last two or three minutes, Marvelous Interactive and Image Epoch have rushed to the rescue with a new unlikely-heroes-go-off-to-fight-evil game for the Nintendo DS.

Announced in Famitsu just recently (with IGN translating the interesting bits), Luminous Arc is about Alf and his brother Tio, who were raised in some sort of convent called Ever Garden, and who have been enlisted to sort out the forces of evil.

Alf and Tio's world is looked after by the eponymous Luminous organisation, who normally ensure peace and cakes for all, but following the death of a former leader all hell's broken loose and monsters abounds. There's also a nasty witch messing with people.

In order to sort her and her minions out, Alf and Tio journey around a world map visiting places to chat with NPCs, buy items and weapons from shops and engage in turn-based battles. The battle sysem's only roughly defined so far, but you'll be able to group similar characters together in battle for strategic benefits, while the order of turns will be dictated by each character's speed values. You'll control their movement on the battle grid with the stylus.

Marvelous also notes that the game, which is due out this winter in Japan, will feature characters by Shibano Kaito and sound production by Yasunori Mitsuda, whose name you may recall from his work on best-game-ever Secret of Mana and second-best-game-ever Chrono Trigger (or Mario Party, depending on whether you deserve to live).

If anything Luminous related happens on the Western front, we'll let you know. ...

More on the Wii Launch details:

Nintendo's Wii looks set to launch with no fewer than 27 games on day one. We always said that, with blockbusting exclusives of the calibre of Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Metroid Prime: Corruption, and Wii Sports, Ubisoft's Red Steel and Konami's bizarre Elebits, the Wii would sport the best launch line-up of any console ever, in terms of quality. And now it seems that the quantity is there, too.

According to our sources, the Wii's launch line-up will consist of the above mentioned, plus the following titles: Activision's Call of Duty 3, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam; Ubisoft's Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII, Far Cry, GT Pro Series, Open Season and Rayman Raving Rabbids; Nintendo's Excite Truck; EA's Need for Speed: Carbon and Madden NFL 07; THQ's Avatar: The Last Airbender, Cars and Spongebob Squarepants: Creature from the Krusty Krab; Midway's Blitz: The League; Atari's Dragonball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2; Square Enix' Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers; Sega's Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz; Atlus' Trauma Centre: Second Opinion; and SNK's Metal Slug Anthology. Phew.

According to Wikipedia - yes, we know it's sometimes unreliable, but it does tend to get this sort of thing right - there are a grand total of 151 games currently in development for the Wii. The only downside is that all that waving around of the Wii-mote is likely to give us very achy wrists. ...

News via CVG

The Nintendo DS puzzle game assault shows no sign of letting up: next up is a game called Actionloop, an effort which should appeal to devotees of Tetris DS, Meteos and their ilk.

Scheduled to launch in Europe on October 27, Actionloop places coloured gemstones on looping, moving tracks; you have to flick them off with the stylus, by aligning three or more of the same colour, and causing chain reactions.

Actionloop has four game modes. Challenge is the most Tetris-like: you must eliminate as many as possible before they reach the end of the track, and the more you get rid of, the faster the track moves. In Quest mode, you have to eliminate a set number of gemstones. Checkmate mode brings static puzzles to the party, and Versus mode pits you against a friend in a gemstone flick-off. The game will come bundled with the DS Rumble. Sounds flicking great. ...

New details on Rockstar's playground actioner Bully have emerged, courtesy of an article appearing on MTV.com.

Revealed in the article is Bully's pro-nerd gameplay, which has you performing tasks for the four 'non-bully' factions in Bullworth Academy, the fictional school where the game takes place.

The nerds, preppies, jocks and greasers will all need your help combating Bullworth's teenage hoodlums, after which you'll gain brownie points with their faction and they'll help you out around campus, rugby-tackling your foes and hopefully performing a 'bundle' or too.

Other missions put you in school lessons, managing beakers in chemistry class and other education-related tomfoolery in English and Gym (or 'P.E.', to use its proper name). There's also a GTA-style 'alert level', which lands you in the principle's office if you skip too many lessons or start playground fights. The latter half of the game will also apparently give you access to the nearby town.

MTV goes on to report that the game features no guns whatsoever, instead opting for innocent fire crackers and bags of marbles as its weapons of choice. Also, no-doubt to the delight of our female readers, lady-focussed violence has also been outlawed in Bully. According to the article, if you try to grab a girl in the game "she kicks you in the nuts." That never happened to us in school. ...

Famitsu has managed to grab a first look at Natsume's Harvest Moon for the Wii, revealing just how the cute farm-'em-up will operate using the Wii-mote.

Unsurprisingly, you can do things like tilt the Wii-mote downwards (having selected the watering can with the D-Pad) to water plants, and pull it back and throw it forwards in order to fish. Some story details have emerged, too: the game is set on an island which is home to a goddess and a great tree, but one day the tree goes dry and the goddess disappears. At which point, Harvest Moon's familiar helper creatures, the Koropokuru, ask you to farm the land and build relationships with in-game characters, in order to restore the island's equilibrium.

Release details remain undisclosed, but we'll bring you them as soon as possible. ...

News from Play Asia:

31 preorder exclusive 2007 Comic Calendars now on sale - Bleach, Naruto, One Piece, Prince of Tennis, Kingdom Hearts & more themes available (updated)

Shoueish, Square-Enix and Mac Garden and others have opened preorders for a total of 31 assorted Anime & Video Game branded 2007 calendars. Those Japan exclusive items are available based on different Anime & Video Game series, including Bleach, Naruto, One Piece, Prince of Tennis, Kingdom Hearts & more.

We have now opened preorders for three different calendar types. Please note that the following items are preorder exclusive products. Preorders will be closed after the order deadline date. All calendars will be shipped in hard cover protection tubes.

More info --> http://www.play-asia.com/SOap-23-83-...9-en-84-n.html ...

With the Wii launch hiding somewhere in the next 3 months, we can't help but to brim with excitement while thinking about what we'll be playing on Wii-day (which is our favorite term for the day the Wii launches). If your worried about the Wii suffering from the lackluster launch day the DS did, you can put all those fears to rest.
We went back to count just how many games had been confirmed for the Wii so far, and were wonderfully surprised to find 27 confirmed launch titles coming to the Wii. Can you say 'biggest game console launch in history'? This isn't a little collection of obscure third-party games nor two-thirds of sports titles either, we're talking a list with some serious big-hitters. Metroid Prime 3, Zelda, and Red Steel top a list of widely diverse and interesting titles.

Some quick comparisons. The Xbox 360 launched last year with 18 games in the US, although only a handfull were exclusive, and 11 of them were sports games. The Wii counters with it's games spanning numerous genres (maybe even inventing some new ones) and over 20 exclusive titles. The PS3 is currently sitting at 15 confirmed games on it's November 17th launch day. Of course, this is expected to increase in the next few months. That said, the current Wii launch list (which you can see below) is far from final, and we wouldn't say it's a stretch to expect to see at least 30 games on launch day. If that doesn't get you excited about the Wii, you have no soul.

Title Publisher
Avatar: The Last Airbender THQ
Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII Ubisoft
Blitz: The League Midway

Call of Duty 3 Activision
Cars THQ
Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 Atari
Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors Square Enix
Elebits Konami
Excite Truck Nintendo
Far Cry Ubisoft
GT Pro Series Ubisoft
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers Square Enix
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Nintendo
Madden NFL 07 EA

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance Activision
Metal Slug Anthology SNK
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption Nintendo
Monster 4x4 World Circuit Ubisoft
Need for Speed: Carbon EA
Open Season Ubisoft
Rayman Raving Rabbids Ubisoft
Red Steel Ubisoft
SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature from the Krusty Krab THQ
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz Sega
Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam Activision
Trauma Center: Second Opinion Atlus
Wii Sports Nintendo

One last note of interest. Worried about that post-launch drought? Well, if we don't see 'em at launch, remember Super Mario Galaxy, WarioWare, Fire Emblem, Prince of Persia, Sonic, and of course Super Smash Bros. Brawl aren't very far behind. ...

Every time we see pictures of this game, we can't help but be in awe. And, with this latest batch of screenshots to come about, Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed for the PlayStation 3 is looking sweeter and sweeter.

Let's just hope the final gameplay turns out to be as solid as these pictures appear when the game finally ships next year. Check after the break for more of these beauties.

Screens Here ...